I used rebirth to bury his captivating gaze.

Chapter 79 The Truth About Yu Mei's Marriage 3 (The Mother-in-Law Takes Advantage and Acts Inno

Yu Mei got pregnant with the Chen family's child, and I was placed under house arrest by the Chen family. It was supposedly for the good of a pregnant woman, so they said they wouldn't let her walk around freely. They would only put her shoes on when she went to the toilet, and Chen Lixin even washed her feet.

He was quite pleased that he had managed to win over such a beautiful wife with a little trick without spending a penny.

He doesn't go out to work; all he does all day is take care of his pregnant wife, or spend his free time watching his mother play mahjong.

After the mahjong game ended, the old lady reluctantly prepared rice for every meal. She cut a large piece of tofu from Northeast China into several small pieces, added some salty soybean paste from Northeast China, and made two dishes of tofu and pickled vegetables, the main dishes for her three meals a day. She placed them on a dilapidated dining table on the side. The old lady, her son and daughter, and her daughter-in-law whom she had obtained through trickery, were the four of them eating.

Sometimes, the old lady would feel jealous when she saw how beautiful her daughter-in-law was, thinking that her own appearance was worlds apart from her daughter-in-law's.

The old lady had another habit: despite her age, she loved to dress up. If she had a dollar in her pocket enough to buy clothes, she would never save it. She believed in living for the moment and not caring about tomorrow. She would buy clothes to wear first, regardless of whether she would have food to eat tomorrow.

The old lady looked at Yu Mei and thought that even if she was wearing a tattered burlap sack, her face was more beautiful than when she was dressed in gold and silver. The more she looked at Yu Mei, the angrier and more jealous she became. Then, suddenly, she picked up the glass of the old baijiu she was drinking every day and downed it in one gulp.

Chen Lixin noticed that her expression and behavior were a bit off. The old lady usually drank the liquor slowly, but these past few days she had been drinking it faster. So he advised her, "Mom, drink slowly. Drinking too fast is bad for your health. Drink slowly. When you finish, have Xiaoxia take the empty glass bottle and get you some more liquor."

“Brother, why don’t you go and get some wine for Mom? You’ve only opened a bottle for Mom once since your wife came.”

"Don't I still have to take care of your pregnant sister-in-law?"

"Alright, you two shut up. Lixin, hurry up and eat. After you finish, go help your Uncle Liu unload the cart in the yard. He's helping his daughter's family move into this yard. It seems his daughter is pregnant too. Uncle Liu has always taken good care of our family. When we use his cart to haul firewood for firewood, he doesn't ask for a single penny. I'll help Uncle Liu take care of his youngest daughter. You go help them unload the cart and move things into the house."

As they were talking, they heard Old Liu's carriage enter the courtyard from outside the gate, followed by the sound of it stopping...

"Okay." After saying that, Chen Lixin quickly shoveled the two mouthfuls of rice in the bowl into his mouth, and before he could even spit them out, he put down his chopsticks and walked out.

Yu Mei didn't say anything. Looking at her mother-in-law and sister-in-law in the new house, she felt a little frustrated and uncomfortable.

As the saying goes, "A wife in heaven is not as good as a girl who suffers mistreatment. Besides, she's not even in heaven without a wife."

Moreover, Yu Mei noticed that this old Mrs. Liu had some bad habits. She would buy ready-made cigarettes to smoke, drink bulk liquor with every meal, gamble for a few cents at a time, and replace her old shirts with any money she had, giving the old ones to her son.

Thinking back to my mother, Diao Yan, even if she wasn't perfect, she didn't have any of Diao Yan's bad habits: smoking, drinking, playing mahjong, and wearing new clothes.

These four symptoms resembled the four major infectious diseases of earlier years, all afflicting a woman in her fifties. It's said she used to be a bus conductor for a bus company in this small coal-mining town. After a few years, she developed a bad temper and frequently fought with passengers, eventually being fired by the company's management.

Old Liu's daughter moved into the compound that day, into a three-room vacant house next to Old Liu's house.

Liu Laoya then lived with her husband. Liu Laotai was Chen Lixin's widowed mother. She and Lao Liutou had lived together for several years before they got into a fight and separated.

With Yu Mei's arrival, the two got back together. Then, Chen Ma Liu Xiulan began to take care of the pregnant Liu Laoya every day. Liu Laoya had been divorced before and married her current husband, a miner who worked two shifts and had no time to take care of her.

I heard before that after Liu Laoya got divorced, she still wanted to marry Chen Lixin, but Chen Lixin disagreed. This was said by Liu Xiulan at a dinner table. I don't know if she was showing off her son Chen Lixin's abilities or implying that he was not single and couldn't find a wife.

Later, Liu Laoya would pick fights with Yu Mei, saying that Yu Mei was too lazy and didn't help her mother-in-law with housework. Yu Mei wouldn't listen to that. She had a bad temper by nature, and she had suffered a series of grievances since she came here. She was worried about not being able to find an outlet for her anger, so she found a scapegoat. The two started arguing, and Yu Mei went to hit her, but Chen Lixin stopped her.

Yu Mei also betrayed Liu Xiulan's mother-in-law's earlier statement that she wanted to marry Chen Lixin and not her.

When Liu Xiulan heard Liu Laoya return to her room to complain, she realized that she hadn't been in the courtyard when the two of them had argued; she had gone to her parents' house in Da Huo.

Liu Xiulan went to Yu Mei's room and argued with her, saying, "Why are you so greedy, always eating this and that, and so lazy? You deserve to end up like this. And you even betrayed me."

Afterwards, Liu Xiulan's mother-in-law and Liu Laoya grew closer. Later, it was revealed that Liu Laoya's pregnancy was a hoax, intended to deceive the man who had gone down the mine. When the man found out, he abandoned her.

Liu Xiulan loved her even more after that. The old lady used her own money, which was the daily income of thirty or fifty yuan that Liu Laotou gave her for delivering furniture to customers at the furniture stores on both sides of the street. She bought a new pair of pants for each of Liu Laoya, Chen Lixin's eldest sister's family of four, and her own daughter Lixia.

I told Yu Mei to watch over it. I had said I would buy it for Yu Mei before, but then the two of us had a fight, and Yu Mei betrayed me to Liu Laoya, so I gave up on buying Yu Mei new pants and gave her a pair of old white and black checkered pants that Xiaoxia no longer wore.

There are many more such unpleasant past events, all vivid in my mind, too numerous to recount.

Yu Han and her second aunt stopped abruptly at this point. Liu Shulan, overwhelmed with mixed emotions, was at a loss. Seeing that she was already six or seven months pregnant, what could she do? Could she really bring her home like this?

After hearing so much from her, she knew that Yu Mei must have suffered a lot together, but she believed that Yu Mei, who had a bad temper since childhood, would not let her in-laws bully her.

She only lost out in terms of the man's financial situation. It seems she won't have much of an appetite during her pregnancy. She's quite overweight in the middle, but the rest of her body is much thinner than before.

Liu Shulan gave her a final hug before returning to her own house.

She truly kept her word; she didn't tell Yu Han about the disgusting things Yu Mei had told her. Nor would she tell anyone else.

The next day, Liu Shulan bought five catties of Fuji apples and five catties of eggs and delivered them to Yumei's house. Unexpectedly, Yumei moved without leaving any address. She asked Old Liu and Liu Xiulan, and the two of them replied that they did not know.

Clearly, Yu Mei wanted to avoid her at this moment and didn't want anyone to see her unsightly side.

Yu Mei has always been strong-willed since she was a child, and she avoids her second aunt to preserve her self-respect!