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Chapter 556: Chapter 546 Am I Your Dad or Your Mom
"Second Sister-in-law, don’t speak ill of my Xiaolan. My Xiaolan has suffered a hard fate," Mother Zheng clutched her daughter and began to cry as she spoke.
This time her tears were genuinely heartfelt, for her daughter had truly been through hardships, and it was quite possible that she’d never have her own children. Just thinking about it made her heart ache for her daughter.
Shen Yunfang was certainly not there to watch them perform a tragedy. With no sympathy, she said, "Can you get to the point? If you can’t make it clear, don’t blame me for not sticking around."
"Mom, look at her, look at her!" Zheng Guilin wailed and thrashed in Mother Zheng’s embrace.
Mother Zheng gently patted her daughter’s back to help her catch her breath, not neglecting to speak, "Second Sister-in-law, how can you be so heartless? My Xiaolan’s child was truly lost because of you."
So Mother Zheng exaggerated the story of how her daughter had repeatedly miscarried, of course, in her telling, it was all because Shen Yunfang hadn’t given money to Li Hongqi to buy a house in town, which led to Zheng Guilin’s unstable condition due to back and forth travels. Therefore, in the end, it was all Shen Yunfang’s fault.
Besides the four from the Li Family, everyone else in the room found it unbelievable. They actually made such a far-fetched excuse seem justified; they were truly shameless.
Shen Yunfang, however, did not get angry; perhaps it was that she had experienced many such situations before, had become experienced, and developed resilience, which allowed her to listen to those words so calmly.
"And then? What do you want to do?" she asked.
"What do we want to do? You owe my child’s life," Zheng Guilin sobbed uncontrollably after her mother spoke, her belief that it was all Shen Yunfang’s fault strengthening once again.
Mother Zheng glanced at her son-in-law and in-laws who stayed silent, knowing she had to play the villain herself. After all, her and the Li Family’s second daughter-in-law had virtually no future dealings, so she might as well be the villain for her daughter’s sake just this once.
"The child is gone. Xiaolan said you should pay with your life out of anger, but in the end, all three children were lost because of you. The doctor also said that after these miscarriages, Xiaolan’s body is ruined, and if she wants children in the future, she needs to rest well and can no longer commute like this. Given these circumstances, we just want Hongqi and Xiaolan to be able to buy a house in town. Your in-laws don’t have the money, so we came here to reason with you about it," Mother Zheng stated assertively.
"This is outrageous, simply outrageous!" Zhu Zhengqi became incensed after hearing their demands. He’d seen shameless people, but never someone this shameless.
Shen Yunfang soothed Mr. Zhu. She wasn’t upset at all because she had anticipated that they were there for money but hadn’t expected their reason to be so ludicrous, managing to twist the blame for their child’s loss onto her.
"Auntie, I’ve listened to you go on and on, but I still don’t see what responsibility I have in this. It was Li Hongqi who married your daughter, and if he, as a man, doesn’t have the ability to provide her with a good life, causing her to have miscarriages over and over, I don’t understand how you can blame me, his brother’s wife. I don’t even know how many hoops you had to jump through to pin this on me." This is truly some divine logic, that she could be blamed for this.
"How can I not blame you? If, at the time we got married, you had forked over the money to buy a house, how could my children have just disappeared one after the other." Zheng Guilin hadn’t thought this way at first, but time and time again, whether it was her mother or Li Hongjun, they instilled this rhetoric in her, gradually leading her to truly believe it—this is what’s commonly referred to as successful brainwashing.
"Am I your mother or your father? I didn’t give birth to a big girl like you, why on earth should I give you money to buy a house?" Shen Yunfang asked rudely.
"I, you might not be related to me, but you are Hongqi’s older brother’s wife," shouted Zheng Guilin.
"So what, just because I’m his brother’s wife, I should be dead? Just because I’m his brother’s wife, I should definitely buy him a house when he gets married? Whose rule is that, or which place’s custom?" Shen Yunfang continued to press, "Or are you saying that Li Hongjun’s biological parents have all died out, that he is an orphan?"
"Older brother’s wife, what are you saying?" Li Hongqi, being squeezed like this, could only complain about the disrespect toward his parents hidden in his older brother’s wife’s words, otherwise he’d really struggle to lift his head in front of all these people.
Shen Yunfang slammed her hand on the arm of the couch with a smack, and with her head held high, said to the few crackpots in front of her, "How am I speaking? I might be direct, but did I say anything wrong? Whose child gets married while their parents are around and has to rely on their siblings to buy a house? Even if the parents were no longer alive, you still have an older brother. It wouldn’t be my turn, the second brother’s wife, to fork out the money. Besides, if I remember correctly, we had split up the family when I got married. You were with your parents; whether you bought a house when you got married or not, you should have discussed it with them, how is it related to me?"
"But at the time, our parents didn’t have money, did they? Since you had money, why couldn’t you lend a hand?" Zheng Guilin was still not convinced. She was the victim, yet Shen Yunfang was shouting even louder than her, which just infuriated her.
"How do you know I have money? Are you a worm in my belly?"
"Older brother’s wife, that’s not the right thing to say. Li Hongjun has a salary every month, that’s something we all know. Let’s not speak of much, fifty bucks a month, which makes six hundred a year. The house in the county wouldn’t cost that much at the time; three hundred would be about enough. Are you telling me that to you, three hundred bucks is not as important as three kids?" Zheng Guilin’s mother pursed her lips and said. Although she didn’t insist on the Li Family buying a house in the county at the start, she regretted it now. If she had insisted back then, for the sake of their daughter, the in-laws surely would’ve found a way to squeeze some money out of this daughter-in-law. Then, her daughter might not have suffered so miserably, and maybe she would have held several grandchildren by now.
"By your logic, after Li Hongjun receives his salary every month, we should save it all up for you folks to spend, and our own family should just starve to death," Shen Yunfang’s voice grew colder. "You only see Li Hongjun bringing home a steady income, but didn’t you ever consider that Li Hongjun also has a family to support, a wife and children to provide for? Every year he has to give his parents a hundred bucks for elder care; add all these up, and what’s left from his salary at the end?"
"Don’t make yourself sound so pitiful, older brother’s wife. I might not have known before, but now I’m a salaried worker, too. I’m aware of how much comes in each month, how much one can spend on living expenses," said Li Hongqi coolly from the side, as if to say, don’t try to fool me, I know you must have money.
"Oh, now that you mention it, I really do remember that you’ve been assigned a job for quite some time. Since you’re also earning a salary and you say it’s enough to save money, then why haven’t you paid for a house yourself? Why do you insist I need to pay for it?" Shen Yunfang looked at her little brother-in-law with a smile that was not a smile, her wit clearly sharper than his. "One more thing, I’d like to remind you again that no matter how much money your older brother makes, it all belongs to our little family. To be blunt, that’s all mine. Let me make it clear to you, Li Hongqi, I don’t think highly of someone like you, who acts one way in front of people and another behind their backs, who would do such two-faced and treacherous things. So don’t expect to squeeze a dime out of me for anything; even if your older brother agrees, it won’t work. You might as well just give up on that idea."
