NOVPUB
Chapter 148: Chapter 142 Clearance
In the evening, when Shen Yunfang finished cooking and brought the food in an insulated container into the ward, she saw Qiu Shuping ranting in front of Li Hongjun’s hospital bed.
She could guess without even thinking that it certainly wasn’t anything good about her.
"Here she comes, here she comes, now it’s time to really talk things out," Qiu Shuping had already decided in her heart that Shen Yunfang was guilty, so she was quite arrogant, convinced that if she exposed this woman’s true colors in person, her son would come to his senses.
Shen Yunfang ignored her and placed the items on the dining table before saying, "Talk? Talk about what?"
"I felt something was odd yesterday. When we left the room was in one state, and when we returned it was the same. You didn’t touch anything. I deliberately went back to check today, and sure enough, I caught you red-handed. You didn’t go back to rest at all, there was no one in the room. Tell me, if you didn’t go back to the hostel, where on earth did you go? Could it be you despise my disabled son and went off to find some other man?" Qiu Shuping accused.
Ignoring her, Shen Yunfang instead asked the man on the bed, "Where’s your dad?"
"Couldn’t take it, went outside to smoke," Li Hongjun said expressionlessly.
Understanding, Shen Yunfang nodded and asked, "Do you need to go to the bathroom?"
Li Hongjun understood and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
So, Shen Yunfang approached Qiu Shuping and said, "Auntie, could you come here a moment? I have something to say to you."
"What do you want, as if I’m afraid of you. I can justify myself anywhere."
Once Qiu Shuping had stepped out of the ward, Shen Yunfang swiftly slipped back in, then quickly locked the door behind her before hurrying to the bed. Ignoring the thunderous knocking from outside, she helped Li Hongjun with his physiological needs.
"Alright, now you can listen in peace to your mom ranting outside," Shen Yunfang said, comforting Li Hongjun with a pat. Then she carried the urinal to open the shaking ward door.
The moment the door opened, Qiu Shuping squeezed in, clamoring as she tried to scratch at Shen Yunfang, "You wicked woman, what were you doing with my son locked in there? Trying to harm my son, were you? I’ll fight you for this."
Shen Yunfang didn’t move an inch, simply raised the urinal she was holding, successfully frightening Qiu Shuping off.
"You’re a mother too. Didn’t you say you raised five children and have experience? Then how come you didn’t realize your son had been holding it in for a whole day and needed to pee?"
Qiu Shuping was left speechless, "He... he didn’t say anything." She hadn’t thought about this at all. When the kids were little, the grandmother was there, and her responsibility was to work—the kids were cared for by the grandmother.
"Should he have to tell you that? What do you even do here?" Shen Yunfang jabbed at her before turning to head for the bathroom.
Glaring at her retreating back, Qiu Shuping seethed with anger, "This woman, this woman—she’s really flipping the script on me. It’s infuriating!"
"Son, you see, this is how this woman treats your mother. You have to stand up for me," Qiu Shuping turned back to complain to her own son.
After rinsing the urinal, Shen Yunfang brought in a basin of hot water, only to see Qiu Shuping still sniveling and crying.
She placed the urinal under the bed and took a clean towel to start wiping Li Hongjun’s face.
Upon seeing her actions, Qiu Shuping stopped crying, hastily got up, snatched the towel away, and said, "You step aside, I’ll take care of my son."
Shen Yunfang just shrugged—this was even better—and stepped aside as she watched Qiu Shuping tenderly wipe Li Hongjun’s face.
"Mom, you don’t need to, let Yunfang do it," Li Hongjun pressed down on his blanket, adamantly not letting his mother proceed any further.
But Qiu Shuping wouldn’t have it, finally seizing a chance to show her care, "What are you embarrassed about? Your mother has seen everything when you were little."
Li Hongjun suddenly stood up, his face turning red, or rather, it should be said he turned pale with anger.
With clenched teeth, he said, "Mom, I’m an adult now." Then he snatched the towel from Qiu Shuping’s hands and tossed it to Shen Yunfang, who was watching the commotion. "Take it."
Shen Yunfang suppressed a laugh as she washed the towel.
Qiu Shuping felt embarrassed, thinking that Shen Yunfang was laughing at her, and her quelled anger started rising again. "That’s right, don’t think you can just muddle through this. Tell me, where have you been gallivanting these past few days?"
