A hundred flavors of life

Chapter 1414 Hua Twelve: I can't even think about it! (Please subscribe!)
"Catch up with America! What are you saying!"

Zhuang Chaoying immediately realized that things had gone wrong; Gan Mei's words were too hurtful, and she quickly spoke up to stop him.

But it was too late. Zhuang Hualin's eyes went from shock to disappointment. She thought that she had sacrificed for her family and that her parents and younger brother would remember her kindness. But the words that came out of her brother's mouth were a vicious blow to her head, like a knife stuck in her heart.

At this moment, Zhuang Hualin's entire body trembled. He pointed at Zhuang Ganmei and questioned her in a voice trembling with tears:

"Ganmei, what did you say? Say it again!"

Seeing the situation spiraling out of control, Grandpa Zhuang slammed his hand on the table:
"Stop arguing! I want to listen to the radio!"

His meaning was clear: that's enough, stop talking.

But these words were so hurtful to Zhuang Hualin, causing her so much pain. Her parents' indifferent expressions became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

She suddenly stepped forward, grabbed the radio on the table, and slammed it to the ground!

"Snap—crash—"

The radio crashed to the ground, its casing shattered, and its parts scattered everywhere.

Everyone was stunned.

That radio was Grandpa Zhuang's treasure. Although it wasn't a high-end item, it was still one of the major household items in those days.

"You...you..." Grandpa Zhuang pointed at Zhuang Hualin, his fingers trembling, too angry to speak.

Grandma Zhuang screamed, "Hua Lin, have you gone mad?!"

Zhuang Ganmei jumped up as well: "Second sister, you've gone too far!"

Grandpa Zhuang caught his breath, stood up, and raised his hand to slap his daughter.

Zhuang Chaoying reacted quickly and stopped him, saying, "Dad! Calm down!"

Huang Ling quickly blocked Grandma Zhuang's way.

But no one expected that Zhuang Ganmei, the younger brother, would actually dare to make a move. He went around the table, raised his hand, and slapped Zhuang Hualin!
Just as the slap was about to land on Zhuang Hualin's face, a small figure rushed over.

Hua Shier kicked Zhuang Ganmei in the groin!

"Ah!" Zhuang Ganmei screamed, clutching her groin and collapsing to the ground, her face contorted in pain.

Hua Shier reached out and poked him, and the "Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl" technique pierced his eyes. Zhuang Ganmei then went from covering his groin to covering his eyes, screaming in agony.

It wasn't that Hua Shier was too ruthless; it's just that he'd gotten so used to kicking the groin and gouging the eyes that he'd become quite adept at it. Zhuang Ganmei was just unlucky, but for now, compared to his aunt's family in the last world, this uncle was quite fortunate.

Zhao Huohua: Comrade Ganmei, you've suffered over a hundred stab wounds, all minor injuries.

Grandpa Zhuang and Grandma Zhuang were very worried when they saw their youngest son being kicked in the groin and gouged in the eye.

"Ganmei, are you alright? Zhuang Hualin, look at the fine son you raised!"

After beating the man, Hua Shier turned and ran out, then ran to the kitchen on the other side of the yard, grabbed a cleaver, and rushed back.

He held up a kitchen knife, pointed it at the Zhuang family, and his voice was as cold as ice:

"If anyone dares to lay a finger on my mother, I'll chop them off!"

He wasn't bluffing. Although the body was only eleven years old, the serious expression and the gleaming kitchen knife sent chills down the spines of all the adults.

Zhuang Hualin was terrified and quickly pulled his son away: "Pengfei! Put the knife down!"

"Mom, don't worry."

Hua Shier remained motionless, his eyes fixed on the Zhuang family:
"I'm telling you this right now: if anyone ever bullies my mom again, I'll fight them to the death!"

He just wants to make a big scene, the bigger the better.

It would be best to completely sever ties between Zhuang Hualin and her extremely biased family.

