It was no exaggeration to say that Yun Feng and Hu Chunhua were fighting as if they wanted to beat each other to death.
“Aiyo, Granny Zhang—could it be that they’re both possessed?”
A woman who had come to help clutched the broom she’d brought and asked Zhang, the witch doctor and owner of the thatched hut.
An auntie nearby chimed in: “I think so! Never mind that Hu girl. But Yun Feng—normally she’s so gentle and capable. How could she be fighting so viciously?”
The others nodded in fearful agreement. The sheer ferocity of these two women fighting—even they themselves, even the men in the village, weren’t this brutal.
Just then, both women reached out to claw at each other’s eyes.
Good heavens!
The people who had been too afraid to step in earlier, fearing accidental injury, now rushed forward to pull them apart.
Liu Zhaodi, who had been wailing about her poor daughter suffering, finally bounced back from the corner: “Stop it, stop it! You damn woman! Ah Feng, Ah Feng! Mom’s here to save you…”
Yun Feng was finally jolted back to her senses by the repeated calls of “Ah Feng.” Coming to, she realized her face was swollen. Her lips looked like sausage lips, and she could barely speak. Moreover, the village women around her were staring at her with terrified expressions, as if she were a lunatic.
She immediately understood what had happened.
The gentle, capable, sensible image she had cultivated for years—for all those years—had just collapsed in front of these people…
This was a devastating blow to Yun Feng, who had always been obsessed with crafting her persona.
She frantically searched her limited mental capacity for a foolproof solution. But because she had gotten so worked up fighting with Hu Chunhua, her mind was now filled with nothing but the fight scene.
Just as Yun Feng was about to fall into despair, she caught fragments of whispers from a few aunties.
She had a flash of inspiration. Recalling what she’d seen of simpletons, she rolled her eyes upward. Then she collapsed to the ground, convulsed a few times, and finally passed out.
After she “fainted,” Yun Feng heard Granny Zhang shout: “This is what happens when someone’s possessed by a ghost! Now this—looks like the little ghost has run off.”
The aunties and older women saw this, and some actually believed the nonsense.
But there were also the more rational ones, who whispered to those around them that Yun Feng didn’t seem possessed at all. Instead, she seemed to have genuinely lost her mind and wanted to fight Hu Chunhua to the death. Who knew what kind of grudge the two had…
Indeed, because of this vicious fight between Hu Chunhua and Yun Feng, everyone had forgotten why they had come in the first place—to rescue Yun Feng, who had been tied to a chair.
—
“So, what happened in the end?”
Yun Su hadn’t expected that when she returned home from Guangzhou, ready to share her first impressions of the big city with her family, she would be greeted by a story about Yun Feng and Hu Chunhua being possessed.
Of course, that was just what people were saying privately. There were many rumors going around the village about this incident. Another version said the two had simply gone mad. Yet another said they were both perfectly normal but had fallen out because their scheme to harm someone had failed.
Yes, in this version, Yun Su was the intended victim.
As the first witness at the scene, Fu Zai was now standing on a chair in the main room, holding a rolled-up newspaper as a makeshift microphone, dramatically reenacting the scene for Yun Su.
“Don’t listen to this rascal. He’s told this story eight hundred times today already. Anyway, Hu Chunhua went around the village telling everyone she suspected Yun Feng was possessed, so she kindly invited Granny Zhang to perform an exorcism. Then Yun Feng went crazy and started fighting her. And then Hu Chunhua revealed that the incident where you fell into the water was orchestrated by Yun Feng…”
Yun Su’s mother thought this version was closest to the truth.
After hearing her mother’s account, Yun Su and Ji Xiangtian exchanged a glance. They both felt this version was correct. They were the two who had fallen into the sea that day.
That fall into the sea had given them the chance to meet. Of course, that didn’t mean she would thank Hu Chunhua or Yun Feng. Those two had evil intentions and had both wanted to harm her. Their current fate—becoming the talk of the village—could be considered a form of karma.
“How did the brigade captain end up handling them?”
Regardless of what Hu Chunhua said, the fact that she had gotten the witch doctors to tie up Yun Feng was true.
Yun Huaimin spoke up at this point. When they had just gotten off the boat, the brigade captain had been pulled aside by an auntie and taken straight to Granny Zhang’s place. He certainly wasn’t going to miss out on the drama, so he had followed immediately.
That was also how he’d discovered that his little brother was squatting there watching the whole thing.
That kid had some brains. When something like this happened, he knew to call the adults.
“The brigade captain made them apologize to each other. Yun Feng wanted compensation. So the captain just told them both to go to the clinic and pay for each other’s medical bills. As for tying Yun Feng up—the captain just gave Granny Zhang a lecture.”
Punishment? Impossible. Granny Zhang was already halfway into the grave. If they punished her, she might actually die on the spot.
As for the other witch doctors who had participated—punishing them was even more impossible. They weren’t even from this village. In the end, the village had strong laborers escort them back to their respective production brigades.
Hearing this, Yun Su laughed.
These witch doctors had made Yun Feng suffer such a huge loss, yet they got off with no punishment at all. And chances were, Yun Feng wouldn’t dare go after them directly to settle the score.
