Chapter 116 Inferior to Outsiders

Chapter 116 Inferior to Outsiders

Little Flower obediently let her push her along, but before leaving, the little girl couldn't help but add in an incredulous tone, her eyes sparkling, "And they rolled around the yard together, yet they didn't bump into each other at all."

Unlike her brother and his friends, who could roll around in such a large threshing ground that they would inevitably bump into each other.

Thankfully, the little girl didn't say the last part aloud, otherwise Aunt Ge would definitely have lost her composure.

She doesn't care how other women throw tantrums, but she absolutely cannot allow them to corrupt her grandchildren.

After hearing about the hardships others were going through, Xie Wanniang and Jiang Yuan took the things they needed and went up the mountain together.

Walking down the street, Xie Wanniang sighed to Jiang Yuan in a low voice, "And this is supposed to be a relative? They're not even as kind-hearted as some outsiders."

Jiang Yuan was not surprised at all. "Even biological parents are not necessarily loving to their own children, let alone just an uncle."

If blood ties were truly so useful, he wouldn't have stayed in Mingfu Village for so many years, and Xiaohua and Awang wouldn't have lost their father and mother at the same time.

The same goes for Xie Wanniang. She was forced to jump into the river, and her own mother, father, and grandmother all played a crucial role in her death.

Xie Wanniang sighed, "Indeed, some relatives are less like relatives and more like karmic debts from a past life."

The two talked as they climbed up the mountain, one after the other. But they hadn't gone far when Jiang Yuan, with his sharp ears, heard a sobbing sound.

He raised his hand, signaling Xie Wanniang to stay put for now, while he walked towards the figure hiding behind the big tree, following the direction from which the sound came.

"Atai?" Jiang Yuan called out to the boy who looked up at him, somewhat surprised, upon seeing the thin figure wiping away tears.

He wasn't very familiar with Atai, but he had crossed paths with his deceased father a few times.

He asked Atai, "Why are you hiding here?"

It took Atai a while to recognize Jiang Yuan. He turned his face away, not wanting Jiang Yuan to continue staring at his swollen eyes.

Moreover, he did not answer Jiang Yuan's question because, in his view, Jiang Yuan was asking a question he already knew the answer to.

Jiang Yuan didn't mind Atai's silence; he looked at Xie Wanniang.

When Xie Wanniang heard him call "Atai", she had already started walking towards the two of them.

She glanced at Atai, who was thin as a skeleton, with tattered and dirty clothes that revealed many new and old scars. Instead of speaking, she took out a bamboo tube for water and two sugar cakes that she had made that morning from her basket.

"Want to eat?"

Atai glanced at the bamboo tube and oil paper package handed to him, his mouth watering uncontrollably, but he held his hand firmly, preventing him from reaching for the oil paper package that was still slightly warm.

"Eat up." Xie Wanniang's voice was as calm and gentle as ever. "Only when you're full will you have the strength to protect yourself and your sister."

Atai glanced at Jiang Yuan, and seeing him nod at him, hesitantly accepted the two items Xie Wanniang handed him.

"I'll pay you back later," he said sullenly.

Xie Wanniang smiled and said, "Okay."

Her words actually made Atai feel a little better.

The fourteen-year-old, dark-skinned, thin boy carefully opened the oil paper package and ate a sugar cake inside.

The sugar cake was even bigger than his thin face. After he finished one, he couldn't bear to eat the last one.

He also had a sister who was even worse off than him, and he wanted to take the remaining sugar cakes back and secretly give them to his sister.

Thinking of his sister, Atai's anger surged again.

His sister was only twelve years old, and his aunt, that vicious woman who deserved to be killed a thousand times, actually planned to sell her to an old man in his late thirties or early thirties in the deep mountains for ten taels of silver.

He overheard the woman's private conversation with their uncle and became furious, causing a scene. However, the woman and their kind uncle vehemently denied it, insisting that he was just making up lies because he was dissatisfied with them, deliberately inciting resentment among the clansmen and relatives.

Atai tried to defend himself, but he couldn't produce any solid evidence. With both he and the couple having their own versions of the truth, the villagers could only offer a few words of advice at most.

But his extremely vicious aunt wouldn't just talk the talk without walking the walk like the rest of the clan. She not only cursed him with foul language, but also chased after him with a fire poker.

Atai couldn't fight back, because fighting back would only lead to greater losses and would also implicate his sister. He could only run, run far away, to give himself a quiet space to think about how to get rid of that heartless family with his sister.

"Thank you, I have to go now." After wrapping up the remaining sugar cake and putting it in his pocket, Atai returned the bamboo tube of water that he hadn't drunk a drop of to Xie Wanniang. "I'll give the cake back to you later."

"Wait a minute," Xie Wanniang called out to him, "Is there anything we can do to help?"

Atai was taken aback; he hadn't expected Xie Wanniang to offer to help him.

After all, even among his relatives, few of them genuinely wanted to help the siblings.

Last year, his parents passed away. He was originally unwilling to move to his uncle's house, but the clansmen were all swayed by his uncle's sweet words. Instead of helping them, they urged them to move to his uncle's house as soon as possible.

No matter how unwilling he and his sister were, with the support of their clan, his uncle's family eventually managed to take all the wealth that their parents had painstakingly accumulated over more than ten years and bring it into their own hands.

Having nothing and having to live at the mercy of their uncle's family, the siblings did try to find the elders in the clan after their uncle's family exposed their true colors. However, those people did nothing for them except to give them a few words of advice.

They were unwilling to offend Atai's uncle's family to the death for the sake of Atai and his sister, but they forgot that if they hadn't all sided with Atai's uncle, Atai and Xiaomei wouldn't be in this predicament today.

The two children were already thirteen and eleven last year. With the house, land, food, furs, and money left by their parents, even if their lives are more difficult than when their parents were alive, the hardship is at most a lack of food and clothing, not like now, where they not only have to endure hunger every day and do countless chores, but also suffer beatings and scoldings at every turn, and their bodies are always covered in injuries.

“I have some knowledge of pharmacology, and A-Yuan is quite skilled. We can definitely help you.” Xie Wanniang saw that A-Tai didn’t speak and thought he didn’t believe that she and Jiang Yuan could help him, so she added this sentence in a gentle voice.

Atai hesitated for a moment, "My aunt wanted to sell my sister to an old bachelor in the mountains. I heard her talking about it with my uncle, and I got angry and made a scene, but they insisted that nothing of the sort happened."