When Grandpa Zhuang saw that the boy had actually used a knife, he finally became somewhat afraid.

He roared at Zhuang Hualin:
"Hua Lin! Your son's going to fight his own father! I've wasted my time raising you!"

Zhuang Hualin was in tears. Looking at the mess on the ground, her younger brother rolling on the floor in pain, and her parents trembling with anger, the last bit of hope she had for her family shattered completely.

Her voice was hoarse: "Since there's no place for us, mother and child, in this house, then let's leave!"

Zhuang Hualin was about to leave with Hua Shier when, at that moment, his second aunt, who had been keeping a low profile and hadn't said much, finally spoke up after helping her husband up:

"You broke the radio, you have to pay for it!"

Zhuang Ganmei, who had been yelling just moments before, now stared with her eyes red and tearful from being poked, enduring the pain in her groin, and cried out as well:
"Yes, we have to pay compensation!"

Zhuang Chaoying looked at her younger brother and sister-in-law with a gloomy expression, while her grandparents remained silent.

Zhuang Hualin smiled sadly, took out fifty yuan from his pocket, and his beautiful wife immediately said:

Fifty is not enough!

Zhuang Hualin stepped forward and slammed the money on the table: "It's just fifty yuan, take it or leave it!"

She put the money on the table and pulled Hua Shier to leave.

Hua Shier broke free from her hand: "Wait, if we lose money, then the radio is ours."

As he spoke, he squatted down and picked up the broken radio parts from the ground, one by one, and put them in his clothes.

Zhuang Ganmei shouted, "What do you think you're doing? Don't take it!"

Hua Shier shouted, "Then give back the fifty yuan!"

This time, no one stopped them. After all, the radio was already broken, and fifty yuan was better than nothing.

Zhuang Hualin pulled Hua Shier away, and Zhuang Chaoying and Huang Ling sighed as they looked at the mess and followed them out.

By the time we got back to Textile Lane 3, it was already dark.

Zhuang Hualin broke down emotionally and kept crying. Huang Ling accompanied her and booked a room at the guesthouse at the alley entrance for her to stay for the night and calm down.

Hua Shier then carried the pile of radio parts back to the farmhouse.

Zhuang Chaoying looked at what he was holding and smiled bitterly:
"Pengfei, it's so badly damaged, it can't be repaired. I'll take it to the scrap yard tomorrow and see if I can sell it for some money."

"Uncle, let me see if I can fix it," Hua Twelve said.

"You can fix it?" Zhuang Chaoying asked skeptically. "This is a radio, a precision device."

Hua Shier laughed: "Why not give it a try? It doesn't cost any money, and what if it works!"

Actually, he had already checked and found that the fallen parts were not important; things like circuit boards and diodes were not damaged.

Zhuang Chaoying thought her nephew was right, so she instructed him:

"Then be careful not to hurt yourself!"

Zhuang Tunan, Zhuang Xiaoting, and Lin Dongzhe were reading a storybook at the Lin family's house when they heard the commotion and ran out. Seeing that Hua Shier needed to fix the radio, they all curiously gathered around.

Lin Dongzhe asked, "Brother Pengfei, where did this radio come from? How did it get so broken?"

"We'll talk about that later. Can I borrow Uncle Lin's tools for now? I'll return them to you in a bit!"

Lin Wufeng was an engineer at the transformer factory and had a lot of tools at home. Lin Dongzhe hurriedly went back and laboriously brought out a black leather bag, which was full of tools used for maintenance.

Hua Shier took out the appropriate tools and started working on it. After getting the components almost done, he got up and ran to the nearby scrap metal recycling station. He haggled with the old man there for a long time and finally got a one-meter square board.

Of course, the board wasn't of good quality either, otherwise I wouldn't have given it to him. There were several knots in the wood and cracks in it.

After Hua Shier took the board home, he asked Zhuang Tunan to borrow carpentry tools such as a plane and saw from Wu Shanshan's house. Using this broken board, he repaired the casing of the rotten radio.

