The villagers who had gathered to watch the drama eventually dispersed, yet the Lin household remained in a state of lingering unrest.
Since the clan leader had delivered a definitive verdict, Zhao was left with no further recourse. She even found herself drifting into a daze, wondering if someone else in the village who despised her had been the one to strike. After all, her constant boasting and ruthless tongue had earned her a truly formidable list of enemies.
Still, her instincts told her that Lin Qu remained the most likely culprit.
She glared venomously at Lin Qu. “It was definitely you, wasn’t it?”
Lin Qu offered a faint smile. “If Third Aunt insists on believing that, then think whatever you like.”
Zhao froze. What kind of response was that?
If it was an admission, it seemed entirely possible, especially given the meaningful edge behind that smile. Yet if it wasn’t him, that also made sense, given how poorly they got along, and the fact that she was currently covered in waste while Lin Qu watched her make a fool of herself, finding it hard not to chuckle was only natural.
Without waiting further, Lin Qu turned and walked back toward his room. Thanks to Zhao’s frantic midnight uproar, the clan leader had simply dispensed with the three-day penance in the ancestral hall and ordered him straight back to bed. Under the circumstances, Old Mrs. Lin and the others dared not raise any objections.
As for whether or not to admit to it, Lin Qu had zero interest in exposing himself. Doing so would only increase the likelihood of unforeseen complications.
In the dead of night, he had no desire to court such risks.
Besides, admitting to it now might feel momentarily satisfying, and even if Zhao broadcasted his confession, the villagers wouldn’t necessarily believe her. However, whether the rest of the Lin family would believe it was another matter entirely. First and foremost, Zhao’s husband, Lin Lao-san, would undoubtedly side blindly with his wife, and Old Mrs. Lin was likely to do the same.
After all, he was merely a Ge’er, and given his current powerless standing within the household, he couldn’t afford to upend everything by sheer force of will. There was no reason to confess and invite unnecessary trouble upon himself.
Watching Lin Qu walk away, Zhao felt a lingering frustration burning in her chest. Even if she suspected it might not have been him, she still held a deep-seated animosity toward the second branch. Without missing a beat, she snapped, “Why is the second branch’s sister-in-law still just standing there? Can’t you see I need to clean up? Hurry to the kitchen and heat up some water right now!”
“O, oh!” Wang reacted purely out of reflex, preparing to obey Zhao’s command.
Just as she started to move, however, she caught the cold, indifferent gaze her young Ge’er was casting her. Wang’s steps ground to an abrupt halt.
Without a single word, Lin Qu strode straight into his room.
The two younger brothers, who had also been woken up earlier, didn’t even spare their birth mother a single glance before following their older brother inside.
Wang was left speechless, an empty, aching void suddenly hollowing out her chest.
In the past, although she was constantly ordered around by her sister-in-law, she had always found comfort in her heart because she knew that the Ge’er and two sons she had raised deeply cherished her, and her husband always stood by her side in quiet solidarity, treating her well.
Being simple-natured, she had felt that doing a bit more work didn’t matter. Having grown up accustomed to endless chores in her maiden home, keeping busy always gave her a sense of purpose.
Yet now, ever since Xiao Qu had been ordered to kneel in the ancestral hall, the entire household dynamic had shifted.
The look Xiao Qu gave her was utterly cold and detached, as if her well-being no longer mattered to him in the slightest, and her two sons mirrored that exact expression.
The protective warmth they once showed her was entirely gone.
Over the years, Lin Qu had fought back countless times, for the sake of his parents, his younger brothers, and himself. Having endured so much hardship, no matter how slow-witted Wang might be, she finally understood that her children were deeply resentful toward her.
Worse still, this time it didn’t feel like the usual grievances laced with underlying care.
The realization filled her with a paralyzing sense of panic.
Wang burst into tears right on the spot. Lin Guangfu wrapped a heavy arm around her shoulder, asking in a panicked voice, “W, what’s wrong?”
Wang wailed uncontrollably, sobbing so hard she couldn’t form words.
Zhao:
She muttered impatiently, “I just asked you to heat some water! Why are you crying as if someone’s taking your life?”
In the end, that hot water was never heated by Wang.
Inside their room, Lin Qu and his two younger brothers sat completely unmoved by the sound of their mother’s weeping.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the courtyard, Lin Qiong and his father had stoked the fire to heat water for Zhao, scrubbing her down repeatedly until the soap shrank significantly in size before she was finally considered clean.
Even so, a faint odor of the pit still clung to her skin.
Grumbling and cursing under her breath, Zhao remained utterly displeased.
After a moment of thought, Lin Qiong suggested, “Mother, why don’t you ask Grandmother to take you to town to see a physician tomorrow morning?”
“Hm?” Zhao paused her scrubbing and asked, “Did you notice something?”
