Chapter 121: Chapter 118: A 30,000% Henpecked Husband

Lin Lan looked at him and smiled. “You didn’t come all this way just to give me mooncakes, did you?”

Li Xiangyang grinned and nodded. “What you make is yours, but what I give is mine!” As he spoke, he pulled a bag of White Rabbit candy from his satchel and handed it to Little Douzi. “Someone gave these to me. There’s one bag for you and one for Dandan.”

Little Douzi accepted it joyfully. “Thank you, Uncle Xiangyang!”

Li Xiangyang ruffled his fluffy hair and handed a basket to Lin Lan. “These are some festival gifts for you.”

Lin Lan took the basket and saw it contained a bag of large jujubes, a slab of pork belly, a pair of pig’s trotters, and two boxes of mooncakes. She thought about how she had only sent him some of her own mooncakes.

She looked at him, a bit embarrassed. “Xiangyang, you’re too generous.”

Li Xiangyang laughed. “It’s all just stuff from around the house. Nothing to be so formal about.”

Lin Lan smiled, took the items out, then packed a few of her ham mooncakes into the basket as a return gift. “Please give these to Uncle Li.”

Li Xiangyang nodded. “Will do! I’m heading back now.”

After seeing Li Xiangyang off, Lin Lan took two mature pumpkins to the kitchen to make lunch, which included pumpkin cakes. Just as she finished, Lin Yuezhen returned with her back-basket.

They had just finished eating when Li Guizhi came over with a basket of pea pods, a gossipy look on her face as she eyed Lin Lan. “Little Lin, something happened to Liu Jinbao. Did you hear?”

Lin Lan shook her head. “I haven’t left the house these past few days.”

Li Guizhi lowered her voice. “Yesterday afternoon, Liu Jinbao took a fall over at the Construction Team’s graveyard. I heard it was pretty bad. Everyone’s saying his spiritual energy is low, and that he ran into a ghost wall in broad daylight.”

Lin Lan stared at her in surprise. “Really? That’s terrifying.”

Li Guizhi nodded. “That place has always been haunted. Rongqing said that back in the old days, people who were executed by being ’potted’ and had no one to claim their bodies were buried there. I have to pass by it when I go back to my parents’ home, and every time I get near, I get chills and feel so unsettled. I wish I could just sprint right past it.”

“Some places just have a heavy, dark energy,” Lin Lan said with a laugh. “But let’s not talk about such things during the festival. I made some mooncakes and was planning to bring some to your house later. Since you’re here, you can take them with you now.”

Li Guizhi looked at her, embarrassed. “Oh, thank you! I was over at the Eucalyptus Forest selling eggs when I heard everyone saying how delicious your mooncakes are.”

Lin Lan smiled. “They’re nowhere near as good as the ones from the commissary.” With that, she went inside to get the mooncakes.

Little Douzi came out with a plate of pumpkin cakes. “Auntie, have some pumpkin cakes.”

“Little Douzi, you’re so sweet!” Li Guizhi said, looking at the golden pumpkin cakes on the plate. “Are these really made from pumpkin?”

Little Douzi nodded. “Mhm! Mommy made them.”

Li Guizhi tried one and thought it didn’t taste like pumpkin at all. She looked at Lin Lan and said, “Little Lin, you’re so skillful.”

“Oh, I just threw them together,” Lin Lan said, handing her the mooncakes.

Li Guizhi accepted them happily. “Thanks, Little Lin! I’ll take these back for my mom and dad to try.”

“Of course. I need to go visit my parents in a couple of days myself.”

“Do you still need rapeseed oil and beans? I can pick some up for you while I’m there.”

“As long as the quality is good, I’ll take them.”

“I know. I won’t bring back anything that isn’t good quality.”

After seeing Li Guizhi off, Lin Lan delivered some mooncakes to the old great-grandpa and to Yang Meihua’s family. After visiting just two households, she had already heard several different versions of Liu Jinbao’s ghost encounter, each one more outrageous than the last.

The story had spread throughout the entire First Team, and everyone was saying they should take a detour from now on and avoid the Construction Team’s graveyard.

The next afternoon, Yao Xiuyun also came to Lin Lan’s house. The moment she saw her, she said with unconcealed glee, “It’s karma! Sweet, sweet karma!”

Lin Lan looked at her, confused. “Who’s getting their karma?”