Otherwise, as the villagers said—if Yun Feng wasn’t possessed, then why would she have instigated Hu Chunhua to harm someone? The Yun Feng they knew, who had been kind and sensible since childhood, would never do something so heartless.
Therefore, she must have been possessed by a ghost. Those witch doctors hadn’t harmed her at all—on the contrary, they had saved her life.
There was nothing wrong with that airtight logic.
The more Yun Su thought about it, the more she burst out laughing. As she laughed, she wondered to herself: would Yun Feng regret building such a solid persona as the good, sensible girl? Now that some of her dirty deeds had been exposed, she could only swallow her broken teeth along with her blood.
—
And indeed, Yun Feng was swallowing that bitter pill.
At Yun Feng’s house, Yun Feng’s father (Second Uncle Yun) had just returned from sea and gotten off the boat when he heard about his eldest daughter’s situation. But by then, only women were involved, and as a man, it wasn’t appropriate for him to get involved. Anyway, his wife Liu Zhaodi was there—they wouldn’t lose out.
But when the mother and daughter came home, Second Uncle Yun realized they had suffered a great loss.
Did he, as her father, know whether his eldest daughter was possessed or not? Unfortunately, it was too late to say anything now. The villagers were all saying Yun Feng was possessed, and his family couldn’t even argue.
Otherwise, how could they explain why Yun Feng had wanted to harm Yun Su?
As for Hu Chunhua, she had already been detained by the public security for half a month for pushing Yun Su into the sea. Now she had nothing to lose and feared nothing. She was wandering around the village, stopping everyone she met to tell them the whole story of why she had harmed Yun Su in the first place.
In the end, she would add pitifully that she had turned over a new leaf this time. Coming back and spending a fortune to hire witch doctors to exorcise Yun Feng—that was for her own good. Someone as kind as Yun Feng wouldn’t harm anyone. The ones doing harm were ghosts and demons. Getting an exorcism would just drive them away.
Listen to that—listen to that. There wasn’t a single hole in that story.
Some of the elderly villagers even praised Hu Chunhua for being a righteous person.
In all his life, Second Uncle Yun had never encountered such a frustrating situation.
“Don’t feel so wronged either. Hu Chunhua has all the logic on her side. You can’t just jump out and take revenge on her now. People are praising her out there! Right now, you just have to grit your teeth and act like nothing happened. Wait for this storm to blow over, then get married off quickly!”
This kind of thing was too humiliating. Second Uncle Yun didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Liu Zhaodi wanted to argue, “Why should we?” But when she thought about Hu Chunhua’s clever maneuvers and her daughter’s situation, she couldn’t come up with any good solution. She could only urge her daughter to lock things down with Gu Zhengrong as soon as possible.
Once the commitment was officially sealed, she wouldn’t have to worry about him running away.
Yun Feng: “He’s out on a mission again. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
This only made Liu Zhaodi angrier. If news of today’s events reached the ears of Gu Zhengrong’s widow mother, there would be another uproar for sure. It was all that damned Hu Chunhua’s fault.
—
That damned Hu Chunhua, on the other hand, was absolutely delighted now.
Although things hadn’t gone exactly as planned, at least she had made Yun Feng a public laughingstock in the village.
Whether the villagers believed she was possessed or not, everyone now believed that Yun Feng had wanted to harm Yun Su. And as for Hu Chunhua, she was just a poor, pitiful tool who had been deceived and used.
With this understanding, she had finally regained some face in the village. She could walk around now without being afraid of people pointing and whispering. She had Sister Hong to thank for all of this.
Sister Hong was twenty-two years old. She had apparently been married once, but her husband was a short-lived ghost—he’d kicked the bucket not long after the wedding. Fortunately, Sister Hong’s older brother doted on his sister and had taken her back home to live with him.
But the family was poor. Neither Sister Hong nor her brother had a proper job, so they engaged in some speculative trading.
Sister Hong had ended up in detention this time precisely because of that speculative trading. Hu Chunhua had been lucky enough to be assigned to the same cell as her. They had become good sisters. Sister Hong had helped her analyze many things about her situation and taught her how to get revenge.
“Sister Hong, I’m just so happy. Who dares say I did anything wrong this time? I owe it all to your advice. Otherwise, I’d still be stupidly getting used as a pawn.”
This woman called Sister Hong looked rather haggard, but she had good skin and an energetic complexion.
She was sitting in Hu Chunhua’s main room, slowly sipping a cup of warm water. Finally, she spoke: “What’s there to thank me for? We’re about to become family. From now on, whenever you have any trouble, I’ll definitely stand by you.”
Hearing this, Hu Chunhua was even more moved.
—
“Sister Hong, you’re so wonderful. Don’t worry—I promised to marry Brother Biao, and I won’t go back on my word. But… are you really willing to marry my older brother?”
She asked the last question cautiously. The main issue was that her brother’s current situation was… not something you’d show off to others. Someone as good as Sister Hong—even as a second-time bride—marrying her brother felt like an injustice.