Not entirely certain of his own reasoning, Lin Qiong replied, “I have a feeling that Lin Qu and Xu Qiu might know each other well. It’s possible Lin Qu got something from Xu Qiu that caused Grandmother to suddenly fall ill with diarrhea in the middle of the night. If we have a town doctor check her, their diagnosis might tell us a different story.”
Zhao frowned. “They know each other in private?”
“Yes,” Lin Qiong said. “When we were out gathering firewood in the mountains together earlier, Xu Qiu handed Lin Qu two steamed buns. Then yesterday afternoon, when I went to deliver food to Lin Qu, I found out Xu Qiu had already brought him food beforehand.”
That afternoon, Old Mrs. Lin hadn’t originally planned to send dinner to Lin Qu, but Lin Qiong felt it was going too far. No matter what, Lin Qu was still just a sixteen-year-old kid, barely an adult, and moreover, Lin Qiong felt a twinge of guilt knowing his mother had acted unreasonably in having Lin Qu sent to kneel in the ancestral hall. Pestering Old Mrs. Lin with spoiled coaxing, he managed to get her to agree, knowing the old lady always pampered him endlessly.
He simply hadn’t expected that upon arriving at the ancestral hall, he would discover Xu Qiu had already delivered food to Lin Qu.
Hearing this, Zhao flew into a towering rage. “Well, well! So those two hooked up behind our backs ages ago! Lin Qu is his cousin, yet the Xu family has no shame whatsoever!” Judging by the fact that they were already exchanging food, she knew their interactions couldn’t possibly have started just these past couple of days.
And yet Li had actually had the nerve to shift the blame for breaking the engagement onto their family.
Their calculation was practically masterclass, shifting all the blame onto the Lin family while keeping the Xu family looking spotless.
Still, Zhao kept these thoughts from her precious son, merely saying, “It’s getting late, go back to sleep. Mother will handle these matters herself.”
“Alright,” Lin Qiong agreed.
The next morning, bright and early, Old Mrs. Lin and Lin Lao-san’s couple headed off toward the town market.
Li was an early riser. Catching wind of their departure, she brought it up over breakfast: “Those people from the Lin family actually refused to trust the diagnosis of the old village doctor. Who knows what kind of nonsense they’ll manage to dig up by running off to town.”
Xu Qiu asked, “They went to town?”
“Mhm,” Li replied between bites. “They left before dawn broke.”
Xu Qiu furrowed his brows. Thinking back on it, last night’s events had indeed been remarkably coincidental. Old Mrs. Lin had suffered a sudden bout of diarrhea in the middle of the night, prompting Zhao to use the public outhouse just as the timing aligned. How could anyone be certain Zhao would wake up at that exact hour? While she was known for occasional night trips, stacking up that many coincidences usually meant something more deliberate was at play.
The person who had taken Old Mrs. Lin’s pulse last night was his master, and Xu Qiu couldn’t be entirely sure whether the old doctor had genuinely found nothing unusual or not.
Given the notorious reputation of Lin Lao-san’s family in the village, contrasted against the constant oppression they inflicted on Lin Lao-er’s branch, the possibility that the old doctor simply wanted to save himself the headache of dealing with Lin Lao-san’s antics wasn’t out of the question. Besides, whatever happened to that couple, they thoroughly deserved it.
The thought began to weigh on Xu Qiu. If a medical examination in town somehow uncovered evidence pointing directly at Lin Qu, the consequences would likely extend far beyond a simple stint of kneeling in the ancestral hall.
Mulling over this, Xu Qiu finished his meal, washed the bowls, and sat in the courtyard reading a book. As soon as he heard movement from the Lin household next door, he stepped outside. Lin Qu had just hoisted a large back-basket onto his shoulders and was heading out to gather pigweed. Xu Qiu trailed a distance behind him, waiting until they reached a secluded spot before catching up. “Your grandmother and third aunt headed to town at crack of dawn. They’re probably trying to get a medical checkup to find out if there’s really anything wrong with your grandmother’s health.”
“Oh?” Lin Qu blinked in surprise before grasping Xu Qiu’s underlying concern. “Do you think what happened last night was my doing?”
He was privately bewildered himself. He hadn’t even retaliated against Zhao twice, and in the past, she rarely realized when someone sabotaged her, so how had Xu Qiu managed to guess?
It sounded almost as if Xu Qiu understood him far too well.
His mind drifted to another possibility: Could it be that Grandmother’s health really did have something wrong with it last night?
Had some unrelated party with an axe to grind coincidentally timed their move to collide with his own plan?
That would be troublesome.
Xu Qiu hurriedly reassured him, “No, no, I didn’t take her pulse last night, so I don’t know Granny Lin’s exact physical condition. But if you didn’t do anything, then you have nothing to worry about; there’s no need to fear whatever diagnosis they bring back.”
