Chapter 51: Chen Youde, Who Takes Several Beatings a Day

Just as Zhang Huacheng arrived at his doorstep, he ran into Chen Youde, who had just returned. The latter stared at him with a look of utter resentment, which struck Zhang Huacheng as quite ridiculous.

You failed your denunciation attempt against me, and now you hold a grudge?

Little did Chen Youde know that when he had just gone to the production brigade thinking something good was in store for him, Chen Gonglin had immediately greeted him with a flurry of kicks that sent him rolling all over the ground.

Clearly, it had been Chen Yinshan's idea all along, yet the blame was dumped entirely on him. Tomorrow, he would still have to go to the commune to pay a fine and undergo criticism and education.

"What the hell are you glaring at?" Er Gou had been itching to deal with Chen Youde for a long time. Seeing him stare at Zhang Huacheng with such resentment, Er Gou rushed forward and delivered a flying kick.

"Er Gou, you—"

Chen Youde was terrified. It was already too late to run home; before he could even finish his sentence, Er Gou sent him flying straight into a snowdrift with a single kick.

"You motherfucking snitch dog!" Er Gou rained fierce blows and kicks down on Chen Youde, drawing continuous, miserable screams.

"Er Gou is beating people up!"

"Help! Murder! Someone's being beaten to death!"

"Tiezhu! Tiezhu!"

Hearing the commotion, Sun Li came out, took one look, and let out a piercing scream. She wanted to rush over and pull them apart, but fearing that Er Gou might beat her up as well, she could only run back inside to call Tiezhu.

Tiezhu was called out. Upon seeing the scene, he scratched his head, then exchanged blank, bewildered stares with Sun Li. What was he supposed to do?

"What are you standing there for? Go help your dad!"

Sun Li was boiling with rage at this blockhead.

"Oh!"

Tiezhu nodded, then asked with a somewhat troubled expression, "How do I help?"

Huh?

How do you help?

Your old man is practically being beaten to death, and you're asking me how to help? Sun Li was stunned into silence for a few seconds before screaming in exasperation, "Go hit Er Gou! Go hit Er Gou! Are you a pig? Why did you grow to be this big for nothing?"

"Oh!"

Tiezhu scratched his head and walked toward Er Gou, taking one step and looking back every time. His hesitant demeanor made Sun Li sit down on the ground and howl in despair.

Seeing Tiezhu approaching slowly with a reluctant look on his face, Er Gou finally dealt Chen Youde a few heavy punches, cursed under his breath, and got up to look for Zhang Huacheng.

He didn't want to make things difficult for Tiezhu, either.

Tiezhu hauled Chen Youde out of the snowdrift by his collar.

Poor Chen Youde still had blood streaming from his nose. Struggling to sit up, he took one look at Tiezhu's foolish mug staring down at him and, in a fit of rage, raised his hand and slapped him right across the face.

"Can't you see your old man getting beaten up!"

Chen Youde roared, his eyes completely bloodshot.

Having taken a slap, Tiezhu stammered, "Dad, didn't you say not to fight back when hit?"

"I, I—"

Chen Youde choked on his breath and almost died of anger. He raised his hand to deliver another slap to Tiezhu, but Er Gou rushed back and sent him sprawling face-first into the snowbank with a single kick, where he instantly went motionless.

Sun Li rushed over as well, wailing and howling at the top of her lungs.

"Auntie, what's going on here?"

Someone who heard the commotion came out to take a look.

"Well, Chen Youde just got beaten up by Er Gou."

"If he got beaten by Er Gou, what can you do? Even the production brigade can't be bothered with him. But since Er Gou beat him, why did I just see him hitting Tiezhu?"

"Ventilating his anger, of course."

Chen Youde had a terrible reputation; nobody liked him, and his constant denunciations had offended plenty of people.

Besides, the one who beat him was Er Gou—a notorious hoodlum from the Chen Tangsan ditch. Nobody bothered with him, and while the brigade couldn't control him, they couldn't just get rid of him either. Taking a beating from him simply meant suffering in vain.

Er Gou was now a mountain patroller and carried a gun; who would go out of their way to provoke him?

