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No matter how reluctant she was, she could only take the last name Ye, not Tang; at this moment, she was still Wuwa, and her surname couldn't be changed. So, she decided to use the name Shiqi from now on—Ye Shiqi.
She blinked her eyes, feeling that her grandmother wouldn't just give up like that and would come back to search for things. With a thought, she took the bundle into her space.
Currently, her space only contained soil and the Spiritual Spring. In order to store things in her space, she could only spread the old mosquito net her parents had intended for diapers, which hadn't been washed clean, on the ground of her space.
Ye Shiqi felt that her space grew as she aged, from two cubic meters to six cubic meters. It might not be as large as the bathroom in her previous room, but it could hold important items.
While the space could be used to grow items, she didn't have any seeds. Besides, feeling that she was too young, even if she grew crops in the space, she wouldn't be able to take them out. If her space were exposed, it would be a big trouble.
Siwa kept staring at his younger sister, blinking and feeling that something was off, as if something was missing, but the little child didn't think too much about it at the moment.
"Sister, it's so good that mom is back. Now you'll have milk to drink."
Upon hearing this, Ye Shiqi helplessly sighed in her heart. Just now, Mrs. Li had returned, and after another drama, although she held her, she didn't feed her. Her soul was that of an adult, but her body was that of an infant, and she couldn't resist the craving for milk.
Unfortunately, she couldn't speak to remind Mrs. Li, nor could she expose Mrs. Li's breast in front of their father...sigh.
At this moment, a figure sneaked into the room, light on her feet and looking left and right upon entering. Ye Shiqi saw that it was Mrs. Lai.
Siwa, with his back to the door, didn't see Mrs. Lai. It was only when Mrs. Lai began rummaging through the room that he suddenly became tremulously frightened and called out, "Granny, father... Granny's rummaging through things."
Mrs. Lai hadn't expected Siwa to be vigilant. To her, the four weak girls and one baby who couldn't speak were no threat to her. She didn't expect Siwa to shout.
The shout from Siwa startled Mrs. Lai, a guilty reaction that caused her hands, ruffling through the wooden chest, to pause. Her plump body rushed over, threatening fiercely, "Keep screaming like that and see if I don't beat you to 'melon'."
When Siwa heard Mrs. Lai talking about beating her to 'melon,' didn't that mean she wanted to beat her to death?
Fear made her tremble even more. She looked at her grandmother with her eyes and hugged her sister tightly, "Granny, please don't beat Siwa to death."
"You...you're such a loss, tell Granny quickly where your mother put the things?"
Mrs. Lai had just checked the wooden chest and hadn't seen anything. Her gaze now wandered over the bed. In this simple room, there was really nowhere to hide things. She peeked under the bed and saw only a chamber pot and some stinky rotten shoes.
Mrs. Lai was perplexed. She didn't see Mrs. Li take things away; where could they be hidden?
Could there be a hole in the ground? Mrs. Lai tried stomping on the floor, carefully searching throughout the room.
"Mom, what are you doing?" Hongji was working outside with his father, making furniture—knocking and hammering, the sounds echoing as tools shaped the wood.
The loud scream from Siwa, begging grandmother not to beat Siwa to death, had startled Hongji. Dropping his tools, he quickly ran back to the room.
"Hongji, what are you doing? You barely worked for a while and now you're running back to the room again?" Hongji's father was a bit older and perhaps hard of hearing; he didn't hear Siwa's voice and reprimanded his son who had just started working.
Hongji didn't care about his father's scolding. The children held a place in his heart that couldn't be shaken by just a few words of reproach, and at the doorway, he saw his mother searching for something in the room.
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Siwa clutched his frightened sister, and Hongji suddenly couldn't fathom what his mother was searching for.
"Hongji, I just came in to have a look, the floor of this room is very firm. Why aren't you out working, and why have you come back instead? No wonder your father scolds people."
Mrs. Lai dared not mention the search for something in her son's presence, fearing it would alienate him. Though she always cared much for her daughter, she knew she had to rely on her son to look after herself when she was old.
"Siwa is still young, don't scare her by coming in, Mother. It's also getting close to time to cook, shouldn't you start cooking?"
"Hongji, I've been the one cooking for the past month. Mrs. Li should cook now that she's back. Don't think just because she enjoyed herself at her main family's house, she can come back and do nothing."
"Mother, Mrs. Li said she's going back to the county soon, and she's now on her way to pick up the children." Hongji helplessly wiped the sweat off his face. He used to rely on his wife like everyone else at home did, and now it was the same. He felt a little sorry for her.
"I have been taking care of all of you for a month, and Mrs. Li is just going to leave when she's back. Didn't she say she could have a day off?"
Unable to find what she was searching for, Mrs. Lai felt increasingly irritable. She had thought she wouldn't have to do any chores today as soon as she saw Mrs. Li, and resentment bubbled up inside her.
"Mother, look how hard it is for your son. Maybe my wife doesn't need to work as a housekeeper anymore?"
"No way, what about the two taels of silver? You and your son could only make that much money from a month's carpentry work. Doesn't our household have expenses? The grain from that tiny plot of land isn't enough. Neither Second Miss nor Third Miss have any money saved for their dowries. We can't spend my funeral savings."
The thought of losing that income of two taels of silver caused Mrs. Lai so much pain, she kept on trying to dissuade her son from the idea.
"Mother, go cook. Don't stay here and frighten Siwa and Wuwa."
Hongji came to realize that he couldn't count on Mrs. Lai to take care of the children, and if she didn't scare them, it would already be a blessing.
"Humph, once you've got a wife, you forget your mother, such a spineless thing. Always expecting your old mother to cook." Mrs. Lai, with her plump body, was pulled out by her son. She looked at the kitchen with reluctance to go in, her eyes wandering until she spotted Second Miss and Third Miss trying on flowers with a small copper mirror by the window.
"Er Niu, San Niu, come out here for your mother."
"Mother, I have a name. Calling me Er Niu sounds so unpleasant!" Ye Shuzhi didn't put down the copper mirror in her hands, finding the flower adorning her to be quite beautiful.
"Yes indeed! Even I have a name. I don't want to end up like Big Brother's kids, Daya, always being called without a proper name." Ye Shuzhen said proudly, her gestures as flamboyant as her elder sister's.
"You... well, fine then. Your brother is defiant, and you too don't listen to your mother. Why is my life filled with such hardships? Boo hoo!"
Mrs. Lai covered her face with her hand and started rolling on the ground as if in agony. This was actually her plan to avoid cooking. When she caught the eye of the driver sitting on a bench beside the thatched pavilion, she noticed he was watching her.
The driver felt this family really knew how to put on a show. Today, he got to watch another play for free. It was a pity he couldn't write a script, otherwise, it could have made a great play.
A wicked mother-in-law maltreating her daughter-in-law, beating the small children in the household, and spoiling her own daughters.
"There you go again, Mother. We both took jobs washing clothes. The kitchen is too dirty, I'm not going in," said Ye Shuzhen after giving her mother a glance. The sisters exchanged looks, knowing well to use such tactics against them. They weren't their sister-in-law, and they certainly weren't falling for that trap.
Ye Shuzhi nodded along on the side. The sisters helped each other put on flowers, ignoring Mrs. Lai who was fake crying outside.