I scrolled down to the customer-uploaded photos, and some customers had even photographed the entire packages they received.
The meat was vacuum-sealed, with a kraft paper bag printed with the “Zhang’s Western Hunan Flavors” logo wrapped around the outside.
The packaging was far from cheap.
This wasn’t someone casually opening an online shop for fun.
They were running a real business.
I continued looking.
One additional comment caught my attention.
The customer wrote:
“I asked customer service, and they said they’re currently out of stock and that I have to wait for the next batch. The shop owner said the supply isn’t very stable this year.”
The date was mid-November.
Right when winter was beginning.
And exactly the year I hadn’t made any smoked meat.
The supply wasn’t stable.
I was her supply.
Liu Xiulan kept urging me to make smoked meat, not because Chen Nanxuan liked eating it.
It was because Zhang Ying’s shop needed more stock.
I put down my phone and closed my eyes.
My mind quickly ran through the numbers.
The twelve kilograms of meat from last year—even if Zhang Ying hadn’t used all of mine for sale, the shop’s initial reputation, reviews, and repeat customers had all been built on the meat I made.
637 orders.
198 yuan per kilogram.
Monthly revenue of more than 120,000 yuan.
Even if the profit margin was only forty percent, that was still nearly 50,000 yuan a month.
In a year…
And I hadn’t even gotten to eat a single piece.
Dawn came.
Chen Beicheng was still asleep in the room next door.
I had made him sleep outside last night.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on some light makeup, and left the house.
I didn’t go to work.
I took the day off.
I went to a quiet café beside the city library, found a corner, sat down, and opened my laptop.
Over the next two hours, I did several things.
The first:
I saved the entire product page, product details, and reviews from Zhang Ying’s shop.
Anything I could screenshot, I screenshotted.
Anything I could record, I recorded.
The second:
I checked the shop’s business license.
The license was registered under Zhang Ying’s name, with the registered address in the provincial capital.
The third:
I searched for “Zhang’s Western Hunan Flavors” on several major platforms.
It wasn’t just a shopping store.
There was also an account on a short-video platform.
I clicked on it.
The account “Yingying’s Western Hunan Flavors” had more than 80,000 followers.
The videos showed Zhang Ying making smoked meat in the kitchen.
Cutting the meat, seasoning it, hanging it up, smoking it.
The background music was the warm, folksy kind, and the captions read:
“Carrying on my mother-in-law’s traditional flavor.”
The comments were full of praise.
“Your mother-in-law is amazing. Her skills are incredible.”
“You’re so lucky to have married into a family like this. You get both the craftsmanship and the family tradition.”
“Another healing food post.”
I stared at Zhang Ying’s hands in the video.
She pretended to rub pepper in front of the camera, but her movements were incredibly clumsy.
The pepper had already been crushed into powder, yet she kept rubbing it.
These were not the hands of someone who had ever made smoked meat.
This was an act.
The videos were very cleverly edited.
All the important seasoning steps were skipped over with cuts and fast-forwarding.
There was no way to see any of the details.
The steps that actually required skill, such as the ratio of seasonings, when to turn the meat, and the smoking temperature…
Not a single shot.
Because she simply didn’t know how to make it.
What she was selling was the meat I made.
Those videos were nothing more than a smokescreen.
I exited the video app and opened WeChat.
I had never deleted my chat history with Chen Beicheng.
I scrolled all the way back to the beginning of last year.
There it was.
On February 17, exactly the week I finished making that batch of smoked meat, Chen Beicheng transferred a sum of money to Liu Xiulan.
3,000 yuan.
The note said:
“Mom, living expenses.”
Three thousand again in March.
Three thousand in April.
Three thousand in May, June, July, and August.
Every month, three thousand.
Something wasn’t right.
Chen Beicheng’s actual monthly salary was 12,000 yuan.
I knew that.
The mortgage was 4,500 yuan, the car loan was 2,000, and our daily expenses were 3,000 to 4,000.
Money was already tight.
Where had he gotten another 3,000 yuan every month to give his mother?
I checked our joint household spending records again.
From the second half of last year onward, he had indeed hardly bought any new clothes.
He had also started bringing lunch to work much more often.
Before, he would eat out two or three times a week.
After that, he brought lunch almost every day.
At the time, I had even praised him for being thrifty.
He wasn’t being thrifty.
He was saving money to give his mother.
Three thousand yuan a month.
Thirty-six thousand yuan a year.
After looking at the final transfer record, I slowly closed my laptop.
My coffee had gone cold.
Outside, the sun was shining brightly.
Sitting there, I suddenly found it almost laughable.
I was over here saving water, saving electricity, not even daring to buy clothes that cost more than 200 yuan.
And he was secretly giving his mother 3,000 yuan every month.
His mother took the money, then complained that my womb wasn’t trying hard enough.
His younger brother’s wife used the meat I made to earn more than 100,000 yuan a month.
And me?
I got a 200-yuan red envelope and the words:
“You can just make another batch.”
It was time to settle this debt.
I picked up my phone and called my mother.
“Mom, I want to come home for a few days.”
“What’s wrong? Did you and Beicheng have a fight?”
“No. I just miss you.”
“Then come home. Your dad just finished making pickled vegetables. It’s your favorite.”
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