Baozi Xishi's Struggle

Chapter 141 The whole story

It turned out that Mrs. Hu and Old Man Zhou were the owners of the bakery on the street.

It’s just that the old couple are old, and now they have let Zhou Dalang run the bakery. They are only in charge of the money, so Li rarely saw them and didn’t recognize them.

Mrs. Hu had no children, only a daughter, who married a businessman and had left here with her husband a long time ago.

More than ten years ago, when it was snowing, Old Man Zhou picked up a little beggar who was freezing and starving on the street and adopted him as his son.

Old man Zhou was fine, but Mrs. Hu always treated Zhou Dalang indifferently.

When Zhou Dalang got married, Mrs. Hu started scolding and beating chickens and dogs at home.

When Zhou Dalang showed a little concern and care for Cui, Mrs. Hu said that Zhou Dalang was unfilial and had forgotten his mother after marrying a wife.

The bakery owned by Mrs. Hu and Old Man Zhou has been open on this street for more than ten years. Since it was the only bakery at the time, people nearby would buy their cakes, so business was pretty good.

Later, a market was built, and there was a pancake stall at the entrance of the market in the morning. The pancakes he made were better than his, so his business became much worse.

When Shen Yu set up the bun stall, it had an even greater impact on his family.

This morning meal was easy to come by, because there were already two or three stalls selling cakes at the entrance of the market, and not many customers would go to Mrs. Hu's bakery to buy cakes in the morning.

But the lunch meal was not good. It turned out that Shen Yu did not deliver the meals. Mrs. Hu's bakery had good business during the lunch time. Since Shen Yu started delivering meals, the number of customers has decreased by more than half, and the income is much lower than before.

Mrs. Hu was so angry that she kept cursing in the street, but there was nothing she could do.

Later in August, Shen Yu started selling small reunion cakes, and many customers around ordered Shen Yu's small reunion cakes.

Every Mid-Autumn Festival, Mrs. Hu’s bakery also makes small reunion cakes to sell.

But her fillings were ordinary, and the styles had been the same for years. This year, with the new styles of Shen Yu's cakes, customers naturally didn't want to order her cakes anymore, causing the business that used to make a steady profit every Mid-Autumn Festival to completely cease.

Mrs. Hu was so angry that she had no place to vent it. A few days ago, she scolded her daughter-in-law in front of the bakery, saying that she was a jinx and that it was because of her that her family's business was getting worse day by day.

Cui was crying in the store out of grievance, but Old Man Zhou saw that it was not right and came forward to take Mrs. Hu back home.

Many people on the street saw it.

Li was furious. As expected, Shen Yu had guessed it right. It was her prosperous business that had brought about this unexpected disaster.

Although Li knew the cause and effect, these were just the ladies' guesses, and there was no solid evidence that Mrs. Hu had framed the Shen family.

It was already late when Li came back. She thought of telling Jiang to stay at home with Yucheng and the others to wait for news.

He immediately went to He's house to wait for the captain of the police to come back and tell him what he had learned. Then he heard someone knocking on the gate and a man talking.

Dun Dun hurried to open the door and led three people in, two of whom were Captain Xing and Liu Sanjiang, but Li did not recognize the other one.

When Li saw Captain Xing, she felt like she had found her backbone and quickly told him what she had heard about Mrs. Hu's family.

Captain Xing did not let Li participate in the subsequent events. He just told them to wait for news at home and he would come again if there was any progress.

Although the family was sitting at home, their situation was not much better than Shen Yu's in the women's prison.

After reluctantly eating some food, they all sat around the small table with sad faces waiting for news. Later, it was only after Jiang's persuasion that everyone lay down in their clothes to rest.

After finally waiting until dawn, Li was the first to get up, open the gate and look out from the door. It was dead silent outside, without any movement at all.

Jiang prepared breakfast, but no one had an appetite.

At this time Liu Sanjiang came over happily and brought good news.

There was some clue in the case of Mrs. Hu, so everyone was asked to have breakfast quickly and go to the government office for the trial.

The family ate in a hurry and went to the yamen to wait, together with the chief constable and others, for the county magistrate to come to court.

When Li met the chief constable at the county government office, he realized that the man who came with him yesterday was actually the county magistrate's fourth son, whose surname was Lu and whose given name was Lang. He was the one who saved Qiqi during the Ghost Festival.

While waiting for the county magistrate, Chief Constable Xing whispered to Li about what happened yesterday when he went to Mrs. Hu's house.

It turned out that Mrs. Hu was so angry that the Shen family's small reunion cakes took away her family's business, and she didn't have the ability to make better cakes, so she came up with such a despicable trick.

After the three leading detectives learned about Mrs. Hu's background from Mrs. Li, they went to Mrs. Hu's home under the cover of night.

Mrs. Hu's house is a shop in front and a residence in the back.

From the front, the bakery was dark and there was no movement.

The captain of the police went around to the back alley, climbed over the courtyard wall, and slipped to the door of the main house. Through the crack in the door, he saw that the lights in the main house were on. Mrs. Hu and Old Man Zhou were drinking happily in front of a table full of food.

The chief detective squatted quietly by the door and heard everything that happened without any effort.

It turned out that Mrs. Hu saw Shen Yu being imprisoned during the day, and thought that the matter was confirmed and it was a sure thing. Since there was no one around at night, she celebrated triumphantly.

All I could hear was Mrs. Hu bragging, "Old man, if I hadn't come up with such an easy way, would I have been able to drive that Baozi Xishi away? After she gets out this time, she will definitely not have the face to set up a stall here. Even if she did, no one would buy. Then, our bakery's business will pick up again."

Old Man Zhou also nodded and said, "That's right, but Xiaobao suffered the consequences."

Mrs. Hu said disapprovingly, "What's the big deal? I put a small amount of medicine in it, just half a croton bean powder. Xiaobao hasn't finished eating it yet. It won't kill him. He's just a child, so having diarrhea is no big deal."

The head of the police force also had a child, and after hearing this, he couldn't bear to listen any longer, so he kicked the door open and rushed in.

The loud noise scared the proud old couple so much that they pissed their pants and thought a strong man had come. They knelt down and kowtowed.

Zhou Dalang and his wife, who were living in the side room and were busy taking care of Xiaobao, heard the noise and rushed over to check, but Captain Xing asked them to wait nearby and promised that they would not regret it after hearing it.

Then he opened the gate and let Liu Sanjiang and Lu Lang outside come in to be witnesses together.

But after being threatened twice, the timid old man Zhou confessed everything.

Mrs. Hu was not close to Zhou Dalang on weekdays, and she was always picky and sullen about her daughter-in-law.

As time went by, her little grandson wanted to hide whenever he saw her, and Mrs. Hu even began to dislike this three or four-year-old child.

This time, in order to compete for business, he set his sights on Xiaobao and showed no mercy when it came to poisoning him.

Mrs. Hu went to a traveling doctor in the countryside to buy the croton seeds. After asking for the dosage, she ground the croton seeds into fine powder. In the morning, she bought buns, broke them apart, mixed the croton powder into the red bean paste, and then put the filling back into the buns. Because the croton seeds were ground so finely and the amount added was so small, it was not noticeable at all.