Although the words were addressed to Zhao Jiujiu, the addition of the phrase "sweet talk" clearly indicated that they were meant for Gu Lingyu.
Of course, Gu Tiehan couldn't understand it.
Out of respect for her mother's authority, she didn't argue. She simply pushed a small bowl of peeled shrimp toward Shen Wuqiu, then wiped her hands with a tissue and gave a casual hum.
Zheng Xinghe glanced at her, then lowered his head and chuckled softly.
Shen Wuqiu noticed this small detail perfectly. She paused for a moment, then frowned as if she had thought of something. She then put some fish into Gu Lingyu's bowl and said, "Don't you love Auntie's braised sea bass the most? Eat up."
Gu Lingyu was flattered – her sister was actually serving her food?
The unpleasant feeling in her heart was instantly suppressed. She immediately picked up a piece of fish and put it in her mouth, glancing at Zheng Xinghe with a proud look, "The fish that my sister picked up is so delicious."
"..." It was so childish, but Shen Wuqiu couldn't help but laugh.
Seeing that they were eating and chatting quite attentively, Mr. Shen glanced outside.
It turned out that it wasn't a hallucination; Yang Shuitao was indeed standing on the small earthen slope diagonally behind his house, banging a gong and shouting insults.
Despite the unfortunate nature of the incident, out of respect for Shen Xianghua, Mr. Shen suppressed his anger and asked, "Yang Shuitao, what are you cursing about?"
When Yang Shuitao is a good person, she can be considered kind and gentle, but when she turns bad, she looks particularly mean and gloomy. Just like now, her cheekbones are prominent, and her already thin lips are now pursed, making her chin look even narrower and making her look like a shrew who is not forgiving when she has the upper hand.
"I painstakingly hatched fifty chickens, and after raising them to two or three pounds each, I don't know which heartless bastard killed them all."
Losing one or two isn't a big deal, but if fifty are lost, that's definitely something to be angry about.
However, Mr. Shen was puzzled: "Stolen so much at once, surely someone would have noticed? There are three other households behind your house."
At this point, Yang Shuitao became even more sarcastic, "Fifty chickens, not one more, not one less, they were all bitten to death there."
"It wasn't lost?"
Yang Shuitao looked at him and sneered: "What, you don't know?"
Mr. Shen understood immediately, and his face darkened instantly. "What do you mean by that?"
"What do you mean? Ke Xian said that when he heard the rooster crowing in the bamboo forest, he saw a cat."
"So you mean to say that all your chickens were killed by my cat?" Mr. Shen didn't believe that his Wangcai daughter would do such a thing. Besides, she had been honest and upright all her life, and she couldn't stand such an insult. He immediately wanted to go with her to confront Ke Xian.
Ke Xian was a family living behind Yang Shuitao's house, but the two families were separated by a bamboo grove. Yang Shuitao's house was under the bamboo grove, while Ke Xian's family was on top of the bamboo grove.
“Let’s confront him then,” Mr. Shen said bluntly. Yang Shuitao then retorted, “You’re the only family in the whole village that keeps a cat. If it’s not yours, whose is it?”
Meanwhile, Su Yunzhi, who had vaguely overheard the conversation between the two at home, came out as well. When she saw Yang Shuitao standing outside her house with a gong, shouting and cursing, her expression immediately turned ugly. "Shuitao Bao, what do you mean by this? You're making a scene outside while we're having dinner?"
"Your cat killed all the chickens in my backyard, and you won't even let me ask for an explanation?"
"That's a joke! Your backyard chickens got killed, so why is it my cat's fault? Which eye did you see it with? Or did you catch it yourself?"
Su Yunzhi didn't believe that Wangcai had killed the chicken. That little thing was like the ancestor of the family, taking turns eating chicken, duck, fish and meat, and being picky. Let alone biting a live chicken, even stewed chicken mushy wouldn't be something this ancestor would look at.
"I'm not as lucky as you guys, able to stay home all day eating and drinking well. I don't have time to guard the chickens, but Ke saw them first."
That old geezer.
Su Yunzhi cursed under her breath. Years ago, she had a conflict with someone over a few ducks.