“What nonsense are you talking? My brother and I are both people of our word. You’re so innocent. And your brother—I’ve talked to him, and he’s a good man. I don’t mind his little problem. Men—the important thing is that they listen. In a couple of days, when my brother moves his things over, our two families can just go ahead with the weddings.”
Hu Chunhua nodded eagerly. She would be more than happy to become family with Sister Hong and Brother Biao.
Just thinking about Brother Biao’s muscles made Hu Chunhua feel energized. Marrying a man like that, no one would dare bully the Hu family ever again.
Hidden in the room watching their eldest son, Father Hu and Mother Hu overheard the conversation in the main room. Something felt off to them.
Their daughter had gone into detention—such a disgrace! But while there, she’d met this so-called Sister Hong. They’d become as close as sisters. They’d agreed to marry each other’s brothers. And then Sister Hong and her brother were both going to move into the Hu family’s house.
On the surface, it sounded like her own family wasn’t losing out, but Mother Hu felt deeply unsettled.
Still, when she looked at her eldest son lying on the bed with little spark of life left in him, that unease was quickly pushed to the back of her mind.
The simple fact was—her son was half an invalid now. If he could get a second-time bride, that would already be good enough.
Who would have thought that her son, just by rolling around in a filthy drainage ditch, would come home and, because he hadn’t cleaned himself properly, develop an infection in that part of him?
It was a problem in a private place—nothing to show the world. Father Hu and Mother Hu could only secretly find a quack doctor to take a look. He gave them a few plaster patches for ten yuan.
But after using up all the plasters, the place hadn’t healed at all. In fact, it had festered quite a bit. In the end, they had to ask around for some so-called secret family recipe. At least it wasn’t rotting anymore. But still…
Just thinking about it left Mother Hu speechless.
What a tragedy…
From now on, she would treat this Brother Biao well. Let Chunhua bear a son with the Hu family name. Then they could pass that son to the eldest to carry on the family line…
—
No one in the village had noticed the Hu family’s little secrets yet.
As for Yun Su, after hearing about the farce between Yun Feng and Hu Chunhua, she set it aside for now. She started pulling things out of the burlap sack she’d brought back, one by one.
On this trip to Guangzhou, she hadn’t actually bought that many things. The main reason was simply being “poor.” She didn’t want to spend too much of Ji Xiangtian’s money, and she’d already used up all the cash she’d brought.
Still, she had bought quite a variety of things.
In particular, one department store had put out a lot of flawed fabric. Because it was all cotton, not the popular Dacron, she’d managed to snatch up half a bolt. This half-bolt would last a long time for making clothes for the family.
She’d also grabbed two quilt covers.
The weather on the island wasn’t cold all year round. The coldest it got was just over ten degrees Celsius. Quilt covers came in handy often.
But as soon as she pulled out the quilt covers, her mother took them.
“Keep these for your dowry when you get married.”
Hearing the word “dowry,” Yun Su felt a little embarrassed.
But Ji Xiangtian, standing nearby, couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at those words. Fu Zai, who was in the middle of clinging to him, noticed and was thoroughly confused.
“Brother Ji, I’m telling you about serious man-to-man stuff. What are you laughing at?”
Fu Zai had been sharing the troubles of school life with his future brother-in-law. When he tried to talk about these things with his older brother, Yun Huaimin would listen impatiently. But this future brother-in-law was so nice—he was willing to listen.
“Alright, you little squirt. You haven’t even reached my shoulder yet. What troubles could you possibly have? Come here, tell me…”
Yun Huaimin usually found his little brother’s antics annoying. But seeing him constantly clinging to Ji Xiangtian and chattering away made him feel a bit off.
This awkward, contradictory personality of his only made Ji Xiangtian want to laugh even more.
This family was so fun, so vivid. His aunt and uncle were very kind and doted on their children. When it came to people who bullied their kids, they showed no mercy.
This future brother-in-law was one year younger than him but loved acting like the big brother in front of him. And he absolutely adored Yun Su—was terrified that Ji Xiangtian might mistreat her.
The little brother was lively and a bit wild, but not mischievous. Very sensible, and helpful around the house.
And as for Yun Su—she was the treasure of his heart.
In short, this family’s standing in Ji Xiangtian’s heart was rising higher and higher.
—
Happy times were always short.
After Ji Xiangtian finished dinner at Yun Su’s house, the car came to pick him up.
Yun Su walked him to the courtyard gate and recognized the driver—it was Brother Li, who had come once before.
“I have the next Saturday off. If it’s convenient for you, you could come visit my home…”
Ji Xiangtian quietly told Yun Su his plans for the following weekend.
Yun Su looked into his eyes, which shimmered in the night, and nodded slightly: “Alright…”
They hadn’t been dating long, but Yun Su had already decided that she wanted to continue walking this path with him. So visiting his home was necessary.
Besides, her mother thought she should go see the Ji family first. If they were decent people, then an engagement could be put on the table. Her family could start saving up for her dowry.
The Jeep quickly disappeared from Yunjia’ao Production Brigade under the cover of darkness. But concealed by that same darkness, someone stared at the Jeep for a long, long time.
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