Two hours later, the previously dilapidated radio was completely transformed, except for a few 'patches'. Of course, the wooden casing didn't look very nice, but it was practical.

Hua Shier carried the radio into the house, plugged it in, and turned on the power.

"Sizzle. Sizzle."

After a burst of static, clear sound came through the radio:
"XX Radio Station, this is newspaper summary time."

Fixed it!
It's really fixed!
The onlookers were incredibly excited.

"Amazing! It's really fixed!"

Zhuang Chaoying looked at the radio that had "come back to life," then at her nephew, and was so shocked that she couldn't speak.

Hua Shier wiped the sweat from his forehead and smiled, "Uncle, we'll have a radio to listen to at home from now on."

Zhuang Chaoying finally snapped out of her shock and asked curiously, "Pengfei, who did you learn this skill from?"

Hua Shier said he had once read a book on repairing radios and remembered some of the simple things. Since the main parts of the radio were not damaged, he gave it a try and unexpectedly succeeded in fixing it.

Zhuang Chaoying nodded, thinking to herself that this was more like it, and then encouraged her:

"This is already very good. Tu Nan and Xiao Ting, you both need to learn from Peng Fei. When you study, you should use your brain more, think more, and combine it with practice. Don't just study by rote!" Zhuang Tu Nan and Zhuang Xiao Ting nodded repeatedly, but when they looked at Hua Shier, they couldn't help but show a resentful look, as if to say, "You are the 'role model'!"

That wasn't the end of it. When Lin Wufeng and Song Ying returned that evening, the children told them what had happened. Even Lin Wufeng, the engineer, was amazed. Even if they had read repair books, being able to operate the equipment themselves required exceptional hands-on skills.

Hua Shier thus became the "other people's child" that the adults in the alley talked about.

Zhuang Hualin stayed at the guesthouse for one night, and his emotions calmed down a bit the next day.

Zhuang Chaoying accompanied her to complete the household registration procedures for Hua Shier.

After completing the formalities, Zhuang Hualin was about to return to Guizhou. Before leaving, she took Huang Ling's hand at the train station and stuffed a handkerchief into her hand.

"Sister-in-law, there are three hundred yuan in here. It's Pengfei's living expenses for a year."

Now that Hua Shier has local household registration, he has access to grain supplies and no longer needs to buy expensive grains. The monthly living expenses of more than 20 yuan for the children are more than enough.

Huang Ling pushed it back: "Hua Lin, what are you doing? Peng Fei is our child, he's in our family. You don't need to."

"Sister-in-law, you must accept this."

Zhuang Hualin insisted, "I'll feel bad if you don't accept it. Pengfei has already caused you so much trouble."

After much back and forth, Huang Ling finally had no choice but to accept it.

Zhuang Hualin then pulled Hua Shier aside and repeatedly gave her instructions:

"Pengfei, you must listen to your uncle and aunt, study hard, and get along well with Tunan and Xiaoting. Mom is in Guizhou, far away, and can't take care of you, so you must be sensible."

As she finished speaking, she hugged her son tightly, tears streaming down her face.

Hua Twelve was speechless:
"Don't make it sound like a life-or-death situation. You just wanted me to stay in Suzhou, right? Now that your wish has come true, shouldn't you be happy? Just wait until your son Pengfei becomes successful and rises to prominence, then you can bring them all to Suzhou to enjoy a life of luxury!"

Zhuang Hualin was both amused and exasperated by Hua Shier's words, and all the sadness she felt from being separated from her son vanished.

He released Hua Shier and punched him hard on the shoulder:

"You brat, you're so happy to be away from home and never see your dad and me again!"

"Fine, I'll be heartbroken then. I won't stay. Can I go back to Guizhou with you?"

Zhuang Hualin, annoyed, was about to hit him again:
"Hurry up and go, are you trying to upset me? Behave yourself and don't be naughty!"

