Liu Mei couldn’t make sense of it.
At the same time, a sudden unease gripped her heart.
She walked back to her room and saw Xiu Jianlin hadn’t gone to bed yet, so she went up to him and gave him a pat, asking, "Don’t you think your eldest son is a bit strange?"
"What?" Xiu Jianlin didn’t immediately catch on to whom she was referring, as Liu Mei never called Xiu Xi that way. She would either call him a bastard or a dead mixed breed—the more unpleasant the name, the more likely she was to use it.
"Xiu Xi, your eldest son!" Liu Mei glared at him irritably.
"Him?... Hasn’t he always been ?" Xiu Jianlin looked at her, puzzled. In his memory, his eldest son had always been akin to an invisible person—not eating at home, occasionally not even sleeping at home, like a wild man.
He wasn’t unaware of how Liu Mei treated his son; it’s just that for him, a child whose mother had died was far less important than his current wife and child.
Liu Mei’s increasing harshness wasn’t without his tolerance.
"It’s different," Liu Mei said with a frown, yet didn’t know how to describe it.
"What’s different about it? I think you’ve just eaten too much meat and feel bloated."
"Then you tell me, where did all those pheasants and bamboo rats come from? You really believe his nonsense? That he ’found’ them?"
"Pah! How old is he? How could he catch so many prey?"
Xiu Jianlin also lost his patience and sat up, "Then what exactly is it! This isn’t it, that isn’t it!"
Liu Mei bit her lip, looked around cautiously, then leaned closer to him, conspiratorially whispering in his ear, "Do you think he could be a shape-shifter from the mountains?"
At this, Xiu Jianlin looked at her as if she were a fool.
It displeased Liu Mei to be looked at in such a way, and she slapped him once more.
She told him the rumors she had heard outside: "Do you think only I say this? Do you know how Ruan Jiaojiao came back? What kind of place is that front mountain? Even Ruan Jiandang didn’t come out in one piece from there, and these two kids, just a little over ten years old, came out unharmed. Don’t you find that strange?"
"Well, maybe they were just lucky," Xiu Jianlin said, his voice now uncertain.
Because generation after generation lived here, he naturally knew what kind of place the front mountain was. Elders would mention that during times of starvation, many would dare to hunt in the mountain, but it usually ended with them not returning, or if they did, they were missing arms or legs.
Ruan Jiaojiao and Xiu Xi, the two children barely over ten years old, had safely emerged after spending a night and day inside, which really was a bit eerie.
Could it truly be the work of shape-shifters?
"How can you talk about luck here? And that Ruan Jiaojiao—most people with her kind of troubles would have died young. The way she keeps escaping danger, I don’t believe there’s no trickery involved."
"Where did you hear all this?" Xiu Jianlin frowned at her.
"Who doesn’t talk about it in the team? Even if the Ruanlin Family is formidable, can they shut everyone’s mouth? Besides, not long ago, many saw the Ruanlin Family carrying things to Qian Xiabai’s house. It might well be about that girl’s business."
"Nonsense, that was clearly for asking about an auspicious day for breaking ground." In rural areas, people believed in this—hoping for good fortune. Even the poorest family, facing something significant, would take a pound of rice or half a pound of meat to ask Qian Xiabai for an auspicious date. Whether his predictions were accurate or not, it was all about seeking good luck.