novelraw Chapter 291: Looted and emptied, all buried alive!
Chapter 291: Looted and emptied, all buried alive!
Chapter 291 Looting everything and taking everyone with them!
Gu Lianshan couldn't argue with her, so he went back into the house and told his third uncle that Gu Tang and the other two were going to watch the fun at Gu Baoshan's house and would be back in about 15 minutes, so that the old man wouldn't be worried about not being able to find them.
The village roads have been dug out, and the narrow passages, like winding sheep paths, connect the village from one end to the other, branching off into many other roads that connect the courtyards and alleys on both sides of the main road.
Walking on the path, my steps were much lighter, unlike in the morning when I was stumbling and unsteady.
When Gu Tang was still a few feet away from Gu Baoshan's house, he could already see a group of people fighting in the fenced yard of Gu Baoshan's house.
I could hear foul language and curses, interspersed with occasional shrill cries.
Gu Tang's ears twitched. Among the cries, there were those of Jiang and her daughter, Gu Baoshan, and two unfamiliar men and women. Judging from their cries, they should be Guan's parents.
Upon entering the courtyard, they saw a group of people split into two groups.
The men were beating Gu Baoshan, while the aunties and grandmothers were hitting Jiang and her daughter!
The clan chief and elders were entangled by Guan's parents, who were crying their hearts out and even threatened to kill themselves by banging their heads against Gu Baoshan's house.
This action startled the clan chief and elders, who quickly stopped the person.
If the Guan family elders were to die here by crashing their heads into the ground, then the Gu and Guan clans would truly be locked in a life-or-death struggle.
Chief Gu was extremely worried and was having a hard time when he caught a glimpse of Gu Lianshan out of the corner of his eye.
A surge of joy welled up in my heart!
Gu Lianshan is incredibly eloquent; he's a master at persuading and coaxing people!
Thinking of this, Chief Gu hurriedly beckoned Gu Lianshan over.
Gu Lianshan saw the Guan family elders' desperate attempts to kill themselves and sighed before leading Gu Tang and the others over.
Upon reaching the corridor, Gu Lianshan instructed Gu Tang and the other two to stand in the corner to avoid being bumped into by the chaotic crowd in the courtyard.
After arranging the three of them, Gu Lianshan wiped his face and shamelessly went to persuade the Guan family elders.
They are in the wrong.
After all, those were two lives!
Which family doesn't have a daughter? If their daughter ended up like this, wouldn't their family go crazy?!
Gu Lianshan understood the feelings of the Guan family elders very well, so he offered them targeted advice:
“Our daughter is gone. You can beat that bastard Gu Baoshan to death. If you beat him to death, the village will dig a hole and bury him. It’s no big deal!”
Auntie, my sister had such a hard life! She never ate or drank anything good while she was alive, and she never even wore nice clothes.
Please don't cry yet. While there's no one in the house right now, go inside and search for some fabric or coins to make a shroud for the mother and daughter.
"And buy two more good coffins, spend all the things in this house, and leave them not a single penny!"
These words struck a chord with the elderly couple.
They weren't really seeking death; they just wanted to pressure Chief Gu to stop interfering in Gu Baoshan's affairs.
Unexpectedly, someone has given them this idea.
Thinking about it carefully, this idea is excellent. It can not only vent our anger, but also wipe out the Gu Baoshan family's wealth, leaving them with nothing.
Their Guan family's daughter died here, so Gu Baoshan can forget about ever marrying again in this lifetime!
Guan's mother, He, wiped away her tears, nimbly got up from the ground, and beckoned her husband, Old Master Guan, to come inside and help her.
Gu Lianshan seized the opportunity to hand over a stone: "Use this to break the lock."
Mrs. He glanced at it but didn't take it. Instead, she called her two sons and told them to go to the kitchen to get a kitchen knife and smash all the pots and pans in the kitchen!
Guan's son was tall and strong, and he was very obedient to his mother, He Shi. Without saying a word, he went to the kitchen.
Then a series of banging sounds came from the kitchen!
A short while later, the noise stopped, and Guan's two sons came out with kitchen knives.
Afterwards, He led his two brothers and his wife to search the house!
Once the Guan family entered the house, the clan chief glared at Gu Lianshan and quietly reprimanded him.
"I asked you to come here so you could persuade them to stop making trouble, not to add fuel to the fire or incite them to steal from my house!"
"You really think highly of me!"
Gu Lianshan's eyes widened: "Their daughter and granddaughter are both dead here. Please let them vent their anger first, so we can talk things over later."
Don't worry, the Guan family isn't stupid. They won't kill anyone. At most, someone might break an arm or leg, and they'll recover after a while.
