Evening had just lit a few faint stars over Nanluoguxiang, and the quitting bell from the Rolling Mill seemed to still linger in the air.
Humming the upbeat tune of "Socialism is Good," Su Changshun swaggered across the threshold into the Front Courtyard. There he spotted Mrs. Jia standing by the courtyard's water basin like a temple guardian, her hands on her hips, with a meek-looking Qin Huairu standing right beside her.
"Oh, my goodness! Changshun, back from work? We've been waiting forever for you!" Mrs. Jia deliberately pitched her voice loud, terrified that anyone in the courtyard might miss it. "Our pot's dry at home! We're running out of grain! You've got a city household registration and food rations—why don't you spare us some cornmeal?"
At just the right moment, Qin Huairu took a small step forward, keeping her head slightly bowed as she spoke in a timid voice: "Brother Changshun... Look, Banggeng is still young and growing, and our family's grain supply is running really low. Could you... could you lend us some? I promise to pay you back as soon as payday comes."
That pitiful act of hers would have long since melted Shazhu's heart. Unfortunately for her, the one she was dealing with today was Su Changshun.
Su Changshun saw right through it. The morning drama at the factory had barely ended when the main course of "borrowing grain" was served up this evening.
Yi Zhonghai must have been displeased that he didn't get the upper hand at yesterday's meeting, so he changed tactics. He wanted to use public pressure, the label of "financial hardship," and a dash of Qin Huairu's feminine charm to corner him.
He sneered inwardly. *Yi Zhonghai, oh Yi Zhonghai, you certainly know how to crunch the numbers, but your boy here is no Shazhu!*
"Tch!" Su Changshun slapped his thigh, a completely fake, overly enthusiastic expression instantly plastered across his face—three parts sympathy and seven parts surprise. He raised his voice a few notches, instantly catching the attention of several neighbors in both the front and back courtyards who hadn't gone inside yet.
"Oh, my goodness! Borrowing grain? We old Beijingers are all about pride and neighborliness! Say no more, say no more!"
His cheerful readiness took Mrs. Jia by surprise, choking the wailing lines she had prepared right back down her throat.
Qin Huairu also lifted her eyes, casting a quick, darting glance at him, wondering why this guy wasn't playing by the rules.
Su Changshun's mind raced: Yi Zhonghai went to all the trouble of making the Jia Family put on this poor-act to borrow grain from him with absolute malicious intent—either to ruin his reputation or drag him into a trap.
Knowing Yi Zhonghai and Mrs. Jia's dynamic-duo partnership as well as he did, would Mrs. Jia's sharp, tricky mouth ever cooperate without some sweetener? Would Qin Huairu ever swallow her pride like this? Nine times out of ten, Yi Zhonghai had promised them something! But what on earth was it? Material goods? Or some empty promises?
Blind guessing wouldn't cut it—he had to flush it out!
A mischievous, wicked smile touched the corner of Su Changshun's mouth. He abruptly shifted the tone of his voice, laden with thick suspicion, and addressed Mrs. Jia directly: "Wait a minute, Aunt Zhang, the other night I opened my window to get some fresh air around midnight, and how come I vaguely saw Master Yi—our First Uncle in the courtyard—carrying something in his hands, sneaking stealthily straight to your place? Tsk tsk, by the shape and the posture, it looked like he was clutching a nugget of gold! Was that grain... or what?"
He said this with the air of a curious onlooker, but his eyes swept across Mrs. Jia's old face like a pair of searchlights.
Well! Would you look at that?
Mrs. Jia's face instantly looked like someone had pressed a hot iron to her backside, her expression instantly tightening with tension.
*Gotcha!* Su Changshun felt wonderfully enlightened, a pair of little drums going *ding-ding-dong-dong* in his head—*There's no doubt about it! Yi Zhonghai definitely slipped them grain!*
Whether it was cornmeal or white flour, seeing the old hag panic like she'd been hit in her fatal weak spot proved it was one hundred percent real!
He immediately dropped his face, arching his eyebrows high, and raised his voice so high he could practically sing an opera: "Oh—my—lord! Now isn't that a revelation! You just received the great and generous kindness of Master Yi, and the warmth hasn't even faded yet, but your proletarian bellies are already rumbling with hunger again?"
