Chapter 856: Asking the World What Love Is

It had to be admitted that Wang An's carpentry skills were indeed far, far superior to those of Niu Yichen and his son, Niu Dalong.

To be precise, they weren't even on the same level.

Consequently, as furniture blueprints were drawn by Wang An's hand, as long as the corresponding piece of furniture was successfully built, the father-and-son carpenters would carefully preserve the blueprint.

In Niu Yichen's words

"This is the craft that puts food on the table. Learning it is gaining a skill; besides, it'll all come in handy in the future."

It was clear that the father and son truly admired Wang An's carpentry skills.

In reality, it was indeed the case. The furniture Wang An designed was basically simple and elegant without sacrificing aesthetics; most importantly, it didn't look clunky.

Regarding the furniture, following his own ideas, Wang An didn't make the large wooden chests common in this era, but instead made vertical wardrobes.

These vertical wardrobes were absolutely much more useful than those large wooden chests; at the very least, it was more convenient to find clothes.

The dining tables weren't the square "Eight Immortals" tables common in the countryside, but rather circular kang tables and circular floor tables.

The reason for this was that Wang An's family had many members, and he found that square tables were too crowded; circular ones were more comfortable.

Wang An also made a writing desk and a matching chair for his younger brother, Wang Yi, and his two younger sisters.

Of course, only Wang Yi could make use of the writing desk now; it would likely be another two years before Wang Xiaomei and Wang Xiaoli could use them.

As for the kang-beds that Northeasterners of this era absolutely required, Wang An didn't make them in the traditional style.

Instead, he added a detachable vertical cabinet to the top of the kang-bed—the area where bedding was usually placed.

By doing this, the bedding could be put into the cabinet during the day, preventing it from spilling out and looking unsightly.

Naturally, for the sake of convenience, whether it was the vertical cabinets, kang-beds, kang tables, floor tables, or writing desks, the items in the two houses were identical.

To be precise, it was actually just a matter of slightly modifying one blueprint and directly making a new one.

It had to be said that the phrase "the lazy find a way" fit Wang An perfectly.

One evening, after seeing off the group of hired laborers, while Wang An's family was cooling off outside, Second Aunt Yao Ping suddenly arrived at Wang An's house in a hurry.

After some brief pleasantries, Yao Ping, with a somewhat grim expression, shared some news with Wang An's family.

The news concerned this person, Li Xiuyu.

More accurately, it was about Li Xiuyu's family.

During this period, for the sake of Wang Li's marriage, Wang Daliang and his wife had asked many people to investigate Li Xiuyu's family.

They had indeed gathered quite a bit of information, but most of it was useless—just trivial family gossip.

Today, however, Wang Daliang and his wife had finally unearthed a very important piece of news.

Namely, how Li Xiuyu's family had ended up with a high-interest debt.

Supposedly, Li Xiuyu's father was named Li Guangcun. Whenever he had free time, he loved to gamble; simply put, he liked playing for money.

However, he had always played for small stakes, so no one took it seriously.

A while back, while playing Pai Gow with some people in the township, for some reason he suddenly got carried away. He started betting bigger and bigger, and in a blur, he borrowed high-interest loans from a loan shark.

It was said that he only borrowed 300 at first, but loan sharking calculates interest by the day, and more importantly, the interest compounds.

This led to a situation where, although Li Guangcun had borrowed from all his relatives and friends, he still couldn't plug this massive hole.

The reason Yao Ping's expression was grim wasn't because of the debt itself, but rather something related to it.

Because now, if one wanted to marry Li Xiuyu, the bride price was no longer 500 yuan, but had become 600 yuan.

In other words, in just a few days, the bride price had damn well gone up.

The reason for the price hike was that the high-interest loan had compounded up to 600 yuan.

Fortunately, Wang Li didn't mind the 600 yuan, and Yao Ping and her husband weren't short of that amount either.

So, Yao Ping and her husband had arranged a matchmaker, intending to set a date after a meeting.

Unfortunately, things always have a way of taking an unexpected turn.

The turn was this: when the loan shark went to Li Guangcun's house to collect the debt, he damn well took a liking to Li Xiuyu as well. He said that either the money be paid back, or Li Xiuyu would be used to settle the debt.

With things reaching this point, even the matchmaker didn't dare to speak up.

Mainly, as ordinary folk, who would dare to offend a loan shark for no reason?

Because it was common knowledge that, regardless of the era, loan sharks had connections in both the legal and illegal worlds.

The current situation was that Yao Ping and her husband were in a dilemma, and Wang Li was distressed.

To be honest, after hearing all this, Wang An was completely stunned.

The world truly is full of wonders! Such a bizarre thing could actually happen!

After Second Aunt Yao Ping finished speaking, Liu Guilan frowned and said in surprise

"This matter... there's no point in coming to us for this, right?"

After Liu Guilan spoke, Mu Xueqing and Wang Dazhu also looked at Yao Ping with confused expressions.

Clearly, these two also didn't know what Yao Ping's purpose was in telling them this.

It wasn't surprising that the three of them didn't understand; a normal person probably wouldn't. This was someone else's business, and it was in another village. As people from an outside village, there wasn't much they could do; mainly, there was no way to get involved!

However, Wang An had a vague guess in his heart.

Second Aunt Yao Ping's purpose was nothing more than wanting him and his family to help persuade Wang Li to give up, or perhaps she wanted him to deal with those loan sharks.

Of course, the former was more likely.

As for the latter, given Second Aunt Yao Ping's intellect, she shouldn't have such a foolish idea.

Sure enough, Yao Ping glanced at Wang Dazhu and the others, and finally looked at Wang An and said

"Xiao An, why don't you go to my house and persuade Xiao Li? Tell him not to hang himself from a single tree. I don't know why this boy is so stubborn, insisting on liking this Li Xiuyu."

As Second Aunt Yao Ping finished speaking, a phrase suddenly popped into Wang An's head—a very popular one

"What is love, that people are willing to pledge their lives to it?"

However, it was very awkward that this phrase could only be applied to Wang Li, because that Li Xiuyu didn't seem to like Wang Li at all!

Wang An blinked rapidly, looked at Second Aunt Yao Ping, and said helplessly

"Second Aunt, it's not that I won't go, but how am I supposed to persuade him in a situation like this? Should I go over there and give him a beating instead?"

(End of Chapter)