The Ger's Contract Marriage [BL]
Chapter 461: The Stepmother

Chapter 461: The Stepmother

The village was like he remembered. Before the zombies, before Nanshan Estate, there was his life in Sun Village— the life before he lost his dad and the life after it.

Xu Zeng tried not to think about either time spent in Sun Village because both brought sharp pains to his chest. It seemed like a completely different lifetime, but it was only a mere year ago that he called Sun Village home.

From the Trick Chestnut Trees at the entrance of the village— the ones that held fruit that looked like Chestnuts, but were actually poisonous— to the thatched roofs and sparse tiled roofs, Sun Village seemed stuck in time.

He had grown and changed, but the village stayed the same. He knew the people had grown with the passage of time, and things wouldn’t be the same, but the feeling of being frozen in time was still hard to shake.

"Thank you for listening to me Dad." Xu Zeng thanked his dad once more. The incense he’d lit had nearly run half its course. He’d stayed much longer than he’d intended, but he missed talking to his dad.

The three ceremonial incense gave off a murky smoke that moved upward as if to reach the heavens beyond the roof of the ancestral hall. A good thirty minutes had passed, and Xu Zeng knew he needed to leave.

At the very least, he’d lit some incense and brought a small offering for his dad. Even when he lived in Sun Village, it was hard to visit his dad regularly. The woman didn’t like it, and would accuse him of looking down on her by visiting the former "wife" so often.

Xu Zeng’s heart squeezed as he bowed several times, slowly and meticulously for his dad. "If I get a chance to visit again before I leave Dongzhou, I will. Thank you and I’m sorry about my brother, please watch over him if you can."

Without a thought of visiting his childhood home, Xu Zeng was ready to make his way back to his mates. That woman, her children, and her husband couldn’t be his concern. How they chose to use his dad’s dowry and what wealth he left in the home was already a foregone conclusion.

He did have an attachment to his "younger brothers," in the past, but it wasn’t worth it to see them. Besides, neither of them had treated him half as kind as Xiao An and Xiao Momo and they were of similar ages.

It was clear they didn’t have him in their hearts either. That was alright.

Where he had dragged his feet as he entered the village, now as he made an exit, even the wind couldn’t hold him back. Xu Zeng couldn’t wait to fly out of Sun Village.

He’d stayed too long, and the sun had risen over Sun Village. His greeting had turned into a full offloading of the key events of the last year to his dad— as quickly as he could. There had been voices in the village and footsteps as he spoke with his dad, but Xu Zeng had focused on zoning it all out.

Now, he would try to avoid the villagers rising, and those returning from the farm. The woman and her husband had a large piece of land— bought with his dad’s silver— and shouldn’t be among the first to return. He cut it close, but he should still be in the clear.

"You! Thief! You come to my house to steal for your husband’s house!" An accusing voice pierced the air, though tinged with uncertainty as if following a rehearsed script.

"Your father and I went through so much to marry you to a family in town, but when things go bad, you come to steal from us! This white-eyed wolf! This unfilial child! This ungrateful ger! A curse like you killed your dad, and now you’ve returned to kill me and your father!!! Awooo!!"

The woman’s sudden collapse to the ground, followed by wailing and appeals to the heavens, lacked any sense of shame. Despite her theatrics, she made a half-hearted attempt to avoid rolling in the dirt, retaining some semblance of dignity.

She knew not to act like the most shameless of old village shrews, she had some reservations, but not enough.

Unfortunately for her and her reservations, Xu Zeng had little to no concept of social norms outside of the filial piety that bound him to Sun Village in the past. His dad was already dead, and his household registration was no longer under this shameless stepmother and her husband’s household.

Whether they did handstands and backflips in front of him, he didn’t want to stay and play such ridiculous games. When did he come to steal? He hadn’t even returned to their home. He was a child who lived in the pigpen, what would he be going back to retrieve from there?

"You... You..!!!" The woman seemed shocked that the figure she was yelling at in the distance continued to grow more and more distant. He hadn’t even turned back to glance in her direction.

Thinking quickly, she bolted back to her feet glancing around once more. Some older onlookers and children had risen and peeked out at the commotion.

Those who were left in the village weren’t those who could do farm work, harvest season required all able hands to go to the fields.

If it weren’t for that blabber mouth, Han Han’s Mother, who was always slacking and had brought her news about a silver-haired ger from the neighboring village’s bullock cart uncle, she wouldn’t have run back to her home to look for Xu Zeng.

At first, she returned home with a few women and searched her home, but nothing and no one out of the ordinary was found.

Her children were still asleep, and her home was untouched. She was just on her way to chew out Han Han’s Mother for such a bald-faced lie when she saw silver hair glittering in the early morning sun.

And now that silver-haired person was moving further and further away.

Han Han’s Mother was right! Xu Zeng was back, and he had married well according to her.

If she didn’t want this golden spoon to leave without receiving a chunk of gold, she needed to act fast.