The commune members gathered in small groups to discuss the spectacle, but not a single one of them stepped forward.

"Come on, let's go to the brigade to file a complaint. I refuse to believe nobody can keep him in line!"

Sun Li pulled Chen Youde up, intending to head straight for the brigade.

Who would have thought that Chen Youde, usually so fond of filing complaints, would shake off her hand and limp back toward his house instead? File a complaint? Complain to whom? He had just been beaten up right inside the brigade office earlier, and it was the brigade leader himself who had hit him.

Wang Lin was tidying up inside the house. Hearing the commotion, she ran out to take a look, but Zhang Huacheng gently pulled her back inside.

"Does it look nice?"

She pulled Zhang Huacheng into the room and looked at him expectantly.

That morning at the department store, she had bought two red ceramic vases and picked out two bunches of fake flowers, placing them on the table to add a touch of color to their home.

"It looks great!"

Zhang Huacheng praised without hesitation, making Wang Lin beam with joy.

Doubao was fast asleep, tightly clutching her Beijing cloth tiger and refusing to let go.

This was her first toy. Zhang Huacheng quietly walked over and tucked the quilt in around Doubao. Looking at the cloth tiger, he suddenly remembered the few small stones Doubao had left behind in his past life, and his eyes instantly grew moist.

Er Gou had called Tiezhu over to his house, knowing that sending him back would only make him the punching bag for Chen Youde's frustrations.

Having taken a beating, Tiezhu acted as if the blows hadn't landed on him at all. The very first thing he did upon arriving was to check the stove, clearly hungry once again.

"Linlin, check if the dough has risen. Once it's ready, let's steam a pot of buns." Zhang Huacheng was slicing wild boar meat, preparing to whip up a stir-fry with chili peppers. After the meal, he planned to take Tiezhu and Er Gou deep into the mountains to practice marksmanship.

"Okay!"

Wang Lin washed her hands, pressed her fingers into the black porcelain basin to test the dough, and seeing that it had risen properly, began kneading it.

Er Gou wasn't idle either. After clearing the snow from the courtyard, he used a shovel to knock down the long, sharp icicles hanging from the eaves, while Tiezhu sat in front of the stove tending the fire.

When the rich aroma of meat filled the air, Doubao finally crawled up. She sat on the *kang* holding her cloth tiger and dazed off for a moment, clearly not fully awake yet.

"Doubao is awake."

Wang Lin walked over.

"Pear!" Seeing her mother approach, Doubao made a baby-talk request for a pear, remembering clearly before falling asleep that her mother had promised she could eat one when she woke up.

Wang Lin smiled and went to fetch a frozen pear.

"Linlin, the frozen pear is too cold. Don't we still have a few apples left? Give Doubao an apple instead," Zhang Huacheng reminded her. The frozen pears were too chilling, and they still had apples given to them earlier by Er Gou.

"Then I'll cut half an apple for Doubao."

Wang Lin nodded.

Apples in the dead of winter were a rare luxury these days. Ordinarily, neither she nor Zhang Huacheng could bear to take even a single bite; they saved all of them for Doubao.

Soon, Doubao was happily sitting on the *kang*, munching on an apple.

"Brother, when can we go set some fish traps? Damei and my two younger brothers haven't had fish in a while; I want to bring a few home for the family," Tiezhu said, scratching his head with a trace of embarrassment.

"Set fish traps?"

Zhang Huacheng thought for a moment and said, "Then let's go set some this afternoon, and haul them in at nightfall. It should be enough for a meal."

"What fish traps?"

Er Gou had just walked in and overheard, asking with curiosity.

When Zhang Huacheng explained how he had made his first pot of gold, Er Gou grew instantly excited. He never imagined that Zhang Huacheng could catch fish and crabs from the sea, and in the dead of winter, no less.

"When the weather warms up a bit slightly, I'll take you out to catch big green crabs in the sea. They're nothing like these rock crabs," Zhang Huacheng said, looking forward to the arrival of spring. By then, he would rely on the ocean to make a fortune.

