Li Family Village, the Mo family home.
“Someone come smash this door open for me! We agreed the silver would be paid today, so where are they now?!”
Mrs. Li called over people from her maiden family along with her sons. Several of them carried a huge wooden log that took two people to wrap their arms around and prepared to ram the door open.
Inside the house, Li Guang, whose fever had finally gone down a little, struggled to sit up after hearing the noise outside. Mo Fang poked him back down onto the bed with the stem of his pipe.
“Lie down. Don’t move.”
“Great-Grandpa…”
Li Guang wanted to say something, but under Mo Fang’s displeased gaze, he swallowed the words back down.
“Ahu, stay here and watch him. I’ll go outside and take a look,” Mo Fang said to Li Hu.
Li Hu gently stroked Li Miaomiao beside his leg. After a moment of silence, he said, “Let’s go out together. I want to see what exactly they’re trying to do.”
Mo Fang didn’t answer, which counted as agreement.
Just as the people outside were about to ram the gate, Li Hu removed the wooden bar locking the door and quickly stepped aside. The people charging in all crashed into the courtyard together like a pile of ginger roots, toppling over one after another and crying out in pain.
Mrs. Li was furious and stepped forward. “Doctor Mo, what is the meaning of this?”
Mo Fang took a puff from his dry tobacco pipe, slowly exhaling white smoke before leisurely replying, “What do you mean what’s the meaning? You shouted for the door to be opened, so we opened it. What? Is there a problem?”
Most of the villagers watching nearby were just there to enjoy the drama. Hearing that, many secretly laughed.
Mrs. Li curled her lips, unsure how to respond, so she changed the subject.
“Your daughter-in-law promised to give me twenty taels of silver today. Where is he now?”
“Hm? Did that happen?” Mo Fang looked at Li Hu in surprise.
Li Hu’s lips twitched. “Yes, but not now. There’s still one more hour left.”
“Hmph. If they had money, they would’ve paid already. They’re dragging things out because they don’t have any! If they can’t pay, hand the person over!”
Luo Wangshu had given Mrs. Li a very good idea. That brat was skinny, but his looks were decent enough. Selling him to a male brothel would be much more profitable than burning him to death.
Mo Fang remained calm as ever. He pulled the written agreement out from his clothes.
“It’s clearly written in black and white here. There’s still an hour left, yet you already brought people here to smash the door down. Isn’t that a little inappropriate?”
“What’s inappropriate about it? If you can’t pay, hand him over!” Li Niu shouted impatiently.
Mo Fang raised an eyebrow and slowly said, “Then what about the one tael you owe me? Need me to remind you? I didn’t charge a single coin for treating your father. If you’d gone to another doctor outside, do you know how much that would’ve cost? And their medical skills might not even be better than mine.”
Li Niu immediately lost his voice.
Luckily, Li Chunhua reacted quickly. She stepped forward with a smile and said, “What are you saying, Grandpa Mo? We’re all fellow villagers. Isn’t there still one hour left? We only came to remind you. If my elder brother said anything rude, please forgive him.”
“You said it yourself—we’re all villagers here. Tearing things apart completely won’t benefit anyone. We can talk about the silver once the time comes. The house is small, so it can’t hold so many people. If you don’t mind, you can just wait outside.”
As Mo Fang spoke, he sat comfortably in the rocking chair on the steps, happily smoking his pipe.
Li Hu sat on the only remaining stool and stared at the sky.
The group outside looked at each other awkwardly, and things fell into a stalemate.
Inside the room, Li Miaomiao rested her chin in her hands and looked at Li Guang on the bed.
“Brother Xiao Guang, why are you so dark?”
Li Guang: “…From the sun.”
“Really? But Miaomiao thinks maybe you just didn’t wash properly?” Li Miaomiao asked with wide innocent eyes.
Li Guang silently closed his eyes. Somehow, the anxiety in his heart eased a little because of her random nonsense.
