Bai Lian and Li Xiaorou stood nearby, stoking the flames of the confrontation.
“You dared to hit my son? I’ll fight you to the death!”
“Sister, please, just pay them something to make this go away,” Li Xiaorou pleaded, her voice dripping with artificial distress. “You’re my sister, but they are my in-laws. It’s all flesh and blood—if not for yourself, do it for my sake, won’t you?”
Li Miaomiao ignored them, her peripheral vision fixed firmly on the main room.
Amidst the tugging and shouting, Xiao Xian emerged from the main room, leaning on his crutch, and made his way to the kitchen. He stirred the pot briefly. She had been simmering it on low heat; just by the look of it, the braised pork intestines would be delicious.
After a quick glance around the kitchen, Xiao Xian picked up a basin of freshly fried meatballs and stepped back outside, right into the middle of the commotion.
He spoke calmly, his cool, steady tone cutting through the noise with perfect clarity: “My dear, we have so many guests today; I’m afraid these meatballs you fried won’t be enough.”
The word “guests” was dripping with sarcasm—everyone could clearly see that this was a brawl, not a social gathering.
“What? Fried meatballs?”
Instantly, the crowd’s attention shifted. They watched as Xiao Xian, leaning on his crutch with one hand and balancing a brim-full basin of golden meatballs in the other, stepped onto the threshold. Despite his worn, coarse clothes and his physical disability, his striking features and refined temperament made him look like a portrait come to life.
Li Miaomiao’s eye twitched. Who told him to bring the meatballs out? She had only wanted to use his voice to hint that there was food in the pot, hoping the curious villagers would wander into the kitchen on their own.
She yanked her arm free from Bai Lian’s grasp and marched toward him, plastering on a forced, tight-lipped smile. “Thank you, husband, for bringing those out for me.” She reached out to take the basin.
Xiao Xian saw through her frustration immediately. He lifted the basin higher, letting her hands grasp only air.
“Husband, give it to me.”
“No rush,” he replied. He lowered his gaze to the crowd, then met her eyes, his expression nonchalant. “My dear, we didn’t host a banquet on our wedding day. Why don’t we offer these meatballs as a small gesture of goodwill to everyone today? How does that sound?”
Hearing him deliberately draw out his tone, Li Miaomiao thought of his previous remark about “apricot blossoms reaching over the wall,” and she strongly suspected he was doing this on purpose. She bit her inner lip, her heart aching at the thought of the cost.
“Whatever you say, husband,” she managed to say.
Watching them interact so harmoniously, Li Xiaorou felt her teeth itch with irritation. Damn that Li Miaomiao—how is she still buying meat after losing her dowry?
As Xiao Xian stepped down from the threshold, Li Miaomiao pretended to reach out to steady him, whispering in a voice only the two of them could hear: “Fine acting, husband.”
Xiao Xian’s thin lips curled upward. “You’re not so bad yourself, my dear.”
To the villagers, their gentle smiles and close whispering looked like a picture of domestic bliss.
“They seem to get along quite well, don’t they?”
“They really do. I actually thought that after Li Miaomiao’s dowry turned into a loss and she tried to leave him, Xiao Xian would be the type to beat her.”
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Xiao Xian walked forward, his cool, calm voice carrying a hint of warmth. “Everyone, please, have a taste.”
The villagers looked at one another, but no one dared to reach out. Tie Zhu, watching them, pushed his way through the throng and offered Xiao Xian an honest simple smile before reaching out to take a meatball.
“Many thanks to Brother Xiao and Sister Miaomiao for the kindness.”
He popped the meatball into his mouth. At first, he swallowed it hastily, but after a few chews, he began to savor it, his expression shifting from surprise to pure astonishment.
After swallowing, he asked in disbelief, “Sister, what did you add to the meat? It’s incredibly delicious. May I have another?”
“Help yourself.” Li Miaomiao wasn’t stingy, but she was genuinely poor—she had to save money for Xiao Xian’s leg treatment and repairs for the house. After expenses, the little silver she had earned wouldn’t go very far.
Seeing Tie Zhu take a second one, the other villagers finally reached out too. As soon as they tasted the meatballs, their expressions mirrored Tie Zhu’s exactly, leaving the four members of the Lin family standing awkwardly to the side.
“Delicious! This is so fragrant.”
“Li Miaomiao, what did you use to make this? Teach us!”
Lin Youcai pulled his son aside, whispering urgently. “Lad, things aren’t going the way we planned.”
Lin Dalang had arrived at Li Miaomiao’s doorstep with his parents, intending to use the beating he’d received as leverage to corner her and, incidentally, to get a good look at Xiao Xian’s condition. His parents had come up with a spur-of-the-moment scheme: threaten Miaomiao with a hoe and demand that she either hand over the land at the back of the mountain or pay a hefty sum in compensation—or else, they would smash her house to pieces.