"Mountain patrollers aren't really supposed to mess with things from the sea. Everything outside the mountains is off-limits; we can't let others find out about this," Er Gou reminded him.

Getting caught would bring a lot of trouble.

"We can just check the traps at night," Zhang Huacheng pondered aloud. "Going into the mountains to bag a single wolf is worth half a month of crab trapping anyway. We can't rely on it to make a fortune, or else I wouldn't have given up selling seafood. That said, even if we don't sell it, we can eat it ourselves."

Eating it themselves was a fine option too. He needed to figure out how to manage fishing; relying on the mountains when living by the mountains, and relying on the sea when living by the sea—once winter passed, making big money would still require fishing.

The rocky coastal areas were indeed tricky, but the mountains lacked no shortage of stones. As long as they had enough manpower, they could quickly pave a path right through the rocky shoals; it would just take time.

"Huacheng, Linlin, are you home?"

At that moment, a voice called out from beyond the gate.

"Who is it?"

Hearing the commotion, Wang Lin opened the door to step outside and take a look.

"It's me, your Fourth Aunt! Linlin, your mom and dad have arrived, they're already at the brigade office!"

"Ah?"

Upon hearing this, Wang Lin bolted outside in a panic.

Zhang Huacheng snapped to his senses as well, following her out as he said, "Let's go welcome them."

He hadn't expected Wang Lin's parents to arrive in person. He had thought it would take a few more trips to the county town for Wang Lin to mend the relationship, and that the friction would naturally dissolve over time. It seemed he had overcomplicated things after house.

Chen Feng's descent was extremely rapid, and he could also see the fiery red chains on his body pulling continuously, likely hurtling toward the second stage.

Baili Chenfeng's gaze shook, and in an instant, the surroundings grew so quiet he could hear the sound of a gentle breeze brushing against his temples.

After forcing Wang Yang to wear the necklace, Wang Yang had run off. When he called her phone, it wouldn't go through at all—clearly leaving him not a single chance. And now, she was swaggering out shopping with Xia Zixuan again.

Hearing this, Ning Changsheng on the judging panel couldn't help but secretly nod. When he had interacted with Shen Mengyao earlier, he indeed found that she had symptoms resembling a heart disease, and at the time, her emotions had turned overwhelmingly sorrowful.

"What is this?" After Wen Xin opened the door, she froze instantly. There was absolutely nothing inside the room. After a thorough inspection, she found that it was truly empty. If that was the case, what was she supposed to do here?

"Left Chancellor, I won't leave. Linlang will not leave, unless you drive Linlang away." Linlang was startled, not expecting the person on the bed to suddenly grab his hand and utter such words.

Because she could sense the goodwill Wen Xin was directing at her, her smile grew even brighter and more charming.

"Heh, you actually spent eighty thousand to buy a radish. With your kind of judgment, I reckon you won't even need me to deal with you—you'll be eliminated in the first round." Qian Lin couldn't help letting out a sneer.

Ji Huichun and Feng Ming were both startled. Turning their heads, they saw a familiar figure walking over, and the two of them were immediately overjoyed.

Internally cursing Fu Guocheng for being a scumbag, she recalled the vague, unclear plotline and suddenly felt a wave of lingering fear.

He led me to take the elevator, which was probably a private, exclusive one. It even required a password to activate. I found myself awkwardly wondering if a bar really needed to be this high-tech.

Su Youjun made a reassuring gesture to her elder sister, beckoned over Lüluo's wet nurse to take the baby, and then pulled her sister out of the inner room.

The old lady washed peaches for us—Wuxi honey peaches are quite famous, you know. I picked one up and handed it to my dad, but he shook his head and declined. I handed another to Shen Duo; he took it, but then gave it to Xigua instead.

That was it—a bellyful of things she wanted to say and advise, but the words rose to the tip of her tongue and simply refused to come out.

It wasn't that Li Tiance was bragging; fellows like Xiang Longyu and Li Tianba were already strong enough, right? Yet even they were no match for him.

However, if it were merely this, he was clearly still unsatisfied. What he needed was to make the Xiahou clan the true, sworn enemy of everyone.