Lin Qu smiled, his face exhibiting an expression of pure innocence. “Of course I didn’t do anything! Although it might look like my family holds a grudge against Third Aunt, she offends plenty of people and leaves plenty of folks waiting to see her make a fool of herself. Who knows, maybe some passerby just happened to be in the right place at the right time and gave her a shove.”
“I’m just a little Ge’er, where would I ever get the guts to pull off something like that?”
Even though Xu Qiu was wonderful, and Lin Qu knew deep down that even if he spoke the truth, Xu Qiu wouldn’t spread it around, what Ge’er wanted to expose his scheming side right in front of his crush?
After all, who would willingly keep someone with such a deep and calculating mind lingering by their side?
There was no telling when those schemes might end up directed at oneself.
Xu Qiu thought to himself that he’d have to be an idiot to believe that explanation, though he kept his skepticism entirely off his face. “That’s good then. Go ahead and take care of your chores, I’ll head back.”
Lin Qu opened his mouth, longing to chat with Xu Qiu a little longer, but lacking a topic, he could only watch with puppy-dog eyes as Xu Qiu turned to leave.
In truth, the incident with the Lin household had been engineered entirely by him. His grandmother’s system couldn’t tolerate spicy food; even the slightest touch of heat would trigger severe diarrhea, a trait dating back to his childhood that had only flared up once before. In their daily household diet, spicy dishes were virtually nonexistent. Chili peppers had only begun gaining widespread popularity across major restaurants over the past six months, and prices for the seeds remained exorbitant, far beyond what their village could afford.
Thus, the moment he saw the plate of meat his eldest uncle brought back yesterday, he knew his opportunity had arrived.
Lin Qu’s eldest uncle occasionally went into town for odd jobs; yesterday, his employer had been in high spirits and distributed shares of meat to the laborers, a portion of which his uncle brought home.
And included in that meat dish had been chili peppers.
While Old Mrs. Lin’s body couldn’t properly process spicy food, that didn’t mean she disliked the taste, after all, it was meat! True to her miserly nature, aside from reserving portions for Lin Qiong and the old master of the house, she undoubtedly consumed the lion’s share herself.
Once she ingested it, a bout of severe diarrhea became an absolute certainty.
As for Zhao’s midnight trip to the outhouse, that was a daily routine. Obsessed with salty preserved vegetables, Zhao drank copious amounts of water throughout the day, forcing her to wake up multiple times every night. All Lin Qu had to do was ask his mother to place a bowl of extra-salty preserved greens on the table during dinner.
Wang had no idea what her son was plotting, but setting a plate of pickles on the table was hardly an unusual occurrence.
Everything fell into place smoothly. Using a simple ladder constructed from wooden sticks tied together with straw rope, he scaled the ancestral hall wall with the coordination of his two younger brothers, stashing the tools securely afterward. In truth, he hadn’t been certain the plan would succeed, but the opportunity was too rare to pass up, he wanted to test his luck and vent the suffocating frustration trapped in his chest. He never imagined it would actually work.
The moment he finished shoving her, he scrambled straight back into the ancestral hall. Returning was even easier, as a tree inside was tied to the end of the ladder, eliminating even the need for his younger brothers to pull it back up, he simply climbed right back down.
He had thoroughly checked his work, leaving behind zero trace.
No one could possibly investigate him.
Even if there genuinely was something wrong with his grandmother’s health, proving how he could have possibly climbed out of the locked ancestral hall would remain an insurmountable hurdle, as scaling those stone walls was no simple feat.
…
Late in the morning, Old Mrs. Lin and Lin Lao-san’s couple returned from town with dark, sullen expressions. They had tried avoiding people on their way out, but returning proved far more conspicuous, immediately sparking speculation among the villagers regarding the true purpose of their town trip.
Instantly, the village erupted into buzzing gossip.
“Looks like the Lin family didn’t trust the old doctor’s medical skills after all.”
“If you ask me, the old doctor’s skills are leagues ahead of those town physicians.”
“You guys probably don’t know this, but last night the clan leader asked Xu Qiu to take Old Mrs. Lin’s pulse, and Zhao flat-out refused him. And to think Xu Qiu is practically her prospective nephew-in-law, yet she wouldn’t even trust him.”
“Could it be that she and the Xu family had a falling out? Back then, she and Li were the closest of friends, whenever Li had anything nice, she’d send it over. But Zhao spent every waking second bragging about how blessed and successful her Ge’er was, claiming her future son-in-law would take care of them in their old age. And yet last night, she actually tried framing Li for pushing her.”
“That’s entirely possible. Lately, nobody’s even seen the two of them walking together anymore.”
“Could something serious really have happened between them?”
“A falling out is for the best! She gave birth to one single Ge’er and acted like royalty. Li was the real fool for letting herself be treated like a doormat while showering her with gifts. A falling out is ideal, they might as well break off the engagement entirely, because that Lin Qiong is nothing special anyway.”
“Come to think of it, that little Ge’er Lin Qiong hasn’t been causing nearly as much trouble these past two months, has he?”