Chapter 20 - Raise A Stone And Drop It On Her Foot

With a cleaver in hand , Su Wan rushed out of her house . When she heard the loud bang she knew that somebody came to make trouble for their family and this wasn"t surprising to her after all her family just brought four farming fields and a house that priced fifty taels but what she couldn"t believe was that not even half a day pa.s.sed before the Old Lin family came to cause trouble for them .

Atleast let her eat before you come to cause trouble , how was she suppose to fight with an empty stomach ? ??

Cleaning the house sapped a lot of energy from her and the energy from the shrimp porridge was all used up by now .???e????૦ѵel. c??

With an empty stomach , she wasn"t even left with much energy to open her mouth yet she has to kick that fat Zhang Xiaohui.. Aiyo , just the memory of kicking that fat pig was enough to make her ankle throb .

" What do you think you are doing ? shouted Su Wan waving the cleaver in her hand " this is my house ! Not your old Lin family "s house , how dare you cause trouble here !"

This was one of those time when Su Wan really missed the modern times , that had law against trespa.s.sing . If the ancient era had such a law then she wouldn"t have to worry about someone breaking in her house , in broad daylight .

Breaking in - just the thought was enough to darken her face as she stared down at Zhang Xiaohui who shivered and trembled under Su Wan "s darkened gaze.

Afraid that this niece in law might really chop her like a pig in slaughter house , Zhang Xiaohui hurriedly stood up and waddled as fast as she could like an overweight penguin to Lin Ze and hid behind him .

However, compared to his son and wife, Lin Ze was thin and lanky . His thin profile was no where adequate to hide both Lin Che and Zhang Xiaohui , thus when the mother and son pain hid behind Lin Ze , their enormous backside was still poking out .

" Trouble ? Aiyo , why didn"t the heavens just strike this old lady before!" when Grandma Lin saw that the Old Ling family house was slowly getting packed with onlookers , she started to howl like a dying dog " How will this old lady survive ? These grandsons didn"t even give us enough money to eat properly for this month . This poor lady thought that you all didn"t have any money left either and this old lady didn"t ask for a single coin from you but you clearly have money! You just didn"t want to give a few silver taels to your old grandmother . Aiyo !" Grandma Lin fell flat on her b.u.m and slapped her thighs at the same she cried in an aggrieved manner " Your sister is old enough to get married and your little brother didn"t even have his school fees for this month , yet neither or you took out a single tael and left your younger sister to become an old lady waiting for a groom in the house ... even your little brother"s fees is borrowed from the neighbours , hiccup , hiccup while I won"t ask for you to prepare dowry for Lin Yunxi , I still hoped that you might return the borrowed money to our neighbours - how , how can you leave this old lady and your cousins to eat cornmeal while eating pork in your house ? This is not how I raised you "

Grandma Lin was an old shrew of the Dong tong village , she knew if she asked for money from the Lin brothers they might refuse but if she were to sell sympathy and ask money for Lin Yunxi and Lin Che "s matters , she might at least be able to whisk away atleast twenty to twenty five taels .

She even dragged the neighbours who lent money to the Old Lin family before cleverly .

Everyone were honest farmers in this era and neither of the family earned much money , they even thought twice before spending a single copper coin . However , Grandma Lin was one of the elder of the village and when she went around the village asking for money for her grandson"s study , they couldn"t refuse it . After all , Every one belonged to the same village and no one wanted to go against each other and create problems , thus they lent her the money , except the money that Grandma Lin borrowed never returned to them . Everytime they tried to ask for their money , Grandma Lin would start crying and shouting . She would scream about how they were bullying an old lady like her , because she was old and elderly neither of the neighbouring family asked for money again but that doesn"t mean they didn"t had any dissatisfaction with the old Lin family . If not for Grandma Lin being old and a shrew at that , they wouldn"t have let the matter drag so long but now that the Lin brothers had enough to buy a house , the neighbours believed that they should try to get their money back thus, under Grandma Lin "s inciting they all started to clamour .

" That"s right , That"s right . Your family owes money to us for so long , its high time you return it "

" Exactly " said an old portly woman with piggy eyes " My daughter in law is pregnant we need to save as much money as we can , three days ago I went to your house but your grandmother told us that she has no money and because you five brothers were preparing to marry a wife , I didn"t create any scene at your house but this is too much , you brought this huge house at such an expensive price yet you didn"t return my thirty copper coins ! How am I supposed to feed my daughter in law chicken or pork ? That was our monthly savings yet we took it out for your grandmother because she promised to return it soon -"

" Same here ! My wife just gave birth but she is too weak to make milk , I need to buy a goat for my son but I can"t because your grandmother created a ruckus in front of my house screaming and shouting that she might as well hang herself , if her grandson was to be kicked out of the school that"s why I had no choice but to make do with borrowing milk from our neighbours and give the money to buy a goat to your grandmothers , the sum isn"t small either its a silver tael !"

