Thinking about this made Lu Zhengning even angrier. He barged through the door of Zhao Si’s house, only to discover that everything inside was perfectly intact. There wasn’t the slightest sign that Zhao Si had run away.
“What the hell is going on?! He took the money but didn’t do the job, and now he’s nowhere to be found!”
Lu Zhengning was extremely frustrated.
If the man hadn’t run away, then where the hell was he?
If Zhao Si had actually done the deed with that woman Su Yuanyuan today, then no matter how much of his allowance Third Brother sent home afterward, wouldn’t all of it belong to them?
If Zhao Si really dared to run away, Lu Zhengning would make sure to break his legs if he ever caught him!
The frantic Lu Zhengning had no idea that Zhao Si had been knocked unconscious by Su Yuanyuan and dumped on the ridge in the wheat field, where he still hadn’t regained consciousness.
There was no one at Zhao Si’s house. After shouting and cursing, Lu Zhengning was afraid people would think he was a thief, so he could only slink home.
The moment he returned, he saw Su Yuanyuan going from room to room lighting mosquito coils. He shot her a glance, pulled a long face, and went back to his own room.
Su Yuanyuan acted as though she hadn’t seen him at all. After lighting the mosquito coil in the last room, she was about to leave.
Wang Xiujuan leaned against the doorway and looked at her with undisguised contempt.
“Don’t think doing this little chore means you can be lazy during the day. There’s plenty of work in the fields during the autumn harvest. Even if you can’t go into the fields, you still have to do something. And you’re dragging around two little burdens too. If you think you can freeload here, forget it!”
The entire Lu family was living off the allowance sent home by Su Yuanyuan’s husband. Yet somehow, they had the nerve to think that Su Yuanyuan and her two children were the burdens.
Su Yuanyuan was speechless.
She secretly rolled her eyes, but on the surface, she lowered her head and remained silent, putting on a weak and timid appearance. She coughed softly twice.
Wang Xiujuan disgustedly pinched her nose and hurriedly waved her away.
“Go, go, go! Don’t pass your illness on to the children.”
In the original novel, Su Yuanyuan had never talked back when her sisters-in-law were harsh to her.
She still had things to do tonight, so she didn’t want anyone to become suspicious. Without saying a word, she returned to her room.
Watching Su Yuanyuan’s figure, which remained surprisingly full despite her poor health, Wang Xiujuan gritted her teeth and spat on the ground.
“Money-grubbing parasite!”
Her voice wasn’t too loud or too soft, deliberately loud enough for Su Yuanyuan to hear.
With her back to Wang Xiujuan, Su Yuanyuan closed the door, a cold smile curling at the corners of her lips.
Go ahead and curse.
There would be plenty more to curse about tomorrow!
In the villages during this era, once it was past eight in the evening, there was no one left on the streets.
The sounds of insects and barking dogs drifted in from outside the window. Everything was deathly quiet.
Lu Siyuan and Lu Mingzhu were already fast asleep.
Su Yuanyuan sat up on the kang and carefully listened to the sounds coming from the room next door.
She had complete confidence in the mosquito coils she had made herself.
The coils she had lit in everyone’s rooms tonight were actually simple incense sticks she had made by grinding medicinal herbs from her space into powder.
She had originally intended to make a calming incense, but the effect had turned out to be too good—it could knock people completely unconscious.
She had thought there would never be a chance to use this batch of incense.
Who would have thought she’d get to use it tonight?
If nothing unexpected happened, everyone else in the household should already be sleeping like the dead.
Su Yuanyuan glanced at the two sleeping children.
Yes, she had also lit a mosquito coil in her own room, but she had taken the antidote beforehand.
The incense was harmless to the human body and also repelled mosquitoes. She had done this simply to be extra cautious.
“Time to get to work.”
Su Yuanyuan stretched lazily, took a steamed bun from her space and finished it, then began busily moving things.