“Brother Xiao Guang, are you going to sleep? Then should Miaomiao tell you a story?”
“Mm.”
Originally, he wanted to refuse, but after meeting those clear and innocent eyes, he simply couldn’t say no.
Excited, Li Miaomiao climbed onto the bed and barely managed to wrap her arms around Li Guang’s shoulder. Acting like a little adult, she cleared her throat seriously and said:
“Once upon a time, there was a blind man who sold children. He liked catching naughty children and selling them away. If children cried at night, he would come out…”
Li Guang, whose mind had been a tangled mess, couldn’t help laughing a little after hearing such an obvious story made to scare children.
The little voice kept rambling beside his ear, and before he knew it, he actually started feeling sleepy.
An hour passed—not particularly fast, but not too slow either.
The sun had already started tilting westward. Mrs. Li stood up, patted the dirt off herself, and confidently walked toward Mo Fang.
“The time’s up now, isn’t it?”
Mo Fang was comfortably asleep in the rocking chair with his eyes narrowed shut, completely ignoring her.
It was Li Hu’s first time seeing Mo Fang act shameless like this. Besides feeling a little shocked, he said nothing.
Logically speaking, they should’ve returned by now. Could something have happened on the road?
Seeing that no one responded, Mrs. Li’s suppressed anger exploded upward.
“Doctor Mo, I respected you because you’re old and gave you some face. Now the time is up. What else do you have to say?”
Mo Fang yawned and lazily glanced at her before saying something that nearly made everyone cough blood.
“Oh? You people still haven’t left?”
“You—”
Mrs. Li pointed at him furiously. After a pause, she shouted at the group behind her, “What are you all standing around for?! Go inside and drag the person out!”
The helpers exchanged looks before carrying their tools and heading inside.
Mo Fang looked at them calmly, his eyes full of mockery.
Li Hu was currently hesitating over whether he should temporarily use the silver Mu Bai had given him when suddenly the sound of a horse neighing came from outside.
Everyone immediately turned their heads.
After all, who would dare buy a horse without a decent amount of money at home?
A jujube-red horse quickly entered everyone’s sight. Luo Wangshu sat pale-faced in Mo Li’s arms. Since everyone’s attention was drawn to the horse, nobody noticed how terrible Luo Wangshu looked.
Li Chunhua looked up and accidentally met Mo Li’s eyes. Her heart suddenly skipped a beat. But before she could look closer, he had already looked away and was gazing gently at the person in his arms.
“Wife, are you alright?”
Luo Wangshu forced himself not to vomit and waved weakly. “Get me down.”
Mo Li tightened his grip around him and leapt gracefully off the horse.
Only after his feet touched the ground did Luo Wangshu finally feel relieved. Mentally, he felt much safer, but the dizziness in his head was still intense.
People in TV dramas always looked majestic while riding horses, but once it was his turn, he got motion sickness instead. The insides of his thighs hurt badly too.
Still, the speed really was impressive.
Mrs. Li stared fixedly at the jujube-red horse. The greed in her eyes was practically solid. Luo Wangshu felt that if she hadn’t been unable to beat Mo Li, she probably would’ve pounced on it already.
After resting for a moment, Luo Wangshu walked directly toward Mrs. Li and took out the silver he had prepared on horseback earlier.
Mrs. Li’s eyes widened as she reached for it, but Luo Wangshu pulled his hand back and extended the other one instead.
“The agreement.”
Though unwilling, Mrs. Li still took out the paper. Luo Wangshu accepted it before handing over the silver.
He even reminded her, “You’d better count it clearly right here. If you leave and later claim the amount is wrong, I won’t take the blame. And I’ll beat you every time I see you.”
Mrs. Li snorted disdainfully, obviously not taking Luo Wangshu’s small frame seriously.
Mo Li stepped forward and said to Luo Wangshu, “Wife is right.”