Shen Duo connected a line on his notebook, and the entire problem suddenly became clear. I couldn't help but admire him.

Yet clearly, this method was mostly unviable under the current circumstances. The enemy general, Huang Pu, was a renowned strategist of ancient times, highly esteemed by Emperor Yuan, making it difficult to shake the army's morale. Meng Tu could only resort to a slight stratagem and execute a decapitation strike.

Wasn't it just performing an item? She could casually pick a song that would explode across the entire internet a few years later and easily crush the competition.

At this moment, she truly understood the gap between herself and Yutu. This gap wasn't just a tiny bit, but rather spanned an entire tier.

They all possessed abilities ordinary people lacked; once utilized properly, they would definitely serve as a trump card for catching others off guard.

More and more people from the local neighborhood gathered around, but upon hearing Old Lady Hang's string of deeds, no one else stepped forward to persuade her.

He looked up and found that there were at least a dozen people in the boxing gym, all of them fighters, engaged in various forms of practice.

The two of them trembled all over. The other ministers kept their heads lowered, eyes fixed on their noses and noses fixed on their hearts, not daring to cast a single glance in their direction.

The leader was a sexagenarian elder with thick glasses and half-balding, graying hair. He took the initiative to shake Huang Ying's hand, first expressing his apologies before turning his gaze toward the lenses of the mass media reporters, speaking with grave solemnity.

Ordering a drink at the bar, he walked alone to a corner table and sat down, silently observing the situation inside the bar.

"Thank you..." Accompanied by these words, uttered as if using up every ounce of remaining strength, the Constellation of Kung Jin—who had lingered constantly on the brink of life and death—finally regained consciousness.

Yet upon a second thought, if Jiang Yu really had robbed a bank, how could he possibly dare to purchase a villa with such swagger?

Leng Ruobing felt her eyes well up with tears instantly. This was just something done casually; if she put in real effort, goodness knows what it would look like. This made her feel somewhat unworthy of the elders and villagers of Jiangdong.

Grandma said: Listen to that! How strange—the one who usually threatened to hang herself, drink pesticide, or slit her throat at every turn is now screaming for help!

Within the Nine-Heads-Breaking Formation, Dongfang Chou and the others desperately bombarded the array. But as the Purple-Gold Divine Dragon had stated, a formation set up by him was not something their meager strength could break through.

After purchasing the furniture from the old lady's shop, the group didn't even bother looking at other stores and headed straight out of the furniture mall.

However, if the potion truly had no side effects, Butterfly would conclude that this was a trap set for her by the remnant of the Qian Tian sect, Ye Fei. No matter what, even if it cost her life in battle, she was determined to bring Ye Fei to justice.

Turner hurriedly bit down on his tongue. The sharp pain cleared his mind slightly, and he immediately pulled back his energy in a panic, realizing that upon this resurrection, Shen Shang had advanced even further in strength. His own seventh-generation strength couldn't even fathom the bottom of it—could it be that he had already reached the eighth generation or above?

The war continued. The guards division soldiers fought with undying determination, repeatedly crashing against the Nationalist army's defense lines. Under the cover of armed helicopters, tanks, and rocket artillery, they consistently suppressed the enemy's firepower, with numerous light and heavy machine guns continuously spitting fire.

People in the entertainment industry were all shrewd insiders; from the interactions between Yin Jing and Feng Jing, they could tell that the two maintained a very close relationship.

Hearing Ye Fei's reply, the expression on Ison's face grew even gloomier, but it immediately turned ecstatic again. The thought of once more watching the bugs devour Ye Fei made him tremble with excitement.

The old tomb fiend cackled weirdly as he walked toward that direction, until he too stepped into the forbidden zone and his figure vanished from sight.

However, Nan Xi simply lay on the bed, her hollow eyes gazing out the window without a shred of spirit or brilliance.

If he unleashed all his trump cards, he could still manage to trade blows with Fahai to mutual destruction. Yet the price of this mutual destruction was indeed somewhat difficult to accept. Even though Long Xiaoyao could severely injure Fahai, under the backlash of his secret arts, he would either die or lose his cultivation entirely.