Chapter 539: Gossip Survival System (38)

Fortunately, there was still a piece of gossip tail for her to gnaw on.

After gnawing on it, she saw Xie Yang had finished work, so she rushed over to share it with her, incidentally digesting this overly choking piece of big gossip:

"Oh my god, Sister Yang Yang! You absolutely, absolutely cannot guess what happened in our courtyard today!"

"……"

Xie Yang already knew.

The address of Lou Xuefang's maiden home was provided by the Main System at her request.

Come to think of it, even she hadn't expected Lou Xuefang to be so bold as to use the excuse of helping the production team purchase chemical fertilizer to deceive the villagers' trust, taking the three hundred yuan they pooled together for her to buy train tickets and fertilizer, and then returning to the city after leaving a fake home address.

Three hundred yuan, and malicious fraud at that; it was enough to get her into a heap of trouble.

Lou Xuefang had originally thought that returning the three hundred yuan to the villagers would be enough. She didn't have the money herself, but her mother-in-law surely did; otherwise, how could she afford to send her sister-in-law to high school and university?

She never expected that the families of those three thugs would run to the entrance of the Police Station, tears streaming down their faces, crying and complaining: Why should their sons have to go to the Northwest for labor reform when they didn't even steal a single cent, while this woman surnamed Lou managed to swindle the money—and three hundred yuan at that! If it weren't for a kind-hearted person who couldn't stand it anymore and wrote a letter to inform them, she would have escaped using a fake address. Why should such a person be allowed to settle privately? They weren't convinced!

The production team, having collected public opinion, was also unwilling to settle privately. Everyone was filled with righteous indignation, believing that the nature of what this female Educated Youth had done was too vile and the impact too poor. If this kind of thing could be settled privately, wouldn't all sorts of bad things be settled privately in the future? If things continued to develop this way, would cases of murder and arson also be suppressed by power to pretend to be settled privately?

Consequently, Lou Xuefang's case was not allowed to be settled privately, and she was eventually sentenced to fifteen years of labor reform, also heading to the yellow-sand-blinding Northwest Gobi Labor Reform Farm.

Awaiting her, besides the endless work from dawn till dusk—reclaiming wasteland, farming, planting trees, herding, and so on—was the retaliatory venting from those three thugs.

With Lou Xuefang arrested, Niu Cuifen surely made her son get a divorce.

At this moment, she was actually relieved that her daughter-in-law hadn't kept the pregnancy; once divorced, it was over, and there wouldn't be any entanglements over the child in the future.

After the divorce, Wang Tao was dejected and heartbroken for several days.

Not only was he sad about losing his wife and child, but also because he now belonged to the category of "divorced men" in the marriage market. It would be even harder to find a clean, pure, unmarried girl with at least a junior high school education.

The only person in the Wang Family secretly happy was probably Wang Lin.

Because she had caused her sister-in-law to lose the child in her womb, her mother and brother had given her plenty of cold looks and made her do housework to make up for her mistake.

Now it was great; the eyesore was gone, and she didn't have to do housework to make up for her mistake anymore!

Life seemed to have returned to the way it was before Wang Tao started dating...

……

In the warm, blooming month of March, Xie Yang and Gu Yu'an got engaged.

This year, she was also named a "March 8th Red Banner Holder" by the factory, and on March 8th, she went to the Great Hall of the People with the Factory Director and the Secretary to attend the commendation meeting, which could be considered a double blessing.

The engagement banquet was held quite lively.

However, no matter how lively, it was still much more frugal than in later generations; it was nothing more than a slightly richer variety of dishes, and afterwards, they gave out a few wedding candies to the neighbors.

Gu Dagu looked with gratification at this incredibly well-matched couple; her heart was finally at ease, and she was happy for her late brother and sister-in-law.

She wrapped a thick, substantial red envelope for Xie Yang and also gave her the spare keys to her nephew's courtyard house, meaning that from now on, the young couple could close their doors and live their own lives, and living a prosperous life was what brought elders the most gratification.