Zhuang Chaoying and Huang Ling watched the interaction between the mother and son and couldn't help but laugh.

From that day on, Huashier officially settled in Suzhou.

The day after Zhuang Hualin left, Zhuang Ganmei fell while riding her bicycle to work and broke her leg. It was unbelievable that she could fall on flat ground and break such a serious leg.

Hua Shier: Don't make wild guesses without any evidence!

Just kidding. That day, Zhuang Ganmei tried to hit Zhuang Hualin right in front of Hua Shier. Although he didn't actually hit him, he couldn't just let him suffer a little. That wouldn't be Hua Shier's style.

The radio that Hua Shier repaired brought about some subtle changes in the courtyards of the Zhuang and Lin families.

Every day at noon, children from the alley, carrying their small bowls of rice, would flock into the Zhuang family's courtyard.

On the repaired radio, Liu Lanfang's "The Story of Yue Fei" was in full swing. The storyteller's powerful voice came through the wooden casing, carrying a slight buzzing echo, which created a unique kind of liveliness.

"Brother Pengfei, can Yue Fei's spear really pierce through iron armor?" Lin Dongzhe asked, shoveling rice into his mouth, his eyes glued to the radio.

Hua Shier swallowed the stir-fried vegetables in his mouth and casually said, "The storytelling exaggerated it, but the Yue Family Spear is indeed powerful."

"You've seen it before?" Zhuang Tunan asked curiously.

"I read it in a book," Hua Shier said naturally. "I'll take you to the library later; they have all kinds of books there."

The children nodded, seemingly understanding, though they didn't know what a library looked like yet. But Pengfei was always right.

The adults' attitudes were more subtle.

First, the women in the alley gathered to listen to Pingtan (a type of storytelling and ballad singing in Suzhou), because Suzhou women love this kind of melodious tune in their bones.

Huang Ling and Song Ying sat side by side on small stools, knitting in their hands and listening to "The Legend of the White Snake." They would occasionally exchange a smile, and the gentle charm of the Suzhou water town flowed quietly in their soft Wu dialect.

Later, somehow, the story of Hua Twelve "drawing a knife to protect his mother" spread throughout the alley.

The story got distorted. Some said that Hua Shier chased his uncle half a street with a kitchen knife, while others said that he split the radio in two without even blinking.

In short, the adults in the alley looked at the child from Guizhou with a different, more indescribable look in their eyes. It wasn't disgust, but rather a cautious scrutiny.

Wu Shanshan once secretly asked Zhuang Xiaoting, "Xiaoting, is Pengfei really that fierce?"

Zhuang Xiaoting blinked and thought about it seriously: "Brother Pengfei isn't fierce, he's doing this to protect Auntie."

That's what they say, but the children are different after all.

He used to be called "Brother Pengfei" because he admired his skill in playing marbles and shuttlecock. Now, when people call him "Brother Pengfei," there's a hint of cautious reverence in their voices.

Even the most mischievous Lin Dongzhe became much more well-behaved in front of Hua Shier.

Wu Shanshan was a little different; she always liked to ask Zhuang Xiaoting about Hua Shier.

Hua Shier observed these changes but didn't bother to pay attention. Whether they feared him or respected him, he didn't care much; he simply responded to each in his own way.

Huang Ling's anemia has improved, and her complexion is gradually becoming rosy again, but Hua Shier knows that just relying on the little bit of water and soup at each meal is not enough.

His aunt and uncle kept a close watch on him, so he couldn't catch fish often. One day, Hua Shier made an excuse to go out and find someone to play chess with. As a result, he took a bus for an hour to Mudu Town and caught two rabbits at the foot of Lingyan Mountain.

When they returned to the courtyard, they surprised both the Zhuang and Lin families.

Zhuang Chaoying only found out after asking that Hua Shier had driven more than ten kilometers on this trip. She was so angry that she almost beat him up, but Huang Ling stopped her.

"Super Hero! What are you doing!"

