dognovel Chapter 144 Mengmeng's Grievance
Chapter 144 Mengmeng's Grievance
Looking at the group of vendors struggling to make a living under the shed, barely daring to breathe, Chen Feng couldn't help but let out a long sigh.
His face revealed helplessness and dejection.
He understood perfectly.
This group of insignificant people with no background or power can only go with the flow. Yesterday, Su Ang was powerful, so they became accomplices in the stockout.
But his phone call alarmed the Beijing elite circle, and they became as anxious and fearful as they are now, turning what was originally a purely ordinary business transaction into a nauseatingly sophisticated social interaction.
He didn't hate them, nor would he hold a grudge against them, but he genuinely disliked the somewhat suffocating atmosphere.
"Boss Wang, there's no need for that."
Chen Feng pulled out a neat stack of banknotes from his pocket, his face darkening. He grabbed two hundred yuan and placed it on the cold cutting board.
"I run a business, so what happened yesterday is in the past."
Today I don't want anything fancy, just the usual ordinary white pigs. At the market price.
Chen Feng left with a single sentence, ignoring the complex gazes that were still secretly peeking in his direction. He took the goods, stepped onto the plastic mat covered with scraps of vegetables and blood, and headed towards the deepest part of the market.
Next up are the ingredients they need for cooking today.
Today he plans to make a dish of braised loach with red peppers. In addition to loach and pork, he also needs garlic, purple ginger, and red chili peppers. None of them can be missing.
Chen Feng took the lead and walked ahead, his face no longer showing any emotion.
Su Chen and Xing Ruo followed closely behind, each carrying a heavy woven bag. Meanwhile, in Chen Feng's right arm, Mengmeng was clinging tightly to her father's neck with her chubby little hands.
The little girl's big, dark eyes glanced timidly at the stall owners around her before she quickly buried her delicate face in Chen Feng's gray short-sleeved shirt collar.
"Old Li, thirty catties of purple-skinned garlic, no need to round down, it's one hundred and twenty in total, right?"
Chen Feng stopped in front of a dry goods stall at the very end. Before the old man, who was trembling with fear, could even speak, he skillfully pulled his phone out of his pocket and quickly "beeped" the slightly greasy QR code.
"Alipay payment received, 120 yuan!!"
A crisp electronic notification sound rang out in front of the somewhat quiet stall.
"Boss Chen... this, how can I accept your money? My wife was being unreasonable yesterday, I..." Old Li's wrinkled face was covered in cold sweat, and he frantically wiped his face with his hands on his coarse apron.
"It's the going rate. Take it."
Chen Feng tossed out two words, picked up the bag of garlic with one hand, looked at it again, turned around and led a few people through the mud and water towards the bread truck outside the greenhouse.
The entire process, from start to finish, took a full twenty minutes.
Wherever the four of them passed, the once noisy and sweltering ground floor of the greenhouse was automatically cleared by the crowd, creating a two-meter-wide passage.
Those vendors who usually loved to joke loudly with Chen Feng over a penny or two, and who would shout and laugh with the old neighbors.
At this moment, they stood stiffly behind their own counters, their hands neatly placed on the sides of their trouser seams. Looking at Chen Feng, their eyes held nothing but unfathomable fear and awe.
No one dared to come up to Chen Feng and make a joke anymore, and no one dared to pat Chen Feng on the shoulder and call him "Boss Chen".
"Clang!!"
Chen Feng gently placed Mengmeng, whom he was holding, on the passenger seat, and then stepped into the car himself.
Su Chen and Xing Ruo stacked several heavy bags of goods in the trunk, and then somewhat blankly climbed into the back seat.
"Buzz—!!"
The car let out a deep growl, turned around, and sped off towards the old street.
The atmosphere in the carriage became heavy.
Outside, the water churned up by the wheels made a sharp "splashing" sound, but inside the carriage, it was so quiet that even the sound of everyone breathing could be clearly heard.
"dad……"
Sitting in the passenger seat, Mengmeng held onto her white dress with her two chubby little hands.
The little girl pouted in grievance, her childish voice tinged with a hoarseness as if she were about to cry.
"Mengmeng doesn't like this... Mengmeng doesn't like the greenhouse at all today."
Chen Feng's right hand tightened slightly on the steering wheel, but he didn't turn his head: "What's wrong with Mengmeng?"
Mengmeng leaned uncomfortably against Chen Feng's elbow, her small eyes staring at the rapidly receding green belt outside the window. Her voice was soft, revealing a sense of loss that shouldn't be present at her age.
"When we used to go to buy meat, Uncle Wang would always give Mengmeng a big bone to gnaw on and would pat Mengmeng's little head."
Grandma Li would give Mengmeng some really sweet red dates to eat... but today, they all seemed so afraid of their father.
The way they looked at their father was like they were looking at a man-eating demon king from an animated film... Dad isn't a demon king, Dad is the best dad, why are they doing this to him, sob sob..."
Hearing her daughter's aggrieved cry, Xingruo, sitting in the back seat, felt her eyes inexplicably well up with tears and turned her head to look out the window with heartache.
Su Chen scratched his frizzy hair in frustration.
He knew in his heart that this was all because his older brother, Su Ang, had used such underhanded capital tactics to completely ruin Brother Chen's peaceful, ordinary life.
Chen Feng gently rubbed his daughter's slightly fluffy soft hair twice with his right hand, his voice unusually revealing a trace of helplessness and bewilderment.
"Be good, Mengmeng."
Chen Feng's voice was extremely low and steady, as if he were speaking to himself, or as if he were speaking to everyone in the carriage.
"Today's dish of braised loach with red peppers on Changjie Street, when we get back to the old street, we'll make it properly and authentically."
"From now on... from now on, those big bosses and small vendors will see us living our lives on the street like ordinary people every day. As time goes by, their prejudices will fade, and they will naturally revert to their old ways."
When he said those words, he himself had absolutely no confidence.
He understood perfectly what these small vendors, who had spent their entire lives struggling at the bottom of society, were thinking.
In this world, once even the slightest trace of your powerful facade and terrifying background is revealed, those originally pure friendships will be shattered in the face of the class divide.
All he can do is continue to tend to the hearth, just like he is now.
The bread truck continued speeding along in the somewhat gloomy weather.
Throughout the journey, none of the four people in the carriage uttered another word.
Only the baskets of live loaches, thrashing about and covered in slime, made a cold, rustling sound under the dimly lit back seat, carrying the heavy, oppressive atmosphere all the way back to the deepest part of the old street.