Chapter 32: Chapter 32 Playing the Blame Game
Ma Jinbao, who always obeyed Li Zhaodi’s words, raised his hand and violently slapped toward Yue Xiaofang’s face.
Yue Xiaofang had long been frightened by the beatings, and her earlier courage had only arisen from the need to protect her mother.
Seeing the palm strike coming, she instinctively closed her eyes and raised her hands to protect her head.
Just at that moment, Ma Jinbao’s wrist was firmly grasped.
The person’s strength was immense, like a pair of iron pliers, causing Ma Jinbao to cry out in pain involuntarily.
He feared his wrist would be crushed.
Yue Jiandong looked down at him from above, his gaze sharp as a knife, causing Ma Jinbao, who tended to bully the weak and fear the strong, to instantly go weak in the knees.
“Coward, only good at hitting women,” Yue Jiandong said as he violently flung away his hand, causing Ma Jinbao to fall to the ground with a thud.
The three brothers of the Yue Family arrived late to the scene, and Li Zhaodi swallowed her saliva, quietly taking two steps back.
At that moment, someone shouted, “The village chief is coming!”
The onlookers dispersed, and an ordinary-looking middle-aged man walked into the center of the crowd.
It was none other than the village chief of Jinshan Village—Ma Shulin.
Li Zhaodi immediately assumed the guise of a victim, holding up the broken tooth in her palm.
“Village chief, I can’t live , the people from Daye Village don’t take our village seriously at all. I was just disciplining my daughter-in-law a bit, and she called her family to beat me up,” she said.
“Last night, she ran out of the house for no reason, and Jinbao and I were worried about her, looked for her all night long, who would have thought her mother would come and attack me, I… how unlucky I am to have married such a daughter-in-law, I’d rather be dead.”
Lin Chunju did not expect Li Zhaodi to switch faces so swiftly and was infuriated to the point of chest pain.
In just a few words, she had twisted the beating of Yue Xiaofang into a domestic issue, and turned their visit to the village into a conflict between outsiders and villagers. What a clever trick!
The surrounding people, after witnessing the entire event, silently despised her, yet did not speak out.
Before Li Zhaodi could finish, the voice of Ma Cuicui could be heard in the distance.
“Mother, Mother, what happened to you, how did you get beaten ?” Ma Cuicui hurried over and threw herself onto Li Zhaodi.
“Sister-in-law, I know you’re unsatisfied with Mother, but you can’t just knock her teeth out. The Ma Family has provided for you, where did we wrong you?” she said.
Li Zhaodi sobbed, “It’s my fault for not being able to control my daughter-in-law.”
The two of them played their roles well, truly like mother and daughter.
The Yue Family, clearly in the right, was instead being framed, and they couldn’t express the indignation they felt.
Some who came with Ma Shulin and didn’t understand the situation glared angrily at the Yue Family.
Ma Shulin, however, remained silent.
Lin Chunju’s eyebrows were tightly furrowed, feeling that she had been rather rash in taking action.
Turning her head, she saw Yue Qingqing giving her a sweet smile.
Lin Chunju’s mind immediately steadied, yet she didn’t notice her youngest son making faces next to her.
Li Zhaodi, crying crocodile tears without any consequences, wailed for a while without hearing the village chief speak, feeling embarrassed as if she couldn’t continue the act.
“Village, Village chief,” Ma Cuicui tentatively called out.
Suddenly, Ma Shulin asked, “Li Zhaodi, you said your daughter-in-law ran out for no reason, then how did she get the injuries on her arm?”
Li Zhaodi sneered, “Who knows how she got them? She’s capable of calling her family over, isn’t she capable of framing me?”
“Did you look closely? The injuries on her arm are both new and old. Yue Xiaofang just returned to her mother’s home last night, how could she have inflicted months-old scars to frame you?” he said.
Li Zhaodi opened her mouth but found herself at a loss for words.
Ma Cuicui, unwilling to accept this, retorted, “So what? She’s the mother-in-law. What’s wrong with disciplining her daughter-in-law?”
Ma Shulin drawled, “Do you know that in recent years, the country has been cracking down on such behavior? To beat someone , you could go to prison.”
Upon hearing this, the three members of the Ma Family shuddered, growing fearful.
Go to prison? Surely it couldn’t be that serious.