"What am I doing? I'm asking him what he's doing!" Zhuang Chaoying was so angry that her face turned red and her neck bulged. "He dared to take a car all the way over ten miles by himself, and even dared to go into the mountains. This kid is too bold!"

Hua Shier corrected, "I didn't go into the mountains!"

Zhuang Chaoying angrily retorted, "How dare you say that!"

Huang Ling pulled Hua Shier behind her, her voice urgent: "Don't yell, let the child finish speaking."

Hua Shier peeked out from behind Huang Ling and whispered, "Auntie, I just thought that rabbits can supplement your protein intake, which is good for your health."

In one sentence, Huang Ling's eyes immediately reddened, Zhuang Chaoying's anger subsided, and Song Ying quickly offered a few words of comfort.

Huang Ling gently rubbed Hua Shier's head and said in a soft but serious voice:
"Pengfei, your aunt knows you're a good boy, but you have to promise me you won't do it again, understand? If you go and catch fish or rabbits again, even if you bring them back, your aunt won't eat them!"

Seeing Huang Ling's unusual seriousness towards him, Hua Shier knew that his aunt was serious this time, so he had no choice but to nod in agreement.

That evening, Hua Shier was going to kill a rabbit to show off his skills. Everyone had seen him cook fish before, so they weren't surprised. But then Zhuang Xiaoting cried and stopped him, saying that rabbits are so cute, please don't eat them.

Hua Shier smiled and agreed, then gave Lin Dongzhe a wink. The latter, quick-witted as ever, immediately understood and made an excuse to take Zhuang Xiaoting out to play.

Then Hua Shier started to take action, killing one rabbit and tying the other with a rope, planning to raise it in a wooden cage later.

He processed the slaughtered rabbit meat and then added green peppers to make stir-fried rabbit cubes.

Rabbit heads are also used to make braised rabbit heads, a dish found in Shandong cuisine.

However, he added potato chunks and eggs to the braised rabbit head dish, and the taste was absolutely amazing.

Zhuang Chaoying and Huang Ling, along with Lin Wufeng and Song Ying, were stunned watching Hua Shier cook; his skills were far superior to theirs.

Zhuang Tunan's mouth watered as he looked at it, and he suggested:
"Mom and Dad, I think if Pengfei cooks at home in the future, I'll be able to eat two more bowls of rice."

Seeing the expectant look in her son's eyes, Huang Ling resolutely refused:

"No way, Pengfei is so young. There's no reason for him to cook. Besides, it's enough for him to eat his fill. Why are you eating so much? What if we don't have enough food and we go hungry for the rest of the month?"

Zhuang Tunan then gave an embarrassed smile and stopped mentioning the matter of having Hua Shier cook.

When Zhuang Xiaoting returned, she noticed that one of the rabbits was missing and anxiously asked where it had gone.

Just as everyone was trying to trick her, Lin Dongzhe saw the rabbit meat that Hua Shier had brought to the table, his eyes lit up, and he blurted out:

"Wow, rabbit smells so good!"

This time, Zhuang Xiaoting broke down completely and burst into tears, and no one could comfort her.

Hua Shier took a piece of rabbit meat, blew on it to cool it down, and then stuffed it directly into Zhuang Xiaoting's mouth, which was wide open from crying.

Two seconds later, the crying stopped. Zhuang Xiaoting chewed something, then suddenly burst into laughter through her tears.
"The bunny is so delicious!"

September arrived in the blink of an eye, and schools across the country were starting the new semester. Hua Shier, under Zhuang Chaoying's arrangement, entered the affiliated primary school of the cotton mill.

Lin Dongzhe and Zhuang Xiaoting, after an exam, were given a special opportunity to skip a grade due to their excellent academic performance, and ended up being classmates with Hua Shier.

Thank you to 08a and Little Tiger of the Demon Realm for the donations, and thank you to all the brothers who voted with monthly tickets and recommendation tickets. Thank you so much!