80s Transmigration: The Young Widow's Hustle to Riches

Chapter 312 - 309: Dog Bites Dog

Wu Shuhui glared at Wu Shufen, flatly denying the accusation. "Absolutely not. My Littlebo can be disobedient sometimes, but he’d never stoop to petty theft!"

Wu Shufen looked at her and said, "Xiangyang found some braised meat mixed with rat poison that someone had thrown into the front yard for Wangcai to eat."

Wu Shuhui stubbornly refused to back down. "Just because he found poisoned meat doesn’t mean my Littlebo and his friends were the ones who did it!"

"Shuhui, I’m not targeting Littlebo. I’m worried he’s going down the wrong path. Tonight, when I was making the bed, I deliberately mentioned Xiangyang’s friends to give him a hint, to make him drop the idea." Wu Shufen looked at her. "As long as he’s willing to learn a trade from Little Lan, does he need to worry about not making money?"

Wu Shuhui quickly threw on her clothes, her face grim and silent. ’Wu Shufen’s family gets rich and suddenly they’re looking down on their poor relatives,’ she fumed internally. ’Acting all high and mighty, deliberately humiliating my son.’

Just then, Lin Lan pushed open their door and looked at Wu Shufen. "Mom, Littlebo and two other guys have been cornered by Xiangyang and Ah Yong at the back gate."

Wu Shuhui felt it was all the valuable things in Lin Lan’s house that had tempted Xu Xiaobo into this. With a dark expression, she muttered, "What rotten luck."

Lin Lan gave her a cool glance and led Wu Shufen around the courtyard to the backyard.

As Wu Shuhui rounded the corner, she saw Li Xiangyang and Ah Yong standing in the vegetable patch with flashlights. She then turned her head and saw Xu Xiaobo held at knifepoint by Boss Jiang. Her face went deathly pale. "Littlebo, Mom’s here! Don’t be scared, don’t be scared!"

Xu Xiaobo looked at her, his face streaked with tears. "Mom, tell them to get out of the way! Let Boss Jiang and the others go, or they won’t release me!"

Wu Shuhui shrieked at Li Xiangyang, "Xiangyang, they forced Littlebo to do this! Hurry and let them go so they’ll release him."

Li Xiangyang glanced at her. "No. We’ve already called the police station. We’ll wait for them to come and take these men away."

Boss Jiang grew anxious when he heard that. He turned to Wu Shuhui. "As long as you get them to let us go, we’ll release him."

Wu Shuhui grew anxious too. "You can’t call the police! If you call the police, my Littlebo will be arrested and sent to prison!"

Li Xiangyang stared at her coldly. "He was willing to target his own relatives, and you’re still coddling him?"

"Littlebo didn’t do it! They must have forced him." Wu Shuhui shook her head repeatedly, pointing at Boss Jiang and the round-faced man. "You good-for-nothings! You’re the ones who corrupted my Littlebo! Now let my Littlebo go!"

Boss Jiang looked at Wu Shuhui with a sneer. "We forced him? The East Market is so far away, how would we know his cousin lived here? It was Xu Xiaobo who came to us. He told us his relatives were rich, that they’d butchered a fat pig and made cured meat and sausages."

The round-faced man added, "That’s right! It was your Littlebo who came and got us. He even said his cousin’s family had a television and a sewing machine. He said if we could just get our hands on this stuff, we could sell it right away. He’d even found a buyer already."

Xu Xiaobo scrambled to defend himself. "You’re lying! I was just bragging to you guys when I got back from the East Market! You’re the ones who told me to pretend I wanted to learn a trade so my mom would bring me here to be your inside man!"

Seeing Li Xiangyang’s expression grow colder, Xu Xiaobo quickly turned to Lin Lan to beg for mercy. "Cousin, I was wrong! I’ll never do it again. Please, for my mom’s and my aunt’s sake, tell your husband to let us go."

Lin Lan watched the three of them turn on each other like dogs. She stared coldly at Xu Xiaobo. "I was kind enough to offer to teach you a trade, and you turn around and bring people to rob my house. Having a relative like you... I must have the worst luck in the world."

