“My house…” Wang Xiaoqin began by crying softly, but soon her cries turned into a heart-wrenching wail. “My house!”
Watching the house disappear into the flames, Ren Chaomei had originally felt rather melancholy.
But when she heard Wang Xiaoqin using the exact same words she had used, crying and shouting about her house, Ren Chaomei instantly stopped feeling sad or regretful.
Instead, a rush of satisfaction surged through her.
She had been right to set that fire. She had done the right thing. If something couldn’t be reclaimed, then it should be destroyed.
After the walls collapsed, the fire stopped spreading. It took nearly an hour of everyone working together before they finally managed to bring the fire under control.
“There are definitely still plenty of embers underneath the brick walls. They might reignite tonight, so someone needs to keep watch. Otherwise, the wind could blow the embers somewhere else and start another fire.”
After the brigade leader finished directing everyone around, he finally realized that Ren Dahe and Ren Guodong were nowhere to be seen.
He was just about to ask about them when he saw the father and son hurriedly returning from outside.
“You two weren’t even home at a time like this! You were still out playing cards!” The brigade leader scolded them in exasperation. “If I catch you doing this again, I’m confiscating all your gambling equipment!”
They had confiscated playing cards, dice, and other gambling tools before and given the gamblers plenty of criticism and warnings. But even when the equipment was confiscated, people always found ways to get new gambling tools.
After a while, the brigade leader stopped bothering with it too much. He only warned everyone during the busy farming seasons not to let gambling interfere with the harvest.
This time, Ren Dahe and his son hadn’t delayed their farm work. They had only neglected their own home.
“If you two had been at home and kept an eye on things tonight, the fire wouldn’t have gotten this big!”
“Look at it! What has your house become now?”
“This… this was my house…” Ren Dahe stared at the ruins in disbelief, his eyes going blank.
The moment Wang Xiaoqin saw Ren Dahe, all her anger suddenly found an outlet.
She rushed over and pounded on him several times.
“It’s all your fault! All your fault! I asked you to fetch water tonight, and you refused. You weren’t even home when we were putting out the fire! We can’t count on you for anything! How did I ever end up marrying a man like you?”
“You were the one at home when the house burned down, and you still have the nerve to blame me!”
There had been fires in their brigade before. Some had been caused by people burning fires for warmth during winter, while others had started because people left the kitchen unattended while cooking.
Remembering that Wang Xiaoqin had been boiling medicine recently, Ren Dahe instinctively turned his anger toward her.
“Ever since I married you, it’s been one illness or disaster after another. You can’t do any work, you just eat without contributing, and you’re like a walking curse! You burned down the whole house just to boil your medicine, and you still have the nerve to blame me!”
The production-team members who had just finished fighting the fire now had to pull the couple apart and calm them down.
“This kind of disaster is something nobody can predict. It can’t be helped.”
“Calm down, calm down. You can rebuild a house after losing one. As long as nobody was hurt, that’s already a blessing in disguise.”
Ren Chaomei listened quietly from the side without saying a word.
No one connected the fire to deliberate arson, much less suspected her.
Ren Chaomei had lived in this house for more than ten years and was still living there. Now that it had burned down, she had nowhere to live either. She was also a victim.
Who would suspect a victim?
Even when Ren Dahe and Wang Xiaoqin blamed each other, they only accused one another of not being vigilant enough or not paying attention. Everyone believed the fire had been an accident.
After Ren Dahe had cursed a few more times, the production-team members pulled him aside and tried to comfort him. In the end, whether from frustration or anger, he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He crouched on the ground, covered his face, and began to cry.
“Waaah… my house, my money…”
Ren Chaomei pricked up her ears and listened for a moment.
Yep. She was certain.
Ren Dahe was crying over the money.
A ruined family still had a fortune tied up in its belongings. Rebuilding the house would cost money, replacing everything would cost money, and most importantly, a lot of the money he had hidden inside the house had also been burned.
The Ren family’s losses from this fire were particularly severe.
Wang Xiaoqin, who had been arguing fiercely with Ren Dahe moments earlier, stopped fighting when she saw her husband crying. Instead, she went over and hugged him, crying with him.
The miserable sight of the husband and wife embracing and sobbing together made the brigade leader unwilling to continue scolding them.
