Chapter 4: Chapter 4 Designing the Enemy Chapter 4: Chapter 4 Designing the Enemy During this time, there had been no rain for over half a month, and Meng Chuyue had been working relentlessly for over ten days, subsisting on the worst food in her household.
Of course, the reason she remembered today was not because she had fainted twice in a row and had been beaten by Fu Hongfang.
It was because tonight, Meng Jingfen and Wu Yuanchun had been caught in the heat of a secret rendezvous in the forest behind Xiaoliu Village, causing the entire village to erupt in gossip, and laying the groundwork for her future painful life.
Wu Yuanchun was quite handsome, but poor; Meng Jingfen was only lusting after his body and did not want to marry him.
With the affair exposed, and fearing the wedding plans in the town might fall through, Meng Jingfen and her family, along with Wu Yuanchun, shifted the blame onto her, claiming that it was she who had met with Wu Yuanchun.
They said she was mistaken for Meng Jingfang because she shamelessly wore Meng Jingfang’s pink dress.
She naturally did not want to take the blame for this huge scandal, and she was prepared to make a big fuss about it, but her mother Meng Wanhua, who had seldom cared for her after leaving her at her grandmother’s since childhood, suddenly came back and urged her to agree.
She also secretly gave her a part of dowry money—five thousand yuan.
Back then, five thousand yuan was really a lot of money.
But Meng Chuyue couldn’t compromise.
If Wu Yuanchun had only been poor, or if he had been unattractive, she might have agreed to take Meng Jingfen’s place if it was only because of his poor family background.
But Wu Yuanchun had relations with Meng Jingfen, which would likely lead to messy entanglements in the future.
How could she live such a life?
She firmly refused, and as a result, Meng Wanhua seemingly conceded but in secret arranged for Meng Jingfen to use her ID card to get a marriage certificate with Wu Yuanchun.
By the time she learned about this, her family had already started to prepare for her wedding to Wu Yuanchun.
Pretending to compromise, she fled on her eighteenth birthday, the first day of the sixth lunar month, to Hai City with the five thousand yuan left by Meng Wanhua to seek help from her father Lin Youdong, thus beginning an even tougher life.
Having reborn, Meng Chuyue would naturally not sit idly by.
She decided to fight back.
She began to craft a plan for retaliation.
The first option: leave Xiaoliu Village immediately.
However, this would still result in Meng Jingfen blaming her for the scandal that night.
Meng Wanhua might, just like in her previous life, scheme to have her marry Wu Yuanchun, which would lead to numerous troubles.
This option was not feasible.
The second option was to deliberately entangle with Meng Jingfen that evening, preventing the disgraceful events of the previous life.
She wouldn’t have to take the blame for Meng Jingfen, nor marry Wu Yuanchun, and she would have plenty of time to plan her departure from Xiaoliu Village.
But she had already beaten Fu Hongfang into a pulp, and she needed to resolve this matter, or the electrically shocked Fu Hongfang might suspect her of being a demon.
That would not end well for her.
How could she solve this problem?
Certainly she couldn’t kill Fu Hongfang, right?
That would be a crime and definitely not an option.
So, what should she do?
As she pondered, she searched through her space and, upon seeing the oils, paints, and curling iron, a scheme popped into her head reminiscent of some storylines she had read.
She would make Fu Hongfang believe she had been struck by lightning.
She took out a pair of scissors and wildly snipped at Fu Hongfang’s curly hair, then used the curling iron to create burn marks on some strands of hair, and finally she damaged the clothes on Fu Hongfang’s body and applied oil paint and pigments on her face.
After doing all this, she packed her ID card, junior high school diploma, graduation photo, and clothes and shoes she needed these days, all the while keeping an eye on Fu Hongfang’s movements.
When things were nearly packed, Fu Hongfang groaned as if she were about to wake up.
She quickly threw the items in her hands into her space, then lay down beside the bed, pretending to have fainted when Fu Hongfang was struck by lightning.
When Fu Hongfang came to, she saw her limbs and clothes were charred black, and they even had the smell of burning, which almost made her faint again.