Qiaohui and Tong Xinglan also looked at them with contempt.

Wu Shuhui turned and knelt before Lin Lan. "Little Lan, your Second Aunt is on her knees. I’m begging you, please let Littlebo go. I promise he’ll change. I’ll never let him set foot in your house again."

Lin Lan quickly stepped aside. "Second Aunt, please don’t. I can’t accept this."

Such is the heart of a parent. But with a mother who doted on him like this, could Xu Xiaobo really change? If he waited a few more years and got caught for a crime, it wouldn’t be as simple as a stint in a labor camp.

"Shuhui, what are you doing?" Wu Shufen was so angry she went to pull her up. But Wu Shuhui refused to get up from the ground, and it took Qiaohui and Tong Xinglan helping to finally get her to her feet.

Wu Shuhui grabbed Wu Shufen and cried, "Second Sister, I’m begging you. Please ask Little Lan and Xiangyang to let Littlebo go. We’ll never come back again."

Wu Shufen sighed, then turned to Lin Lan and Li Xiangyang. "Xiangyang, Little Lan, let them go. From now on, just pretend you don’t have this cousin."

Li Xiangyang glanced at Lin Lan, then said, "Fine. We can let them go, but they must write a confession. They have to guarantee they will never come to my house to steal again. If my house is ever robbed, I’ll take this confession straight to the police station."

Hearing this, the three of them nodded repeatedly. "We’ll write it. We’ll write it right now."

Li Xiangyang pointed his stick at Boss Jiang. "Drop the knife."

Resigned to his fate, Boss Jiang tossed the knife to the ground.

Lin Lan went inside to get paper, a pen, and an ink pad, then brought them to the backyard. The three men obediently wrote their confessions and pressed their thumbprints on them.

Li Xiangyang looked at the three of them. "Don’t let me see you again."

"We guarantee it." Boss Jiang and the round-faced man left through the back gate.

Wu Shuhui was too embarrassed to stay at Lin Lan’s house any longer. She said to Wu Shufen, "Second Sister, we won’t stay here. We’ll go find a hotel."

Worried something might happen to them out in the dark, Wu Shufen said, "It’s just for a little while longer. Why don’t you leave at dawn?"

Wu Shuhui looked at the pitch-black sky and nodded. "I’ll go sit in the room where Littlebo was sleeping."

"Cousin, we’re going to bed now." Qiaohui and Tong Xinglan wrapped their cotton-padded coats tightly around themselves and went inside to sleep.

Lin Lan said to Li Xiangyang and Brother Yong, "Will you two just make do and stay here for the night?"

Brother Yong waved him off. "No, Yuezhen is waiting for me to get home!"

"My old man’s still waiting up for me. We’ll head back now. You be on your guard tonight," Li Xiangyang advised.

Lin Lan nodded. She saw them out of the backyard and saw that their bicycles were locked to the courtyard wall. Watching them get on their bikes, she said, "Be careful."

Li Xiangyang nodded. "Hurry back inside, or you’ll catch a cold."

Lin Lan wrapped her coat tighter and went back to close the backyard gate. When she turned around, she saw Wu Shufen waiting for her at the door. "Mom, why aren’t you in bed?"

Wu Shufen looked at her lovingly. "I was waiting for you to come back before going to bed."

Lin Lan went and took her arm, asking in a low voice, "Is Second Aunt in the east wing?"

"She was in tears, begging me not to tell anyone about what Littlebo did. She said she’d discipline him properly when she gets back."

Wu Shufen sighed as she spoke, looking at Lin Lan. "I was thinking... nothing was actually stolen, and Littlebo is still young. He has his whole life ahead of him. If he got arrested and sent to prison because of this, your Second Aunt would definitely resent you."

Lin Lan nodded. "I know."

Wu Shufen patted Lin Lan’s hand. "Let’s just consider this incident a wake-up call for Littlebo. If he can straighten himself out and be a good person from now on, I’ll be able to rest a little easier as his aunt."