Chapter 159 The Obsessive Male Lead of the Era 21 (1/2)

"Bullshit! Li Youcai! On the sixteenth of last month, you sneaked into Widow Zhang's backyard carrying sacks of grain seeds. Did you think I was blind?"

"If it weren't for my wife saying we had to consider the team's reputation, I would have reported you long ago!"

Suddenly, a lean old man jumped out from the crowd and poked Li Youcai's nose with his index finger.

The entire room fell silent. There really was a witness!

"You're talking nonsense! Widow Zhang took her son back to her parents' home for a visit last month, and I..."

Li Youcai blurted out a shout in a moment of madness, but immediately stopped himself.

His face turned deathly pale, and even the militiamen holding him were so shocked that they let go of him.

The crowd erupted in a deafening roar, and several women in the village even slapped their thighs and shouted.

"Visiting relatives? Battalion Commander, you even know when their kang (heated brick bed) gets cold?"

"No wonder that widow's child eats only steamed buns every day!"

Widow Zhang exploded, her mind in turmoil: "Nonsense! Don't gossip like this without evidence!!"

Li's mother's pupils suddenly contracted.

She remembered her husband always saying he was going to meetings at the commune and wouldn't come home at night, and she remembered Zhang the widow suddenly wearing a new floral jacket. Her pent-up anger overwhelmed her reason!

"Li Youcai! You heartless bastard!"

"You even deliver grain to widows?! You beast!!"

Li's mother pounced on the stage like a wild beast, her withered fingers slapping her husband's face repeatedly. Her nails scratched Li Youcai's cheeks, instantly leaving three bloody furrows!

Li Youcai screamed and tried to back away, but was forced to the ground and unable to move.

"Four hundred catties of grain seeds! That's enough for Jianye to marry three wives!"

"See that?! Your dad's gotten really bold, he even dares to keep a widow on the side now!"

This made it even easier for Li's mother to grab his hair and slam his head against the ground. She suddenly turned around and roared at the two brothers, who, in a moment of rage, joined in the fray.

Tie him to a tree! Make him explain himself!

Director Wang was so angry that his lips turned purple. He was afraid they would beat Li Youcai to death if he didn't speak up soon.

"I admit it! I admit it! But Zhang Cuihua, what the hell are you pretending for? Weren't you also involved in reporting the Ji family back then?!"

"When the Ji family was raided, didn't you have any idea how much profit you skimmed off the top?!"

The moment the rope tightened around Li Youcai's neck, he suddenly burst into maniacal laughter, thinking that it would be good to drag his old lover down with him!

"Splash!"

A bucket of freshly thawed sewage was poured onto his wide-open mouth.

Widow Zhang clutched the empty bucket, trembling all over, but her eyes darted towards Director Wang and Crazy Ji in the audience.

Zi Xi clearly felt her husband's hand suddenly tighten; he was staring intently at Widow Zhang and Li Youcai.

"Drag Zhang Cuihua away too!! Take her away!"

Director Wang's roar startled everyone, and he waved his hand with a livid face.

Two militiamen dragged Li Youcai, whose face was covered in blood, toward the commune, their cloth shoes kicking up a cloud of dust as they scraped the ground.

Li's mother took two steps and suddenly collapsed to the ground, slapping her thigh and wailing, "My grain! Four hundred catties of flour!!"

Zi Xi clenched Ji Yanchen's icy fingers into her palm; their temperature was as cold as a stone at the bottom of a river.

Ji Yanchen's Adam's apple bobbed laboriously in the cold wind, his gaze fixed on Li Youcai's retreating figure.

That snowy night, his father, also wearing a tattered wooden sign that read "landlord's son," was dragged across the same icy dirt road.

"Li Youcai, you're really something! Giving wheat seeds to a widow is true love..."

The children's rhyme scraped across the threshing ground like a knife.

Zi Xi placed his hand on her warm neck: "Yan Chen, this is retribution..."

Before he could finish speaking, Ji Yanchen suddenly pulled his hand back and rushed into the snowstorm like a wounded wild beast.

On the path back to the village, rumors spread throughout the village.

"Li Xiaorou aborted all the male fetuses her sister-in-law was carrying!"

"Bullshit! It's clearly speculation and profiteering that got you shot!"

"So it turns out the Ji family was reported by Li Youcai back then! What a family of despicable bastards, destined to die without descendants!"