Rebirth Counterattack with Space

"You’re about to get married, yet why can’t you change your petty temper? Would you act like this in front of your mother-in-law and against Gu Feng too?" With Gu Feng out of sight, Ye Man’s mother slapped her heavily.

Ye Man pouted with a sense of grievance and looked at her mother mournfully, which only made her mother even more irate: "Did I say something wrong?"

How could this child, who was about to get married, still cling to such trivial matters? If she continued to throw tantrums like this and annoyed people, where would she go crying then?

In her mother’s mind, the fact that Gu Feng had concealed his identity was already a minor issue. She felt there was no need for her daughter to keep harping on it, and she now took delight in watching her son-in-law, a phrase that took on the meaning "the more she looked at her son-in-law, the more interesting he became."

Yet it was precisely this attitude of her mother that made Ye Man even more unable to accept it. For her, being forced to accept and forgive Gu Feng, on top of the betrayal of support from her father and mother, was simply unbearable.

"Exactly, men need to save face, you should coddle them. Otherwise, if you anger him and he goes out to drown his sorrows in drink, it wouldn’t be good if some other woman set her sights on him. Tsk, such a tall, handsome man with such a good family background—if you don’t watch over him closely, some wild woman out there will take advantage of it, and then you’ll have reason to cry."

Xiu Juan also sourly advised from the side and began to feel resentful toward Ye Man as well—such a high-quality man was in your hands, and you still act spoiled and don’t coax him. Instead, he’s the one humbling himself to you; it’s just not right.

She had initially thought that a man from a good family willing to compromise to marry a woman without family status or beauty would definitely be some kind of unattractive option, but reality was a blow—it really was like "casting pearls before swine."

Why couldn’t her own daughter have such luck? 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

The more Xiu Juan scrutinized the "swine" before her, the more frustrated she became. Her daughter was genuinely prettier, but the tastes of rich people were simply... beyond any sense...

The man must have some defect, maybe a hidden disease, one that doesn’t show on the surface, or perhaps the inability to father children—it was hard to say.

While Xiu Juan speculated maliciously, Gu Feng had already parked the car and came over with several bags in hand, warmly calling out to Ye Man and her mother, "Mom, Xiaoman, let’s go upstairs."

"Why did you buy so much?" Ye Man’s mother quickly reached out to take some.

"Mom, you don’t need to, I can carry it," Gu Feng tried to refuse, but there was too much, and he wasn’t agile enough. In the end, he couldn’t win against his mother-in-law, who grabbed several bags to carry.

Xiu Juan bid them farewell and the three of them walked straight back. Neither Gu Feng nor Ye Man’s mother mentioned asking Ye Man to carry anything, as if it were only natural for her to be empty-handed, which outraged Xiu Juan even more.

She couldn’t help but think of her own situation.

Back at home, she dealt with most chores and errands. Even when shopping, it was like she was the family workhorse. And then there were the times her daughter and son-in-law visited, almost always with the son-in-law empty-handed and her daughter lugging bags behind him...

Xiu Juan returned home dispiritedly. As soon as she entered, her husband, who was watching a TV drama, complained, "What time is it now? Why are you just getting back? You should have come back earlier to cook."

"Why don’t you know how to cook once in a while when you’re also home? All day, you just wait for me to wait on you. What if I were bedridden one day? Would you all go drink the north wind?"

A surge of anger suddenly rose in Xiu Juan. Even the rich young masters knew to suppress their temper to pamper their wives, so why should a man who had neither money nor ability take it for granted that he could command his wife around?

"Who curses themselves like that? If you don’t want to cook, we could have just made do with some noodles. What’s the big deal? Why make such a fuss?"

Xiu Juan’s husband saw the usually compliant, yellow-faced woman in his house suddenly roaring like a lioness and couldn’t help but curl his lips dismissively, muttering to himself before deciding to ignore her altogether.

A surge of anger trapped in her chest, Xiu Juan started slamming and banging the pots and pans around.

"What on earth are you making such a scene for? No one provoked you, what got into you?" Seeing Xiu Juan’s behavior getting out of hand and disrupting his TV watching, her husband finally couldn’t contain himself and stood up to yell.

"It’s you who provoked me!" As soon as Xiu Juan heard her husband raise his voice, her forehead heated up on impulse and she hurled an enamel vegetable bowl at him.

The world turned upside down—Xiu Juan’s husband rolled up his sleeves, rushed at her, and landed a slap across her face.

"You hit me?"

Xiu Juan was stunned, then her eyes reddened, and like an enraged bull, she charged headfirst into her husband’s chest, knocking him onto the sofa in the living room. She then sat on top of him, grabbed his hair, and began bashing his head against the armrest of the sofa, her face twisted in frenzied rage as she screamed, "I’ll teach you to hit me, I’ll teach you! I’ve served you all my life, and you dare to raise your hand against me..."

...

"Mom and Dad, what’s going on here? Can someone tell me what happened?"

At noon, Xiu Juan’s son and daughter-in-law came back to find the house in disarray and their parents’ faces—one with a swollen slap mark and the other scratched with blood trails—horrifying to behold.

They were shocked; although the old couple quarreled now and then, physical fights had never happened before, at least not in Xiu Juan’s son’s memory.

"It’s all your mom—out of nowhere, she came back picking fights and went crazy," Xiu Juan’s husband snarled, his regrets now visceral since he knew all too well how vicious her temper could be.

Back in the year they got married, he had heeded his mother’s advice: "You have to set the rules straight right after the marriage." So, he found an opportunity to slap her, which led her to chase him around the village with a kitchen knife, threatening to kill him. In desperation, he had to hide in his mother’s room, yet she dared to threaten his mother with the knife.

This incident escalated so much that it alarmed the brigade leader and the village head. Moreover, several of Xiu Juan’s tall and strong cousins from her maternal family nearly turned their house upside down. In the end, when it was discovered his own mother had been the troublemaker behind the scenes, Xiu Juan’s mother publicly cursed her so fiercely that she couldn’t hold her head up in the village for years.

Decades had passed, and over the years, he thought she had mellowed enough and was easy to command, so he had completely forgotten that past episode. If she hadn’t suddenly thrown a vegetable bowl at him today, why would he have resorted to hitting her?

But look what happened: a grown man like him couldn’t even beat a woman, and in the end, he was the one getting beaten.

"You still have the nerve to say that—it was clearly you who hit first," Xiu Juan snapped, glaring.

Xiu Juan’s husband shrank back, then said with a mix of panic and indignation, "If you hadn’t thrown that bowl first, would I have hit you?"

...