"An'an was young at that time, and later he went to the army, so I helped rent out the east and west side rooms and the inverted room. The rent was low a few years ago, but in recent years, with more Educated Youth returning to the city, the rental market has become lively. I saw it and raised it a bit; the two side rooms are 8 yuan a month each, and the inverted room is 5 yuan. Those families seem decent enough, so my meaning is to let them continue living there; added together, it's at least some income. When you have children and the children grow up, it won't be too late to take them back if the main room isn't enough..."

Xie Yang did not brush off Gu Dagu's kindness.

To be honest, having traveled through so many planes, she had truly rarely seen an aunt who thought so much for her nephew yet never coveted the inheritance in his hands.

Gu Dagu's family conditions were not bad; her husband was a sought-after Eighth-Grade Worker, and she was a Women's Federation Director, living in an independent small courtyard, but it was an ordinary courtyard—

Three main rooms, with two side rooms attached to each side. As her son grew up, got married, and his wife gave birth to children, the housing was actually tight.

But with the aunt holding things down, no one in Gu Dagu's family, from her husband down to her nephew, coveted this house of Gu Yu'an's.

Of course, the two wives of her nephews were extremely jealous. With such a large house sitting empty in the cousin's family, they would rather rent it to outsiders than let their own family live in it. Several times they proposed wanting to borrow it, only to be rebuffed by Gu Dagu in a few words:

"Borrow it? Will you pay rent? The two side rooms are 8 yuan a month. If you borrow it at that price, that's fine. I'll talk to An'an later, and he'll definitely agree. Renting to our own people is definitely better than to outsiders."

"……"

Is it still called "borrowing" if you pay money?

The two wives were instantly silenced.

From then on, they didn't hold Gu Yu'an in high regard.

It wasn't until these past two years, as Gu Yu'an frequently performed meritorious deeds, was promoted several levels, and transferred to the Public Security Bureau as Bureau Chief due to his injuries, that the two wives' minds began to waver again. Several times they expressed wanting to introduce a partner to Gu Yu'an.

But the partners they introduced—one was a niece who was like an old ox, knowing only how to bury her head in work and listen to the family's arrangements for everything else, and the other was a younger sister who had no job and was lazy—were rejected by Gu Dagu after she inquired about them, without even telling her nephew.

The two wives were unwilling to give up and wanted to try harder, when suddenly they heard that Gu Yu'an had a partner and the two were getting engaged on International Women's Day.

And so, they were so angry that they didn't give Xie Yang any good looks at the engagement banquet.

But Xie Yang didn't care at all.

She wouldn't be living with them in the future anyway, so whatever looks they gave couldn't affect her good mood about being about to own a small courtyard house in the inner ring of Beijing.

As for Gu Dagu, she truly admired and respected her from the bottom of her heart.

In the future, whatever Grandma Xie had, the aunt would have a share of.

Furthermore, regarding this Gu family courtyard, Xie Yang had been there a few times after establishing a relationship with Gu Yu'an.

However, because he lived alone, the house was empty and looked very desolate, so after going once or twice, it turned into Gu Yu'an frequently running to the Xie Family instead.

Now that they were engaged and getting married in the second half of the year, the decoration of the bridal chamber had to be put on the agenda.

Xie Yang accepted the keys solemnly handed over by Gu Dagu, and going to the Gu house again, the feeling was different.

This small courtyard house had three main rooms, one ear room on each side, two side rooms on the east and west, a courtyard in the middle of about fifty square meters, and a long, narrow row of inverted rooms facing south.

Currently, four households lived there: one in the east side room, two in the west side rooms, and one in the inverted room.

The courtyard and the well in the middle were shared, paved with bluestone slabs, and looked quite clean, though unfortunately, there were no trees.

There should have been some earlier; the stumps were still there. Later, it was probably because they blocked the light, so the trees were sawed off, leaving two large tree stumps used to place winnowing baskets to dry vegetables when the weather was nice.