The next morning, Xue Qingqing woke up.
For some reason, she felt that the room was permeated with a faint, lingering fishy and astringent odor.
She didn't think much of it and first changed out of her bellyband.
Thanks to massaging her acupoints before bed, she surprisingly hadn't experienced clogged milk ducts. The milk that had seeped out had soaked the entire front of the bellyband, leaving large patches of dried, thick white milk stains.
Xue Qingqing dressed herself, then took the dirty clothes out to scrub and wash them. After hanging them up to dry, she went about her daily chores as usual—tidying up inside and out, taking care of the animals, chopping grass to feed the donkey, letting the chickens out to roam and forage.
By the time she finished everything, it was nearly noon, and only then could she make her own meal.
She cooked the food, but halfway through eating, Little Tiger started crying again. Xue Qingqing had no choice but to pick up her son and, snatching a few bites in between soothing him, managed to finish her meal in a haphazard way.
By the end of the day, even an ox would be worn out.
But Xue Qingqing still had to go out and drive the chickens back home.
It was an overcast day, and though it was only evening, the sky had already darkened. Clouds piled up over the village, threatening to unleash a heavy rain at any moment.
Xue Qingqing kept four hens and one rooster in total. Earlier, she had stewed one hen to nourish "Shen Zhuo," leaving only three hens and one rooster.
She searched around her doorstep for a long time but only managed to round up two hens and the rooster. The remaining hen was nowhere to be found.
Just as Xue Qingqing was fretting over this, a smoky smell suddenly drifted through the air.
She followed the scent and eventually arrived at the stream, where she saw a pile of cooled campfire ashes on the ground, with charred chicken feathers scattered nearby.
Two men sat facing the fire, noisily sucking the meat off chicken bones with great relish.
"You stole my chicken, didn't you?" Xue Qingqing demanded in a low voice.
The two men turned around. One had a face full of pockmarks—it was Wang Ermazi, the village's notorious idler.
The other had a dark face with thick eyebrows. Though he had a somewhat heroic bearing, his face was full of menace and cruelty, and he looked unfamiliar—not someone from Plum Blossom Village.
"What are you talking about?" Wang Ermazi said, picking his teeth with a chicken bone and letting out a satisfied burp. "How can you prove this chicken is yours?"
Xue Qingqing said with displeasure, "And how can you prove it's not mine? I don't care—if you steal someone's things, you have to compensate them. Otherwise, I'll spread the word and let the whole village know you've taken up thievery. Everyone will be on guard against you from now on."
Wang Ermazi jumped up in a panic: "You crooked woman! It's just a lousy chicken! I ate it, so what!"
The dark-faced man beside him also stood up, reaching out to hold Wang Ermazi back. He looked at Xue Qingqing and said in a conciliatory tone, "Little sister-in-law, it was wrong of us to eat your chicken. How about this—name a price, and we'll pay you back."
Xue Qingqing calculated in her head: "This hen was one I kept for laying eggs. If I sold it, it would fetch around sixty-five wen. I'll charge you sixty."
Wang Ermazi was frantic: "Sixty wen? You might as well go rob someone!"
But the man agreed without hesitation, pulling out a bulging money pouch from his chest. He took out sixty wen and stepped forward to hand it to Xue Qingqing.
Xue Qingqing took the money and walked away without looking back.
Wang Ermazi cursed and grumbled as if he were the one who'd had his chicken stolen and his money taken.
The dark-faced man, however, said nothing. He stood in silence, his eyes fixed on Xue Qingqing's retreating figure, then suddenly asked, "Whose wife is she?"
Wang Ermazi was still fuming. At the question, he snorted and said contemptuously, "She's nobody's wife. She's a widow."
The dark-faced man was clearly intrigued: "A widow?"
Noticing that his companion was about to be led astray by lust, Wang Ermazi warned, "Brother Xu, let me tell you—this little woman is cursed. She's brought death to her husband, her father, her mother, and her brother. Whoever she gets close to, she kills. Her natal family has nearly been wiped out by her curse. And on top of that, everyone says her house is haunted!"
The man chuckled: "If ghosts exist in this world, then karma must surely exist too. But has anyone ever seen those high officials who trample on human lives get their comeuppance? You can believe that talk if you want, but I don't."
Wang Ermazi curled his lip: "Suit yourself. I don't care. Just don't ask me to collect your corpse when you die."
The man was unperturbed. Watching the little widow's back, a greedy glint gradually rose in his eyes.
…
Xue Qingqing returned home, put the money away, made a simple dinner, and ate alone.
She had a belly full of grievances with no one to pour them out to, so she muttered to her late husband's memorial tablet: "I was furious at the time, but at least I got the money back, so it's not a total loss. The only pity is that chicken's feathers—if they hadn't been burned, they would've been perfect for making a feather duster."
Chewing a couple more bites of the coarse flour cake, Xue Qingqing said, "It's a shame about the chicken, but when I think about it more carefully, I can let it go. I can't go over there to keep you company, but sending one of the chickens over to keep you company isn't out of the question. It can keep you entertained and satisfy your cravings."
Her words grew more and more frequent, until she was saying whatever came to mind:
"Salt's gotten more expensive again."
“There's been a lot of rain this year, and the vegetables are hard to grow.”
“Auntie Li's dog had puppies, and I'm planning to bring one over to raise. That way, when I sleep at night, I won't be so scared.”
