Zhou Zhimin carried a basket of wheat straw on his arm, cursing as he walked into the courtyard.
Hearing the cursing, Huang Meili walked out of the house again. "What's wrong?"
"Someone hollowed out a hole in the second brother's wheat straw stack. Some people must be fooling around in there..."
Zhou Zhimin raised his hand, pinching a strange object between his fingers.
Huang Meili leaned in for a closer look, and her face instantly changed color. "Why did you bring back this filthy thing? Throw it away right now!"
Saying this, she slapped Zhou Zhimin's hand hard. His hand trembled, and the object dropped to the ground.
"I just wanted to show you! Tell me, how shameless can these two be? They could have done it anywhere, but they just had to sneak into a straw stack!"
Huang Meili scolded, "Really, too shameless! Having an affair in a straw stack!" Although she was cursing, she felt quite vindicated in her heart.
She had always harbored a grudge against Zhou Zhijun for not agreeing to adopt Zhou Xiaomei!
Now that his straw stack had a hole hollowed out by someone, it was like venting her anger for her. It never even crossed her mind that Zhou Zhijun might be the one involved.
Zhou Zhaodi hadn't gone far. Hearing Zhou Zhimin talk about people fooling around, she hurriedly turned back. "What? Who's so shameless?"
Huang Meili pointed at the object on the ground and said, "Look at that filthy thing! They really have no shame!"
Listening to their conversation, Chuntao's small face turned as red as cloth in a dye vat. With her head lowered and her footsteps floating, she hurried home in a panic, the water buckets swaying back and forth.
Zhou Zhaodi looked at her back and cursed, "Shameless slut! It must be her!"
"How do you know it's her?" Zhou Zhimin and Huang Meili asked in unison.
Zhou Zhaodi pouted her lips. "Who else could it be?"
Zhou Zhimin's heart also skipped a beat. A few days ago, the villagers were privately gossiping that the relationship between Zhou Zhijun and Chuntao was improper.
They also said that his mother accepting Chuntao as her goddaughter was just a cover for them. Could what they said be true? Did Zhou Zhijun hollow out this hole?
"What are you thinking about? Hurry back to the house and start the fire for cooking!" Huang Meili gave him a push.
Zhou Zhimin went to the kitchen, while Zhou Zhaodi remained standing outside, whispering with Huang Meili.
"It must be Zhou Zhijun and Chuntao fooling around in there... If they could do it in the wild grass pile in the east ditch, the straw stack is soft and warm, making it even more comfortable to sleep in..."
Huang Meili slapped her thigh. "Why didn't I think of that? Now that you mention it, it really makes sense!
With the second brother's hot temper, who would dare hollow out a hole in his straw stack? Nobody would dare except himself!"
The two of them whispered for a while longer before Huang Meili walked into the kitchen.
Zhou Zhimin said with a dark face, "Hang around that Zhou Zhaodi less from now on. She's a troublemaker and no good!"
Hearing him say this, Huang Meili let out a cold snort and said, "She's no good, but is your second brother any good?
He walks around all day with a straight face pretending to be decent, but behind people's backs, he does such shameless things."
"What nonsense are you talking about? If the second brother finds out, you'll be in for it!" Zhou Zhimin said this, but he was also suspicious in his heart.
If it was proven true that Zhou Zhijun and Chuntao were having an affair, and someone reported them to the commune, it would be over for them.
Although he was dissatisfied with some of Zhou Zhijun's actions, they were blood brothers born of the same mother after all, and he didn't want anything bad to happen to him.
On the way, Chuntao's heart pounded like a drum, and her small face felt so hot it could catch fire.
When she returned home, Wang Xiaohong was in the kitchen tending the fire. Her face was pulled long with displeasure, but Wang Jieshi was nowhere to be seen.
"My brother hasn't been looking right lately. He loses his temper at the drop of a hat!"
As soon as Chuntao carried the water into the kitchen, Wang Xiaohong complained, "Isn't he the one who brought this upon himself to end up like this? Why is he taking his anger out on me!"
Wang Xiaohong thought her brother was losing his temper because he was in a bad mood due to his physical disability, and she didn't think of anything else at all.
Chuntao didn't say a word; she just poured the two buckets of water into the water vat. On the surface, she remained calm and collected, but her heart was already tangled up like a ball of messy hemp.
After eating lunch and feeding the pigs, Chuntao and Wang Xiaohong shouldered their hoes and went back to the fields.
The matter of the straw stack seemed to have grown wings. In just one noon, it flew to every corner of the village, and everyone knew about it.