Anything valuable in the household went straight into her space without hesitation.
The chickens and ducks in the coop? Take them!
The cow in the shed? Take it!
The wheat flour, coarse flour, rice, millet, and several jars of cured meat in the kitchen?
Take them all!
When she saw the dozen or so pieces of smoked cured meat hanging in the kitchen, a look of disbelief flashed through Su Yuanyuan’s eyes.
She gritted her teeth and cursed.
These heartless people clearly weren’t short of food, yet they had always been so stingy toward the original owner and her two children.
The original owner’s health had become this poor not only because she had always been sickly, but also because she had never properly recovered during postpartum confinement after marrying into the Lu family.
During her confinement, the original owner hadn’t eaten a single bite of meat. Even cracking an egg to cook into porridge would earn her a vicious scolding.
Because she was malnourished, she had no breast milk. It was only because the neighbor next door took pity on her and secretly brought her leftover food that she managed to eat anything at all.
Lu Zheng’an sent home 80 yuan every month, which was a considerable amount of money at the time. Combined with what the family earned themselves, the Old Lu family was now considered one of the wealthier households in the village. They weren’t lacking food or clothing.
How could they shamelessly spend her husband’s wages while treating her and her two children so cruelly?
Su Yuanyuan took several deep breaths to calm herself down, then smiled.
It didn’t matter.
Starting tomorrow—
No.
Starting tonight, the Lu family would be stripped clean by her.
They wouldn’t have a thing left.
Su Yuanyuan entered Lu Zhengning and his wife’s room and immediately saw the sewing machine.
It was one of the three major household items Lu Zheng’an had given her when they got married.
When she entered Lu Zhenggang and his wife’s room, she saw the cabinet that had been made for her when she married.
The shamelessness of this family could constantly refresh Su Yuanyuan’s understanding of the word.
Take it. Take everything.
Even the bicycle in the courtyard went straight into her space.
When she reached her in-laws’ room, Su Yuanyuan looked around.
In the original novel, Li Hua was a notorious miser. She kept her money in a small hidden compartment carved into the very back of her wardrobe.
If Su Yuanyuan hadn’t read the original novel, she would never have found it.
She opened the wardrobe and reached inside, feeling around for quite a while before finally finding a cloth bundle.
Su Yuanyuan opened it and glanced inside.
A thick stack of cash.
“……”
There was a total of 1,000 yuan.
Every bit of it consisted of the allowances Lu Zheng’an had sent home, along with his annual subsidies and holiday bonuses.
Because he was a serviceman, the government also sent rice, flour, and other supplies to military families every year as a form of support.
Ever since this son had joined the army, the Lu family had enjoyed a much better life.
Combined with several years of good harvests, they had managed to save this much money.
Su Yuanyuan glared at her sleeping in-laws, who were completely unconscious, and muttered,
“They sure know how to take advantage.”
Aside from the tiny amount Li Hua occasionally tossed to her like she was a beggar, most of the money had been spent by them.
That wouldn’t do!
Her two precious children had been starved until they were practically skin and bones, and the original owner had died because of their abuse.
She wasn’t even asking them to pay for what they had done.
But she was taking back every single cent.
If she remembered correctly, Li Hua also had a dowry of her own in the original novel. She had always kept it hidden very carefully. Even her two sons had never seen it.
Later, when a flood washed away the crops and destroyed half the house, Li Hua finally took her dowry out.
Where could it be?
Besides the wardrobe, there were several large trunks in the room.
Su Yuanyuan stared at the trunks for a while, then moved one aside.
Sure enough, she saw a small wooden board underneath.
“That’s pretty deeply hidden.”
Su Yuanyuan narrowed her eyes.
She pried up the board.
Beneath it was a square pit dug into the earth.
Inside was a mother-of-pearl inlaid box.
Su Yuanyuan’s eyes widened in surprise.
