vrcanaries Chapter 438: Cheating and being caught by the old lady?
Chapter 438: Cheating and being caught by the old lady?
"Why do you occupy our land without paying us? You think officials are so great!" a strong man shouted.
"That's right, we can't live like this anymore!" everyone echoed.
Shen Wenting rushed over to appease them: "Fellow villagers, this is the emperor's order, you cannot disobey it!"
"What imperial order? The old emperor doesn't care about our lives, why should we listen to him!"
"Yes!" the people who came echoed.
Someone threw a stone and hit Shen Wenting on the head. Blood instantly flowed down his face. The people could not hear anything at all. The noise and shouting were endless.
Feeling the blood on his face, Shen Wenting roared, "Stop! You bunch of unruly people, don't be ungrateful! What could be more important than the imperial mausoleum! If you know the truth, go back and stay here. I will tell you after we have discussed the solution. If you don't listen to my advice and continue to cause trouble, you won't get a penny!"
Shen Wenting's words aroused public indignation, and he asked them to wait. However, the situation got out of control and the people were furious. They started pushing and shoving the officials he brought with him. Finally, it was the government officials who came and suppressed the matter.
Shen Wenting was in dire straits at the imperial mausoleum. He was not getting enough to eat or sleep well, and was busy and exhausted every day.
In Shen Mansion.
When Shen Wenting was not at home, Yan Huan was in control of the mansion. Aunt Ru dared not utter a word. Except for visiting Shen Haobo, she stayed in her own yard on weekdays. She missed her days in Cui Liuxiang, where she was free and could do whatever she wanted. Unlike the Shen Mansion, where she would see a wall when she opened the door every day, and there was nothing else to do except doing housework in the yard and daydreaming.
That night, she was bored in the yard when suddenly a man in black jumped in. She thought it was a thief and was about to shout, but the man quickly covered her mouth: "Ruru, don't shout! It's me!"
"Brother Zhong! Why are you here?"
"I haven't seen you for a long time. I missed you. I heard that Shen Wenting had left Beijing, so I had the courage to come into the mansion." The person who came was Runiang's lover Qiu Zhizhong. He looked around and asked her to come into the house first.
"Wow... Life in the Shen family is so difficult. Brother Zhong, please take me away! Shen Wenting, this bastard, doesn't care about my life or death at all." After entering the house, Runiang could no longer control herself and burst into tears while hugging the man.
"You've been wronged, Ru'er. I'm here now, aren't I?" The man hugged her and comforted her.
"Well, you don't know how that bitch bullied me. She asked the wet nurse beside her to prick me with a needle. It was so big and it hurt so much." Runiang cried.
"Just bear with it for a while. When the time is right, we will take care of them one by one."
"Okay, I'll listen to you." Runiang snuggled in the man's arms and finally got a little comfort.
In the days that followed, Qiu Zhizhong would secretly come to the Shen Mansion to visit Runiang every now and then, and her life was no longer as difficult as before.
That day, the old lady suddenly remembered that she hadn't seen Runiang for some time. She and Wen Ting seemed to have ignored her since she entered the mansion for so long. She had been with her since she was a girl and had never complained about any suffering or grievances, just like her own daughter. The last time she was sick, the old lady punished her maid for Yan Huan's sake. She felt a little guilty, so she asked the nanny to take some things and go see her in person.
When they reached the gate of the courtyard, the nanny remembered that she had not taken the things she had prepared: "Old Madam, look at this old servant's memory. I was so busy coming out that I forgot to take the things I prepared for Aunt Ru."
"Your memory is not as good as mine! Go back and get it. I'll go in and talk to Runiang first. We haven't sat together and chatted for a long time." The old lady laughed and asked the nanny to go back and get it, and she went in first.
When she came to Aunt Ru's yard, there was no servant there, so she thought they had gone out. But just as she was about to leave, she heard laughter suddenly from the room. The old lady stopped and walked gently to the door. It was the voices of Aunt Ru and a man inside.
She opened her mouth in surprise and was about to push the door open when she heard another conversation from inside: "Ruru, for the sake of our son, please be patient. When Haobo inherits the Shen Mansion in the future, you and I can be together happily."
"Brother Zhong, you are still good to me. No one in this mansion treats me sincerely. That bitch bullied me, but they just turned a blind eye. Isn't it because she has money in her hands..."
Hearing these words, the old lady was immediately furious. She pushed open the door and walked in angrily. She saw the two men lying on the bed in dishevel. She took a cane and was about to hit Runiang: "You shameless adulterers, how dare you do such a shameless thing in my house!"
"Madam, why are you here?" Seeing the old lady suddenly rushing in, Runiang was so scared that she was incoherent.
"If I hadn't come, I wouldn't have known that you had stolen people into our house. Great! I thought you were a good person! I didn't expect you to do such a thing!" The old lady was furious, and her cane banged on the ground loudly: "Wen Ting and I think we have treated you well. Over the years, except for not giving you a name, we have given you everything you wanted. You are even better than the wives of wealthy families. What else are you not satisfied with! How dare you do such a shameful thing? You are sorry for Wen Ting!"
"You treated me well? Ha! How dare you say that! Back then, I suffered so much in the countryside for Shen Wenting, just hoping that he could pass the imperial examination and take me out of the misery, but what about him? He married the daughter of the Duke's Mansion in a blink of an eye! He placed me in a villa and ignored me, allowing me to come and go as I pleased. I suffered all kinds of cold stares and humiliation all by myself. Have you ever cared about me at all?" Runiang got up from the bed, put on her clothes, and looked at the old lady with resentment.
"If it weren't for us, could you have lived such a good life! Maybe you would have married to some remote corner and been a village woman for the rest of your life!" The old lady didn't expect that Runiang, whom she thought was well-behaved and sensible, actually resented them so much.
"Good days? Haha! The kind of good days where people point fingers at you behind your back and people climb over your wall in the middle of the night and you live in fear?" Runiang pressed on.
"Then you shouldn't do anything to let Wen Ting down! Also, is Haobo also the bastard born to you and this man?" The old lady just heard clearly that Shen Haobo was the son of her and this adulterer.
"So what? You can throw your own children out, so why can't I have children with others?" Runiang laughed: "After entering the Shen Mansion, I thought I had finally made it, so I endured it again and again. I didn't expect that you would just dismiss me as a concubine! When I was sick, you didn't even come to see me, and you even had my maid beaten. I haven't settled these accounts with you yet!"