Chapter 151 - 143: Borrowing Rice

Chapter 151: Chapter 143: Borrowing Rice

"What? It doubled? Then... how much rice can one mace of silver buy now?" Old Mrs. Bai grew anxious.

Bai Dazhu shook his head. "How would I know? I haven’t been to town."

Liu quickly came up with an idea. "Ma, why don’t we hold off on buying? We can just go borrow some rice from another family. When the price drops in a while, we’ll buy some to pay them back. Wouldn’t that work?"

Ms. Zhang sneered. ’This Liu may look clever on a normal day, but she’s actually the most brainless of them all. Fine, be brainless, but she just loves to play these petty tricks to make herself look capable. Does she think everyone else is an idiot?’

Bai Dazhu waved his hand. "Everyone in the village knows about this by now. Who would lend us rice? I just ran into Aunt Liang, and she was already nagging us to hurry up and return the dou of rice we borrowed from her family."

Bai Dazhu then remembered something else and quickly added, "Oh, right. I just heard from Fourth Brother that Bai Zhi and Hu Feng went to town today. They brought back a huge cart full of rice and flour. They probably found out about the price increase and stocked up."

"A whole cart? How much must that have cost?" Old Mrs. Bai looked heartbroken, as if it were her own silver being spent.

Bai Dazhu shook his head. "Who knows? It must have been a lot. Even though she’s rich now, she can’t just spend like that. Hu Changlin must have incited her to spend it this way. Now the Hu family can just live off her food and drink—they’ll have enough rice to last a year."

The more Old Mrs. Bai listened, the more her heart ached. Those one hundred taels of silver from Bai Zhi and Zhao Lan should have belonged to the Bai Family.

But now, Bai Zhi was using it to support a bunch of outsiders. How could she possibly swallow that insult?

Seeing the thunderous expression on the old woman’s face, Bai Dazhu quickly asked, "Ma, what do you want to do?"

Old Mrs. Bai lowered her gaze to the empty rice vat and gritted her teeth. "If she can afford to support the Hu family, then she has to support us Bai family members as well. Let’s go. We’re going to her place to demand rice."

Bai Dazhu immediately thought of Hu Feng and shook his head frantically. "I’m not going. If you’re going, you can go by yourselves."

Ms. Zhang added, "I’m not going either."

Old Mrs. Bai shot her a glare, then yelled toward the room where Erzhu was "playing dead." "Erzhu! Fugui! Come out with us for a bit."

Erzhu hadn’t come out of the room, but he had heard everything happening outside perfectly clearly. ’Big Brother and my wife both said they aren’t going, so of course I can’t go either.’

"Ma, my butt still hurts, and Fugui isn’t better yet! You guys go wherever you want, we can’t go."

Old Mrs. Bai was furious but held her tongue. Liu, on the other hand, couldn’t stand for it. She shrieked, "Fine, so the second household isn’t going, is that it? Good! After we get the rice, don’t you dare eat a single bite if you have any backbone!"

Ms. Zhang replied coolly, "Fine. It’s settled then." ’Them, trying to get rice from Bai Zhi? They should count themselves lucky if she doesn’t sick the dogs on them.’

Bai Dazhu stared at Ms. Zhang, deeply displeased. "I say, Sister-in-law, my hands are the ones that are injured. Otherwise, I’d definitely go with them. Nothing’s wrong with you, so why won’t you go?"

Ms. Zhang turned her back on Bai Dazhu and walked toward her own room, saying as she went, "I just don’t feel like wasting my time on a pointless endeavor."

As soon as she entered the room, she slammed the door shut with a BANG.

Erzhu got up, pulled Ms. Zhang aside, and whispered, "You think Ma and Eldest Sister-in-law really won’t get any rice?"

Ms. Zhang snorted. "If only Zhao Lan is home, they might get a little. But if Bai Zhi is there, they won’t get a single grain. In fact, they’ll end up being thoroughly humiliated by her. Believe it or not."