At that time, there were no requirements for raising chickens, ducks and geese in the countryside, and they could be let out at will. Su Yunzhi saw that everyone was raising ducks, and Shen Wujun loved to eat ducks, so she had nothing to do and raised seven or eight of them. During the day, she would follow these ducks to forage in the nearby ditches. Everyone's ducks would gather together, but the ducks would also form flocks. By evening, they knew to go back to their own homes.
In June, the temperature was high, and the ducks suffered from heatstroke. Two of her ducks died the day before, and she gave them medicine that night.
The following afternoon, three or four more died in the open space near the ditch.
At the time, it was unclear whose ducks had died. By evening, the ducks had all returned to their respective homes, except for Kexian's family, who were missing three.
As a result, Ke Xian came to the house and forcibly took away three of them, saying that the dead ones must have been raised by Su Yunzhi, because the ducks she raised had died of heatstroke the day before.
Su Yunzhi was naturally unwilling to suffer this loss, and the two had a big argument over it.
Of course, in the end she had to suffer in silence, because Ke Xian came to her house and took away a few of the ducks.
From that time on, Su Yunzhi stopped raising poultry.
Although many years have passed, Su Yunzhi still can't swallow her anger and harbors hostility towards Ke Xian.
It's easy to imagine how indignant she is now that she's heard that Ke Xian is the one who testified.
"Shui Tao Bao, stop talking nonsense. Go and call Ke Xian over right now. I want to see which eye of his saw my cat bite your chicken."
Yang Shuitao retorted, "If you're so capable, come with me and confront someone."
Su Yunzhi immediately followed her to Ke Xian's house.
Ke Xian's family is also a laughing stock in the village, with an old-fashioned two-story house built on a slope without any decoration.
They had two sons and a daughter. The eldest son was good-looking, but he was lazy and loved to eat. He married a wife and had three sons, but he still had no sense of responsibility. The couple, Erke and his wife, were only sixty years old, but they looked like eighty-year-olds. They worked in the fields every day with their backs hunched over.
The second son was lazy and unwilling to work, but he couldn't find a wife. Whenever he had a little money, he would go out and get cheated by women.
Since getting married, the youngest daughter has basically never returned to her parents' home.
Over the years, most people in the village have been living better and better lives, except for Ke Xian's family, who are still the same as they were decades ago.
Looking at their shabby appearance, Su Yunzhi didn't even want to go to their door, so she just stood in the yard.
Yang Shuitao walked to the door and called the person out, "Brother Kexian, please be my witness, did you see the cat chasing my chickens this afternoon?"
Ke Xian was thin and hunched over, the hardships of life etched on his face, making him look somewhat frightening. "I didn't look closely, but when I came back from carrying manure this afternoon, I did see a cat chasing your chickens."
Su Yunzhi sneered: "You can't just say you didn't look carefully. You need to look carefully before you speak, lest you blame our family for the chicken that died. Let me ask you, what did the cat in the bamboo forest look like this afternoon?"
"Your cat can still grow..."
"Don't speak, let him speak." Su Yunzhi interrupted Yang Shuitao, glaring at Ke Xian. "Since you saw a cat chasing a chicken, tell me, what kind of cat was it?"
"I didn't look closely at what they looked like, but I saw that they were the common tabby cats, and there were several mixed-color ones as well."
"Hehe..." Su Yunzhi sneered, looking at Yang Shuitao, "I think you should have seen my cat before."
Yang Shuitao ignored her and asked Ke Xian, "Isn't it a white one?"
Ke Xian shook his head. "There are no white ones. There are three or four cats there, but I didn't see any white ones."
"Three or four? And none of them are white. Water Peach Treasure, did you hear that clearly? You're the one who found the witness."
Yang Shuitao hadn't expected this outcome. When she heard Ke Xian say that a cat was chasing chickens in the bamboo forest, she assumed without thinking that it was Shen Wuqiu's cat's doing and didn't ask any further questions. That's why she went straight to the earthen slope, banging on the gong, to curse.
Yang Shuitao was speechless for a moment, but the thought of the fifty chickens lying in the bamboo grove made her unwilling to give up. "Even if it wasn't your cat's doing, it was your beast that brought the cat here. Why didn't this happen before?"