But the situation had completely spiraled out of their control. The villagers had just feasted on Miaomiao’s fried meatballs; even if Lin Youcai tried to start smashing things, plenty of people would likely step in to stop him.
Lin Dalang couldn’t think of a way out either, so he hissed a warning to his father. “Dad, whatever you do, don’t use that hoe to wreck anything. If you do, we’ll be in the wrong, no matter how much right we have on our side.”
Though the situation wasn’t exactly what she had expected, Miaomiao didn’t let it distract her from the task at hand. Watching the father and son huddled in the back, she heaved a heavy sigh and offered a bitter smile.
“Lin Dalang, are you suggesting that because my life hasn’t been easy, I’m bitter about you insisting on marrying my stepsister and demanding I become your concubine on the day of our wedding?”
Li Xiaorou sensed that the path of the conversation was turning against them and immediately interjected. “Sister…”
Before she could finish, Miaomiao cut her off. She wasn’t about to give the little “green tea” bitch a chance to play the victim. Shaking her head with a weary sigh, she sped up her delivery.
“The fellow villagers and my husband are all here. You’ve all seen it—while my husband and I may not be living in luxury, we aren’t exactly starving to death, either.”
“Furthermore, my husband, leg injury aside, is far more handsome than you are.”
“Why would I pass up a fine-looking man like him to pine after a heartless traitor like you? Your accusation that I lashed out because I hate you is pure, baseless nonsense.”
A fine-looking man?
Xiao Xian’s eyes darkened at the description.
Miaomiao felt a sudden chill in the air, but she pretended not to notice. She held out her reddened, swollen palms, flashing the crowd a look of sheer misery.
“To make this house look decent, I’ve been working from dawn till dusk, chopping wood and making repairs. I’ve been working so hard that my hands are red and swollen. It hurts even to lift a wood-chopping blade—how could I possibly have had the strength to beat a ‘seven-foot man’ like you?”
Xiao Xian glanced at her eyes, knowing full well her hands were merely water-logged and swollen from the work, but he let her spin her tale.
“And to take this a step further: my husband and I live at the edge of the village, and not an inch of your family’s land is anywhere near here. Why would you come all the way to this end of the village, intentionally injure yourself, and then run back to claim I hit you? What exactly do you hope to gain?”
Her words subtly steered the villagers’ thoughts toward more suspicious territory.
A seven-foot man again.
Lin Dalang felt as though those four words were being carved directly into his face. Watching Miaomiao play the part of the delicate, fragile woman, he gritted his teeth. This venomous woman is a natural-born actor.
“Don’t listen to her lies! She’s the one who hit me!” he protested.
But people are easily swayed by kindness, and having just eaten her food, their loyalties were shifted. They looked at Miaomiao’s swollen hands, then at the pile of firewood, the two new stools on the doorstep, and the new crutch Xiao Xian was leaning on. The truth was plain as day.
Uncle Wang, a villager, stepped forward. “Lin Dalang, you’re supposed to be a man. Can you try acting like one? You show up here causing trouble for Li Miaomiao with injuries you got goodness-knows-where. Her dowry is already gone—what else is your family trying to bleed out of her?”
Everyone in the village knew the Lin family’s greedy intentions. Only Li Miaomiao and Old Man Li had been naive—they’d been warned before that the Lin family were swindlers, but they hadn’t believed it. Since then, no one had dared bring it up.
Lin Youcai and Bai Lian immediately stepped forward to defend their beloved son.
“Wang Fugui, watch your mouth! What do you mean my son isn’t a man?”
Wang Fugui was a sturdy man who had spent his youth working as a manual laborer; he was built like an ox. He stepped forward with a shove, sending Lin Youcai stumbling backward.
“You’re greedy for more than your share! Old Man Li only had one daughter, and you lot nearly scared her to death. Aren’t you afraid of the old man coming to visit you in your dreams to settle the score?”
In this era, superstition ran deep. Hearing that, Bai Lian turned pale and collapsed to the ground.
Beside Lin Dalang, both Li Xiaorou and Lin Youcai’s faces went black with rage.
Seeing the reaction, Miaomiao immediately stepped forward, grabbing Wang Fugui’s arm and feigning a look of tearful understanding.
“Uncle Fugui, they came here today to target me. Please, let’s not let your relationship sour because of my troubles.”
“My stepsister is right—I’m just ignorant. I shouldn’t have asked for my dowry back after she stole my husband, and I certainly shouldn’t have asked for the land and the household registry.”
“It’s all my fault. I should have just left with my father.”
As she spoke, she let the tears well up in her reddened eyes, pouring out a performance of pure, heartbreaking tragedy.