"I’ll go open the door," Qin Xiangyang was placing firewood into the stove, then vigorously working the bellows to make the fire burn even more intensely.
With a creak, she opened the door.
"Eh, Aunt Hua, how come you’re here?"
"Yangyang, look," Aunt Hua hurriedly walked in, allowing Granny Lu, who was behind her, to follow inside, "Your granny is here."
"Granny?" Qin Xiangyang was completely baffled, "What granny does she have?"
"Is it you, Yangyang?"
Granny Lu didn’t quite believe it, but just now, clearly, it was this child who received the money. There was no mistake—she did indeed see a resemblance of her daughter in Qin Xiangyang’s face; the eyes were remarkably similar.
"Nuannuan, come out quickly."
Aunt Hua hurriedly called out for Qin Xiangnuan again.
Qin Xiangnuan ran out from the kitchen, casually dusting flour off the quilted coat she was wearing.
"That’s right, exactly, that’s it..." Tears gathered in Granny Lu’s cloudy, aged eyes once more, realizing that this was indeed her granddaughter; this little face looked just like her daughter Pingzi when she was little.
Granny Lu covered her mouth, and tears began to fall, plop after plop.
Not long after, Granny Lu, Aunt Hua, and the Qin siblings were all seated together.
Perhaps it had been too long since Granny Lu spoke, for once she started, she couldn’t stop. Starting from when Mr. Lu exchanged his daughter for a wife for his son, she recounted her daughter’s hardships, her grandsons’ suffering, and how she managed to save up 100 yuan to give to the children.
But unexpectedly, in the end, Qin Pengfei took that money, and deceived her, an old person who had no one to rely on. Although Granny Lu didn’t say where the money came from, one could tell by the clothes she wore, patched over and over, that she had probably begged all the way here.
An old person, in such freezing weather, had all of Qin Pengfei’s schooling gone to waste ? And there’s Hu Li always boasting about how excellent her son is—yes, his education may be excellent, but his character, just like his mother’s, is utterly rotten.
"That won’t do," Aunt Hua simply couldn’t contain her anger.
"This can’t be the end of it, that 100 yuan must be taken back," they really were not lacking that 100 yuan now, ever since their family and Qin Xiangyang’s sister opened that shop, their living conditions had improved a lot. Indeed, 100 yuan didn’t seem like much in their eyes.
But that didn’t mean the Qin Family could just take it. That was money Granny Lu had begged for at her old age; let alone 100 yuan, she didn’t want to give a single yuan of it to that family.
And Granny Lu could only cry, weeping for her unfortunate daughter and her pitiable grandsons.
Although Aunt Hua didn’t say much, from between the lines, she could hear just how much her daughter had suffered, how even the young Nuannuan wasn’t given the chance to be looked after for long before she passed, and how the children she left behind never had good days either.
Poor Xiang Yang, at such a young age, had to be used as labor by Qin Guohua; Nuannuan didn’t have milk to drink as a baby and was fed rice soup by Xiang Yang. Since she could understand, Nuannuan had to wash clothes and cook. They even threw away Nuannuan when she was sick; it was Qin Xiangyang who picked her back up. Despite this, the siblings were still beaten, and as for such beatings, these children had endured them countless times since they were little.