Su Yunzhi was amused by her, "So you're really going to pin this on us?"
"That's how it is. You guys are the only ones in the whole village who have nothing better to do than keep cats."
Su Yunzhi waved her hand at her, "Forget it, I'm too lazy to argue with you. If you're not satisfied, you can go to the government office and make a scene, and let the village leaders uphold justice for you."
Yang Shuitao was speechless and could only dejectedly go home.
Su Yunzhi was upset after being wronged, and when she got back, she didn't care that there were guests present. She complained to Shen Wuqiu, "What do you mean by your aunt? Her family suffered a misfortune. Dozens of chickens she raised were killed by something. Just because Ke Xian said he saw a cat there, she insisted on blaming our Wangcai."
Upon hearing this, Shen Wuqiu immediately looked at Gu Lingyu beside her, and after a few seconds, she asked, "When did this happen?"
Su Yunzhi: "It happened this afternoon."
In the afternoon... a certain cat happened to go out and have some fun.
Shen Wuqiu's feelings became somewhat complicated.
Su Yunzhi took a sip of water and continued, "Ke Xian said that although he saw three or four cats at that time, he didn't see our beautiful Wangcai. They were all tabby cats. Isn't your aunt funny? When she heard that she didn't see our white cat, she blamed us for keeping cats, saying that it was because we kept cats that these stray cats were attracted."
Zhao Jiujiu was already upset about what happened yesterday, and now that she heard about these things, she was even angrier: "Qiuqiu is magnanimous and doesn't hold a grudge against them for what happened yesterday, but they shamelessly keep causing trouble. I think they need to be taught a lesson."
Shen Wuqiu didn't think so. When she saw the cat's back stiffening unconsciously, she knew that this matter was probably related to her.
Sure enough, after returning to the room, she asked the cat several times, and it confessed everything: "I just asked a few stray cats to play with these chicks, but who knew they were so fragile and died in no time."
"..." Shen Wuqiu rubbed his forehead, utterly speechless. "Are you that free?"
Gu Lingyu snorted and said sarcastically, "At least I'm more free than you, but nobody introduces me to men or anything."
"I'm talking to you seriously, stop with your sarcastic remarks."
"See? You've set your sights on some pretty boy, and now you're planning to kick me to the curb?"
"..." Shen Wuqiu was almost laughing in anger. "I said, Gu Lingyu, can't you be reasonable?"
Gu Lingyu simply transformed into a kitten.
Shen Wuqiu was so angry that his teeth itched. He grabbed her by the back of the neck and gritted his teeth, saying, "You'd better change back right now."
The kitten came closer to her and raised its mouth.
"..." Shen Wuqiu threw her directly onto the bed.
With a thud, Gu Lingyu reverted to her old self, saying, "If you don't want to kiss me, then don't. Why are you being so fierce?"
Shen Wuqiu took a deep breath: "Gu Lingyu, if you keep acting like this, I'll really kick you out."
Gu Lingyu straightened her back: "How am I being unreasonable? My partner suffered for so long yesterday because of them, and I've already been very merciful by not taking revenge on them."
The communication barriers created by racial differences are completely insurmountable.
Shen Wuqiu was completely at a loss for words.
After a moment of silence, Gu Lingyu softened again and said, "If you really don't like me doing these things, then I won't do them anymore. Don't be angry."
His tone was still somewhat awkward.
Shen Wuqiu's anger vanished instantly. She said helplessly, "You, you just do whatever you want, like a little child. How will you be a mother in the future?"
“My mother said I’ve grown up… Besides, it was all your fault. First Shen Yan left, and now Zheng Xinghe has come, and everyone likes him.”
Shen Wuqiu pinched her nose, leaned in and sniffed, "I think you're just a jealous person."
Gu Lingyu pouted, "Yes, I'm a jealous person, so sour. Sister, haven't you been craving sour things lately? Then eat a few more bites."
"..."
Indeed, shamelessness knows no bounds.
A note from the author:
The first chapter I updated yesterday had about 500 words repeated due to my mistake, but I corrected it last night and added another 500 words, which is equivalent to adding 1,000 words. Those of you who read it early yesterday, please go and read it again.
Love you all, muah!