Flip the table and divide the family property! Take his wife and daughter into the mountains and eat

"roll!"

As the word slammed to the ground, the rickety wooden door slammed shut in front of Zhao Xiaoyu with a loud bang.

The wind whipped up by the door, carrying snowflakes, splattered all over her face.

Zhao Xiaoyu stood in the dark snow, looking as if her soul had been ripped from her body.

The kerosene lamp in the room shone a dim yellow light through the crack in the door, as if mocking her current disheveled state.

In that instant, her mind went blank, filled with Zhao Shanhe's thunderous question—

"The person sitting there eating meat, wearing new clothes, and going to university right now—is it you or me?!"

She felt no shame.

At that moment, all that occupied her heart was extreme panic and anger.

She was afraid that her hardworking older brother would really "wake up," and then no one would donate blood to her anymore.

She was even more furious that she, the "golden phoenix," had been kicked out of the door by a "peasant" and had her red scarf, which symbolized her dignity, ripped off.

"Fine... fine, Zhao Shanhe..."

Zhao Xiaoyu gritted her teeth, touching her bare neck. The cold wind rushed into her collar, making her shiver.

Fragments of the red scarf lay scattered in the snow, as if mocking her vanity.

She glanced at it with disgust and didn't pick it up. That would be a disgrace.

"You wait... I'm going to tell Mom! I'll get my second brother to deal with you!"

She clutched her schoolbag tightly, like a child who had suffered a great injustice, and ran towards the red brick house at the east end of the village, her steps uneven.

……

at the same time.

At the east end of the village stands a large red brick and tile house.

"Bang!"

The door was suddenly kicked open, bringing in a blast of biting cold wind.

"Mom! Second brother! Waaaaah..."

As soon as Zhao Xiaoyu entered the room, she threw her schoolbag on the ground, collapsed onto the floor, and burst into tears.

On the kang (heated brick bed), Zhao Shanhai, wrapped in two old quilts and sulking, and Li Cuihua, kneeling in front of the stove and coughing from the damp firewood, were both startled.

"Oh my God!"

When Li Cuihua saw her precious daughter in such a miserable state—her hair was disheveled, her face was covered in tears, her neck was bare, and her face was blue from the cold.

She was so distressed that she slapped her thigh, dropped the bellows, and rushed over to help her daughter up.

"Xiaoyu, what happened? Didn't I tell you to go and call your older brother back to chop wood? How did you end up like this? Did you slip and fall?"

Zhao Shanhai also frowned, sat up straight, pushed up his glasses, and said in a gloomy tone:

"What are you crying about? Is that bastard refusing to come back? Humph, I knew he was just putting on airs, trying to make us beg him!"

Upon hearing the words "elder brother," Zhao Xiaoyu cried even harder.

She looked up, her face filled with hatred and jealousy, and screamed as she dropped the bombshell that shocked the entire family:

"Come back? He's not coming back!"

"Waaaaah... Mom! Second brother! You've all been fooled!"

"He's hiding in that dilapidated house, eating all by himself!"

"What?!"

Li Cuihua was stunned. "What are you eating alone? What else is in that dilapidated house besides rats? Is he gnawing on our cornmeal?"

"Meat! Lots of meat! A whole big bowl of meat!"

Zhao Xiaoyu gestured and wailed, her eyes filled with the venomous resentment of not getting what she wanted.

"The whole house smells of meat! I saw it all, glistening braised pork! And big spare ribs! Lin Xiu and Niu Niu were eating with their mouths dripping with oil! Even that good-for-nothing was gnawing on a big bone!"

boom!

These words exploded like a bomb in the cold, hungry room.

Zhao Shanhai abruptly threw off the covers, not even caring about the cold, his eyes wide like saucers:

"Meat?! Where did he get the meat? Where did he get the money to buy meat?!"

"He hunted it! He must have gotten incredibly lucky to shoot such a large animal!"

Zhao Xiaoyu wiped away her tears and began to frantically complain:

"I tried to persuade him with good intentions, saying that it was cold at home and that he should bring some meat back for Mom to nourish her body. I told him that as long as he admitted his mistake, we would let it go."

"And then... guess what he said?"

Li Cuihua's eyes were already red with emotion, and she swallowed hard, asking anxiously, "What did he say? Did he bring it to me?"

