At a glance, Li Hua saw that there was practically nothing left in the kitchen. It had been cleaned out completely.
She immediately rushed into the courtyard and began cursing at the top of her lungs.
“Which shameless bastard did this?! You actually came to my house to steal! Why don’t you just starve to death?!”
Su Yuanyuan frowned inside the room.
Li Hua’s cursing was unbelievably foul.
The commotion outside was so loud that the two children were awakened. They rubbed their eyes and sat up. After hearing what was happening outside, they looked anxiously at Su Yuanyuan.
“Mom! Were we robbed last night? What do we do? If that’s true, then we don’t have anything to eat!”
“Are we going to go hungry?”
The two children were frightened.
They had gone hungry plenty of times before. What they feared most was having nothing to eat. The feeling of hunger was unbearably painful.
Especially since their mother was in poor health and had only just recovered from her illness. How could they possibly manage without food?
Actually, they had each eaten an mugwort cake last night, but their stomachs were already a little hungry again when they woke up.
“Looks like we were probably robbed. But don’t worry. No matter what happens, Mom won’t let you go hungry.”
Su Yuanyuan rubbed the children’s heads, feeling a pang of sadness.
When the original owner had still been alive, she loved spring the most because there were plenty of wild vegetables during that season. Even if her heartless in-laws and the other two branches of the family only gave them a tiny amount of food, the children wouldn’t go hungry.
She could find plenty of houttuynia, Qingming greens, nostoc, bracken, toon sprouts, and many other wild vegetables in the fields.
There was always more than they could eat.
But once spring passed, the miserable days for the mother and her two children would begin again.
Su Yuanyuan sighed and told the children to stay in the room before opening the door and walking outside.
The moment she stepped out, the wailing and cursing from Li Hua and the others stabbed into her ears like needles.
They were unbelievably noisy.
“Oh, we’re doomed! How are we supposed to live now?! All the food has been stolen! That cured meat was made from one and a half pigs! Damn that thief!”
Several people were crying and screaming, tears and snot running down their faces.
Li Hua wiped her nose, sat down on the ground, slapped her thighs, and cursed.
“You starving bastard! You cleaned out the entire kitchen in one night! Even rats aren’t this good at stealing! May Heaven strike these thieves dead!”
Su Yuanyuan was already immune to their insults.
Stealing?
What an ugly way to put it.
She was merely taking back her own things, okay?
The entire family cried and cursed, quickly attracting all the neighboring villagers.
“Oh my, Sister-in-law Lu, what happened so early in the morning?”
The village households were all located fairly close together, so quite a few neighbors came over to gossip and watch the commotion, crowding around the entrance to see what was happening.
“What happened? Can’t you all just talk things out properly? You’re family after all. Sit down and discuss it calmly.”
Sister-in-law Zhang still had a winnowing basket in her hands. She had come running over as soon as she heard the commotion.
She had never thought much of Old Man Lu and Li Hua’s family. The two households normally exchanged superficial smiles, but privately, she wanted nothing to do with them.
She felt sorry for that young daughter-in-law of the Lu family and her two children. It wasn’t right for perfectly good people to be tormented every single day.
When she’d heard the commotion from a distance, she had assumed Su Yuanyuan had been beaten again or that someone in the Lu family had caused trouble.
So she had immediately come over to mediate.
“What is there to discuss?! Our house was robbed! Some heartless bastard cleaned out the entire kitchen! Even a rat couldn’t steal this much! That damned thief deserves to go straight to the eighteenth level of hell!”
Wang Chunhua’s face was covered in tears and snot, making her look rather miserable.
Li Hua glanced at the people gathered around her house.
Her eyes suddenly shifted.
She slapped the dirt off her clothes, stood up, pointed toward the villagers at the entrance, and demanded,
“None of you have heard about any thieves in the village lately, have you? Someone suddenly took everything without making a sound. It could only have been someone from the neighborhood! One of you must have seen our Lu family living well and gotten jealous, so you came and robbed us, didn’t you?!”
Su Yuanyuan timidly shrank into a corner, appearing frightened as she watched what was happening in the courtyard.
In reality, she had already rolled her eyes a thousand times in her heart.
Li Hua’s suspicion wasn’t completely unreasonable.
If Su Yuanyuan hadn’t been the one who did it, she would also have suspected someone nearby if this much had suddenly disappeared without making a sound.
But everyone lived so close to one another and saw each other every day.
Accusing people like this was simply too offensive.
Who would be happy waking up first thing in the morning and being accused of being a thief?
Even if you thought that way, couldn’t you phrase it a little more politely?
Su Yuanyuan shook her head.
What a hopeless bunch.
Then again, it wasn’t surprising.
Throughout the surrounding villages, practically no one actually liked the Old Lu family.
If Su Yuanyuan were one of them, she wouldn’t like them either.
Sure enough, the moment Li Hua said those words, the faces of the women gathered at the entrance darkened.
One or two of them were so annoyed that they rolled their eyes.
“You can’t just say things like that without proof. We went to bed early last night. When we turned off our lights, I could still see the lights on at your house from a distance. You were all still awake when we went to sleep.”
“That was an awful thing to say. Your family is living well because of your youngest son’s money, but we’re not so poor that we can’t afford to eat. Who would bother sneaking into your kitchen to steal a few things? I wouldn’t even want them.”
