It turns out that a few years earlier, the second son of the Du Family, Du Yinbao, was hit by a car. They spent a lot of money on his hospitalization, but in the end, they couldn’t save him, and he passed away, leaving behind a widow and orphans. Dongsheng’s mother couldn’t bear the hardship and remarried, taking Dongsheng’s sister with her. Poor Dongsheng was left all alone. The house that had just been completed not long before was occupied by the Eldest Brother, because at that time, when Du Yinbao was in the hospital, he had owed the Eldest Brother hundreds of dollars for medical expenses.
Since Dongsheng’s mother had remarried, she was no longer part of the Du Family, but the debt still had to be repaid. You can’t run away from your debts; there’s no escaping the temple. And there was still Dongsheng. That whole Du Jinbao family really had no shame at all. They occupied the second son’s house and still expected Dongsheng to repay the debt. Without a father or a mother, Dongsheng couldn’t even attend school and had to help with fieldwork at the Eldest Brother’s farm. During the slack season, he would go work odd jobs on construction sites to earn a little money or he wouldn’t even be able to afford clothes.
Dongsheng suffered a lot at Du Jinbao’s hands. A growing young man, he wasn’t given enough to eat despite all the farmwork he did every day. He had no choice but to eat the leftovers from the Eldest Brother’s family, otherwise how could he be so skinny?
Later, a steel plate fell on a construction site and landed on Dongsheng’s right leg, causing a fracture. The doctors said that with a half-year stay in the hospital and proper care, the leg wouldn’t end up lame. But Du Jinbao, who was unwilling to spend so much money on someone who wasn’t his own flesh and blood, forbade it.
In the end, Dongsheng didn’t get hospitalized, and his bone healed crookedly; the leg became useless. He didn’t even get a cent of the compensation money from the construction site; it all went to the hands of the Eldest Brother’s family. The poor boy had paid for it with his leg.
Hearing about these things, Xiumei couldn’t help but sigh.
"How can they even be called human? Even if he’s not their own son, he’s still their nephew. They can’t be bothered to take care of him but still covet the little money he has. Imagine being orphaned like that; if he doesn’t have a penny on him and falls ill, how is he supposed to survive?"
Granny Lu was so filled with anger, grief, and helplessness that she shook her head and lamented deeply for her grandson, full of hatred for those two unworthy sons.
As for Qin Xiangnuan, she didn’t quite know how to feel.
It was as if she had lived her life for others, and upon her death, she didn’t know if there would be anyone to provide a decent coffin or to bury or cremate her. She thought she might end up worse off; Qin Xiangmei might leave her nothing but an organ donor card.
And she worried that after taking her heart, they might harvest her other organs to give to someone else, which wasn’t a big deal since she would be dead anyway. But what she really feared was that if her body was treated as a specimen, lying bare for study day after day.
Thinking of this, her hatred for the Qin Family brewed even stronger.
Such a deep-seated hatred seemed to seep into her soul, impossible to completely eradicate.
And she thought, Dongsheng’s previous life was probably much like hers, possibly worked to death, and surely no one would have shed a tear for him at the time of his demise.
At the hospital, when the doctors unwrapped the bandage, they were shocked by what they found. Not only was there an almost bowl-sized wound on Dongsheng’s leg, but there was also an unbearable stench.
"This wound is severely infected! How did you treat it?" the doctor asked, frowning deeply and urgently asking the nurse for disinfectant.
"I..." Dongsheng broke out in large beads of sweat on his forehead from the pain. Licking his dry, cracked lips, he said embarrassedly, "In our village, there’s an old method. You grab some yellow earth from the ground and sprinkle it on, and it’s supposed to heal."
"Yellow earth?" The doctor’s eyes widened in disbelief, "You believed that? If yellow earth could heal wounds, what would we need doctors for? You’re lucky to be alive; with a wound , it’s a miracle you didn’t die."
Dongsheng felt so awkward hearing those words that he didn’t dare to look at anyone.
And as he turned his face away, he truly didn’t want to see his own rotten leg. He felt nauseous, wondering if maggots had started to infest the wound.
Seeing the wound on Dongsheng’s leg, Qin Xiangyang also felt a chill in his heart. He even thought that if Dongsheng was to continue with this injury, he might end up dying from it. The wound had become so infected that it might be life-threatening.
And the subsequent cleaning process was, to be honest, almost too gruesome to witness.
There is an old saying about scraping bone to heal wounds, but Dongsheng’s puss-filled wounds required digging out flesh, not scraping bone. Dongsheng bit down hard on his teeth, not making a sound, but the sweat dripping down his forehead and his hands tightly gripping the bed rails, with veins bulging, showed just how painful it was.
The infected flesh had to be removed, and indeed it was extremely painful, so much so that even Qin Xiangyang couldn’t bear to watch.
"Can he have an anesthetic?" Qin Xiang simply couldn’t bear it.
"What anesthetic?" The doctor didn’t even lift an eyelid as he spoke, "This pain will remind him not to do this again in the future—to not simply grab a handful of dirt and apply it to wounds. If it was just himself, it wouldn’t matter. If he doesn’t care about his own life, that’s one thing, but if he did this to someone else, it could cost them their life."
Dongsheng was in so much pain that he clenched his teeth, and cold sweat soaked his clothes. Finally, the excruciating ordeal ended. The doctor applied medicine to the wound and bandaged it up, and moreover, insisted that he be hospitalized.
"I don’t want to stay."
Dongsheng attempted to get out of the hospital bed, but Qin Xiangyang quickly came over and pressed him back onto the bed.
"You need to stay and rest assured. Granny Lu is old, don’t make her worry. What will she do if your wound doesn’t heal properly?"
Hearing this, Dongsheng could only lie back down.
"Don’t worry," Qin Xiangyang knew what he was thinking.
"Our family isn’t short on money now. You can rest assured and stay here. Your hospital expenses are all on your cousin; you won’t have to pay them back."
"But..." Dongsheng felt uneasy. How could he use someone else’s money so freely? How could he rest with peace of mind?
"Don’t worry, I’m not short of money," Qin Xiangyang chuckled, then patted Dongsheng on the shoulder. "Our family is small, and now we have another brother. It’s really nice," he said sincerely without any sign of reluctance or pretense.
Now that he was married and busy with the military academy, often not staying at home, and Nuannuan also being busy with the shop, Granny Lu can be quite lonely. Now that Dongsheng will be with her, they can be more at ease.