Chapter 752

Xu Xuedie was furious too, almost falling over from the injustice of it.

She rushed to explain it wasn’t like that—there were no groceries at home, and she was just about to go buy some.

After hanging up, her expression darkened immediately. She stomped into the kitchen, slamming pots and pans around, grumbling and cursing indirectly as she cooked noodles for Mother Jiang .

She made a bowl of plain noodle soup—and dumped nearly half a bag of salt into it.

If Mother Jiang could see what she herself had been like in her younger days, she would’ve realized just how much Xu Xuedie’s kitchen tantrum mirrored her own behavior back then.

Mother Jiang took one bite of the noodles and nearly choked on the salt. She immediately called Jiang Song again, crying, “If you didn’t want us to come, just say so!”

By the end, she wasn’t even crying to Jiang Song—she turned and directly yelled at Xu Xuedie, “I don’t believe you cook your own noodles with this much salt!”

Mother Jiang had always been fiery and never tolerated being wronged. Her years of silence weren’t because her temper changed, but because those she once could scold had grown into people she could no longer afford to offend.

Jiang Song, who was on his way to handle some business, immediately got a headache from the call. He told the taxi driver to turn around and head back.

When Xu Xuedie realized that the old crone had tattled again, she rushed over to grab the bowl from Mother Jiang, wanting to dump the noodles and cook a fresh batch. But how could Mother Jiang  let her?

Even in her younger days, she’d been tall, strong, and built solidly. She’d never lost a fight growing up. Now, though she was past 50, she was still under 60. Apart from a bit of joint pain and a sore back from years of washing vegetables, she was still sturdy.

Xu Xuedie, who had long been dieting to maintain her figure, was no match for Mother Jiang at all—she couldn’t even snatch the bowl away.

While the two were scuffling over the bowl, Jiang Song walked through the door.

The moment Mother Jiang saw him, she couldn’t hold back. She held the bowl of salty, plain noodles up in front of him, “Look at this—just look!”

Jiang Song didn’t say a word. He took the bowl from her, didn’t even mind that she’d already eaten from it, took a sip of the broth—and immediately winced from the saltiness. He ran to the bathroom to spit it out, then came back and tried to calm her down, “Ma, you sit and rest.”

Back when Jiang Song was dating his ex-girlfriends, he did everything—cooking, cleaning—except laundry. Only with Xu Xuedie did he act like a big shot. Xu Xuedie had always tried to please him, treating him like a king and taking care of everything. Only occasionally, when she was unwell, would Jiang Song cook a bowl of noodles or bring something back from outside. The rest of the time, all the housework fell on her.

But even then, only sometimes, when she wasn’t feeling well.

Jiang Song was perfectly aware of Xu Xuedie’s petty behavior—it actually annoyed him a great deal. But she was, after all, the mother of his two children and had been by his side for so many years. He didn’t want to embarrass her too much.

Xu Xuedie also realized that Jiang Song was genuinely angry this time. So, while he was cooking noodles for Mother Jiang, she obediently stayed beside him to help.

Jiang Song moved deftly, quickly taking a few eggs from the fridge and frying two sunny-side-ups each for Mother Jiang  and Jiang Yuanyue. He also added two pieces of green vegetables.

Even though Jiang Song had been away from home for many years, he still kept certain habits from his hometown—for example, always eating eggs in even numbers.

Once Mother Jiang was comforted and sent off to her room with Yuanyue to sleep, Jiang Song shot Xu Xuedie a warning look before gently coaxing her with a few words and then left again.

Xu Xuedie finally let out a long sigh in the living room.

Though her first attempt had failed, the real battle between mother- and daughter-in-law had only just begun.

Mother Jiang had believed that living with her eldest son would be the realization of her ideal life. But reality hit her hard: the two years she spent actually living with her eldest son turned out to be the most miserable two years of her life.

The first problem was the language barrier.

Even when others spoke Sichuan-accented Mandarin, she could barely catch a few phrases. But the local dialect she spoke—nobody else could understand it. On top of that, she was illiterate. Without Father Jiang around, even going outside was difficult. At most, she could stroll within the residential compound, but she didn’t know a single soul in the neighborhood.

Back when she lived in Shenzhen, even though she also didn’t know the language or anyone there, at least Father Jiang had been with her—someone she could talk to. The rented home in Shenzhen was an old house owned by the landlord’s family, with a pond in the front and wild fields in the back. She could grow a few crops, raise chickens, and keep herself busy. But in this big city apartment, she had no one to talk to and nothing to do. Most of her time was spent staring blankly at the TV.

Her back couldn’t handle sitting for too long. And hoping her son would come home early every day to chat with her? Jiang Song was a party animal. He usually came home no earlier than eleven or twelve at night—sometimes not until two or three in the morning, or not at all.

If he wasn’t home by midnight, Xu Xuedie would come over to make a fuss, demanding that Mother Jiang call Jiang Song. And then she’d take the opportunity to mock Mother Jiang, saying it was all her fault her son came home so late because she didn’t raise him properly.

Even though Xu Xuedie couldn’t understand Mother Jiang’s dialect, Mother Jiang could understand the polished city-Mandarin that Xu Xuedie had refined over the years. At first, Xu Xuedie was all passive-aggressive sarcasm, but seeing that Mother Jiang couldn’t argue back, she stopped holding back and just cursed her outright.

This made Mother Jiang so angry she nearly had a heart attack—her chest tight and aching.

Sure, she could call Jiang Song to complain, but since he was hardly home, it was still Xu Xuedie she interacted with most.

Jiang Yuanyue lived on campus during high school, only coming home on weekends. And since she’d just transferred from the village to a high school in Sichuan, she had to adjust to a new environment, a new dialect, a new curriculum. Her weekends were fully packed with studying. 

Every time Mother Jiang tried to chat with her granddaughter, Xu Xuedie would swoop in to sneer, “Can’t you see Yuanyue is studying? She’s in high school now! And you’re bothering her while she’s doing homework?”

That just infuriated Mother Jiang. She’d raised that girl with her own two hands—wiped her butt and fed her since birth. And now this woman, who hadn’t even helped for a day, suddenly looked like the real mother? Meanwhile, Mother Jiang was made out to be the one hindering Yuanyue’s studies.

Mother Jiang was so angry her chest physically hurt. She’d never suffered so many indignities in her life—all of them delivered at the hands of her eldest son.

She broke down in tears again and, with no one else to turn to, called Father Jiang.

In reality, both Mother Jiang and Father Jiang were high-energy types. This trait was clearly passed down to their three kids—Jiang Song, Jiang Bai, and Jiang Ning—who were all energetic and tireless, always moving, always doing.

In Father Jiang’s case, it meant that even at just over sixty years old, he still felt full of energy and opened his fast food stall every day on time.

With Mother Jiang away and no one to clean duck heads and duck wings, he trimmed back the marinated items a bit and focused on things like duck legs, chicken drumsticks, marinated eggs, and dried tofu—stuff that didn’t require much cleaning. Though the menu shrank, his cooking remained delicious, and customers kept coming. Every dish sold out, and he didn’t make a cent less. He had to keep making money.