Chapter 148 -

Chapter 148: Chapter

"You are crazy... what sort of person are you?!" Bai Rulan shouted suddenly, her voice cracking as the entire hall turned to look at her in utter shock.

Even Wenliang, who was half-sober and clutching his forehead, froze in his tracks to stare at her.

Meiling quickly grabbed Rulan’s sleeve, her face pale as she tugged frantically on her arm. "Rulan, stop it! Keep quiet!"

"No! I won’t stop!" Rulan snapped, pulling her arm away and staring at Yimei with tear-filled, furious eyes. "Even though what the uncles did was wrong... even though them wanting to sell a person was completely evil... you knew about it! You should have stopped them! You should have exposed them before it went this far! But instead, you let Xuiying take her place! Now what if she really gets taken away by those black market traffickers?! Her life is ruined! They will make her a slave or worse! Don’t you even care?!"

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room as Rulan stood breathing hard, her cheeks flushed red.

Yimei didn’t flinch. She slowly turned her head toward Rulan, her expression flat, empty, and chillingly calm.

"Care?" Yimei asked softly, stepping closer to Rulan until she was only a foot away. "Why should I care about the snake that crept into my room in the middle of the night to steal from me?"

Rulan shrank back slightly under Yimei’s dark, piercing gaze, but Yimei’s voice remained smooth and razor-sharp.

"Xuiying went to Qinqin’s bed to rob her. The uncles went to that same bed to kidnap and sell a human being like cattle," Yimei said, her voice echoing clearly for everyone to hear. "Their greed put them in that room. Their choices put that sack over Xuiying’s head. I am not the master of their sins, Rulan, I am simply the one who refuses to be their victim."

Yimei glanced over at Meiling, then back to Rulan’s trembling face. "If you have so much pity to spare for a thief and two human traffickers, then by all means, run out those gates and go buy her back yourself. But never stand in front of me and demand that I protect the very people trying to destroy me."

Madame Liu ran into the hall, her robes covered in dirt and her face drenched in tears. Madame Bai and Madame Zhang hurried toward her, asking what had happened, but she ignored them completely. She rushed straight up to Yimei.

Ruizhe, who had followed his mother outside earlier, ran in right behind her. Mother and son threw themselves onto the cold stone floor at Yimei’s feet, sobbing frantically as they begged her for help.

"Yimei! Please, I beg you, save Xuiying!" Madame Liu wailed, clutching at the hem of Yimei’s skirt. "The slave traders said if we want her back, we have to pay triple the price they bought her for! Please, Yimei, save my daughter!"

Yimei casually pulled her skirt out of Madame Liu’s grasp, sat down on a wooden chair, and crossed her legs, looking down at them with an entirely unbothered expression.

An Yulan stepped forward, frowning deeply as she looked at the kneeling pair. "How much did you even sell her for in the first place?"

Just then, Second Uncle Chengang and Third Uncle Chenghao stumbled back through the compound gates. Their clothes were torn, their faces deathly pale, and their bodies shook like dry leaves in the wind.

Chengang swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he spoke. "We... we sold her for twenty taels..."

"Twenty taels?!" Madame Bai shouted, her voice echoing off the wooden beams in pure disbelief. "Brother-in-law, are you insane?! Such a ridiculously small amount to sell a human being for?! That wouldn’t even cover our groceries for a single week!"

Hearing his mother’s outrage over the pathetic sum, Zhengyu suddenly threw his head back and burst into laughter. The deep, rich sound rang out across the silent hall, sharp and entirely devoid of warmth.

Everyone turned to stare at him in shock.

"Twenty taels..." Zhengyu said, wiping a tear of amusement from his eye as he leaned forward in his wheelchair, his dark gaze locking onto the terrified uncles. "You two traded a daughter of the Bai family for twenty taels of silver. And now you need sixty taels to buy her back."

Madame Liu turned her swollen eyes back to Yimei, weeping uncontrollably. "Yimei... you have the money from the shop deed! Please, lend us sixty taels! She is your sister-in-law!" ℯℓ.

Yimei rested her chin on her hand, a faint, razor-sharp smile touching her lips. "Lend you sixty taels? Aunt Liu, why would I spend my shop money to fix a mess created by a thief and two kidnappers?"

Madame Liu’s voice trembled with a mixture of fear and desperation as she made her final plea. "I... I have an inn I can offer. It was given to me by my parents as part of my hidden dowry when I married. I concealed it from everyone, even my own husband. It is old and run-down, but if it is renovated, it could be worth a great deal. Please, I beg you, save my daughter!"

Yimei looked down at the kneeling woman, her face unreadable. "Fetch the deed."

Madame Liu scrambled to her feet without a second thought. She rushed past her husband, completely ignoring the furious glare he shot her way. His face had turned pale with shock, quickly twisting into raw anger as the realization hit him: his wife had held a valuable property deed all these years and never uttered a word to him.

Madame Liu didn’t waste a single second. She ran to her room and returned breathless, practically throwing the dusty yellow parchment into Yimei’s hands.

Yimei unfolded the document and scanned it with practiced ease. The land deed was indeed for an inn right here in the south-east district, how extraordinarily convenient. In its prime, a property in that location was easily worth ten thousand taels of silver. But Yimei knew the truth. Abandoned and neglected for years, the building was likely nothing more than rotting wood and overgrown weeds.

Even if Madame Liu tried to sell it to someone else in the village right this second, no merchant would hand over sixty taels on the spot. They would demand a full inspection, drag out the negotiations, and offer a pathetic few hundred taels at most. By the time any money changed hands, Xuiying would already be hundreds of miles away in a slave cart, sold off forever. Yimei held all the cards, and everyone in the hall knew it.

A cold, calculating smirk touched Yimei’s lips as she folded the deed and tucked it neatly into her sleeve.

"I will take the inn," Yimei said smoothly, her voice echoing clearly in the dead silent hall. "But that is not the only thing you will give me today."

Reaching into her inner robe, Yimei pulled out three freshly drafted sheets of paper and dropped them onto the wooden table with a sharp thud.

"You, your son, and your husband will sign these documents right now," Yimei commanded, leaning back in her chair.

Ruizhe frowned, wiping his tear-stained face as he stepped toward the table. "What... what are these documents for?"

"Read it for yourselves."