Rebirth Counterattack with Space
Chapter 218 - 210: Destined by Fate

Chapter 218: Chapter 210: Destined by Fate

After hanging up the phone, Lu Aiguo slapped his forehead, berating himself for his foolishness. He had been so preoccupied with maintaining the secrecy of the matter that he forgot to clarify whether it was good news or bad news, causing his own mother to worry unnecessarily. It was truly inexcusable.

On the other end, Lu Yun’s uncle chuckled to his wife, "Now you can rest easy, right? No matter what it is, it’s definitely something good."

Only then did Lu Yun’s aunt finally breathe a sigh of relief, regaining her cheerful demeanor.

Early the next day, Lu Aiguo had made special arrangements for pick-up, and the people and vehicle designated to escort Lu Yun’s uncle and aunt to the Capital City quickly arrived at Yushu Village.

Lu Aiguo’s eldest uncle and his wife smiled as they saw them off. Now, they were the only two left living in Yushu Village from their branch of the family. Like Lu Yun’s aunt, they had grown accustomed to the village and had no desire to follow their children and grandchildren to the big city.

The Su Family.

At noon, Su Huahua’s father returned from the fields, hoe on his shoulder. As he entered the house, he saw Chen Juxiang in the yard, hunched over on a stool, struggling to scrub the laundry.

The frustration he had been forced to suppress on the way home—after being taunted that he still had to work the fields at his age, unlike Lu Yun’s uncle and aunt who were whisked away to the Capital City to enjoy the good life that morning—suddenly erupted again.

If it weren’t for this cursed woman in front of him, why would he still need to toil in the fields at his age? Wouldn’t he have been living the divine life like most others in the village by now, residing in a nice house, hiring others to work the land, and spending his days leisurely enjoying a few drinks, playing chess, and shooting the breeze?

Fuming with these thoughts, Su Huahua’s father saw red, anger mounting, malice brewing at his core. Thankfully, he still had some sense left; he threw down his hoe, charged over, and violently kicked Chen Juxiang, knocking her to the ground.

"You lazy wretch, still dawdling over the laundry at this hour! Why can’t you get up early and finish the chores?" he bellowed.

Seeing Chen Juxiang rolling on the ground, clutching her head and wailing, Su Huahua’s father didn’t stop his assault. Instead, he felt a perverse sense of satisfaction, kicking her several more times, still not satisfied. He then grabbed a broom from the corner of the wall and continued to rain blows upon her, cursing loudly and fiercely as he did so.

Chen Juxiang, trembling and crying, clutched her head and begged for mercy, "I won’t do it again, I won’t dare to."

She was in such a pitiful state, with snot and tears mixing with the dirt on the ground and smearing all over her face, that it was both disgraceful and revolting to look at. This sight only fueled Su Huahua’s father’s rage further, and he beat her with all his might until he was out of breath, pausing only to catch his breath and still not forgetting to curse at her, pointing at her nose and shouting, "You broom star, you home-wrecker! Would the Su Family be like this if not for your bad luck?"

No one in the Su Family came out to check on the commotion.

As for Chen Juxiang being beaten every other day, everyone in the household had become used to it, considering it a mercy that they didn’t step in to kick her a few times themselves. Whenever they felt upset, they too would yell at Chen Juxiang to vent their anger.

Even Chen Juxiang’s youngest son and grandson, whom she once doted upon so much, had begun to treat her like an enemy.

It had also been a long time since Su Huahua visited her mother’s home. Chen Juxiang didn’t want her to come back either because each visit became a "disaster day" for Chen Juxiang.

Chen Juxiang’s reputation was so tarnished that it brought trouble to her daughter-in-law, who found it harder and harder to endure life at her in-laws’. So, when she did visit, where else could she unleash her irritation if not on Chen Juxiang?

Once Su Huahua’s father had vented enough, he bellowed at Chen Juxiang to bring food, and he went straight into the front room to sit down and wait for his meal. As soon as he entered the front room, the other residents of the Su Family, who were nowhere to be seen before, suddenly appeared.

Disheveled, Chen Juxiang started to lay out the food. Once done, she swallowed hard, touching her growling stomach, and returned to the yard to continue washing clothes.

She couldn’t even remember when it started, but at some point, she was no longer allowed to sit at the table for meals and had to wait until everyone else had finished eating. She would then scrape together the leftovers from everyone’s bowls and mix them with the remaining soup and vegetables to make her own meal.

