The Chen family's yard was filled with onlookers.
"Make way!" Yu Jingting yelled.
Seeing Suizi approach, the crowd's expressions grew peculiar.
Under Yu Jingting's protection, Suizi parted the crowd and entered the compound.
Under the dim yellow light, Wang Fenfang was standing on a stool, a rope just slightly thicker than a chopstick hang from the beam. Sobbing loudly, she cried...
"I can't live like this anymore! This life is unbearable!"
Chen Kaide was squatting in the corner, taking puff after puff from his pipe.
Lun Lamei clutched a corner of Wang Fenfang's dress, crying intermittently and still yelling:
"Uncle, please talk my mom down!"
Chen Kaide didn't make a sound. The brass pipe, worn through long use, glowed with a greenish hue...
Yu Jingting led Suizi inside.
Lun Lamei charged forward, pointing at Suizi and shouted:
"How dare you show your face? You want to tear this family apart, first by making my mother want to hang herself?"
"Watch your mouth, and keep your stench away from my wife." Yu Jingting shoves Lun Lamei away with disgust.
"Why is she trying to hang herself?" Suizi asked knowingly.
Lun Lamei stuttered in response.
"We've only just arrived and aren't sure what's happened. Someone here must know—" Yu Jingting yelled out to the courtyard, "Hey, Yang Family's third son, tell us what's going on!"
A young boy, just at the age of parroting whatever he hears, shouted out the gossip he'd heard but didn't fully understand:
"Lady Lamei claimed the village chief was lusting after her, the village chief said Lamei has slept with Wu Er and he didn't want someone so dirty. Then Uncle Chen stepped in... Mom, what does 'slept with' mean?"
The mother covered her son's mouth and spit on the ground:
"What kind of question is that for a child?! Such a disgrace, discussing such shameful affairs, it's going to corrupt our children!"
The heated discussion outside the courtyard was more lively than any New Year's celebration.
Yu Jingting was the worst of them all. Suizi couldn't help but notice - was he doing this on purpose? One sentence stirred up the crowd, pretty impressive.
"Trying to cast this shit on me, I'd rather be dead!" Wang Fenfang shoved her head into the noose, causing Lun Lamei to scream.
"Mom, don't do anything rash! It's all Suizi's doing, spreading lies! Uncle, do something!"
Chen Kaide put down his pipe, and spoke gruffly:
"Come down, don't make a fool of yourself."
Wang Fenfang's head was large and her neck thick; the noose that was supposedly for show now choked her quite uncomfortably. A thought crossed her mind - maybe she should have loosened the rope a little. If she wasn't careful, before she successfully fooled everyone, she'd choke herself to death instead.
Suizi hadn't anticipated the chaotic spectacle.
She had meant to drive Lun Lamei away, but she had inadvertently stirred up Wang Fenfang's old grudges in the process.
The village doctor's wife recounted the whole incident to her.
The village chief had seized upon the conflict between Lun Lamei and Suizi, insisting that if Suizi didn't agree to his terms, he'd send Lun Lamei back to her old village to live with her grandmother's relatives.
Wang Fenfang sat on the ground wailing and crying about the hardships of a widow and her motherless child, blaming Suizi for pushing her towards death.
Seeing the village chief resolved to send Lamei away, Wang Fenfang panicked. In desperation, she leapt up and accused the village chief of lusting after her. When his affections were not returned, he became spiteful... Or something to that effect.
Caught off guard, the village chief retaliated by airing Wang Fenfang's dirty laundry.
No man wants to be cuckolded, Chen Kaide was no exception. Enraged, he tried to hit Wang Fenfang. He missed and accidentally pushed the village chief off the kang.
"Chen Hansui, you're a harbinger of doom! You colluded with the village chief against me and Lamei, are you trying to kill me?"
Wang Fenfang shouted, veins popping out on her forehead.
Suizi had a prepared a speech, but Wang Fenfang's yelling made her forget it. Suizi was left momentarily speechless.
Every time they argue, she has this problem - she has too much to say but doesn't know which point to bring up first.
Yu Jingting was standing back, watching the commotion, but he wouldn't let his wife be insulted.
"Is your face and ass switched? You're the one who cheated, your little brat almost made my wife miscarry. Are you angry because you've been caught red-handed?"
He went on a tirade, berating Wang Fenfang and her daughter. And clearly explained the root cause of the trouble.
Suizi admired him wholeheartedly. She quietly grabbed the hem of her clothes, silently writing down his method of confrontation.
She swallowed a breath, wanting to mimic him, but the explicit language made her stutter. Unable to spit out the words, her face turned red with frustration.
"With her at home, the chickens don't lay eggs, the dog doesn't guard the house, and there's even less harvest from the field! Isn't she the cause of all this bad luck?"
"Cheap people are cheap! Pork in town has gone up to 85 cents, why are you still so cheap? A cheap person sleeps everywhere, a cheap mouth spews everywhere. You could probably blow up a latrine with the shit you spout. Is your life so miserable that you lost all sense of shame?"
"A lazy good-for-nothing who can't even pick up a fallen oil bottle! Raise a bunch of roosters to lay eggs, You must be dreaming! Even dogs despise your shamelessness. If you don't till the land, how will there be a harvest – do you think everyone is like my father-in-law, doing nothing, expecting others to raise their maiden?"
Impressive! A new level! Suizi took a deep breath. She hadn't even mastered the previous arguing techniques and now there's a new one?!
"Our life was better when my mother-in-law was alive! You tell me, little Yang boy, why can't her family live well?"
The named child once again extracted the essence from Yu Jingting's words: "Because they're cheap people?"
"That's one reason, guess again! If you're right, uncle will buy you a candy cigarette!"
The child swallowed, wishing for the candy cigarette, a "luxury item" to attract the envious eyes of the other village children.
But this question was too tough, the kid didn't know the answer...
His mother whispered into his ear, his eyes sparkling, in a voice filled with pride and audacity, he shouted out:
"Lazy!"
"That's correct! Uncle will buy you candy later!"
Wang Fenfang couldn't out-argue Yu Jingting, so she vented her anger on Suizi.
"Her a precious mother was cursed by her, cursing her stepmother now. I can't take it anymore~~~~~"
Chen Kaide slammed his tobacco pipe on the edge of the stove, leaving a shallow white dent on the cement platform.
"Chen Hansui, all this happened because of you, aren't you embarrassed?!"
Suizi's eyes turned cold.
All this while, the old man was weighing the pros and cons.
Between his flippant wife and his own daughter, he chose his wife.
Every time, he abandoned his own daughter for another woman, without exception.
"She called me a harbinger of death, do you think the same?" Suizi asked.
Chen Kaide turned his face away and absently tapped his pipe.
"Your mother was cursed to death by you... now you want to curse your stepmother to death."
Yu Jingting was listening to the whole family bullying his wife. He wanted to continue scolding them, but Suizi covered his mouth.
"Don't let your expectations for me be in vain, let's see if I can curse her to death!"
She kicked Wang Fenfang's chair away. Wang Fenfang soared into the air, flapping and flailing, and the thin rope couldn't bear the weight and broke.
She ended up in a heap on the ground.
Yu Jingting picked up a back scratcher from the stove and gingerly prodded her.
"Did she die?"
"Given her weight and the thinness of the rope, falling was inevitable under the force of gravity. Didn't you say I was cursing you? Did I curse you to death?"
Suizi couldn't mimic Yu Jingting's style of insulting people, so she stayed in her own rhythm, doing whatever is comfortable for her.
The sight of his wife's murderous side profile gave Yu Jingting a shiver.
From now on, he had better not provoke his wife. This woman didn't just argue, she took immediate action...