Quan Ruifeng's lips curled into a smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared, though he promptly composed himself with a serious expression.
"Now, let's take your statement."
Since they had entered the interrogation room, taking a statement was standard procedure.
At Quan Ruifeng's suggestion, the two of them had emerged somewhat slowly, and Liu Jun had already finished his interrogation. Seeing Quan Ruifeng come out, he immediately walked over and began to complain.
"That mother and son are as stubborn as old leather—completely impervious to reason."
"They refused to cooperate no matter what, and as soon as I asked too many questions, they started hurling insults. They made me so angry I locked the pair of them up right on the spot! Thank goodness I didn't let you handle the questioning, or you'd have died of frustration."
With that, he turned his attention to Xia Xian.
"Comrade Xia, your relationship with them is quite complicated, and without further evidence, even if they had ill intentions, there's nothing we can do to them right now. We can only take action after something actually happens."
"Your husband has already passed away, which means you are legally a free agent and have no ties to the Chu family. Why don't you use this time to pack up your things and head back to your parents' place first, instead of entangling yourself with them? If they come looking for you again, we'll have proper grounds to detain them."
"For now, we can only hold them for a night, and by tomorrow morning at the latest, we'll have to let them go."
He looked slightly apologetic; after all, they were Xia Xian's mother-in-law and brother-in-law, essentially family, and hooliganism committed by family members was much harder to legally define than that by strangers.
Xia Xian understood. She hadn't expected to keep the two of them locked up for long anyway—one night was already more than enough.
She nodded.
"Alright, thank you. I'll go back now and pack my things. Please keep them detained until tomorrow, otherwise I'm afraid that before I even reach home and figure out a plan with my family, that mother and son will come chasing after me."
"Don't you worry about that, I'll definitely give you plenty of time!"
Liu Jun patted his chest reassuringly.
"Right then, let's not drag this out. I'll walk you back right now."
Director Mei Yanxia was consumed with worry, fretting that if they waited too long, Xia Xian wouldn't dare walk back in the dark. She hastily grabbed Xia Xian by the arm to head back and pack up her belongings first.
Xia Xian glanced back at Quan Ruifeng, then quickly walked away.
Regardless of whether she chose to help Quan Ruifeng or whether she ultimately left this place, she was going to teach Chu Sheng and his mother a lesson. If she couldn't manage it herself, she would use this as leverage to make a deal with Quan Ruifeng. As for money, she could earn that on her own!
Those five catties of gold bars had given her immense confidence.
She and Director Mei returned to the Chu family home, picked up the torn bundle from the ground, and clutched it to her chest.
"Director Mei, thank you so much for today. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have known what to do."
"You should go take care of your work now; I've already taken up a lot of your time. When I have the chance in the future, I'll definitely come back to visit you!"
Xia Xian said sincerely, looking into Director Mei's eyes with deep gratitude.
In her past life, she had married Second Young Master Chu, and Director Mei had frequently stepped up to uphold justice for her. But once she got her marriage certificate and had a child, that mother and son felt they had her completely under their thumb and feared no one.
She deeply regretted not listening to Director Mei's advice to get a divorce sooner.
However, Mei must have handled too many cases like this, constantly letting anger get the better of her, which eventually led to breast cancer. This time, she was determined to persuade her to go for a check-up early!
"Nonsense, what important business could I possibly have? You are the business I need to take care of right now. Let me walk you home—where was your house again..."
Director Mei was enthusiastic and deeply responsible, insisting on walking Xia Xian home personally. But Xia Xian still needed to secretly stay behind to dig up the gold bars.
Fortunately, the neighborhood committee always had plenty of matters to attend to. Before Director Mei could finish speaking, another committee member, Auntie Liu, hurried over, completely out of breath.
"Director Mei, I finally found you! Wu Jianshe and his wife are at each other's throats again, and they've even thrown their child out. We couldn't hold them back, you need to get over there right now!"
"What! Those wretches! How could they abandon their own child!"
"I'm going right now. You take Xia..."
Director Mei was instantly furious, gritting her teeth as she prepared to rush over. In her haste, she told Auntie Liu to walk Xia Xian home, but Xia Xian quickly refused.
"No, no, I'll be fine! Director Mei, you guys hurry over there. That situation is much more serious—they might even pull out knives, so you all need to be careful!"
"Alright then."
Thinking it over, Director Mei realized Xia Xian had a point. She stopped fussing over Xia Xian, turned, and hurried away, followed closely by all the other neighborhood committee members rushing toward Wu Jianshe's place.
Seeing the two of them leave, Xia Xian breathed a sigh of relief. She picked up her bundle, walked out, and looked around—there was no one in sight. The timing was perfect!
She immediately retreated back into the Chu family house and shut the door behind her!
Without even taking off her bundle, she rushed to the kitchen to grab a wooden stick and a kitchen knife. Lacking a shovel, these two tools would have to do.
"Where was it that they dug it up..."
Xia Xian remembered it was in the courtyard, but the courtyard was not small, and she didn't have enough time to dig up the whole thing.
She closed her eyes and tried to recall. Two minutes later, as if something had clicked in her mind, she snapped her eyes open, her expression bright with excitement.
She first walked over to the doorway, then began measuring the distance with her own steps.
"One step, two steps, three steps..."
She paced out six steps, then forcefully drove the wooden stick into the ground to mark the spot. Next, she walked over to the kitchen entrance, used the same pacing method to walk six steps, and drew an imaginary circle using those two points as references, roughly defining the area.
"This has to be it."
Xia Xian muttered to herself, rubbing her chin. In her previous life, she had visually estimated the approximate location of the gold bars; doing it this way now would be much more precise.
Having determined the area, Xia Xian went to fetch a bucket of water. She poured some of it onto the ground to dampen the soil and soften it up, then picked up the stick and the knife and began digging away with great determination.
Gold, gold, it was all going to be hers!
Let Chu Sheng and his mother go eat dirt!
The more Xia Xian thought about it, the more elated she felt, and the harder she dug, feeling no fatigue whatsoever.
After digging for I don't know how long, her stick struck something hard. Her heart leaped with joy—this time it surely wasn't a stone! She had dug down quite deep!
Without hesitation, she threw the stick aside and started digging with her bare hands, scraping away the topsoil. Sure enough, a dark purple wooden box was exposed!
This was the box! The one filled with gold bars!
A brilliant light flashed in Xia Xian's eyes. Unable to keep the corners of her mouth from turning up, she sped up her movements and forcefully hoisted the wooden box out of the ground.
The wooden box was still intact, though the lock had already corroded.
Looking at it now, wasn't this wooden box itself a valuable antique?
Only, in her past life, Chu Sheng hadn't known any better and had simply smashed the wooden box to use as firewood.
Well, she could verify that later.
Xia Xian immediately shoved the heavy wooden box into her bundle, hastily shoveled the dirt back into the hole, and knocked over the bucket to make it look like she had made a mess purely out of frustration rather than having dug something up from the courtyard.
After finishing all this, she picked up her bundle and prepared to leave, but suddenly a thought struck her. She immediately ran back to Old Woman Chu's bedroom and precisely located their family's meager savings inside her wardrobe.
"This is mine too!"
The corners of Xia Xian's mouth curved upward into a radiant smile.
Money was the lifeblood of that mother and son. In her past life, she had suffered immensely trying to earn money to support the whole family, while that mother and son had stood by coldly, caring only for their own comfort. A few things like this weren't even enough to compensate her for what she had been through.
And this was only the first step of her revenge!