Witty Wife, Better Life

Chapter 237: Chapter 227 turns out to be them

"Yunfang, what did Captain Xing come here for today?" Grandpa Shen asked anxiously.

Ever since the night before yesterday, his heart had been under constant strain, and now, hearing that someone from above had come to the village, his heart gave a jolt, and he rushed over here immediately.

The people standing nearby were all ears as well.

"It’s nothing, just the same issue from that day. He came to understand the situation," Shen Yunfang felt that sometimes being too low-profile was not good. If only those people knew she had a decent relationship with Xing Zhonghua, and knew that even writing an accusation letter wouldn’t bother her, perhaps this incident might not have occurred.

"Ah? That matter isn’t resolved yet?" Grandpa Shen was surprised; he thought that once people came back, it would be over.

"I’m done with it, but those who wrote the accusation letter framing me aren’t done yet. Since I am innocent, the guilty ones are them," Shen Yunfang said, her eyes scanning the crowd present.

Although she didn’t yet know exactly who had written the accusation letter, she suspected someone from Gaijiatun was definitely involved.

She had wanted to pay close attention to Cousin Shen Er because she thought it was very likely that Cousin Shen Er was behind the writing of the accusation letter, but she was nowhere to been seen among the crowd who had come to see the commotion.

Shen Yunfang frowned, wondering if Cousin Shen Er was feeling guilty like a thief and therefore didn’t dare to show up in front of her.

"We need to find this person; it’s utterly despicable, to unjustly slander someone like that," Grandpa Shen muttered and cursed a few more times.

The people present, for reasons only known to themselves, joined in with Grandpa Shen’s cursing, and after everyone had vented, they each returned to their homes.

Shen Yunfang closed her door and returned to her normal daily routine.

Three days later, Grandpa Shen came over to inform her that the issue with her family’s grain ration had been resolved, and that several people from Gaijiatun (he emphasized it was the accountant from the Li Family) had agreed to allocate 280 jins of grain to Shen Yunfang, and pay money to make up for any shortfall.

Shen Yunfang nodded to acknowledge she understood, and that afternoon, she went to the brigade to collect her family’s grain.

A week later, Ergouzi suddenly came to deliver a letter to her, saying someone at the village entrance was loitering and had given him a dime to deliver the letter.

Shen Yunfang took the letter and looked it over; nothing special, just an ordinary envelope, light in her hand, seemingly empty, but the seal was meticulously glued shut. She gave Ergouzi a fruit candy, watched him hop and skip away, then went back inside to read the letter.

Shen Yunfang tore open the letter; inside was just a slip of paper, with three names written on it: Shen Yunfeng, Li Hongqi, Li Chengji.

She immediately knew who had sent the letter, not expecting the bespectacled man to be so trustworthy.

Upon seeing the names on the note, Shen Yunfang frowned, Shen Yunfeng, her first cousin, Li Hongqi, her brother-in-law, the very people who reported her.

Her contact with Shen Yunfeng was limited to two years ago when she acted as a team leader at a procurement station in the county town. Although there were some frictions between them, from her perspective, these were trifles. If she didn’t like someone, she simply cut them off, and that’s exactly what they had both done over the past two years. Shen Yunfeng’s visits to Gaijiatun were rare, and knowing that Shen Yunfeng looked down on her, she never tried to curry favor. She couldn’t understand why she had offended Shen Yunfeng to the extent that she would write a denunciation letter to condemn her to death.

And then there was Li Hongqi, her brother-in-law; she did not remember offending him either. Not only did she not antagonize him, but she had also consistently yielded ground to him. She remembered how during the Li Family’s division of property, she and Li Hongjun walked away with nothing but the clothes on their backs, leaving everything to Li Hongqi and Li Hongxing. Considering Qiu Shuping’s favoritism toward Li Hongqi, most of those possessions would inevitably end up in his hands. Just a few months ago, she had given fifty yuan to her brother-in-law for university expenses. Despite all this, even if Li Hongqi didn’t appreciate his sister-in-law’s kindness, he shouldn’t hold a grudge against her. Shen Yunfang was utterly baffled.

Then, who was this Li Chengji? She didn’t even know the person, so why would he want to harm her? Ah, wait. That name sounded familiar.

Shen Yunfang closed her eyes and tried hard to recall where she had heard this name. Suddenly, she remembered, Li Chengji was the accountant Li, wasn’t he? This memory belonged to the original Shen Yunfang, so she only had a vague impression of him in her mind. Without careful thought, she couldn’t really remember.

However, she had basically no contact with accountant Li and had certainly not offended him, so why would he want to harm her as well?

Her past life’s business experience taught her that sometimes people harm you not because they hold a grudge against you, but because there might be a conflict of interest that you can’t see.

Shen Yunfang analyzed the issue from a different angle. Although there was no actual conflict with Shen Yunfeng, Yunfeng was influential and liked to compare herself with others. It was very likely that she couldn’t stand to see Yunfang, whom she perceived to be inferior, living a good life. On top of that, with Ergouzi’s mother peeking at her household recently and Taxue biting her, could it be possible that Ergouzi’s mother held a grudge and spoke to Shen Yunfeng, leading her to write the denunciation?

As for Li Hongqi and accountant Li, she couldn’t think of any problems there at the moment, but she believed the day would come when everything would be clear.

She wrote everything she knew and thought in a letter to Li Hongjun, hoping he could analyze it for her.

As time entered mid-November, Gaijiatun welcomed its first snow of 1975. Shen Yunfang had already sharpened the pig-slaughtering knife, ready to go up the mountain to kill pigs.

Aside from the snow making it difficult to go up the mountain, another reason for her early pig slaughter was that Shen Yunfang’s belly had grown; she was six and a half months pregnant. What used to be a small bump had, in the past half month, swelled like a balloon. As she was still agile, she wanted to take care of the livestock on the mountain while she could move freely. It would be dangerous to slaughter pigs later when she could no longer see her toes when she bent over.

It took Shen Yunfang a week to slaughter twenty pigs, seventeen sheep, and over seventy chickens on the mountain. She selected the edible organs to keep, storing them in her space.

The two pigs at home, one was slaughtered by someone right there, half of which was taken to the county to fulfill her pork quota, while the other half Shen Yunfang divided up, keeping a pig’s head, two ribs, a pork belly, along with a full set of offal for her family. The remaining pork was sold from her house. Of course, she wanted no money, only grain—specifically, rice and wheat flour.

Fortunately, she set a reasonable price, and since the villagers had just divided up their grain supply not long ago, some households willing to part with their grain exchanged it with her. The leftover pork was almost equivalent to three hundred catties of rice and over a hundred catties of wheat flour.

Of course, she didn’t forget to send two catties to Elder Shen, and in return received a warm welcome from Granny Shen.