" That"s right how can you be so shameless as to gulp our money down !"

" We helped you and you paid us back like this , isn"t your conscience hurting ?"

The villagers that lent their money to Grandma Lin got excited and started shouted more and more profanities making Mother Lin"s head swoon .

She stumbled and would have fall flat on her b.u.t.t if not for Lin Jing catching her on time seeing this Lin Chen"s face darkened and he rushed to slap those foul mouthed villagers but Su Wan beat him to it .

She sprinted to the front of the crowd and screamed louder than their scoldings " Shut up ! Who did you lend money to ? Isn"t it the old Lin family what is their relation with ours ? Our family is already seperated ! You lent the money to an unreasonable old woman yet you dare to ask money from us ? Did my husbands swallow your money or did the Lin family swallowed your money ? Be clear on it ! My husbands don"t owe you any thing , they have a clear conscience they eat what they earn ! Why should my husbands pay you back when they didn"t use your money ? Did they ever ask you all for money ? What is the meaning of this ? You mean to say that even if the Old Lin family murder someone as long as they create a ruckus , my husbands should go and shoulder their blame , is that what you are saying? The laws of heavens are clear , the one who owes the money should be the one to pay back ! Why are you all calling my husbands shameless when you didn"t even give them a copper coin ! What money they should return if they didn"t even borrowed money from you all , what kind of logic is that ?"

Su Wan was an old lady who knew her ways in the market as well as the black market ; she was used to seeing shameless people .At the age of twenty she already learned that when you are facing a mob of shameless people the only way to win was to be even more shameless than them . There was no point in explaining things in a clear and conceited manner .

" Exactly ! " Lin Chen who rushed to face the crowd brought Su Wan behind him hurriedly , afraid that the crowd might lunge at his wife and harm her " we didn"t eat food of your table nor did we drink your water , we didn"t even knew that the old lady went to borrow money from you all . You complain that she took your money but where should we all go and complain when she took our money ? " then he turned around and faced Grandma Lin who was still squatting on the ground " every month you s.n.a.t.c.h at least a total of sixty to seventy copper coins from us brothers , where did you use it all up if you still had to borrow money from them ? Is cousin studying in some high cla.s.s imperial school that we don"t know of is that it ? How come the fees of his school is so sky high that you even have to borrow so much ?"

Grandma Lin who was sitting on the mud covered ground was a bit stunned , she never thought that Su Wan will rush out to shout at the crowd like this , after all she was still a young girl how much courage she might have ? She took the earlier confrontation as Su Wan being stubborn and throwing her princess att.i.tude around , to Grandma Lin the matter of fighting among family and with a group of strangers that she didn"t knew was two different things - she never thought that this grand daughter in law will be even more shameless than her !

As for Lin Chen the brat actually tried to question her ? When his mother was still in her hands , the brat didn"t dare to say east when she called it west but now that his mother no longer controlled him , he was actually revolting against her ?.

Grandma Lin was both furious and anxious . Furious because the dogs that she thought would never dare to even let slip a small "awo "actually dared to bite her and anxious because Lin Chen just told the entire neighbourhood that she took seventy copper coins from the brothers . Lin Che "s school fees was only thirty copper coins while the remaining forty copper coins were enough to run the house . But what the neighbours didn"t know that Lin Ze was an addicted gambler he always turned up at house with a debt on his head ,though Grandma Lin got angry at him , she loved Lin Ze a lot .He was her only son after all , how can she let him get troubled with the matter of something like money and food ? Because Grandma Lin was used to pampering Lin Ze she didn"t think that it was wrong for her to borrow money from the neighbours and pay back Lin Ze "s debts , she loved her son a lot and could never see eye to eye with any trouble that he brought back . Thus ,she tried her best to help Lin Ze. In her heart only Lin Ze and his children were on the priority list , she treated them to best of her abilities as for the troubles that her neighbours might be facing , she never gave it a thought . After all they were the outsiders and Lin Ze was her own flesh and blood but now that her face was completely ripped off by Lin Chen .

Grandma Lin finally realized what it meant to raise a stone and drop it on her foot .

And as expected all the neighbours who were clamouring before turned to stare at Grandma Lin making her go pale with fright.