The warmth inside the room lasted only for a brief moment before the ugly realities of the outside world crashed back into Shen Qianqian’s mind, freezing her gaze instantly.
She lifted her head, leaning in close to Huo Xiangbei’s ear. Lowering her voice, her breath brushed softly against his earlobe: “Xiangbei, tomorrow… no, right now. We need to head over to the educated youth compound.”
Huo Xiangbei’s muscles instantly went taut. The arm wrapped around her tightened reflexively, and his heart dropped straight to his stomach.
[We’re going right now? It’s already pitch black!] [Does she… does she still want to go find him?] [Were all those sweet words just a trick to fool me?]
Shen Qianqian instantly felt his body stiffen, along with the surge of immediate anxiety and a sharp twinge of pain.
She lightly traced her fingers across his back in a soothing gesture.
“Don’t let your mind wander.”
Her voice was soft and gentle, her breath still feathering his ear.
“Listen to me. My bedding, my clothes, and a whole mess of other things are still over at the youth compound. All of that needs to be moved back here. From now on, I’m living right here, and I’m not going anywhere else.”
She paused, feeling his body relax just a fraction before she continued:
“And there’s something even more urgent—over the past two years, Xu Yanqing and Lin Wazhi ‘borrowed’ a whole lot of money, ration tickets, and items from me under various pretexts. I need to get every single cent back, principal and interest included.”
She pulled back slightly to look him straight in the eyes, ticking things off one by one with a clarity and organization that bore no resemblance to her former, hazy self:
“Every month you mailed seventy yuan, I only ever told them it was twenty. The other fifty, I’ve been secretly tucking away the whole time without touching a single coin.” “The thirty yuan my family sends every month, plus that twenty they knew about—totaling fifty—that was supposed to be the public expense account for the three of us… No, for me and those two.” “When I first came down to the countryside, my family gave me two thousand yuan to settle in. Eight hundred of that was ‘borrowed’ by them under all sorts of excuses—’family emergencies,’ ‘younger sister falling sick,’ ‘needing to buy proper outfits’—and they all signed I.O.U.s for it.” “Aside from that, I kept a running ledger for all the unrecorded petty cash, food, drinks, and daily necessities we bought.”
At that, a cold, humorless curve touched the corner of her lips. She almost felt a wave of gratitude for that trace of instinctive, unacknowledged self-preservation from her past life.
Perhaps it was second nature to her background, or just an innate habit of documenting things, but those records were about to become knives plunged straight into the hearts of those two scumbags.
“The fifty yuan Xu Yanqing wired to his family a while back, the one hundred and thirty plus tickets for his wristwatch…” “Lin Wazhi making new clothes for every season, buying leather shoes, the fifty she claimed she had to mail back because her family was struggling, the twenty she spent at the clinic when she was feeling unwell…” “All of it, down to the last scrap, is written down in my ledger. Thinking back now, I wasn’t quite as foolish as I thought. Maybe deep down, a part of me sensed something was wrong, which is why I left myself a safety net.”
She watched as Huo Xiangbei’s face grew darker and heavier—though it was clearly not directed at her. Her voice softened instinctively, carrying a tone of consultation and a hint of cunning playfulness:
“However, I can’t do this alone. You’re going to come with me, but you’ll have to play along and… act out a little scene.”
She leaned in closer still, practically brushing against his ear as she whispered through her plan in detail.
At first, as he listened, Huo Xiangbei’s expression grew gloomier by the second, a fierce ball of fire building up in his chest. Those two bastards had treated his wife like an absolute cash cow.
Yet, as he listened to her clear, methodical, and even somewhat ruthless calculations—especially when she hit him with that final line: “This time, I’m going to make them spit out every single thing they took, flesh and blood included”—
The corners of his mouth couldn’t help but slowly curve upward.
The anger he had felt over the stolen money was swiftly swept away by a much more overwhelming emotion—joy, a solid sense of grounding, and the warm, settled peace of a storm passing.
His wife had genuinely woken up. She finally knew who was good to her and who was trash.
