PFC Chapter 056 The Shopkeeper Gets a Haircut
Chapter 056 The Shopkeeper Gets a Haircut
In the dead of night, Lu Zhiyuan led Lu Yun to Liu's shop.
Manager Liu, over fifty years old, had recently taken a concubine and was vigorously shaking the bed to prove his strength. Hearing the concubine's cries, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, Lu Zhiyuan couldn't resist poking a hole in the window. Just as she was about to peek, everything went black as someone covered her eyes.
"what?"
"It's dirty, Miss, don't look." Lu Yun's cheeks flushed slightly as he covered her ears with his other hand. "And don't listen either."
"Do you know what they're doing?" She stood on tiptoe and pinched Lu Yun's ear. "Look at you, so pathetic. You're embarrassed just because others are doing things."
Lu Yun's ears turned even redder, and she turned her face away.
Lu Zhiyuan, in a playful mood, teased, "You're seventeen now, it's time to get married. When Mother comes back, I'll have her find you a good one. What kind do you like?"
Lu Yun almost coughed, and said in a low voice, "Miss, please don't joke with me. Lu Yun doesn't want to get married. Lu Yun only wants to follow Miss."
"It's pointless. What man doesn't want to get married?" Lu Zhiyuan muttered, looking into the room.
The war had ended, and the sound of Manager Liu's deep snores drifted from inside. In the dim light, one could see the concubine squatting in the corner, washing herself. About fifteen minutes later, the concubine blew out the lamp and went to bed. Lu Zhiyuan furtively took out a newly made bamboo tube. Another fifteen minutes passed, and once everyone inside was sound asleep, she used a dagger to pry open the door latch and walked in openly.
Lu Yun was dumbfounded. He had thought that the young lady had brought him along to do chores, but it turned out that the young lady had done all the work of sneaking in and picking locks. This was a proper young lady from a marquis's mansion. What kind of young lady would climb over walls in the middle of the night, pick locks by blowing smoke, and give her master a haircut?
With just one glance, he could tell what Lu Yun was thinking.
“I’m a petty person and I hold grudges. He had someone bury a cat’s body in my shop, so I buried the cat’s body back in its original place. But you can’t rely on God for retribution, much less on a cat that was tortured to death, or a painting on a beam. As the saying goes, every cause has its effect, and my retribution is his.”
The feud between the Liu and Lu families dates back ten years.
Ten years ago, Manager Liu and his eldest daughter-in-law were caught in their shop. Faced with public condemnation, Manager Liu insisted that his eldest daughter-in-law had behaved improperly and attempted to seduce him. Despite her rebuttal, the Liu family patriarch only listened to Manager Liu's version of events and, under the pretext of enforcing family rules, had his eldest daughter-in-law drowned in the river.
Fortunately, this eldest daughter-in-law was not destined to die. As she was swept downstream by the river, she happened to meet Xie Chaoyun, who was returning to the capital to report on his duties and was watering his horse on the riverbank. In his youth, Xie Chaoyun was a man of strong sense of justice and immediately took his eldest daughter-in-law to the Commandant's residence.
In the courtroom of the Commandant's mansion, Liu's eldest daughter-in-law revealed a secret of the Liu family. Liu's eldest son was impotent, and as the eldest daughter-in-law, she remained a virgin despite being married to her husband for many years.
Shopkeeper Liu and his wife knew their son was infertile, yet they blamed their daughter-in-law for not being able to continue the Liu family line, frequently beating and scolding her. Ashamed to discuss matters of the bedroom, Shopkeeper Liu's eldest daughter-in-law silently endured this for many years, until her husband suggested she have a child with another man.
The eldest daughter-in-law felt as if she had been struck by lightning, and looked at her husband with disbelief.
They met when they were young and fell in love at first sight. Apart from their physical intimacy, they were a loving couple. In her opinion, whether or not they could have sex or have children was unimportant. However, her husband knelt on the ground and begged her, saying that as long as they had one child, regardless of gender, their parents would no longer make things difficult for them, and others would no longer gossip behind their backs, making him ashamed to go out.
Unable to accept such an absurd situation, she endured her grief and proposed a divorce to her husband.