Only after hearing Mo Li speak did Mrs. Li finally put away the contempt on her face. She carefully counted every piece of silver and even weighed them seriously in her hands.
“Got it all straight?” Luo Wangshu asked just as she was about to leave.
Mrs. Li glanced at him before saying to the others, “Let’s go!”
“Wait!”
Luo Wangshu knew his own words didn’t carry much weight, but with Mo Li standing beside him like a giant wall, he finally had someone backing him up. Since he had support, wasn’t it perfectly reasonable to act a little arrogant?
“What now?” Mrs. Li looked at him in confusion.
“The agreement clearly states that after accepting these twenty taels of silver, you and Li Guang will no longer have any relationship whatsoever. Please go to the village chief and properly handle the household registration too, so there won’t be disputes later.”
Mrs. Li was just about to ask what right he had to speak when her eyes landed on Mo Li beside him. She shrank her neck and stiffly said, “Fine! We’ll go!”
“Good.”
The entire group grandly headed toward Li Dakang’s house.
By the time the severing document was written, signed, stamped, and everything settled, the moon had already climbed above the willow branches.
After leaving Li Dakang’s house, Luo Wangshu approvingly patted Mo Li’s shoulder.
“So eating this much and growing this tall actually does have some use after all.”
Mo Li smiled helplessly and was just about to say something when a scream suddenly rang out.
A figure rushed straight toward the two of them. Anyone paying attention could tell the target was clearly Mo Li.
But faster than the falling figure was Mo Li himself.
Holding Luo Wangshu, he spun beautifully to the side, and the charging figure tragically slammed face-first onto the stone pavement, groaning painfully.
“Who’s that?” Luo Wangshu pointed at the person lying on the ground—Li Chunhua—with a confused expression.
Mo Li replied flatly, “Don’t know her.”
Li Chunhua’s eyes widened in disbelief.
He actually said he didn’t know her?!
“Aiya! Chunhua, why did you fall on the ground?!” Mrs. Li turned around and immediately felt heartbroken seeing Li Chunhua sprawled there. She slapped her thigh dramatically before glaring furiously at Mo Li and Luo Wangshu.
“Was this your doing?!”
Luo Wangshu rolled his eyes toward the sky.
Seriously, what kind of nonsense was this?
“She fell on her own. We just didn’t catch her.”
“What?! You still wanted to catch her?!”
What the hell?
Luo Wangshu realized talking to this kind of unreasonable village old woman was exhausting. She deliberately twisted everything people said.
Of course, it wasn’t that he looked down on village old women. He just looked down on unreasonable people.
“My daughter hurt her face from falling! What if she can’t get married now?! Pay compensation!”
Mrs. Li perfectly demonstrated what true shamelessness looked like.
In situations like this, men usually didn’t speak. But Luo Wangshu felt Mo Li was too honest to handle it, so he shoved him behind himself and stepped forward with a cold laugh.
“First, your daughter fell by herself. We simply didn’t help her up, because men and women should keep their distance. Second, with your daughter looking like that, how could I possibly bring myself to catch her? I’d vomit up last night’s dinner. She’s not as good-looking as me, not as tall as me, and the moment something happens she starts crying. Other than having two extra lumps of flesh for giving birth, what else does she have?”
“You—”
“I’m perfectly fine, thanks. Please, can you come up with some new seduction tricks? Copying methods everyone else already overused will only make you a joke. Also, if you care so much about your daughter, why didn’t you help her up before trying to scam us?”
Luo Wangshu fired off everything in one breath without even pausing.
After speaking, he grabbed Mo Li’s arm. “Let’s go. Talking to people like this lowers your IQ.”
Naturally, Mo Li followed his wife away with a smile.
As for Mrs. Li, who looked ready to start a fight, one cold glance from Mo Li was enough to make her wilt immediately.
Being watched by the villagers who hadn’t left yet, Li Chunhua’s face turned burning hot. Biting her lip, she scrambled to her feet and ran away.
“Hey! Chunhua!”