NOVPUB
Chapter 206: Chapter 199 Climbing Over the Wall
Er Daniang tugged Shen Fuzhen along, racing all the way to Shen Yunfang’s doorstep, only to of course find the iron general guarding the door.
"Oh dear, we’ve come at a bad time, Yunfang isn’t home again, I think we should just forget it today, and come back another day when she’s home," Shen Fuzhen sighed with relief, pulling Er Daniang to head back. On the way here, her fever-hot brain had cooled considerably, and she now regretted everything immensely. That little ancestor had powerful backers—definitely not someone she could afford to provoke. If she were to be caught again, she would be ruined.
So, upon arrival and finding nobody home, she was actually relieved.
But Er Daniang, of course, was not content to return empty-handed after such a busy morning wearing down her lips for naught without gaining any advantage; she could not reconcile with that. "We’ve already come all this way, we can’t just leave like this."
"Then what do you propose we do, Yunfang’s not here, there’s a lock on the door, are you planning to stand around waiting? I don’t have the time; it’s nearly noon, I have to go home and cook for the kids."
"We can’t wait," said Er Daniang as she eyed Shen Yunfang’s courtyard, her gaze shifting as she hatched a new idea. "But since we’ve come all this way, we can’t just leave without doing anything."
"What else can we do?" Shen Fuzhen asked suspiciously, wondering if Er Daniang had in mind to break into the house. She dared not participate—should she actually break into Yunfang’s home, Yunfang would undoubtedly never let her hear the end of it once she returned.
"Oh for goodness’ sake, look at you panicking. This is my niece’s home, what could I possibly do wrong?" Er Daniang rolled her eyes at her before getting down to the matter at hand, "I was thinking the rumors from Taoshu Village might not be true at all, why not go and have a look to see for ourselves?" Actually, she was genuinely curious about just how many chickens Yunfang really had at home; she didn’t entirely believe all the gossip herself.
Rumors had it that Yunfang was raising a whole bunch of chickens. Thinking carefully about it, so many chickens would require a lot of grains to feed. A young girl like her only got a fixed amount of grain each year—where would she get enough to feed so many chickens? It would be plausible for her to save a bit from her own mouth to feed maybe ten or twenty of them.
"How are we supposed to check, with the door locked up like this." Shen Fuzhen didn’t want to go but found it difficult to just walk away.
"Stop being so thick-headed. She couldn’t possibly be keeping the chickens in the house. If we can see into the yard, wouldn’t that be enough?" Er Daniang naturally had a plan in mind already.
"But we can’t get into the yard either," Shen Fuzhen, who wasn’t particularly sharp-witted—otherwise she wouldn’t repeatedly get duped by others—didn’t catch on.
"Who said anything about entering the yard? Just follow me," said Er Daniang, waving her hand and walking along the wall towards the back of the house.
As they walked, she had Shen Fuzhen pick up a large stone they found by the road. Circling nearly all around the property, they finally arrived at a suitable spot. "Fuzhen, take the sorghum stalks and spread them aside, then place the stone by the wall," directed Er Daniang.
It was only after these instructions that Shen Fuzhen realized what they were about to do. Looks like Er Daniang planned to climb over someone else’s wall! This wasn’t a bad idea, but there were two rows of sorghum planted outside of Yunfang’s courtyard that now stood over two meters tall with heads as large as washbasins, hanging heavy and low.
If they wanted to climb the wall, they would have to push aside several of the nearest stalks. Considering the sorghum was ripe, it seemed too destructive a task. Village people, who aday rely on the soil for their food, detest waste the most. Furthermore, such movement could be easily spotted—if someone passed by, they would notice the signs of trespassing at a glance. Therefore, Shen Fuzhen was somewhat hesitant to proceed.
Seeing her dithering, Er Daniang lost her patience. "Oh come on, you’re such a dawdler. Let me do it." With that, she stepped forward and pulled a few stalks aside, then promptly broke off a couple of sorghum heads before arranging the stalks at an angle and taking the stone from Shen Fuzhen to stack it at the base of the wall.
"There, that should do it. I’ll go up first to take a look. Hold onto me, alright?" Once Er Daniang deemed it ready, she carefully stepped on the stone, then grabbed the top of the wall with both hands and strained to raise her head above it.
The Shen brothers had built the stone wall surrounding their courtyard together, which was constructed so high that even with a few dozen centimeters of stones underfoot, their stepmother, who was less than one meter sixty tall, struggled to peer inside.
"I can’t see; help me up a bit," the stepmother twisted her head around to speak to Shen Fuzhen below.
Shen Fuzhen had no choice but to embrace her thighs with both arms, straining to lift her up.
"Higher, a bit higher, I’m almost there," the stepmother kept urging Shen Fuzhen to exert more force.
Shen Fuzhen, supporting a grown person who weighed over a hundred jin, was sweating profusely from the effort, "Are you done yet? I can’t hold on any longer."
One demanded to go higher, while the other said she couldn’t manage it, and neither saw that right behind them, two pairs of round, jet-black eyes were already fixed on them.
Suddenly, out of the underbrush behind them, a big, pitch-black dog burst forth—their home’s chicken-guarding Taxue—with no sound, charging towards the two of them.
Shen Fuzhen, her face turning red from exertion as she gripped the stepmother’s thighs, rested her head against the side of her leg.
And for some reason, Taxue took aim at the stepmother’s behind and leaped, taking a bite at her there.
The stepmother was attempting hard to look inside the courtyard, where she could already see the chicken coop; everything seemed normal, pondering that the chickens must have been let out, she strained to glimpse other areas, to see if there was anything else unknown to her. But just as she turned her neck, a sharp pain struck her rear, "Ah, my goodness, what the hell bit me?"
Shen Fuzhen had also seen a dark figure pouncing toward them, and instinctively released her hold and took off running.
Then the stepmother tumbled to the ground with a thud. Taxue had already let go of her bite and began to bark furiously at the stepmother on the ground.
The stepmother recognized Taxue, having kicked it when it was a puppy, and by now knew the animal was the one who had bitten her, burning with rage she thought, "You little beast, dare to bite me, just you wait, I’ll skin you and stew you for dog meat." The stepmother spat these harsh words while her thoughts mirrored them.
Taxue, with the intelligence of a small child, could understand simple words and could sense people’s attitudes toward it. Thus, when it detected malice from the person on the ground, it instinctively growled from its throat to intimidate.
Although the stepmother had never owned a dog, she had seen enough of them to recognize when one was about to attack, so she hurriedly scrambled to her feet and started running away, cursing all the while—cursing the dog and its owner in the crudest terms.
Taxue chased her all the way to the main street by the front gate before stopping, barking at her.
Seeing the enemy truly retreat into the distance, Taxue then proudly strutted back, puffing out its little chest; after all, the chickens were still back there, and it had to go protect them. But as it passed the spot where the two humans had tried to climb the wall, it paused, sniffed with its nose, then turned around, and with its rear facing the stones that jutted out a bit more, it lifted its leg, and a light drizzle of rain fell down.
After marking its territory, Taxue happily went off in search of its hen.
