Without waiting for an answer, Ren Chaomei shrugged indifferently.
“They’re really keeping a close eye on me, huh. Too bad Zhao Youfu, the matchmaker’s son, and I are close. He already told me everything, and he even went back to find out the latest news for me.”
She had promised to treat Zhao Youfu to a meal at a restaurant once she had money.
Right now, her space had food, gold, and silver, but not a single yuan.
She glanced at Ren Dahe and planned to get some money out of him. Trading food, gold, and silver for cash would be too troublesome, so she planned to learn from Ren Dahe and steal the money back.
There was no way she could recover all five hundred yuan, but she would take back as much as she could find.
If she hadn’t already had this plan in mind, she wouldn’t have deliberately caused trouble for Ren Ganying. She wanted Ren Ganying to draw the fire. If she failed to cover her tracks, Ren Ganying could take the blame for her.
Wang Xiaoqin didn’t need to go out and earn work points. She stayed home most of the time doing housework, so finding an opportunity to make her move was rather difficult.
Fortunately, Ren Chaomei had taken a few days off. She could stay home and keep an eye on Wang Xiaoqin’s movements. Whenever Wang Xiaoqin went out to wash clothes or carried shoe soles to work with the other women, Ren Chaomei would immediately spring into action.
“I’m exhausted. Where the hell did that bastard Ren Dahe hide the money?”
Ren Chaomei wasn’t planning to pick the locks yet. She was afraid that if she got caught halfway through, they would hide the money somewhere even more secretive.
After searching for an entire day, Ren Chaomei only managed to find thirty yuan hidden in a crack between the bricks.
Thirty yuan compared to five hundred yuan was nowhere near enough.
But Ren Chaomei was certain that aside from whatever Ren Dahe had already spent, all the remaining money was still in the house.
The Ren family didn’t have the habit of keeping a bankbook. In this era, most ordinary people didn’t either.
In their eyes, putting money in the bank was basically showing off their wealth and inviting some inexplicable, unknown danger.
Back then, Ren Dahe had gotten his hands on a huge sum of at least fifteen hundred yuan, perhaps even more. But he couldn’t simply stop working. He still had to earn work points. Since the family hadn’t been living off their savings, Ren Chaomei estimated that there should still be two or three hundred yuan left at home.
At the very least, they had enough money to arrange a marriage for her cousin Ren Guodong. Otherwise, the marriages of the two sisters, Ren Chaomei and Ren Ganying, wouldn’t have been left so open-ended.
Having money gave people confidence, and confidence made people care about their dignity and reputation.
Ren Dahe wasn’t that kindhearted. If the family had no money, forget Ren Ganying—she, his niece, wouldn’t have been able to escape being traded away for a bride price either.
Unfortunately, Ren Chaomei simply couldn’t find the rest of the money.
Wang Xiaoqin rarely stayed away from home for long either. Ren Chaomei had to seize every little opportunity to do something sneaky, and it was exhausting.
“If I can’t find it, forget it. I’ll just find an opportunity to take everything in one go.”
She didn’t know how to pick locks with a piece of wire or any other advanced tricks, and breaking the lock would leave obvious traces.
So she had prepared herself an absolutely perfect opportunity.
First, set the house on fire. Then, while everyone was rushing around trying to put out the fire and save the belongings, she could conveniently take the things she wanted.
If she wanted the fire to grow bigger, she should start it late at night, when everyone was asleep, giving the tiny flames a chance to grow.
Simply setting the house on fire would be too obvious. Ren Chaomei thought back to the fire-related news stories she had seen before and silently began analyzing the structure of her family’s stove…
Unburned embers falling onto the pile of firewood, slowly catching fire…
As she watched her aunt Wang Xiaoqin cooking in the kitchen, Ren Chaomei could already picture the roaring flames in her mind when someone suddenly called out to her.
“Big Sis Chaomei, are you home?” Zhao Youfu shouted from the doorway.
Without thinking, Ren Chaomei yelled back, “I’m home!”
Under Wang Xiaoqin’s disgusted gaze, which clearly said, There she goes again, going out to fool around, Ren Chaomei opened the door and ran outside.