Sister-in-law Lin pursed her lips, rolling her eyes so hard they nearly disappeared.
Sister-in-law Zhao elbowed her and then explained as well,
“Exactly. It’s busy farming season, so everyone goes to bed early. Stealing isn’t a small matter, and you can’t accuse people recklessly. You should go to the village committee and report it.”
Sister-in-law Zhao’s words were tactful and gave everyone an opportunity to back down. Otherwise, things might actually turn into a fight.
But the moment she finished speaking, Li Hua’s expression changed.
She twisted her thick waist and hurried back into the house.
She closed the door behind her.
The people at the entrance couldn’t help finding it amusing.
A moment later, a miserable scream came from inside.
Li Hua threw open the door and ran out, grabbing Old Man Lu as she cried.
“We’re ruined! All the money in the house is gone! And my dowry! That was the dowry my mother gave me! I’ve hidden it for all these years, and that bastard stole it too!”
The neighbors were shocked.
They knew the Old Lu family had quite a bit of money.
Now all their money had been stolen, and even their kitchen had been cleaned out, while not a single thing had gone missing from the neighbors’ houses.
Could the Lu family have offended someone?
Ever since Lu Zheng’an joined the army, the Lu family’s life had gradually improved.
They had once been so poor they could barely put food on the table.
Now they had meat and good food every day, and they had started looking down their noses at everyone.
Hardly anyone in the neighborhood actually wanted to associate with them.
When the rest of the Lu family heard that all the money was gone, their faces turned pale.
Li Hua wiped away her tears and snot, then glared viciously at the neighbors crowded around the entrance.
The neighbors were irritated by her look.
What kind of look is that?
It was as if she had already decided they were the ones who had stolen the money.
Sister-in-law Lin glanced at the wives of Lu’s eldest and second sons. She folded her hands and smiled gleefully.
“Don’t look at us. Everyone hides their money somewhere. We hardly ever even enter your Lu family’s courtyard, so how would we know where you keep your money? Your money is gone, your food is gone—who do you think stole it? You can guard against outsiders day and night, but it’s hard to guard against a thief in your own family!”
Everyone else was holding back their anger, but Sister-in-law Lin wasn’t about to indulge Li Hua.
The two women had never gotten along. They could even end up arguing with each other while working in the fields.
Now that Li Hua was glaring at her like that, she had no intention of being polite.
Li Hua put her hands on her hips and was about to start cursing when Sister-in-law Lin’s words suddenly made something click in her mind.
That’s right.
She had hidden her money and dowry extremely carefully. No outsider had ever entered her room.
Besides, no one had heard any movement last night.
Everything had been stolen without making a sound.
Then it had to be someone from their own family.
The first people Li Hua thought of were her two daughters-in-law.
Her two sons had always coveted that money. She knew that perfectly well.
They wouldn’t steal the money themselves, of course.
They would have their wives do it.
“That’s right! Someone took everything so cleanly. It can only be someone from our own family! Who was it? If you come clean right now and we shut the doors and discuss this properly, I can let it go. Otherwise, once I find out who did it, I don’t care who she is—I’ll rip her hair out!”
Li Hua’s eyes swept over her family.
The viciousness in her expression was no exaggeration.
When resources were scarce, people could become like this.
For the sake of a small amount of resources, families could even end up killing one another.
Su Yuanyuan was actually a little excited.
My chance to stir things up has arrived.
She hurriedly grabbed the doorframe with a frightened expression.
“Mother, where do you normally keep the money? Who knows about it? To quietly find the money and take it away, they must have known where you kept it. Otherwise, how could they have taken everything so easily?”
No one knew that there was anything unusual about the incense Su Yuanyuan had burned.
The thief had managed to steal everything without anyone noticing.
There was only one possibility:
The thief was extremely familiar with where Li Hua kept her money and dowry.
Li Hua froze for a moment.
Then she turned and glared at Old Man Lu.
She grabbed the broom leaning against the wall and swung it at him.
Old Man Lu was completely bewildered by the attack.
“What the hell are you doing?! Isn’t there already enough chaos in this family?!”
Old Man Lu knew exactly what his two sons were like.
After hearing what the others had said, he too assumed that one of his sons had done it.
Their own family had produced a thief.
How humiliating!
And with everyone gathered outside, family shame should never be aired in public.
They needed to disperse the crowd first, then shut the doors and deal with it privately.
Old Man Lu hadn’t even figured out how to resolve the situation when Li Hua swung another broom at him, sending his temper through the roof.
He grabbed the broom.
Li Hua lost her balance and fell flat on her face.
The neighbors crowded around the entrance were stunned.
They had originally just come over to hear some gossip.
Who would have thought they’d get to watch something this entertaining?
Su Yuanyuan covered her mouth and widened her eyes in shock.
In reality, she was simply trying to hide the smile that was threatening to stretch across her entire face.
Li Hua cared most about her reputation.
Especially after the family had accumulated some money, how could she possibly tolerate humiliating herself in front of all the neighbors?
She was so furious that she nearly ground her back teeth to pieces.
She scrambled up and immediately started wrestling with Old Man Lu.
“You bastard! Don’t pretend you don’t know anything! Don’t think I don’t know you’ve been fooling around with those sluts outside these past few years! That’s adultery! You know exactly where I keep my money! And my dowry too!”