Chief Gu was furious, but he couldn't think of any other good solutions.
There are two lives involved; this cannot be easily dismissed with a few words.
They have to be allowed to vent their anger.
Gu Lianshan leaned closer to the clan chief and asked in a low voice, "Has the Guan family examined the body of Guan and her daughter?"
Clan Chief Gu paused, then sighed heavily: "Both Guan and her daughter have injuries. Jiang insists that they were caused by a falling beam, but the Guan family thinks it looks more like they were beaten."
Gu Lianshan curled his lip: "You have to listen to Jiang's words in reverse."
Chief Gu sighed again. How could he not know?
He knows better than anyone else!
That's why he didn't stop the Guan family from beating people up.
This is Shanghe Village, and the Gu clan has about a hundred households! If they weren't in the wrong, who would dare to cause trouble?
"Father." Gu Tang suddenly came over and pointed to Gu Baoshan and the Jiang mother and daughter who were being beaten: "Both sides are bleeding. If you keep hitting them, it will be too much."
If you want revenge, there are plenty of ways. But beating someone to death in public would just be handing your weakness over to your enemy.
Not worth it.
It's really not worth it!
Upon hearing that blood had been drawn, Gu Lianshan and the clan elders all changed their expressions, and the group hurriedly went into the courtyard.
"Calm down, calm down! The person is already dead. Even if you beat him to death, you can't bring him back to life, can you?"
"It's not worth it to waste your time on something like this! It's really not worth it!"
"We can just beat him up to vent our anger, but we absolutely cannot let anyone die and make Gu Baoshan pay for it with money!"
……
Gu Tang watched with great interest as her father meddled in things, and you know what? After her father said that, everyone actually calmed down.
A series of banging sounds came from inside Gu Baoshan's house. Gu Tang stood by the window and looked inside curiously.
He was seen prying open a box with her husband and two sons.
The unlocked cabinets and boxes inside the house were all ransacked, and all the clothes and shoes inside were slashed to pieces with a knife, leaving nothing intact.
He's son was very strong, and he pried open the box in a few quick movements, then pulled out a bag of copper coins from inside.
Gu Tang glanced at it a few times; everything was strung together, each string containing about a hundred copper coins. This bag should hold about two taels. Besides the copper coins, Madam He also found a few pieces of silver in the box, which, judging by their size, probably weighed three to five taels.
There were still many good things in the box. Gu Tang leaned out the window and watched as Madam He emptied the box. There were three brand-new winter clothes. Judging from their color and size, they should belong to Gu Baoshan and Madam Jiang and her daughter.
There are also two new quilts, with bright red covers and a double happiness symbol embroidered in gold thread.
This is probably Gu Chuntao's dowry.
Mrs. He couldn't bear to cut up the winter clothes and quilt, so she picked out the winter clothes of Mrs. Jiang and her daughter and put them aside, and asked her son to go out and call for help.
"Go and invite your aunties in. Ask them to help your sister and niece wash their faces and change their clothes. You need to make sure your sister and niece have a decent journey..."
At this point, Mrs. He's eyes reddened again, and tears streamed down her face.
Gu Tang could sense that Madam He was genuinely heartbroken, without any pretense or exaggeration.
For some reason, she felt a tightness in her chest.
There was still some cloth in the box. While crying, He asked her husband to help her fold the cloth again.
She said, "Take all this cloth with our daughter and put it in her coffin to be buried with her. The same goes for this quilt; bury it with our daughter too!"
When my daughter married into the family, I prepared four quilts for her, but that old hag took them all in less than a year! Perfect, these two quilts are a replacement for my daughter!
Grandpa Guan nodded: "That makes sense!"
Madam He then handed the silver she had found to her husband: "Use this silver to buy two coffins, and this bag of copper coins on the ground. Use it all to pay for the funeral. Don't leave them a single penny!"
"Alright, I'll have our eldest son handle this." After taking the silver, Old Master Guan picked up the copper coins from the ground, turned around, and went out to find his son.
Madam He also came out of the room. She wanted to help carry her daughter from the main room to the old man's bed in the east room!
They changed their daughter's clothes right there on that old bastard's bed, hoping that the old bastard would absorb some of his death energy so that he could die sooner and atone for his sins to their daughter!
Gu Tang was still engrossed in watching. From these events, it was clear that Madam He held absolute power in the Guan family.
Grandpa Guan and his six sons didn't dare to talk back to her; they just did whatever she said.
The silver, copper coins, cloth, and brand-new winter clothes and quilts found during the search were things that would make even well-off families envious, and everyone would take the opportunity to take them away.
