Chapter 355 - 367: Women Cannot
When the girl saw the crowd behind Aunt Zhang, her expression turned guarded and disgusted.
She was like a cornered animal, bristling with spikes, baring her teeth at the men who had just entered.
An Ning and her group watched quietly from the side.
"Feng Xiaoyu, stay out of adult affairs. You have no right to interfere."
An elder in his fifties or sixties, wearing a sleeveless undershirt, looked at Feng Xiaoyu with impatience, even blatant contempt, in his eyes.
"No right?"
"That’s hilarious. I’m my father’s only daughter. We’re connected by blood. And in the end, I have no right to inherit the house my father built or the boat he owned? Instead, outsiders like you are supposed to inherit them? I wonder which of us is the real joke here."
Feng Xiaoyu stood beside Aunt Zhang. The mother and daughter clung to each other’s arms, holding one another up as if they were being tossed about by waves at sea.
And these waves weren’t caused by some stranger; they were stirred up by the very village where they were born and raised.
The old man across from them spoke impatiently. "Since ancient times, women have never been allowed on boats. It’s bad luck."
"Besides, have you ever seen a daughter inherit a house? Aren’t you afraid of becoming a laughingstock?"
The men who had come with the elder chimed in with their agreement, constantly trying to persuade the mother and daughter.
Women are no good. Women can’t go on boats. Women can’t inherit. They repeated these things over and over.
They stood on their moral high ground, relentlessly condemning the mother and daughter who should have rightfully inherited everything. The two women’s straight backs were being crushed by the pressure, as if at any moment, their spines might snap.
An Ning frowned as she watched but didn’t intervene for the time being.
Yin Xuemei, however, felt a sense of resonance. Although she wasn’t an only daughter, she was the one who was valued the least. Not just undervalued, but even despised.
’Sometimes,’ Yin Xuemei would wonder, ’is it because I’m a woman that I’m treated this way?’
An Ning noticed Yin Xuemei’s distress. She reached out, patted the back of Xuemei’s hand, and said softly, "Don’t be afraid. Do what you feel you need to do."
Yin Xuemei nodded, and much of the chill in her heart dissipated.
She still had friends, very good friends.
At that moment, the confrontation in the center of the courtyard reached a critical point.
The old man looked at the unyielding Feng Xiaoyu and said, "Feng Xiaoyu, you should know that you have no right to visit your father’s grave. Think carefully. If you give up these things, I can still allow you to go see your father. But if you don’t... well, you know the rule about women not being allowed to visit graves."
"You—you’re shameless!"
Tears welled up in Feng Xiaoyu’s eyes. Aunt Zhang was trembling all over. She shakily raised a finger and pointed at the men across from them.
"You—how dare you? How dare you?"
With heart-wrenching cries, Aunt Zhang broke free from Feng Xiaoyu’s supporting grasp. She was a widow, but more than that, she was a mother.
Behind her was the daughter she would trade her life for, her only daughter.
"Let me tell you, I don’t care about your damn rules! Xiaoyu is our daughter, and everything we have belongs to her!"
"I’m still here in this house! It’s not for a bunch of robbers like you to take!"
Aunt Zhang’s sudden outburst made the old man’s pressuring halt for a moment, but it quickly passed.
He was discriminatory against women to his very bones, looking down on them.
"You’re a woman who married into this village. You have no right to meddle in our village’s affairs."
That one sentence was enough to make An Ning want to puke.
An Ning felt her fists itching to punch someone. She especially wanted to have a few choice words for this man’s mother, grandmother, and even his great-grandmother.
’Weren’t they women, too?’
After the old man spoke, he waved his hand, and the men behind him moved forward, ready to take things by force.
"You’re moving out right now. We’ve already been generous enough to give you two months."
The old man spoke as if he were completely in the right. The men behind him pushed aside Aunt Zhang and the desperately screaming Feng Xiaoyu, who was trying to stop them. They rushed into the house and started throwing things out.
CRASH! BANG! The sound of them throwing the mother and daughter’s belongings out filled the air.
More and more onlookers gathered, many of them women.
Some of the women had a look in their eyes that said, "This is how it should be." Others looked on with a mix of sympathy and fear.
’I’m just a woman,’ she seemed to be thinking. ’What can I possibly do?’
"Stop! Stop it!"
"This is my home! My home!"
Feng Xiaoyu was shoved to the ground, scraping her knee until it bled, but she ignored the pain and crawled forward, grabbing onto one of the men’s legs.
"Let go! I’m calling the police! I’ll have you arrested!"
The mention of calling the police made the men who were throwing things out pause and look back at the old man who was in charge.
The old man snorted coldly.
"You’d better be able to get the police to stand guard here every single day. Otherwise..."
The old man continued his threat, "And another thing. It’s a rule passed down from our ancestors that women can’t go on boats. No one will take you out to sea. How exactly are you going to survive?"
The old man was trying to force the mother and daughter to leave.
"Continue."
At the old man’s command, the men started up again.
One of the men, in the midst of throwing things, was about to move to another room.
An Ning gave a look, and Jiang Xia instantly understood. He darted to a new position, ready to strike at any moment.
"Those are our things! We paid rent for several days!"
"Mom—no—"
Jiang Xia blocked a man who was about to enter their room, while An Ning flashed forward and caught Aunt Zhang, who was rushing toward a stone, intending to kill herself.
Behind them, Feng Xiaoyu’s eyes were bloodshot. Her legs went weak with fear, but she scrambled and crawled across the pebbled ground to throw her arms around Aunt Zhang.
"Mom—are you abandoning me?"
"Are you abandoning me?"
Feng Xiaoyu repeated the question over and over. Tears streamed down Aunt Zhang’s face as she hugged Feng Xiaoyu and cried, "I’m not, I’m not, Mom needs you."
"I just wanted to leave you a way out, to find a way for my Xiaoyu to survive."
Aunt Zhang felt that if a life was lost, the matter would escalate, and perhaps then someone would step in.
The mother and daughter clung to each other, weeping bitterly. It was a sight to make any witness shed a tear, a sound to break any listener’s heart.
But this didn’t include the old man in charge. He had seen situations like this many times before.
They were a fishing village. Men went out to sea to fish, and many died in accidents, often leaving people behind.
If there was an adult son, things were better.
If there was no adult son, the deceased’s fishing boat would be confiscated by the village. Nominally, they’d say it was to be returned when the family’s boy grew up, but in reality, it was never returned.
As for families with only daughters, they suffered the same fate as Feng Xiaoyu and her mother today.
They would be driven out of the fishing village.
"Village Chief... what about them?"
The man who had been stopped by Jiang Xia called out to the old man.
The old man’s drooping eyelids lifted. He looked at An Ning’s group and said, "It’s best to be cautious when you’re in someone else’s village."
Jiang Xia let out an arrogant, somewhat wicked laugh. He turned to Hua Cheng and asked, "Is this old bastard threatening me?"
The lackey, Hua Cheng, immediately replied with certainty, "Yes. It seems this old bastard is tired of living."