Chapter 94: Uncle, My Foot

Lin Jingyue looked at the man before her, her expression turning cold.

With a thud, she dropped the bundle of firewood. The usually noisy settlement for the sent-down youths fell silent at once.

The man looked around in puzzlement.

Had everyone just flinched? Had he imagined it?

“What do you want?” Lin Jingyue asked lazily, fixing her gaze on Wu Zhenhua. This man was no good either.

He was her mother’s brother, yet he treated her mother badly, like a stranger he happened to know. As for the younger Lin Jingyue, he had simply ignored her.

“I’m your uncle. I came to see you—what’s wrong with that? Is this how you treat your elders?” Displeasure surfaced on Wu Zhenhua’s face.

Lin Jingyue was becoming more and more unreasonable.

“A child without a mother to teach her has no manners...”

Bang.

Before he could finish, the onlookers sensed trouble. And sure enough, in the next instant, Wu Zhenhua was sent flying.

The people at the settlement were already experienced in such scenes; they all stepped back in unison.

He crashed straight onto the open ground.

Aside from his howls of pain, the place was dead silent.

Everyone gave him a sympathetic look. Honestly, as her uncle, how could he not know Lin Jingyue’s temper?

He was asking for a beating.

After the initial shock, the villagers felt an inevitable sense of “I knew it,” though they also had their own complaints about Lin Jingyue.

In their hearts, they muttered that she even hit her elders.

“You think you’re fit to talk to me about manners?” Lin Jingyue said scornfully, looking at the twisted face of Wu Zhenhua. “I cut ties with the Wu family long ago. What are you doing here pretending to matter? An uncle? You can take that ‘uncle’ and shove it—”

A cold wind swept by, stirring up dead leaves and dust from the ground.

The timing was almost too perfect.

At last Wu Zhenhua found his voice again. He stared at Lin Jingyue in disbelief. “You’re utterly lawless! Lin Jingyue, today I’ll teach you properly what kind of attitude you should have toward your elders. So living in the countryside for too long has made you savage. You’ve learned every filthy habit of the mud-legged lot...”

Smack.

As he struggled upright and rushed at her, Lin Jingyue neither dodged nor retreated. She slapped him across the face.

“You go on and on like a stray dog. What, you’re not a mud-legged peasant? You’re so noble? So well-bred? Look at yourself—how do you look? Like a dog? No, that’s an insult to dogs. You’re not even fit to be called a dog. Calling you heartless and ungrateful would be flattering you and the rest of the Wu family!”

“I was going to leave you alone, minding our own business, but you insisted on coming here to act cheap!”

Smack.

She grabbed his collar and slammed him straight to the ground.

Crack.

The tiny sound reached everyone’s ears, and the whole crowd fell even quieter, instinctively retreating a few more steps.

Too brutal.

Wu Zhenhua had already been dazed by Lin Jingyue’s chain of actions.

He had never imagined she was such a hardened scoundrel, so utterly shameless, with not a shred of morals in her eyes. She hit an elder without hesitation.

And she struck with no mercy at all. Worse still, when had she become this strong?

A grown man like him was being pinned down and beaten!

“She even hits her own father, let alone you...” Lin Xinjian, standing not far away, muttered under his breath.

Wu Zhenhua snapped his head around, his disbelief deepening.

Lin Jingyue... hit her biological father?

Was there no justice left in this world?

Lin Jingyue heard it too and showed no reaction. “If a father is unkind, his children need not be too dutiful.”

Dutiful?

How could those two words even be used here?

Everyone’s mouths twitched hard.

Step by step, Lin Jingyue walked up to Wu Zhenhua and looked down at the terror in his eyes. “Speak. Why are you here? Don’t try to fool me. I’m in a very bad mood.”

As she spoke, she rolled her wrist.

Wu Zhenhua’s face changed. He glared at Lin Jingyue, hatred burning in his eyes as if he wanted to strangle her, yet he did not dare raise a hand.

Dust-covered and disheveled, he looked ridiculous.

Lin Jingyue gave a careless laugh. “Look at you, all muddy and pathetic. Ugly as sin.”

“...”

His chest hurt terribly.

“Spit it out. Have you gone mute? If you won’t speak now, then don’t speak at all.”

Her eyes were full of threat.

Wu Zhenhua turned his head and glanced at the people from the settlement and the villagers outside. Seeing that everyone looked unsurprised, as though this was all perfectly normal, he finally deflated.

Lin Jingyue had changed.

She was probably a tyrant here now.

“Jingyue.”

Just then, a cool voice suddenly rang out.

Wu Zhenhua saw the coldness on Lin Jingyue’s face recede, replaced by a dazzling smile. Her eyes shimmered as she looked at the newcomer. “You’re back.”

“Mm. Did he bully you?”

Jiang Xun held a brick in his hand, as though if Lin Jingyue nodded, he would bring it down without hesitation.

The ferocity in his eyes sent a wave of fear through Wu Zhenhua.

Damn it, he was the one being bullied, all right? Were they all blind?

“He was planning to, but he didn’t get the chance.”

Before she could finish, Jiang Xun had already brought the brick down.

“Ah!”

Wu Zhenhua’s miserable scream rang out.

Everyone: “!!!!”

So damn brutal.

Zhou Yan, carrying a large bundle and pushing a bicycle as he rushed over, caught sight of the scene and could not help twitching at the corner of his mouth.

At the same time, the brigade leader, who had seen Jiang Xun climb over the wall of his own house to chase after them, witnessed Jiang Xun cracking the man open with his own eyes and felt his vision go dark.

He had a terrible feeling he would die young.

“What are you standing there for? Get him to the hospital!” the brigade leader said in panic.

No one knew where this man had come from. If he died here, what then?

His tenure as brigade leader would be over.

“No rush.”

Lin Jingyue raised a hand.

The brigade leader stared, about to speak, but then Lin Jingyue continued, “He won’t die.”

“...”

Everyone looked at Lin Jingyue in horror as she crouched down. Her voice was icy. “Speak. What exactly are you here for?”

With her back to the brigade leader and the others, Lin Jingyue mouthed the words: Tell the truth, or prepare to die.

Wu Zhenhua was utterly terrified.

At this moment, he regretted more than anything coming here at all.

“Y-your grandmother found you a match... she wants you to go back and marry him...”

“Heh. No contact for decades, and now they come like a weasel paying a New Year call to a hen?” Lin Jingyue sneered. “What’s the man like?”

Wu Zhenhua looked at her in surprise.

Under Lin Jingyue’s mocking gaze, he finally gave in. “He’s... an idiot.”

“I’ll beat you into an idiot,” Jiang Xun said darkly, lifting the bloodied brick again. Lin Jingyue grabbed him at once.

“Forget it. If you smash him again, he really will die.”

Jiang Xun looked at Wu Zhenhua, let out a heavy breath, and thought: the Wu family—very good. Very good indeed.

“Brigade leader, please have someone take him to the hospital. He has money and can afford to pay for the trouble.” Lin Jingyue turned to look at the brigade leader, whose expression had turned complicated.

“All right.”

The brigade leader called over a few young men, and they clumsily carried Wu Zhenhua away.

The watching women had originally thought Lin Jingyue was cold-blooded and merciless, lacking all humanity. But when they heard that her long-estranged maternal family had suddenly tried to marry her off to an idiot, their feelings became complicated.

For all these years, perhaps they truly had ignored her without a care. Otherwise, how could a girl of eighteen be driven to such an extreme simply to survive?