The brigade leader sighed and instructed everyone, “Everyone’s been working for so long. You should go back and rest. Ren Dahe, you and your son keep watch tonight. Make sure the fire doesn’t flare up again.”
It was the middle of the night. No one could stay up all night with the Ren family when they had work the next morning.
After assigning Ren Dahe and his son their task, the brigade leader turned to Wang Xiaoqin, Ren Chaomei, and the others.
“You can decide whether you want to stay here and keep watch or spend the night at someone else’s house.”
Wang Xiaoqin said brokenheartedly, “We won’t go. We’ll stay here and keep watch. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.”
“I’m not going either,” Ren Chaomei also shook her head.
She could certainly sleep, but staying at someone else’s house and squeezing into bed with girls she wasn’t familiar with would be inconvenient and embarrassing.
The brigade leader didn’t force them.
“Fine. We’ll arrange things like this for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss your housing situation.”
The people who had come to help put out the fire gradually returned home to sleep.
Only after the outsiders had left did Wang Xiaoqin and Ren Dahe have time to take stock of what little remained of their belongings.
“This bag is beans… This one is cornmeal… Ah! Where’s my bag of dried sweet potatoes? Why can’t I find it?”
In the chaos, everyone had focused only on efficiency. When they helped carry things out, nobody had time to organize them properly. Everything had simply been dumped on the ground before they rushed back inside to carry out more things.
The Ren family’s remaining possessions were all piled together in a messy heap.
“My bag of dried sweet potatoes is gone!” Wang Xiaoqin searched over and over, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
Ren Dahe grew irritated by her rummaging.
“Enough, enough. Stop digging around. If the dried sweet potatoes are gone, then they’re gone. Someone probably missed them while moving things.”
With that, he began searching through the boxes and containers where he kept his money.
After looking through them, he became anxious too.
“Where’s my metal cigarette tin? Why is that missing too?”
Wang Xiaoqin was in charge of the family’s food and household provisions, while Ren Dahe kept all the money in his own hands. So when they had fled the fire, she hadn’t been able to precisely grab all the family’s money.
She had searched for her dried sweet potatoes, and Ren Dahe had casually said that someone must have overlooked them while moving things. Now that he was looking for his cigarette tin, Wang Xiaoqin couldn’t help but throw his own words back at him.
“If the cigarettes are gone, then they’re gone. Someone probably missed them while moving things.”
Ren Dahe’s temper flared.
“There wasn’t just cigarettes in there! There was money too!”
The moment he said that, everyone’s hearts tightened.
“Then hurry up and look!” Wang Xiaoqin immediately panicked. She stopped looking for her dried sweet potatoes and began helping Ren Dahe search for the metal tin.
Ren Ganying also put down the clothes and shoes she had been sorting and took a flashlight to search the surrounding area for the missing tin.
Only Ren Chaomei remained completely unmoved.
She put her share of the salvaged belongings to one side, wrapped herself in one of the rescued quilts, and prepared to sleep.
Ren Ganying searched for a while but found nothing. When she turned around and saw Ren Chaomei breathing naturally, almost already asleep, she became furious and went over to shake her.
“You can actually sleep at a time like this? Everyone’s practically dying of anxiety, and you’re sleeping! Get up and help us find the things!”
Ren Chaomei poked her head out from beneath the quilt and barely opened her eyes.
“That money has nothing to do with me. Why should I be anxious?”
There were very few things in this family that belonged to her. She had already taken out all of her personal belongings. Everything else had nothing to do with her.
Besides, the house was gone, Ren Dahe’s money was gone, and most of the anger she had been holding inside had finally been released.
Her mind suddenly felt peaceful.
Even though the conditions were miserable and she could only sleep on the ground wrapped in a quilt, with Ren Dahe and Wang Xiaoqin constantly arguing beside her, she slept exceptionally soundly.
Before she went to sleep, Wang Xiaoqin and Ren Dahe had only been searching for things and muttering about various items that had gone missing.
But after she woke up, the conversation around her had changed.
Wang Xiaoqin was no longer saying that things had disappeared.
She was accusing someone of stealing from her family.
“Our family has already suffered such a disaster, and someone still came to steal from us! Do they have no conscience?!”
“We thought they were kindhearted people who came to help put out the fire, but they actually came to steal things while they were here! Absolutely shameless!”