"Auntie, you really speak from experience, always going on about gallivanting. Uncle doesn’t seem to mind." Shen Yunfang, unhappy, threw the towel into the basin, causing a small splash.
"You..."
"You don’t have to cling to me anymore, I’ll just tell you. First, I’m not living under the same roof as you all; I’m not comfortable living with strangers, so I had a room opened up for me the day I arrived, which is on record at the guest house, and you can go check. Second, I went out today to buy food for Li Hongjun; what do you think, that the chicken and bones we have every day just fall from the sky?" Shen Yunfang replied impolitely, realizing that her future mother-in-law was definitely the type to take a mile when given an inch. If she didn’t show her true colors now, Li’s father would end up like a second her.
"You, you, you, how can you be so wasteful? Even if my son earned mountains of gold and rivers of silver, it wouldn’t be enough to support your extravagance," Qiu Shuping, seeing Shen Yunfang’s composed face, realized she was probably telling the truth and, finding herself without a leg to stand on, quickly redirected the conversation to the topic of spending money.
"I’m happy, and Li Hongjun is willing. That’s all that matters," Shen Yunfang retorted coolly.
That night, Qiu Shuping was driven away by Shen Yunfang’s words.
When Shen Yunfang looked at Li Hongjun, he simply remarked, "Seems like my wife isn’t someone who can be bullied easily. I’m relieved."
The next morning, after Li’s parents came over, Qiu Shuping declared that she wanted to follow Shen Yunfang during the day, "I can’t just watch you squander my son’s household; I need to keep an eye on you."
Shen Yunfang scoffed and folded her arms, "That’s fine, but if I’m not ruining your son’s household, you can be the one to buy the stuff to replenish his body today."
Qiu Shuping suddenly deflated; if she were willing to spend the money, she couldn’t accuse Shen Yunfang of being wasteful.
In the end, it was Shen Yunfang who left on her own.
After disguising herself, she went to the agreed trading spot with the middle-aged man, scouted several loops around to ensure it was safe and that no one was paying attention to the area, and only then did she take out baskets of vegetables from her space. A lot of them.
Fortunately, the middle-aged man had somehow acquired a covered Eastern vehicle, and he brought out a large scale from the vehicle. It was good that the place was secluded, as several of them went about weighing and loading the vehicle unnoticed.
After the middle-aged man paid, he handed Shen Yunfang a note, "Sister, my name is Song. From now on, you can just call me Brother Song, and this is my phone number. If you have more goods to sell in the future, you can call me directly. Here’s to a pleasant cooperation."
Shen Yunfang smiled and nodded her head, watching the vehicle drive off into the distance.
She walked around the streets for quite a while, making sure it was safe before finally returning to the guest house.
Two days later, Shen Yunfang contacted Brother Song again and sold a total of one thousand nine hundred pounds of pork from her space. Song could not take any more, so he acted as a middleman and connected her directly with the buyers. Shen Yunfang couldn’t let him work for nothing; she sold her pork for three yuan per pound, and how much Brother Song could make from the buyers was down to his own skills.
Afterward, she gradually sold five hundred pounds of raw melon seeds, two thousand pounds of sweet potatoes, one hundred and twenty melons, and one thousand five-spice cones, selling the latter by the piece at one fen each.
In the span of one week, she cleared out the inventory in her space, of course, excluding some items she couldn’t sell, such as wolf meat and sheep meat, which wasn’t much and she kept for her own consumption along with the wild mountain vegetables, which wouldn’t fetch a high price and were better kept for herself.e. And, of course, a large amount of grains, which she would never sell.
This time she had earned a total of ten thousand three hundred and eighty yuan, plus the three hundred yuan from the two pigs sold in October and the monthly income from selling eggs, totalling about eleven thousand yuan for the year—a growth of eight hundred percent from the previous year. This was surely a good omen.
After accounting for a year’s expenses and adding last year’s leftover money, she now had twelve thousand yuan in hand. In this era, she was certainly considered extremely wealthy.
Through these transactions, she had also discovered that raising pigs and chickens was the fastest way to make money. So, if she wanted to earn money, and earn big money in the future, she would have to vigorously develop the breeding industry.