On the way, they met the men and women of the village walking to the fields in small groups, discussing the matter as they walked.
The dirty words in their conversations were like needles piercing the tip of Chuntao's heart, making her entire body tense up.
Zhou Ergan and the village's old bachelor, Baldy Zhang, were sitting on the ridge by the road, their smoking pipes dangling from their mouths as they stared straight at Chuntao.
"Zhou Zhijun's straw stack was hollowed out by someone. I bet he hollowed it out himself! So he could sleep with that little wife in there!" Zhou Ergan's voice was very loud.
Baldy Zhang laughed despicably, "You have to admit, he really knows how to pick a spot. It's warm and soft inside!"
Wang Xiaohong was completely baffled but her face turned red with anger. She pulled Chuntao and quickly walked past them, muttering a curse under her breath, "Indecent old men, spewing shit from their mouths!"
Chuntao remained silent, keeping her head down as she walked forward, her small frame unable to stop trembling.
Naturally, this matter also reached Aunt Zhou's ears, so she carried a basket on her arm and went to the threshing floor.
Upon arriving, she saw that her family's straw stack had indeed been hollowed out with a hole. Inside the hole, besides the flattened straw, there was a bundle of firewood stuffed in it.
Aunt Zhou's face turned ashen, but she didn't say anything.
As for Wang Haichao and Liu Cuilan, when they heard about this, the first people they thought of were Zhou Zhijun and Chuntao.
Liu Cuilan exploded on the spot. Shouldering her hoe, she was about to go settle the score with Chuntao, but Wang Haichao held her back.
"What are you rushing for? To catch adulterers, you need to catch both; to catch a thief, you need the loot! You have no proof or evidence, she won't admit it!"
"Then what should we do? Just let her shit on our necks?
This shameless jinx, she's rebelling against heaven! She thinks that because she split the household with us and acknowledged Old Woman Zhou as her godmother, I can't control her anymore..."
"You go to the fields first. Leave this matter to me. I'll go talk to Jieshi in a bit and tell him to keep an eye out!"
Liu Cuilan shouldered her hoe and went to the fields, cursing all the way, while Wang Haichao turned around and went to Wang Jieshi's house.
Wang Jieshi was still lying in bed, fuming. He hadn't even eaten lunch! Seeing Wang Haichao coming again, he knew it was nothing good.
His face was so gloomy it looked like water could be wrung out of it. "What are you here for again?"
"Jieshi, I originally didn't want to tell you about this, but if I don't, I'm afraid you'll suffer a loss..." Wang Haichao looked troubled.
Wang Jieshi was like a powder keg at this moment. "If you don't want to say it, then don't!"
"No, it's just... your mother was originally going to come, but I was afraid of her bad temper, so I didn't let her!
This noon, Zhou Zhimin went to the threshing floor in the west to pull some wheat straw, and he found that Zhou Zhijun's straw stack had a hole hollowed out in it...
Everyone in the village is gossiping, saying that Zhou Zhijun and Chuntao were inside..."
Wang Jieshi's mind buzzed loudly, as if he had been struck in half by lightning.
Thinking about Zhou Zhijun's help to his family, his defense of Chuntao, and the marks on her body... piece by piece, everything added up, forcing him to believe it.
But he was a cripple with incomplete limbs. He couldn't beat Zhou Zhijun in a fight, nor could he tie down Chuntao's heart.
Was he just going to watch helplessly as Chuntao and Zhou Zhijun fooled around? Was he going to be a cowardly turtle? If so, could he, Wang Jieshi, still be considered a man?
Wang Jieshi's eye sockets turned red, and tears welled up within them, but he forced himself to swallow all the humiliation and fury down into his stomach.
Turning to Wang Haichao, he asked, "Where is that old traditional Chinese doctor you mentioned? I'm heading there right now!"
Wang Haichao was taken aback. "You really want to get treated? It might not be cured, though..."
"It can be," Wang Jieshi interrupted him. "Once my condition is cured, Chuntao will still be my wife. As for Zhou Zhijun and his dirty little thoughts, I'll snuff them out sooner or later!"
When Zhou Zhijun returned after dark, Aunt Zhou told him about the hole hollowed out in the haystack and the villagers gossiping. His heart gave a jolt at the news, and he silently cursed his rotten luck.
Lately, he had been preoccupied with building the house, and Chuntao had been deliberately avoiding him. He had figured he would find a chance to properly show her some affection once the work was done, but he never imagined someone would catch wind of his intentions!
He narrowed his eyes, a flicker of calculation passing through them. It looked like he would have to find a new, safer spot.