The moment she met up with him, before he could even say anything, Ren Chaomei handed him several pieces of peanut candy wrapped in oiled paper.
They came from the old ancestor’s stash in her space. There was an entire compartment full of them.
The Ren family’s meals were nothing special, and Ren Chaomei would get hungry not long after eating. Yesterday, she had relied entirely on the willpower she had developed when dieting to endure the hunger. Today, however, she decided to spoil herself a little.
If she was hungry, she would eat a piece of candy. Besides, with her current weight, she didn’t have to worry about gaining weight.
“Thanks, Big Sis Chaomei. You really are the best.”
Zhao Youfu was at the age when boys could eat the most. The moment he got the candy, he stuffed it into his mouth.
He eagerly said, “I secretly listened in for you. Tomorrow, my mom is going to take the day off and go to the county town. They’re meeting at the entrance of that park. I heard my mom say the man is pretty good-looking, but apparently he has some kind of illness. What was it again…”
The first meeting was just a quick look to see whether both sides were satisfied with each other. If they liked what they saw, they would later visit the man’s family to take a closer look, or the man’s family would come to the woman’s home to formally discuss the engagement.
Because transportation was inconvenient, making repeated trips was a hassle. So the blind-date process would usually be kept simple. If they liked each other at first sight, they might go directly to the man’s home to discuss the terms.
“Tomorrow?” Ren Chaomei was stunned for a moment. “No wonder Ren Ganying looked so terrible today yet still went to work.”
Taking three days of leave in a row gave people a very different impression from taking intermittent days off. The latter made it seem like, Although I’m taking leave, I still have a good attitude toward work.
This blind date might not even succeed. To make things easier when she needed to take leave in the future, Ren Ganying had obediently spent the entire day pulling weeds today.
Zhao Youfu asked, “So are you going with your sister tomorrow to watch the excitement?”
“No. They don’t want to take me.” Ren Chaomei asked curiously, “Are you familiar with the county town?”
Zhao Youfu shook his head. “Not really. I’ve only been there a few times when visiting relatives.”
It took two hours to walk to the county town, meaning four hours for a round trip. Why would he go there for no reason?
“If you’re not familiar with it, then forget it.”
At worst, she could leave earlier tomorrow and ask for directions along the way.
Not having navigation would be a little troublesome, but she was sure she could find the place.
Or maybe she should set the fire tonight and make them so preoccupied that they wouldn’t have the time or energy to go to the county town…
But Ren Ganying had recently lost her precious purse and had been so distracted that she apparently hadn’t slept much at night. It wouldn’t be convenient to make a move right now.
Zhao Youfu looked at her expectantly. “You’re going to cause trouble tomorrow, aren’t you? Take me with you… Forget it, better not. If my mom finds out, she’ll beat me to death.”
Even though he knew Ren Chaomei could keep a secret, he still couldn’t help reminding her, “Don’t tell my mom that I told you any of this.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t get dragged into it.”
Zhao Youfu didn’t care about right or wrong. He only cared about who treated him best.
Ren Chaomei was the one who usually went into the mountains with them to catch rabbits and roast sparrows and loaches. He wasn’t close to Ren Ganying, that refined, proper girl.
Although they all ate at the same table, whenever Wang Xiaoqin cooked, she would secretly boil eggs for her own children but never for Ren Chaomei. Ren Chaomei had seen this scene countless times.
When Ren Ganying was hungry, she could secretly eat the dried sweet potatoes, candy, and biscuits Wang Xiaoqin slipped to her. Ren Chaomei, on the other hand, could only go into the mountains herself to find something to satisfy her cravings.
That was why she was closest to the teenage boys in the production team.
Wang Xiaoqin wasn’t the original owner’s biological mother, and the original owner knew that Wang Xiaoqin would never truly care for her.
But what the original owner resented was never the fact that nobody loved her.
It was that she had no money—the money that had been taken from her by her uncle’s family.
Who would be willing to watch other people live comfortably off what belonged to them?
The original owner wasn’t willing.
And neither was Ren Chaomei.
Not only did she look like the original owner, she had a similar personality too.
They were both petty and unwilling to let things go.