On the day of the incident, her husband wrote her a letter inviting her to his shop to discuss divorce. Caught off guard, she went alone, only to find her father-in-law instead of the person who was supposed to be there. He then proceeded to bully and humiliate her, disregarding her wishes.
Faced with his eldest daughter-in-law's accusations, Manager Liu tried to deny them with vehement words. However, after an on-the-spot diagnosis by Imperial Physician Jiang, it was confirmed that Manager Liu's eldest son was indeed impotent. Furthermore, the Commandant's residence also invited an experienced nanny to examine the eldest daughter-in-law, and the facts were as she had described.
Faced with the evidence, Manager Liu realized he couldn't deny it, so he claimed that he had drunk too much that day and when his daughter-in-law came to greet him, he thought she was deliberately trying to seduce him. Thinking that he shouldn't let the good stuff go to outsiders, he made a mistake in a daze.
The Commandant's Office pronounced its verdict in court, ordering Liu's eldest son to divorce his eldest daughter-in-law and return all the dowry. Liu was imprisoned for six months and fined three thousand taels of silver.
The eldest son of the Liu family was too ashamed to face anyone and became a monk. After Manager Liu was imprisoned, Madam Liu sold off all of his concubines. When he returned from prison, he found that the Liu family had changed drastically. Only after his wife passed away did he stand tall and become the head of the Liu family again.
Manager Liu blamed everything on Xie Chaoyun, who was meddling in other people's business. Because Xie Chaoyun married Lu Huai, the blame was shifted to the Lu family, and he suppressed the Lu family's shops in various ways. However, the Lu family had the Xie family's backing, and after several business battles, the Lu family was unscathed, while Manager Liu was seriously injured and barely surviving.
When Lu Jingyuan was born, Lu Huai gave the shop to Ji Wanwan, who then entrusted it to her younger brother, Ji Yaozu. It was from that moment that Manager Liu saw hope for revenge.
The reason these four shops went bankrupt was partly due to the foolishness of Ji Yaozu, who lined his own pockets and mismanaged the business, and partly due to the cunning of Manager Liu, who took advantage of their misfortune.
To help Ji Yaozu pay off his gambling debts, Ji Wanwan stole the property deeds from Lu Huai and sold the shops. Upon hearing the news, Manager Liu was eager to make his move. In his view, if he were to buy these shops, it would not only be a blatant slap in the face to the Lu family and Xie Chaoyun, but also a bargain purchase of prime locations in the capital.
Before Manager Liu could even make a move, the four shops belonging to the Lu family changed hands. Manager Liu, unaware that Lu Zhiyuan was behind it all, saw that the manager was still the same old manager and assumed he had been fooled by the Lu family. Fueled by both old and new grudges, he devised a vicious scheme to harm people using Lu Ban's skills while the shops were being renovated.
Lu Yun reached out and caught Lu Zhiyuan as she jumped down from the wall. "Didn't Miss not believe that these spells could harm people?"
Lu Zhiyuan hooked her arm around his neck and said, "Whether I believe it or not is not important; what matters is that he believes it. I need to make him understand a principle: those who harm others will ultimately be harmed themselves."
Lu Yun looked at the wall thoughtfully. "Wouldn't it be a bit too gentle to just shave someone's head?"
Lu Zhiyuan yawned: "Shaving his head is just the first step. Making him believe he's been attacked is the second. By the third step, he should be begging us for help."
After saying that, he leaned close to Lu Yun's ear and whispered, "See the dregs under that tree? They're all from that kind of medicine. Manager Liu's eldest son's impotence is probably hereditary, but he's even worse than his father. He's blaming others for his own mess, what a rotten person."
The hot breath tickled her ears, and the somewhat ambiguous words, which were inappropriate for children, caused a strange chain reaction in Lu Yun's mind. He quickly covered Lu Zhiyuan's mouth: "Don't say or hear anything improper, Miss. Why don't you pay more attention to other things?"
Lu Zhiyuan nodded for a while, then pried Lu Yun's hand away and looked into his eyes seriously, saying, "You're quite healthy, so don't worry about having any unspeakable problems like Manager Liu."
Lu Yun's face turned bright red, and he covered her mouth even tighter.
Good heavens! What kind of young master would be so careless as to say such things to a male servant...?