Yao Xiuyun laughed. “That scoundrel Liu Jinbao! The day before yesterday, he was passing the Construction Team’s graveyard and just fell right off his bike for no reason. A passerby had to take him home.”

“They took him to the hospital for an examination, and the doctor said he’d fractured his kneecap. He needs to be hospitalized and have surgery. Sun Xiuhua went home to get money, only to find that all the cash they kept at home was gone. She called Liu Guozhi to come to the station and file a report.”

“We went to investigate and saw that the door to their room and the lock on their cabinet were perfectly fine, not damaged at all. We figured it was either someone they knew or an inside job. In the end, we went to the hospital to question Liu Jinbao, and it turns out he was the one who stole the money and gambled it all away.”

“Over a thousand yuan, all gone. Sun Xiuhua fainted on the spot from anger. When she came to, she cried and begged us not to make it public, to let her family save some face.”

“Serves him right. The heavens are watching,” Lin Lan said, feeling a sense of satisfaction. “The story was already going around the team yesterday, but I had no idea about all this.”

She suddenly remembered that Lin Guoliang and the others had ambushed Liu Jinbao with a sack over his head at that same graveyard. Now this happened there, too. ’Could someone be out there enacting justice on heaven’s behalf?’

Yao Xiuyun glanced at her with a smile. “My colleagues at the station investigated. There were no suspicious tracks or anything. They suspect he provoked someone he shouldn’t have and got paid back for it.”

She had suspected from the start that Xiangyang had arranged it. Yesterday, she and Xu Dong had gone home and asked Xiangyang, and sure enough, he had done it.

The two of them had even teased him about being so protective already, saying he was 30,000 percent guaranteed to be a henpecked husband in the future.

Xu Dong had pointed out that their relationship wasn’t even official yet, and here he was, already running around doing things for her. Wasn’t he afraid Lin Lan might not marry him in the end?

But he had said, full of confidence, that he was sure he could win Lin Lan’s heart and make her his wife.

“Let’s not talk about that disgusting creep!” Lin Lan said, changing the subject with a smile. “I saved some of the five-nut, egg yolk, and ham ones for you. Take them with you when you leave.”

Yao Xiuyun laughed. “I’m never polite when it comes to free food. And could you give me some of your pickled vegetables? The ones I make are never as good as yours.”

Lin Lan’s gaze fell to her stomach. “Craving sour things… You’re not pregnant, are you?”

Yao Xiuyun rubbed her belly, did a quick mental calculation, and smacked her forehead in annoyance. “I hadn’t even realized until you said something! I’m over two weeks late this month. I’d better go to the hospital and get it checked out.”

Lin Lan teased with a smile, “Looks like you’ll have a new baby next year.”

Yao Xiuyun shook her head without a second thought. “Two kids are already more than enough to give me a headache. If another one comes along, my whole life will just revolve around them. Never mind, I’m going to the hospital now.”

“Go get it checked first, and we’ll see,” Lin Lan said. She packed the mooncakes and pickled vegetables into a basket and saw her off.

****

In the orthopedics department of the city hospital, Liu Jinbao lay on a bed with his leg in a cast. He thought back to the first time he’d gone to cause trouble for Lin Lan, how her face had gone pale with fear.

The second time, she was like a completely different person, even daring to swing a knife at him…

The more he thought about it, the more he felt that being ambushed with a sack and encountering a ghost in the graveyard were both related to Lin Lan. And the fact that everything bad happened near that graveyard… ’Could she really be a thousand-year-old ghost?’

Liu Jinbao shivered. He was both terrified and a little thrilled. He suddenly felt he had discovered Lin Lan’s secret.

Seeing his eyes darting back and forth, Sun Xiuhua slapped him in frustration. “You little devil, what did I do to deserve you in my past life?”

“My money! Over a thousand yuan! We could have torn down our house and rebuilt it as a proper brick-and-tile house three times over with that much money!”

Seeing how heartbroken she was, Liu Jinbao actually felt a pang of guilt. For once, he didn’t talk back and just let Sun Xiuhua scold him.

When she had finally vented her anger, he pulled her down to sit and asked in a low voice, “Mom, what did that spiritual master you found have to say?”

Sun Xiuhua paused, stunned. She looked at him. “Don’t you usually say you don’t believe in that stuff?”

Liu Jinbao glanced at the patient in the next bed. “Just tell me what he said.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep