“Then taste a bit of everything. No one’s saying you can only pick one. Don’t constrain yourself inside your own house.” Ye Mo picked a random dish and dropped it into her bowl. The way he said that to her, people would think she was dumb.
She twitched her mouth and rolled her eyes at him. He was the idiot here!
After listening to their interaction, the other three brothers followed suit and each gave her a bit of the other side dishes.
Dongfang Ming sat there like an outsider. Did they have to express their love like this?
After lunch, Liu Duo and Dongfang Ming engaged in a short conversation, under Ye Mo’s close inspection and prompting, before she went upstairs for a nap.
“Mo, why are you following me?” Liu Duo looked back at her pesky follower.
Ye Mo glanced at her too but said nothing. Instead, he sped up and beat her to her room. He sat on her bed as though he owned the place, and waited for her to come in.
Liu Duo merely rolled her eyes at him. “Mo, if you have something to say, just say it. What’s with the pose?”
She sat on a nearby stool.
“Wife, you should restrict your actions, you hear me? Other than your husbands, you are not permitted to communicate excessively with other men!”
Pffft. Liu Duo let out a laugh.
Commandments for me?
She was not even a woman from this era. She had no care for restrictions that husbands would place on their wives. She was satisfied as long as there was loyalty to their marriage!
She would not be confined by these old-fashioned quibbles.
She came to stand in front of him and spoke to his face. “And if I don’t obey that, if I really want to talk to other men, what are you going to do about it? Repudiate me?”
She would really like to know what he planned to do. She engaged with so many villagers on a daily basis, how could she refrain from talking to them?
Ye Mo’s uncontrollable temper rose instantly!
He knew she would talk back, but he did not expect her to mention repudiation! He would not do that, and would never dream of it.
He cleared his throat, restrained his anger and said, “H-How dare you disobey your husband! Even if I want you gone, I don’t have the final say. My brothers would need to agree unanimously. So I advise you to be obedient. I don’t expect you to listen to everything we say, but you have to change your habit of conversing with other men, or else I’ll convince my brothers to repudiate you!”
Obviously he was stretching the truth. He was mad, but he would not unload his anger on her. He’d gotten himself into a ridiculous situation.
“No, I’m not going to! How’s that?” Liu Duo grinned broadly, completely ignoring his words. She bet he would not dare to repudiate her.
For a shared wife to be repudiated, all her husbands would have to agree to it. One alone simply would not work.
Unable to contain his fury, Ye Mo’s mouth twitched. With his strong arms he pulled her close such that she landed on his lap with her back facing him. He then proceeded to spank her three times on the buttocks, albeit quite lightly.
“Wife, this is what you get for not listening to me. If you keep resisting me, I’ll hit you even more.”
He spanked her another two times.
She struggled as she lay pressed on his lap. She was so mad and so humiliated!
How dare he treat her like a child?
“Let me go, Mo, I…”
“What? Don’t think about reporting this to Ye Yang. All my brothers definitely agree with me on this!”
He interrupted her. His nagging could only be described as ‘fierce.’
She talked back anyways. “Y-You’re the childish one! You’re the most childish one in the family! And overbearing too! And you have the gall to lecture me? Let me go now!”
She was not very strong, so she could not free herself, but her current situation was just so shameful. It looked like an adult teaching a naughty child a lesson!