"Serve my ass!"

Zhao Xiaoyu gritted her teeth:

"Not only did he refuse to give it to us, he also pointed his finger at us and called us bloodsuckers! He said we were ungrateful wretches!"

"He even snatched my red scarf! He tore it in front of me! He said it was bought with his money and I didn't deserve to wear it! And then... he even took a knife and tried to cut me out!"

"Rebellion! Outrageous!"

Upon hearing that she hadn't gotten any meat and that her daughter had been bullied, Li Cuihua was so angry that she plopped down on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), pounding the mat and howling:

"That heartless beast! He has meat but won't give it to his own mother, instead feeding it to his wife and children? He even steals from his sister? Is he possessed by a ghost? I can't live anymore... I should have drowned him in the chamber pot back then!"

"Mom! Please stop crying!"

Zhao Shanhai interrupted his mother's crying.

He was, after all, a "scholar," who had worked as a clerk in the county office and was quicker-witted than those two women.

He got off the kang (a heated brick bed), walked around the ground with his hands behind his back, and the shock in his eyes slowly turned into greed, and finally into a sinister look.

"You mean, a whole roe deer?" Zhao Shanhai asked.

"Hmm! I think there's at least five or six pounds of meat in that basin! And I also see two pieces of bloody skin piled up in the corner, they were just peeled off, they're very fresh!" Zhao Xiaoyu added fuel to the fire.

Zhao Shanhai narrowed his eyes, a glint of shrewdness flashing in his triangular eyes hidden behind his glasses.

Roe deer are valuable from head to toe.

The meat is edible, and the hides can be used to make mattresses and fur coats. Especially those two hides, which can be sold at the recycling station or on the black market for at least thirty yuan!

Brother, you've struck it rich!

"OK."

Zhao Shanhai sneered, his tone laced with malice:

"No wonder they dared to split up the family; they thought they were all grown up and capable of making money in the mountains."

"But he forgot that before the family divided the property, his things belonged to the family; even after the division, I am his younger brother, and you are still his mother! How can you eat meat while your mother starves?"

Li Cuihua stopped crying and looked at her second son with pleading eyes: "Shanhai, what should we do? He's holding a knife now and won't even let us in the door..."

Zhao Shanhai straightened his collar, pushed up his glasses, concealing the cold glint in his eyes:

"Mom, we're civilized people, we won't fight with that brute."

He paused, a cruel smile curving his lips:

"Tomorrow is the market day."

"He definitely wouldn't eat the roe deer skin and the leftover roe deer; he'd have to exchange them for money and food."

Zhao Xiaoyu panicked: "Second Brother, shall we go to the market and ambush him? And snatch the stuff back?"

"What are you robbing? That's what bandits do."

Zhao Shanhai glanced at his sister with disdain, his tone exuding an air of official arrogance:

"Tomorrow is the market day, and it just so happens that 'Ma Mazi' is in charge of managing the market. He's my junior high school classmate, and he asked me to help him write some materials last week, so I owe him a favor."

Zhao Shanhai said in a sinister tone:

"My brother hunted illegally without any permits. At best, the hides and meat were illegally slaughtered; at worst…"

He lowered his voice and uttered four words:

"Speculation and profiteering!"

Li Cuihua and Zhao Xiaoyu gasped in shock.

In this day and age, "speculation and profiteering" is a serious crime! At best, illegal gains will be confiscated; at worst, you'll be arrested and imprisoned!

"I went to say hello to Ma Mazi and told him that someone was selling wild animal hides at the market, and asked him to take some people to 'check it out properly'."

Zhao Shanhai patted Li Cuihua on the shoulder, looking completely in control:

"When the time comes, confiscating the goods is just a matter of official business. We'll step in when our brother is desperate, his goods are seized, he's been arrested, and he's going to jail..."

"At that time, not only will he have to return the pot of meat, but he'll also have to kneel on the ground begging us to accept it and get him out!"

Upon hearing this, Li Cuihua's face immediately lit up with a smile: "Oh my, the second son is really capable! He's got a government job, so his brain is sharp! Okay, let's do it this way! Let him know that without this family, he's nothing!"

The crying inside stopped, replaced by a murmur of calculation.