Inheriting a Farm Made Me an Internet Sensation - Chapter 27.1

Tan Xiao understood Lin Muhan’s concerns. After a moment of thought, she replied, “Why don’t we wait and see? If she stays quiet and doesn’t cause trouble, I’ll act as if I know nothing.”

She was never a saint. Her words didn’t stem from taking the side of a sister she’d never met; she simply found it troublesome.

Public opinion was a fearsome thing. The students coming to help at the farm only registered their names. To actually single someone out would inevitably alarm the other students.

Even if they found her, what if she hadn’t actually done anything? Wouldn’t that mean dragging an innocent person into a scandal? The internet trolls were experts at taking things out of context.

Any way she looked at it, it just seemed like a hassle.

It felt as though she were the villain instead.

Lin Muhan rubbed her forehead, a fire smoldering in her heart. She stood up and walked to the window. Just as she was about to speak, she saw a girl dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and long pants walking in, pausing every three steps.

Perhaps sensing Lin Muhan’s gaze, the girl looked up, her face flushing as she stammered, “Excuse me, is Sister Xiao Xiao here?” She tugged nervously at the hem of her shirt. “I… I have something to talk to her about.”

Perhaps she was just clouded by anger, but Lin Muhan felt the girl in the courtyard bore a slight resemblance to Tan Xiao.

Thinking of something, she asked, “What is your name? What do you want with her?”

“I… my name is Huang Mengyao. I have a little pri… private matter to discuss with Sister Xiao Xiao.”

Surname Huang?

Lin Muhan turned back toward the sofa; Tan Xiao had already stood up.

“Did you hear that? Someone is downstairs looking for you,” she said crossly. Sometimes, she truly couldn’t understand the way Tan Xiao’s brain worked.

Was Tan Xiao generous? At times, she held a grudge better than anyone.

Was she petty? Right now, trouble had come knocking at her door, yet Tan Xiao remained unmoved.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Without waiting for Tan Xiao’s response, she marched off toward her own room.

Out of sight, out of mind. After all, she wasn’t the one suffering the loss.

Watching her retreating back, Tan Xiao explained, “Without solid evidence, even if I find her, she won’t admit to it. With people coming and going at the farm now, once word gets out, she’ll end up following in my footsteps.”

Lin Muhan halted. The anger accumulated in her heart vanished instantly, replaced by a surge of chagrin.

As a lawyer, she should have judged based on evidence. Yet here she was, using her own assumptions to pronounce someone she hadn’t even met guilty, even attempting to make Tan Xiao take her side.

Realizing this, her brow furrowed in embarrassment. “I… I’m sorry.” She clenched her hands, her voice dropping significantly. “She’s still waiting for you. Go ahead.” With that, she hurried to her room.

She repeatedly cautioned herself that she must remain rational.

If she continued like this, she might as well stop being a lawyer.

Tan Xiao wanted to say something more, but Lin Muhan had already retreated. She could only withdraw her gaze and turn to go down to the living room.

When Huang Mengyao saw her, she immediately lowered her head. Her hands tightened on her shirt hem as she bowed to Tan Xiao, saying anxiously, “I… I’m sorry.”

Tan Xiao’s eyebrows arched slightly. She had a guess in her heart, but her voice remained calm. “Let’s sit and talk, shall we?”

Huang Mengyao sat on the edge of the sofa, bit her lip, and mustered her courage. “She… I was the one who led her here.” She shook her head. “I… I didn’t know your life was so bitter. I… I was just jealous of you. Jealous that you could live such a good life.”

She wiped away a tear and looked up at Tan Xiao. “I also felt it was unfair. We are both her daughters, yet she keeps clinging to me, while you can live so freely.”

She had hesitated for a long time before coming here to apologize.

When she first saw the Weibo post Tan Xiao made, her first instinct was doubt; she didn’t want to believe it. The next day, when her father called and mentioned her mother, she couldn’t help but ask him. It was then she learned that her mother had truly taken the money Tan Xiao’s father had traded his life for. What made her most ashamed was that her mother had used that money to buy furniture for the house and several new outfits for her.

Before she knew, whenever she was driven mad by her mother’s gambling and wastefulness, she would dig up that memory, telling herself over and over that her mother wasn’t completely irredeemable.

Ha. Looking back now, she felt she was laughably stupid.

She had actually held onto hope for a gambler.

She felt immense regret—regret for dragging Tan Xiao into the mess that day, and even for giving her mother the idea.

She didn’t have the face to see Tan Xiao again, nor the face to come back to the farm.

Every time she heard people discussing Anxin Farm and Tan Xiao, her nerves would tighten, fearing that her actions would be exposed.

