A Happy Wife in a Rural Family - Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Chapter 3. Xiao Yunjing
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
As soon as old Gu said this, it was not the second Gu who spoke to stop him, but Madam Hua.
“Old man, it’s not appropriate.”
Old Gu looked at Madam Hua in confusion. Madam Hua quickly went over and whispered something into old Gu’s ear.
Old man Gu didn’t say anything after seeing Gu Qingli. He waved at the others in the room.
Gu Qingli knew that the old couple didn’t have good intentions, but she didn’t know what it was yet. She couldn’t think of any way to deal with it.
In the afternoon, everyone in Qinghe village knew that second brother Gu’s second daughter had been violated, and the engagement was broken off.
The villagers were abuzz with the news. Some cursed Gu Qingli, some sympathized with her, and some gloated.
In the upper room, old Gu called Madam Hua into the room.
Old Gu shook his pipe on the foot of the bed and refilled it with tobacco leaves. He lit the pipe and took a deep puff before asking Madam Hua, “Old woman, do what you said as soon as possible. Er Nizi’s reputation will be even worse if you delay any longer, affecting the twin brothers’ future.”
Madam Hua waved aside the smoke that old Gu had poofed out. She glanced at old Gu and said, “Hmph! What are you worried about? I’m not the Gu family’s child anyway. If I can exchange her for five taels of silver, it’ll be enough for us to buy a brush, ink, paper, and inkstone. I’ll go later.”
“Okay, keep a close eye on the second brother’s family. Don’t let her ruin things.”
“That b*stard, she dared to fart when I shouted at her. If it weren’t for the fact that she gave birth to twin sons, I would have asked my second son to divorce her. He doesn’t like the mother and daughter anyway.”
“Alright, alright, don’t talk about not stopping. Will you do the family’s matters after you’re done? Or should eldest daughter-in-law do it?” Old Gu was getting impatient.
“That lazy woman.” Madam Hua only cursed once. That lazy woman had a few brothers, one of whom had passed the Tong Sheng (unified imperial) exam a few years ago. Now, she was terrific and had someone to back her up.
She couldn’t even rub her face.
In the west room, the second brother Gu did not go out for the first time today. Usually, at this time, he would either be in the fields or climb the mountain to chop wood.
He was sitting at the door, deep in thought.
Mrs. Wu sat on the brick bed and sobbed.
The host’s younger twin brothers, Gu Qingyun and Gu Qingyang, also known as Da Shuang and Xiao Shuang, sat beside Mrs. Wu in silence, staring at Gu Qingli, who was preparing the herbs in the room.
The ten-year-old children were already very sensible. They knew that the second sister had become a pair of broken shoes, and the engagement had been broken off.
They saw that second sister looked as if nothing had happened. Usually, whenever there was a small matter, the second sister would cry like her mother.
“Second sister, what are these? Why does it look like the herbs picked by Dr. Liin the village?” Da Shuang couldn’t help coming over and squatted down to ask.
Gu Qingli looked up at her handsome younger brother and nodded. “Yes, I heard that medicinal herbs are precious. Second sister doesn’t know which ones are medicinal herbs. So I dug them up and would go to town tomorrow to take a look.
Da Shuang’s eyes were bright, and he nodded. “Then, second sister, let’s go up the mountain and dig some more.”
Gu Qingli knocked on Da Shuang’s head. The ten-year-old boy was as thin as a monkey. “What time is it now?”
“Hehe … Da Shuang laughed dryly as he touched the spot where he had been knocked on the head.
He wanted to get more herbs to sell for money to treat his mother’s illness.
Xiao Shuang’s eyes were also fixed on the pile of herbs; then he looked at Mrs. Wu. His thoughts were in line with Da Shuang’s.
“Second brother, why didn’t you go out?” Madam Hua, who was about to leave, saw second brother Gu sitting at the door in a daze. She called out to him and walked over.
She stood at the door and peeked inside. She saw Gu Qingli packing the herbs, and she turned to look at Mrs. Wu with a smirk.
Seeing that Mrs. Wu was still sobbing, her face fell. “Mrs. Wu, you’re wailing. You only know how to cry every day. You’re going to cry to death.”
After scolding her, she looked at Da Shuang and Xiao Shuang, and a trace of disgust flashed in her eyes. “Why didn’t you two little brats go up the mountain to cut wood and grass? What would pigs eat? What do you burn during the winter?”
The whole family was used to Madam Hua finding trouble and scolding them every day. Only Mrs. Wu wiped her tears and lowered her head.
Gu Qingli and her brothers didn’t even bother to talk to her. If you did, she would scold you for a long time.
Madam Hua felt satisfied after scolding them a little longer and left the house thinking about the matter.
Second brother Gu picked up a knife and a rope and went out.
Seeing that second brother Gu had left, Mrs. Wu walked over and pulled Gu Qingli to sit on the brick bed. She stared at Gu Qingli for a while, then sighed. “Er Nizi, how will you live in the future?”
“What do you mean how to live? Mother, why are you thinking so much?” Gu Qingli looked at Mrs. Wu’s face, which looked like she was in her forties. She remembered that she was only in her thirties.
Gu Qingli furrowed her brows as she looked at her. She thought about how second brother Gu looked like an ordinary farmer, and Mrs. Wu’s face wasn’t pretty. How could they have a child with her face?
Then she looked at Da Shuang and Xiao Shuang. They looked like Mrs. Wu, and she looked like them in every way.
“You child, who would dare to marry you in this state? Er Nizi, do you know who, who was the one who forced you?” Mrs. Wu suddenly thought of something. She held Gu Qingli’s hand tightly and asked.
Gu Qingli shook her head. The man wore a mask, so she didn’t know who he was.
Gu Qingli didn’t know that the man was lying in a yard not far from her house.
Xiao Yunjing, the third son of the Xiao family, was 20 years old and was famous in the village for being a Jinx. From age 15, she would die inexplicably whenever a woman was introduced.
The first one had just exchanged tokens and drowned the next day.
The second one fell to her death on the mountain during the wedding.
The third one died suddenly, and the doctor couldn’t find the cause.
That was why he was as famous as Gu Qingli.
They were all hunters, and they hunted for a living.
Today, Xiao Yunjing had gone hunting in the mountains and was accidentally bitten by a venomous snake. This venomous snake didn’t have any lethal poison, but the person bitten by it had to mix yin and yang to eliminate the deadly aphrodisiac.
He met a girl when he went down the mountain in a daze. He couldn’t care so much, so he did that evil thing.
Now that the news had spread in the village, he knew which family the girl was from.
At this moment, he was looking for the silver he had saved. He had to do something for her.
“San er (third son), what are you looking for?” When Mrs. Jiang entered the house, she saw Xiao Yunjing rummaging through the cabinets for something.
“Mother, I’m not looking for anything. You can go.”
Mrs. Jiang looked at him suspiciously. San er had been acting strange since he came back from the mountain, and she didn’t know what he was doing now.
However, she thought of San er’s character and that he often acted inexplicably like this. So she shook her head and went out.
The next day, Gu Qingli got up and prepared to go out with the herbs she had dug yesterday without even eating.
“Second sister, you’re not going to wait for me?” Da Shuang said as he rubbed his tired eyes.
“Oh, I forgot. Get up, then. I’ll wait for you.