Ye Yang merely gave him a side-glance, as though he were a nobody.
Outside, Grandmother Liu used all her might and fervently tapped on the closed door, shouting loudly, “What a rude bunch! How dare you treat me like this? I am your wife’s grandmother…”
And yet she chose to forget what Liu Duo had just said. Never once did Liu Duo admit that she was her grandmother!
Liu Quanfu furrowed his brow at Grandmother Liu’s endless chiding. He held her by the arm, “Mother, we should go! It’s futile. They’ve already cut ties with us. Let’s leave.”
Relentless, Grandmother accused her youngest son, “You useless thing! Why didn’t you stand up for me when your sons-in-law treated me so awfully? You just want me to leave! How did I give birth to such an inconsiderate child…”
Amidst all the scolding, she eventually held up her hands and started beating him all over. Liu Quanfu didn’t dare to fight back while he tried to drag her away! The more ruckus she created, the more she would make herself a laughing stock for the whole neighborhood to see. Liu Duo and her husbands would just become the centre of gossip.
“Stop dragging me! How dare you do this to me? I’ll teach you a lesson, you ungrateful…”
Inside the house, Liu Duo and the gang pretended they didn’t hear a thing. Ye Ling finished making breakfast, and they gathered around the table to eat.
Ye Mo, however, felt the urge time and time again to go out there and give her a piece of his mind, but Ye Liu managed to stop him. “Little Mo, that old lady is a crazy bitch. Are you one too?”
Liu Duo was entirely unaffected by the ruckus Grandmother Liu had stirred up. Her emotions remained intact. “In the future, if they come again, ignore them, and don’t open the door for them. We are no longer related! Think of them as strangers and nobodies.”
“You heard that, Hei Xiaomeng? Next time, when you guard the door, don’t let any strangers in, got it? Remember what Little Duo says, or you won’t get any food!” Ye Liu tossed a steamed bun to the puppy.
After breakfast, Ye Liu went to town to exchange money. They needed to exchange some silver for copper for convenient use. When they were building the house, Ye Liu told the casual workers to spread the word that they were buying bamboo shoots, four wen per jin. He hadn’t forgotten this money-making scheme!
Liu Duo also requested that he buy a few large wooden barrels to be used as containers later.
Ye Yang and Ye Mo took their farming tools and went to work on their farm and paddy field. Liu Duo and Ye Ling had their hands full too. They went to gather bamboo shoots in the bamboo forest behind their house.
When Liu Duo learnt that Ye Liu wanted to buy bamboo shoots in large amounts, she was very supportive. Other villages, besides theirs, had bamboo forests too. This business could help them earn money as well as provide additional income to the villages. It was two birds in one fell swoop!
“Ye Ling, are you guys really collecting bamboo shoots?” One villager who was chopping bamboo walked over to Liu Duo and Ye Ling.
When they had been building their house, the villagers overheard such a thing, but they never saw them taking any practical action, so they thought it was a fraud!
Ye Ling nodded in all seriousness, “It’s true, you can collect them and sell them to us. We’ll buy for four wen per jin.”
“If you scrape away the old skin and keep only the core, it’s six wen per jin. But it has to be freshly chopped on the same day!” Liu Duo added.
It would be a waste of time if they have to scrape the bamboo shoots all on their own. If they could make do with one less procedure, they would have less work to do. They didn’t mind giving up a little profit.
Once he heard it was real, the villager nodded and rushed home to tell his family. They had some bamboo shoots to collect!