She hadn’t expected this old woman Li to be hiding such a treasure.
She picked up the mother-of-pearl box and examined it.
The wood itself was ordinary, but the mother-of-pearl inlay work was quite good. It looked like an antique and was probably worth some money.
Thinking about the look on Li Hua’s face tomorrow when she discovered that her precious dowry had disappeared, Su Yuanyuan couldn’t help wanting to laugh.
She put everything into her space, then suddenly remembered something else.
Earlier, when the eldest and second sons’ wives had given birth, they had wanted to buy longevity locks for the children.
But no one had been willing to spend their own money.
At the time, it happened to be just after the New Year. Lu Zheng’an had sent home a sum of money, and with the holiday subsidy, it amounted to more than 300 yuan.
They had used it to have two gold longevity locks made for the children.
That month, Su Yuanyuan and the children had been given no living expenses.
Because they were so hungry, Su Yuanyuan had been forced to dig wild vegetables in the fields to make food for the two children.
The two meals the family gave them each day weren’t enough to fill their stomachs.
The more Su Yuanyuan thought about it, the angrier she became.
She went into the eldest and second sons’ rooms and removed the gold locks from their children’s necks.
Even the leftover firewood, rice, oil, and salt in the kitchen weren’t spared.
No matter how insignificant the item was, she took it all.
Even if she couldn’t use it, she wasn’t going to leave it behind for these people.
What kind of nonsense was this?
If the three of them couldn’t have a good life, then no one in this family would have an easy time either!
If even one person in the Lu family had shown the slightest bit of compassion toward her and her two children, she wouldn’t have gone this far.
But since they had chosen not to act like decent human beings, that was even better.
She didn’t have to feel the slightest bit guilty.
After stripping the house of everything valuable or potentially useful, Su Yuanyuan finally returned to her room, completely satisfied, and went to sleep.
Between the incense and the satisfaction of having vented her anger, Su Yuanyuan slept exceptionally well that night.
Early the next morning, while the sky was still gray and barely light, the door to Su Yuanyuan’s room was already being pounded loudly.
“Third Daughter-in-law! Aren’t you getting up to cook? We have to go to the fields later! Is the whole family supposed to starve to death while waiting for you to get up and make breakfast? Hurry up!”
It was Li Hua knocking.
She kept pounding on the door as she shouted.
Su Yuanyuan opened her eyes and called back,
“Got it.”
She had only just repaired that door latch last night.
Don’t break it again!
“Always sick and weak-looking. Who are you putting on this act for? Hurry up and get up! If I have to make breakfast myself, none of you are getting any!”
Li Hua cursed as she returned to her room, intending to sleep a little longer.
It would still take some time before breakfast was ready.
Su Yuanyuan yawned and slowly began changing clothes.
She had only answered to keep her poor door from being broken.
Besides, there was nothing left in the kitchen.
What exactly were they expecting to eat?
She had just finished changing when a scream suddenly rang out.
It was Wang Chunhua, the eldest daughter-in-law.
“Oh no! Oh, no! How did the child’s gold longevity lock disappear?!”
Before Wang Chunhua’s scream had even faded, Wang Xiujuan’s scream from the other side drowned her out.
“Good heavens! We’ve been robbed! Everything in the kitchen is gone! The cured meat we smoked before the New Year—it’s all gone! Which heartless thief did this?!”
Wang Xiujuan slapped her thigh as she cried out.
The gold longevity locks were gone, but before everyone could even process that, they heard that all the food in the kitchen had disappeared.
They immediately rushed over to look.
Food was the foundation of life.
Losing the gold locks was painful, but without food, they would actually go hungry!
Old Man Lu hurried over with his long-stemmed pipe.
When he saw the completely empty kitchen, his vision went black and he nearly fainted from anger.
He planted his hands on his hips and shouted toward the outside:
“Where did this damned thief come from?! Whoever did this has no conscience! Just let me find out who it was!”