Chapter 220: Eviction
Xu Shaoyin turned her gaze toward Ningxiang, Helu, and Sister-in-law Cen.
Though the three of them had not spoken, their tear-filled eyes and their utterly helpless, hopeless expressions already laid the situation bare.
“None of you… can go home either?”
Sister-in-law Cen let out a bitter laugh. “My own child refuses to recognize me. Even though I told him I only washed clothes at Feiyue Pavilion, he still thinks my reputation is shameful and says it will affect his studies for the official examinations.”
“But his tuition, his paper and brushes, and even the money for his future examinations—which part of it wasn’t wrung out of me washing clothes until my hands bled?”
Sister-in-law Cen could not believe that the child she had painstakingly raised had stabbed her where it hurt most.
Ningxiang and Helu felt the same way. “We belong to Feiyue Pavilion. Now, everyone outside says Feiyue Pavilion forced innocent girls into prostitution, and that not a single woman inside is clean…”
Shaoyin’s face grew sorrowful and solemn.
The wet nurse brought over some food and had Fan Shishi and the others eat first.
Inside the room, Xu Shaoyin discussed repossessing the rented portions of the house with her wet nurse and Butler Chen.
The wet nurse was still a bit hesitant. “Yinyin, even though you’ve escaped that quagmire, you don’t have a job anymore. If we take back the rooms, not only will we lose the rental income we need to get by, but we’ll also have to pay a massive fee for breaking the lease.”
The butler was equally troubled. “Yinyin, taking them in for a short time is easy, but with so many people, just feeding them and giving them a place to sleep will be a struggle. At my age, I can’t hold out much longer. In the future… how will you bear the burden?”
The wet nurse and the butler were consumed by worry.
They knew things were difficult for the people outside, but their own lives weren’t that easy either.
Old Chen especially was now nearing seventy years old.
As the saying goes, since ancient times, reaching seventy has been a rarity. If it weren’t for the fact that the young miss had no one else to look after her, a man of his age would have retired to the countryside long ago.
Currently, the three people living in the residence had to rely on his family in the countryside to help supplement their rice and grain supply.
Adding four more people… how could they possibly feed them all!
At his advanced age, he could pass away at any moment. Once he was gone, how would Shaoyin face the world?
Both the wet nurse and the butler were deeply anxious.
But Xu Shaoyin had made up her mind. Now that Feiyue Pavilion was shut down, many people had nowhere left to go.
To say nothing of those who had signed deeds of sale, even those who had signed labor contracts would likely find it hard to secure a place to stay anytime soon.
Many of those families had sent their daughters to Feiyue Pavilion in the first place without ever intending to let them come back.
Xu Shaoyin took out the glass cups and scented soap that the young Manor Owner had given her. After some thought, she took the soap and melted it down over a small oil lamp with the wet nurse.
“Nurse, Butler Chen, I did not kill Bo Ren, yet Bo Ren died because of me. Although this matter isn’t my fault, my lawsuit against Manager Yue stripped them of their shelter. I cannot act as though this has nothing to do with me.”
Xu Shaoyin carefully stirred the soap in the small ceramic pot to help it melt, while speaking to her wet nurse: “Furthermore, I swore an oath. I even received aid from an immortal and brought back these precious goods. How can I just sit by and watch without doing anything?”
The wet nurse let out a sigh and spoke no further.
She exchanged a glance with Butler Chen, and they both understood each other’s thoughts.
In truth, before the young miss went to court to report the crime, they had already discussed it. The young miss was nineteen now; if she were married, she would already be a young matriarch.
Even though there were only the three of them left in the residence now, looking at the young miss’s words and actions in the courtroom, they knew she was a person of firm resolve.
It had been this way for all these years.
Although the young miss was tender in age and appeared delicate, the one who made the decisions in this residence had always been her.
They had offered their words of caution. Since the young miss still insisted on giving up her wealth to help those people, they would simply follow her orders.
Leaving the wet nurse behind to melt the soap, Shaoyin took Butler Chen with her to the front courtyard, intending to negotiate with the tenants about terminating the lease.
However, the moment they stepped out, they ran headfirst into a fierce, aggressive crowd of tenants.
The two courtyards, along with the east and west wing rooms, were rented out to a total of six households.
At this moment, the heads of all six households were present. They barged directly into the rear courtyard where Shaoyin, the butler, and the wet nurse resided, throwing down their lease documents.
“We are here today to break the lease!”
“We only just found out that your family’s young miss was actually a dancing girl at Feiyue Pavilion! And you claimed you used to be a distinguished family—bah! What daughter of a distinguished family would ever go become a dancing girl!”
“Good heavens! Just today, someone rushed to the entrance of our courtyard, snooping around and saying that since they saw the Xu family miss’s arms yesterday, maybe they could catch a glimpse of her legs today!”
The tenants exaggerated to the absolute limit. “We wouldn’t dare rent your courtyards anymore! Paying rent every month just to have people come to our door to humiliate us—we are stopping the lease! Unless you lower the…”
Lower what?
They didn’t get to finish.
Because Xu Shaoyin had already spoken, her voice cold: “Fine. Since you no longer wish to rent, then don’t rent!”
“However, the lease agreement is still active. If you choose to stop renting, it is a breach of contract on your part, and you must compensate me with three months’ rent.”
In truth, three months’ rent didn’t amount to much.
Years ago, Xu Shaoyin had been desperate to repay the debts. In order to rent the house out quickly, she had set the rent very low to begin with.
The tenants had also used the violent deaths of the Master and Mistress as an excuse to drive the price down even further.
Xu Shaoyin had felt indignant, but under the circumstances back then, she had been powerless to resist. She could only counter by requiring them to pay three years’ rent all at once, accepting the low price in exchange.
Now, before the three years were up, the tenants were the ones initiating the lease termination.
Xu Shaoyin knew that not a single word coming out of their mouths was true.
Years ago, her family’s case had been known to everyone in Jiangnan, and plenty of people knew she had gone to Feiyue Pavilion as a dancing girl to pay off the debts.
Yet now, they wanted to use her self-defense in court yesterday to pressure her into lowering the price. Xu Shaoyin sneered in her heart.
Xu Shaoyin instructed the butler to pick up the leases from the ground, agreeing to the termination immediately on the spot.
The tenants, however, were stunned.
The leader quickly said, “Miss Xu, that’s not how it works. We’ve lived here for so long, and the main thing… the main thing is that your reputation makes things very difficult for us!”
“Exactly! We’ve lived here for so long, and for you to just kick us out the moment you say so is far too unrighteous!”
Xu Shaoyin’s voice remained gentle, but her attitude did not shift in the slightest.
“Everyone heard it. You all barged in as a group of over a dozen people, saying you wanted to break the lease. I agreed to it—isn’t that exactly what you wanted? Why are you going back on your word instead?”
Xu Shaoyin looked at the tenants. “You all know full well that in Jiangnan, in this area, your rent couldn’t even secure a tenth of a property like this manor.”
“In the past, when you forced the price down, I said nothing. But now that I am in difficulty, you still come to my door to hit me while I am down—is this your definition of righteousness?”