Shazhu had just stepped into the Front Courtyard when he stopped dead in his tracks at these words. He looked suspiciously at Mrs. Jia, then in the direction of the Yi Family, a huge question mark flashing in his mind: *The First Uncle delivered grain to the Jia Family in the middle of the night? How come he knew nothing about it?*
Yan Bugui's hand, which had been pushing up his glasses, stopped mid-air. His eyeballs darted rapidly as he calculated the value of this piece of news.
Li Qingxiang, the veteran from the Back Courtyard, had wandered over to the Front Courtyard holding his rice bowl to watch the commotion. Hearing this, his thick eyebrows instantly furrowed.
Su Changshun swept his gaze around at the neighbors whose attention he had successfully captured, especially after catching sight of Li Qingxiang's stern expression, which only added to the amusement blooming in his chest.
His voice rang out loud and clear, carrying thinly veiled mockery.
"Well, well! Every neighbor here, just look at this! My slow brain is finally catching up! Master Yi's heart is truly beyond reproach! Stepping through the dark night to deliver grain and solve the Jia Family's urgent crisis! And yet, not even a single day has passed... and Comrade Qin is standing right here looking all miserable, asking to borrow coarse grain from me? What... what kind of hollow play is this? Or could it be..."
He intentionally dragged out the end of his sentence, his eyes drifting toward the closed door of the Yi Family's room, his voice soft yet piercingly clear.
"Master Yi's grain... sure, he delivered it, but how come... was it counted out grain by grain? How is it that when the master craftsman doles out some relief grain, he's so stingy about it?" He made an extremely comical hand gesture of counting tiny rice grains.
"The grain he just crammed down his throat hasn't even been swallowed yet, and already he's starving with his back sticking to his chest and coming out to borrow more? Aunt Zhang, Comrade Qin, the show your family's putting on... is a bit too rushed, isn't it? The drumbeats are way too frantic! I, Su Changshun, am thoroughly entertained!"
These words were like a ladle of boiling oil poured into a pot of cold water! Total explosion!
Mrs. Jia's old face burned crimson from the mockery of counting rice grains, her blood pressure skyrocketing. Trembling, she pointed at Su Changshun and spat, "You! You little bastard! You're talking nonsense! Slandering people!"
She was frantic, yet completely unable to refute the fact of that midnight grain delivery, because it was absolute truth—Yi Zhonghai had indeed done it!
Qin Huairu's face also flushed as if it might drip blood, her teeth tightly biting her lower lip as she wished she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
The "melodrama plus grain-borrowing" routine meticulously planned by her mother-in-law and her master had been stripped down to nothing before it even began, slapped with the labels of "acting" and "paltry amounts of grain"!
Shazhu's face darkened completely. His expression flickered with uncertainty as he recalled how Qin Huairu had also used that exact same pitiful look to beg him for grain and money. Those memories pierced his heart like thorns—just how much of that routine had been real? And how much fake?
The neighbors in the front and back courtyards began murmuring in low voices: "No wonder. Old Yi usually seems fair, but he's truly biased toward the Jia Family..."
"To go around crying poverty right after getting favors—isn't this eating out of the bowl while staring at the pot? Their table manners are just too ugly!"
"Oh my, so it turns out they wanted to eat from both sides all along! Were they trying to fleece Changshun for another share?"
"Changshun's tongue is poisonous! But it's so satisfying! He sees right through them!"
Li Qingxiang put down his bowl, gave a heavy cough, and looked at Mrs. Jia and Qin Huairu with undisguised disapproval. "Sister Zhang, little Qin, this is where you've gone wrong. Since the First Uncle has already helped out, you should make do and plan accordingly. Not even a full day has passed, and you're already hitting up other neighbors—that's not right. What you're doing here isn't borrowing; it's scamming!" Having served in the army, he loathed all forms of deception.
No matter how shrewish Mrs. Jia was, she couldn't withstand this overwhelming tide of criticism and discussion, especially under the intimidating weight of Li Qingxiang's glare.
She shot Su Changshun a vicious glare and spat out, "You little brat! You haven't heard the last of this!"
