The old man’s son and daughter-in-law were not easy to provoke, and he dared not take her home, so the woman actually brought him back to the Ge Family house.
The bed in Ge Xiaotong’s original room was very small—just a tiny single bed. After seeing Grandma Ge, that woman sneakily took a key to unlock De Jun and Liu Pei’s room. Somehow she managed to convince them to let her stay in their room when they were not at home.
As a result, she even brought the old man into their room.
This thoroughly disgusted Liu Pei; she couldn’t bear it any longer. She barged in and pushed the woman out, grabbing a mat and smashing it onto her, demanding payment for her new mat.
She absolutely could not sleep on that bed mat again.
But the woman complained to Grandma Ge in tears, saying her husband had died early in her life and she had not had an easy time over the years; she really wanted to find companionship with that old man to spend the latter part of their lives together. She accused Liu Pei of treating her like a dirty woman, as if trying to drive her to her death.
Liu Pei couldn’t help but lash out at Grandma Ge, accusing her of not being discerning about who she brought home!
Grandma Ge couldn’t tolerate being blamed by her daughter-in-law; she berated Liu Pei and even demanded an apology to the woman.
The woman kept fanning the flames by the side, escalating the situation until Grandma Ge exclaimed that if Liu Pei didn’t apologize properly, she might as well just bash her head in and die.
It was only then that De Jun reluctantly asked Liu Pei to apologize first.
His intention was to soothe Grandma Ge with the apology and then find a way to coax the woman out of the house.
But this only infuriated Liu Pei, leading to what happened next.
Although Chiang Xiao and the others had neither seen nor heard it firsthand, just listening to Liu Pei’s account was enough to make them feel disgusted.
According to Chiang Xiao, they should just kick that woman out first and talk later.
But De Jun, considering Grandma Ge and the fact that the other party was a woman, really found it difficult to lay hands on her.
Later, they didn’t allow Chiang Xiao to hear too much and rushed her back to her room after dinner.
Such repulsive matters were not suitable for a young girl like Chiang Xiao to hear too much of; it would pollute her ears.
They also didn’t want Chiang Xiao to come up with any ideas or offer any help; from the bottom of their hearts, they didn’t want a young girl like her getting involved in such disgusting affairs.
Seeing that Liu Pei had calmed down, and after discussing with Ge Xiaotong and Xu Linjiang about how to handle the situation, Chiang Xiao stopped listening further.
On the third day, early in the morning, the staff of the G Province Painters Association received several more entries for the competition. One of the entries was even sent via express mail.
Without a second thought, he opened that one first.
When he took out the scroll and saw the blue silk ribbon tied around it, he paused for a moment.
Times were hard and it was already good enough to use quality paper for the painting; most entries were sent rolled in newspapers. Of course, there were those who were meticulous and used specialized cases for their scrolls. Still, those cases were generally old ones.
Merely entering the competition without knowing if one might win an award, very few would truly take their work to heart and invest money in packaging.
Yet the case he held in his hands was plain, white, and tied with a beautiful, new blue silk ribbon, not one that had been reused.
Moreover, casually drawn on the surface of the plain case was a delicate Orchid Grass.
Just from that Orchid Grass sketch, one could feel an elegant charm emanating from it.
Even before opening it, he could already sense how seriously the competition had been taken and the reverence given to this particular painting.