However, Madam He was not like that. She used the silver and copper coins to prepare coffins and funeral arrangements, and gave her daughter cloth, winter clothes, quilts and the like as burial goods, without feeling any remorse.
Old Master Guan was even more outrageous. He would agree to anything Madam He said without batting an eye or saying a word.
Gu Tang was truly impressed.
"Stop looking, it's almost time, we should go."
Ah Gou suddenly came over, startling Gu Tang.
"Could you call me from a little further away?" Gu Tang rolled her eyes at him. "Are you trying to scare me to death by getting this close?"
"I was out of my mind, I promise I won't do it again next time," Ah Gou habitually admitted his mistake and made a promise.
Gu Tang didn't dwell on that point. She went over to tell her father and then took Ah Gou and Gu Ping'an home.
Third Uncle has changed his clothes and is now waiting in the main room.
Hearing a noise coming from the courtyard gate, he got up, lifted the curtain at the door, and looked outside a few times.
Seeing that it was Gu Tang and the other two, he breathed a sigh of relief and told them to hurry back to their room to change their clothes.
"Master, shall I go too?" Ah Gou pointed at himself.
“Go! Your uncle said he'd take you with him so everyone can meet you.”
"Isn't that stealing my uncle's thunder?" Gu Tang looked Ah Gou up and down.
You know what, Ah Gou really does look like a decent human now, and he seems pretty good at sweet-talking people.
"What's all this talk about being in the limelight? It's not like when he was young and properly marrying his first wife. Now he's remarried and he's in his thirties, so there's no limelight to speak of."
Third Uncle didn't take it seriously and told Ah Gou to just go change his clothes and come along later.
Ah Gou glanced at Gu Tang secretly, asking for her opinion.
Gu Tang didn't care; whether she went or not wouldn't prevent her from attending the banquet.
This was Gu Tang's first time attending a banquet after transmigrating.
Although the employer was someone she didn't want to see, her father had already given her a gift, so she couldn't refuse. Moreover, her father had given her a task: to make her money back with interest.
When it comes to eating, no one can compare to Ah Gou. If you let him go to a banquet, he can eat an entire table of food by himself!
You definitely won't lose out!
After changing their clothes, led by Third Uncle, Gu Tang, A Gou, and Gu Ping'an headed towards the end of the village.
With the road now open, even though it was still snowing, many villagers who had been cooped up for days came out to move around, bundled up like balls.
The destinations of their movements were very clear: almost all of them went to Gu Baoshan's house, with only a few heading towards the Gu family's house at the end of the village.
When Third Uncle led Gu Tang and the others there, they saw that a simple thatched shed had been built in the Gu family courtyard at some point.
The frame was made of thick wooden sticks around the perimeter, and the top was also made of wooden sticks in a triangular shape, covered with a straw mat woven from wheat straw and grass.
These thatched huts have no walls, only a roof; they can't block the wind, but they can keep out the snow.
People have already started setting up tables under the thatched shed.
Gu Tang's heart skipped a beat, and she whispered to her third uncle, "Master, can't the banquet table be placed inside? It's too cold outside!"
“Who says it can’t? Of course it can be placed inside the house.” Third Uncle glanced at each room and remembered that almost every room in the Gu family had a bed.
He said, "I guess there are beds in the rooms, and there's not enough room to put a table. Right now, it's set up in the thatched shed, which looks bright and lively, but it's a bit cold."
"It's not just cold! The food will cool down quickly when it's served!" That's the key point. In the dead of winter, cold food is inedible.
Gu Tang's worries were completely unnecessary. She would soon find out that the cold food was nothing to worry about, and there were other things waiting for her.
The four members of the family casually chose a table in the shed and sat down, chatting with the villagers while waiting for their food to be served.
Most of the villagers had never seen Ah Gou, but they had all heard that there was such a distinguished person in Third Uncle's family.
Looking at Ah Gou's clothes, the person next to him moved to the other end of the bench.
Although they didn't know what material the clothes were made of, they weren't stupid. If such clothes got dirty, they might not be able to afford to pay for them even if they sold their children!
On one hand, she was filled with anxiety and unease, and on the other hand, she couldn't help but wonder if this person was, as the villagers said, someone who had eagerly sought to recognize Gu Lianshan as his uncle.
Everyone wanted to ask, but they were too intimidated to speak.
However, Ah Gou and the others didn't dare to ask, but Gu Tang and the others could.
"Tang girl, what did you put on your face? It looks like the snow on the ground! Give some to your sister-in-law tomorrow, so she can be beautiful too."
Gu Tang smiled and looked at the person who spoke, who was Yu Shi, the wife of Gu Chengye from the south.
He doesn't have many hobbies, but the first thing he does is ask people for things.