With a sharp yank, she grabbed the still-dazed Qin Huairu, practically dragging her as she scurried back toward the Middle Courtyard like a beaten dog, slamming the door shut behind them with a resounding *bang*.
Watching Mrs. Jia's panicked retreat, Su Changshun's mouth curled into an intensely pleased arc.
He brushed off some non-existent dust, raised his voice toward the still-dazed Shazhu and Yan Bugui, who was watching the show, and called out, "Nothing more to see here! It's getting late, everyone back inside to rest! That grand show was brilliant, but intermission's over!" With that, he whistled a cheerful tune and strolled leisurely toward his east-wing room, leaving behind an atmosphere thick with knowing glances and buzzing commentary.
In the Middle Courtyard, inside Yi Zhonghai's house, Chen Guihua rushed in with a pale face, reporting the farce that had just unfolded in the Front Courtyard down to the smallest detail.
Yi Zhonghai was holding his enamel mug, his hand frozen mid-air, the surface of the tea long since cooled of any steam.
He listened as those harsh phrases—"counting rice grains," "borrowing grain right after being given it," "a master craftsman being so stingy"—drilled one by one into his ears.
In Yi Zhonghai's calculating eyes, shock, shame, and an unprecedented wave of wariness and murderous intent now churned.
He gripped the enamel mug so hard it made a cracking sound, tea seeping out between his knuckles to drip onto the table.
"Good... A fine Su Changshun!" Yi Zhonghai's voice sounded as though it had been squeezed up from the cracks of the earth, every single word laced with venom. "Sharp-tongued and malicious! He's trying to roast me over an open fire! He's trying to skin me alive right here in this courtyard!"
Chen Guihua was too scared to breathe a loud breath, carefully wringing out a dishcloth to wipe the water stains off the table. "Old Yi... calm down, it's not worth getting worked up over some punk kid... The neighbors will talk for a few days, and soon they'll forget..."
"Forget?" Yi Zhonghai snapped his head up, his eyes—usually brimming with fairness and majesty—now cold and harsh. "Didn't you hear what Li Qingxiang said? Scamming! He accused the Jia Family of scamming! And the rest of these onlookers in our courtyard—even Deaf Old Lady didn't speak up today, they're all watching me make a fool of myself! This matter... is not going to blow over!"
He clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles popping. "If my authority is genuinely knocked down by this little bastard, managing this large courtyard in the future will be harder than climbing to heaven! Even that blockhead Shazhu is looking at me differently now!"
The authority and moral high ground he had painstakingly cultivated and maintained for years were being torn to shreds by Su Changshun's casual metaphors of counting rice grains and putting on a play.
He could practically see his carefully constructed structure of power collapsing, a fate far more agonizing to him than physical blows or curses.
"Playing hardball won't work... and he's too slippery for dirty tricks... I can't beat him at a courtyard meeting, and out on the street, that mouth of his can talk the dead back to life..." Yi Zhonghai muttered with a dark face, his finger unconsciously tracing circles on the cold tabletop.
"I have to pin him down somewhere else! What is Su Changshun's only backing right now? Isn't it just that he just entered the factory to do propaganda, drew a couple of pictures, made a tiny splash, and caught the eyes of Zhao Shiwu and Director Yang?"
At this thought, a sharp glint flashed across the murky depths of Yi Zhonghai's eyes, like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows locking onto its prey. *Propaganda! His bulletin board!*
Watching the fierce look on his face, Chen Guihua felt her heart flutter with panic. "Old Yi, what are you planning? You can't go doing anything reckless..."
"What am I planning?" Yi Zhonghai sneered, the toxic resentment in his chest finally finding an outlet. "Propaganda is the mouthpiece of the Party! It demands absolute clarity in stance and tolerates not a single grain of sand! Su Changshun is just a temporary worker who just entered the factory—how much policy does he even understand? Zhao Shiwu can't watch over him every single second! Doing propaganda? Sure, it's easy to stand out, but it's even easier to step on a landmine! Especially... if that landmine happens to be right on the bulletin board he drew with his own hands!" He deliberately emphasized the words *own hands*.
A malicious plan quickly took shape in his mind.