She had had enough of this constant fear. That was why she convinced herself to come here and confess to Tan Xiao.

She didn’t expect Tan Xiao to forgive her. She did this only to make her own heart feel a bit better.

It was selfish, but she had no choice. She didn’t want to become someone like her mother, someone everyone loathed.

Even though she had suspected it, hearing the truth still gave Tan Xiao a shock, but mostly, she felt a pang of heartache.

This heartache was for the original owner of this body.

The original owner had worked so hard, not just for attention, but also to improve her life and live better.

And that very effort had incited the resentment and jealousy of her half-sister.

This was the original owner’s success, yet it was also her tragedy.

“Then did you ever think about how much…” Tan Xiao corrected herself quickly, “…how much effort I put in for that? It’s true that during those few years in the entertainment industry, I wasn’t just being insulted by trolls—that was the price for making money.”

She turned her head to look out at the yard, her voice trembling slightly. “That suicide livestream was my final struggle, a choice made out of desperation when I had no other way out.”

The destruction of her dreams, her agency turning their back on her, the exorbitant contract penalties—these had all weighed down on the original owner until she was on the brink of collapse. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone to such extremes as trying to use a suicide livestream to erase her debts.

Huang Mengyao’s tears fell even faster, her voice choked. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t know anything.”

Yes, “didn’t know.”

Ignorance means innocence, doesn’t it?

But can one truly be innocent? Can the harm already caused be healed by those few painless words?

Tan Xiao knew that Huang Mengyao’s jealousy and resentment weren’t just directed at her, but more so at the original owner.

Because of this, she couldn’t forgive Huang Mengyao on the original owner’s behalf.

She took a deep breath, stood up, and turned her back to Huang Mengyao. “I’ve heard what you had to say.”

Huang Mengyao recognized this as a dismissal. She stood up quickly, wiped her eyes once more, and looked at Tan Xiao’s back. Her mouth opened, but in the end, she couldn’t say a word. She merely covered her mouth with her hand and ran out.

As it happened, the farm workers were returning from their shift. Her face burned red, and she ran even faster.

Filled with confusion, Chen Cuihua came into the yard. Seeing Tan Xiao in the living room, she couldn’t help but ask, “Why was that girl crying? Did you bully her?”

The last part was purely a joke. In her heart, she had long since considered Tan Xiao her own daughter.

What mother doesn’t know her own daughter? Her girl wasn’t the type to bully anyone.

When Tan Xiao didn’t reply, she took a few more steps forward. Seeing that Tan Xiao was in a bad mood, she hurried to her side and said, “What happened? Even if the sky falls, I’m here to hold it up. If I can’t, there are others. We can’t let these small shoulders of yours carry it all.”

Hearing this, Zhang Da chimed in, “Right, if something’s wrong, just tell us. Our brains might not be as sharp as yours, but isn’t there a saying? ‘Three clumsy craftsmen can beat a Zhuge Liang’?”

Tan Xiao looked up and saw everyone’s worried faces. The gloom in her heart dissipated slightly as she forced a smile. “It’s nothing. I just felt that everyone is working too hard. I was wondering if we should change our way of operating.”

This statement instantly grabbed everyone’s full attention. They stared at her without blinking.

She cleared her throat and shared the idea she had when she was surrounded earlier. “There have been a lot of people coming to our farm lately, and I noticed they enjoy being self-sufficient. I was thinking, maybe we should set up a dedicated area for self-service sales.”

Chen Cuihua stretched out her hand and pointed to the side. “Isn’t that just like what we’re doing with the cherry tomatoes? We just handle the weighing and the money.”

Zhang Da rubbed his chin and said, “Those people don’t know their own strength. Take the cherry tomatoes, for example—some people pull them up with the soil still attached, even the unripe ones.”

The cherry tomatoes he mentioned were from the last batch of seedlings; while the others were nearly finished, that batch was just starting to ripen.

Chen Cuihua nodded. “I saw that too. It broke my heart.”

Tan Xiao felt Zhang Da had a point. She decided, “Then I’ll think about it more.”

“You really should.” Thinking of something, Chen Cuihua said, “Zhang Da and I discussed it. Many of the tomato plants in the fields have been cleared. We’re thinking of preparing the soil first. Once you decide what to plant, we can get straight to work.”

Tan Xiao nodded. “Alright.”

“So, have you decided what to plant yet?” Chen Cuihua followed up.

“I’ll plant a bit of every variety, and do some experiments along the way,” Tan Xiao shared her plan.

She made this decision because once winter started, there would be a shortage of various vegetables on the market, and prices would be higher than in the first half of the year.

Her planting methods couldn’t guarantee high yields for every vegetable, but they wouldn’t be low either.