“Little Tiger is getting harder and harder to handle. They say the second month is the fussy month, but I never imagined it could be this bad.”
She muttered to herself: “Maybe Young Master Shen was right. I don't have much strength, and my shoulders are too thin. When I hold him, he's not comfortable either. If someone taller and sturdier held him, he'd settle down right away.”
Xue Qingqing paused, then quickly looked up and said to the memorial tablet: “I'm not saying this because I mean to find him a stepfather.”
“I won't look for anyone else. Once I've raised the child, watched him start a family and build a career, and seen him find new attachments, I'll go and keep you company.”
She lowered her face, idly poking at the grain at the bottom of her bowl with her chopsticks: “They say a person's death is like a lamp going out, but I feel that maybe there's another world after death. Have you been living well over there? Otherwise, why haven't you come to me even once in my dreams?”
She was so absorbed in talking that she ate absentmindedly, and her teeth suddenly caught her tongue. The pain was so sharp that tears nearly sprang to her eyes.
“Forget it. If you're doing well over there, then it's fine if you don't come.”
Xue Qingqing sucked in a cold breath: “I won't talk to you anymore. My tongue hurts terribly.”
Her mouth was full of a sweet, metallic taste, and she couldn't eat anymore. She simply washed the dishes and chopsticks and went to bed early.
In a haze, Xue Qingqing felt she was having a dream.
She dreamed that a man was standing at the foot of her bed.
He reached into her mouth with his index and middle fingers, pinching her tongue to check her wound.
But a woman's tongue is small to begin with, and the tip was slippery—how could it be so easily controlled by him? Several times it slipped out from between his fingertips, like a cunning little fish.
This repeated a few times, and slowly, the nature of the examination began to change.
Those two fingers gradually lost their gentleness, starting to stir restlessly in her mouth, until her tongue root went weak and her saliva overflowed. After that, it could only be described as rough—the two fingers almost forcibly clamped down on her entire small tongue, trapping it between them and toying with it.
The next day, when daylight flooded in, Xue Qingqing woke with a start from her hot, damp dream.
Her whole body was burning, her breathing rapid, yet she felt no discomfort—it wasn't like being sick.
As for what it was, Xue Qingqing, being a married woman, naturally understood all too well.
She buried her face in her pillow, leaving only her reddened earlobes exposed.
It took a long while before Xue Qingqing could accept the fact that she'd had a spring dream last night.
And the object of that dream hadn't been her husband.
She knew very well what Lu Fang's hands looked like. That hand that had done such wicked things clearly wasn't his.
Rather, it seemed like…
The name was on the tip of her tongue, and Xue Qingqing's heart trembled.
Her earlobes grew even redder.
This is deadly. She thought helplessly to herself: What is this supposed to mean?
When he was here, he'd tempted her in every way possible, yet she'd remained unmoved, her heart as steady as an old monk in deep meditation. Now that he was gone, she should be even more free of worldly desires—how could she have such an indescribable, inexplicable dream?
Xue Qingqing touched her cheek, feeling the burning heat of her skin, and wanted to cry but had no tears.
Still, she tried to console herself.
Setting everything else aside, Young Master Shen's looks, his bearing, and even those hands—they truly were… quite alluring.
The two of them had lived under the same roof for so long, and she wasn't some naive young girl. Having some subconscious fantasies about him… was only natural.
It was just that when he was around, her resistance to him outweighed those fantasies, so she'd managed to suppress them.
But now that he was gone and existed only in her memory, it meant she could "dispose of" him however she pleased, and so some of those thoughts could no longer be held back.
Food and sex are human nature—it's in the genes. There was really nothing to be done about it.
Xue Qingqing coaxed herself for a long while before finally calming her restless heart.
What she felt most grateful for was that she and Shen Zhuo would never see each other again.
As long as they never met, this feeling would gradually fade, until thinking of him no longer stirred anything in her.
That's just how people were—no matter how deep the love or hate, once it was cut off and three or five years passed, mentioning the name was no more than acknowledging a stranger with whom you'd had some connection.
…
Several more days passed, and the water vat at home ran dry.
Xue Qingqing didn't want to walk the long distance to the village well, so she went to the nearby stream instead, planning to fetch a bucket of water for cooking.
The wooden bucket was heavy to begin with, and even heavier when filled with water. Xue Qingqing used all her strength, but could only carry it in fits and starts, resting between attempts, her hands chafed red.
Just then, a man's voice came: “Little sister-in-law, need a hand?”
Xue Qingqing turned to look and saw a dark-faced, thick-browed stranger. He looked vaguely familiar, and after thinking carefully, she remembered he was one of the men who'd stolen her chickens with Wang Ermazi that day.
“No need,” she said coldly, lifting the bucket and continuing on her way.
But the man stepped forward in two quick strides, blocking her path, and without waiting for her to say anything, snatched the wooden bucket away.
“My name is Xu Biao. I'm a merchant from the Jiangzhe region.”
Xu Biao got straight to the point: “I came here to do business, and since I'll be staying for a long time, I thought I'd find myself a home.”
Xue Qingqing immediately understood what he meant. Her long lashes lowered, her expression unchanged.
Xu Biao said, "I heard from Wang Er about your family's situation. You've had it hard—widowed at such a young age, and raising a newborn child on your own."
"How about we team up? I'll cover all expenses for you and the child, and on top of that, I'll give you two thousand coins each month. What do you think?"