Money could always be earned back, but having his wife back, whole and true, trumped everything else in the world.
He tightened his arms, pulling her firmly back into his chest, and gave the crown of her head a heavy, affectionate rub with his chin. His voice rumbled deep within his chest, vibrating against her eardrum, thick with absolute indulgence, trust, and even a strange sense of shared pride:
“Alright, I’ll do whatever you say, wife.” “Whatever script you write, I’ll act it out.”
The two of them murmured back and forth on the Kang for a while longer to iron out the details before Shen Qianqian gave him a gentle nudge:
“Let’s go. While it’s still just turned dark and the family hasn’t gone to sleep yet, let’s go set up the stage.”
Huo Xiangbei nodded, moving with crisp efficiency to get up, before turning back to steady her with a careful hand.
Shen Qianqian leaned on his support to climb off the Kang. The moment her feet touched the floor, her legs gave a soft wobble, nearly buckling underneath her. That lingering, unspeakable soreness made her cheeks heat up all over again.
Huo Xiangbei’s arm braced her steadily. In the dimness of the room, Shen Qianqian clearly “heard” a loud howl echo inside his head:
[My wife’s legs are shaky! It’s all my fault!] [Next time… next time I’ll definitely go lighter!]
Externally, however, he locked his features into a mask of tense rigidity, asking in a low, concerned murmur: “Can you walk?”
Shen Qianqian shot him a sideways glance without speaking, testing out a step.
After giving herself a moment to adjust, the worst of the discomfort subsided slightly.
She took a deep breath. When she raised her eyes again, her vision was already shimmering with a rapidly whipped-up layer of moisture, rimming her eyes in red. The look of aggrieved, pitiful vulnerability she put on was nothing short of a masterpiece.
Huo Xiangbei stared at her in a daze, his internal monologue firing off once more:
[My wife is so gorgeous!] [Even when she’s about to cry, she looks amazing!] [Whose wife could possibly look as good as mine… hehe]
Shen Qianqian gave his arm a light pinch to snap him out of it.
Huo Xiangbei instantly reined in his thoughts. The lingering softness on his face froze over in a split second.
He swapped it out for his customary cold, hard expression, his brows even drawing together in a scowl of visible disgust, as if he were harboring immense dissatisfaction toward her.
Shen Qianqian rewarded him with an approving look. The boy actually caught on pretty fast!
Lowering her head immediately afterward, she rubbed at her eyes, deliberately scrubbing the skin around them until they turned even redder. She ruffled her hair just enough to make it slightly disheveled, and then—with a few choked, stuttering hitches of breath—she took the lead, pushing open the door to the main parlor and stepping out.
Huo Xiangbei followed half a step behind her, his face dark enough to drip ink.
In the Huo family’s main central room, the lighting was dim and yellowish.
Electricity had only recently been wired into the village, and the low-wattage bulbs cast a weak, hazy glow that barely illuminated the immediate circle around the eight-immortals table.
Huo Dashan, Huo’s father, sat by the table smoking his long-stemmed pipe, his brows knit tightly together as he lost himself in thought.
Mother Huo, Wang Guihua, sat nearby holding an old jacket of her husband’s that had worn thin at the shoulders. Working by the light of the bulb, she guided her needle through the fabric with tight, even stitches.
The eldest son, Huo Xiangdong, sat on a low stool down-table, quietly weaving a willow basket, the slender vines obediently weaving through his hands.
His wife, Wu Cuilan, sat right beside him, half-finished cloth shoe sole in hand. With a thimble fitted over her finger, she pushed the needle through the thick layers of cloth with a faint snip-snip sound.
The youngest, Huo Xiangxi, had his nose buried in a textbook right at the edge of the table, studying by the light.
Hearing the commotion coming from the side bedroom, everyone lifted their heads.
There stood Shen Qianqian: her eyes rimmed with red, tear tracks still wet on her cheeks, her hair slightly disheveled, and her steps unsteady as she walked in.
She looked the absolute picture of someone who had suffered a monstrous grievance and been thoroughly, ruthlessly put through the wringer.