If one day the daughter-in-law brought out less rice, or someone’s appetite was good and they left no leftovers, Chen Juxiang would have to go hungry.

Chen Juxiang couldn’t help but touch her belly, hoping that later everyone would leave at least some food; the amount she had eaten yesterday was pitifully little, and today she had gotten up before four in the morning to work until now.

She had filled her stomach with cold water in the morning, and while feeding the pigs, she was so hungry that she couldn’t help but stuff a couple hands full of pig feed into her mouth, which left her throat aching even now.

Chen Juxiang’s eyes darkened as she thought of her eldest son again, her heart filled with hatred. If he hadn’t insisted on disturbing her dreams even in death, telling his daughter to change her surname, would she have ended up in her current dire state?

She felt hate whenever she thought of the words spoken by Liu the Blind.

If only he hadn’t taken a fancy to Xia Yuan...

It has to be said that the complete ruination of Chen Juxiang’s reputation could be traced back to Liu the Blind, a soothsayer in Yushu Village who had relied on fortune-telling to make a living even before the liberation and was said to be extremely accurate.

At first, Liu the Blind asserted with certainty that Lu Aiguo and Xia Yuan were stars descended from the heavens to experience trials on earth. If the two had become a couple earlier, they could have led the village to wealth and prosperity sooner and everyone, including the Su Family, would have been living good lives too.

Unfortunately, Chen Juxiang and Su Family’s eldest son each refused to accept their fate and, out of overreaching ambition, drew the trial-bound couple to themselves, forcibly separating a pair of divine lovers, which not only invited heavenly wrath.

Look, didn’t the Su Family soon suffer retribution?

Chen Juxiang’s schemes had cost her own eldest son his life but also led to the Su Family losing their entire fortune. They almost brought disaster upon the entire Yushu Village.

Liu the Blind later said that, fortunately, Su Family’s eldest had a timely realization in the underworld, instructing Lu Yun to abandon the Su surname in favor of the Lu surname, thereby saving a remnant of the Su Family’s fortune and sparing their descendants from total annihilation.

As the years went by, and Lu Aiguo’s business grew bigger and bigger. His associates were buying houses and cars, traveling all over the country every year. Even the family members left in the village began adorning themselves with gold and silver, building luxurious garden villas, and instead of working the fields themselves, they hired outsiders to farm their land...

As Yushu Village grew richer, the villagers became more convinced of these tales.

Today’s Yushu Village is a well-known affluent place. Aside from the Su Family whom the Lu Group steadfastly refuses to hire, which family there doesn’t have someone working for the Lu Group?

Working for the Lu Group is not only respectable but also brings in a good annual income and benefits. Even those who stayed back in their hometown, hiring people to grow potatoes to sell to the Lu Group, earned a handsome income every year.

As Lu Aiguo became wealthy, not only did the people of Yushu Village benefit, but so did the family of the two Lu sisters who married into Xie Family Village. The situation in Xie Family Village was similar to Yushu’s, and now people from nearby villages envied the good fortune of those from Yushu and Xie Family villages.

So no matter how wretched Chen Juxiang’s life was, in the eyes of Yushu’s villagers, she didn’t deserve sympathy. Without her, everyone might have started enjoying their current good lives years earlier.

Therefore, it was unjust for her to bring misfortune upon everyone and expect them to stand up for her – there is no such reasoning in the world, right?

As these tales spread, not only did others believe them, but even Chen Juxiang herself was convinced. She had once sneaked off to see Liu the Blind, and with no money to offer, resorted to kowtowing to him incessantly, begging for a solution.

Liu the Blind, softened by her kowtows, advised her that she must stay far away from the Lu Family people, including Lu Yun. She listened, but life remained difficult.

So when she later heard that Lu Yun had become the top scholar and gone off to study in the Capital City, she couldn’t resist the idea to go there with Su Lao Liu. In the end, she got nothing out of it, didn’t even get to see Lu Yun’s face, and after returning, even the "good" life she had before was gone, leaving her in her current wretched state, ten times more miserable than before.

Unable to restrain herself, she sought Liu the Blind again, but this time, he didn’t give her any advice, merely sighed and said that this was the fate destined for her...

Chen Juxiang truly regretted it; how could she have foolishly disregarded the master’s words back then?