Chapter 680: Jia Zhangshi Calling Out Shazhu

Is anyone here? Anyone?

Jia Zhangshi, convinced her legs had lost all sensation, could only shout for help, her voice filled with strong resentment.

Jia Zhangshi no longer wanted to dwell on how she had fainted, why she had fainted, or similar causes.

Now she just wanted to know why, with people in the house, she had spent a whole night in the icy cold room and no one had called her.

There were people in the house.

Qin Huairu had retired, Bangeng had been fired, Xiao Dang and Huaihua were off work again, I had lain on the ground all night with no one knowing—how ridiculous!

At night, one could still use being asleep as an excuse.

But now it was morning, sunlight streamed through the glass and fell on Jia Zhangshi.

Jia Zhangshi's heart.

It was cold.

The depression in her heart suddenly defied description.

Her voice carried a hint of complaint.

After shouting a few times, seeing no one appear before her, she then called out each member of the Jia family by name.

"Bangeng, Xiao Dang, Huaihua, Qin Huairu."

She shouted those four names louder and louder, especially Qin Huairu's name, calling with all the strength of a suckling infant.

Unusually sharp.

It suddenly sounded somewhat like a palace eunuch on duty.

She waited a minute or two.

She repeated those four names again, but still got no response—Qin Huairu didn't appear, Xiao Dang and Huaihua were nowhere to be seen, and Bangeng was nowhere to be found.

Jia Zhangshi felt she couldn't go on like this; she had to get out, so she tried crawling a few moves, but the sensation of being dragged made her dislike it.

After crawling less than three or four steps, Jia Zhangshi stopped.

She shouted "Shazhu".

As soon as the name "Shazhu" flew from Jia Zhangshi's lips, her face filled with a self‑mocking expression.

When Shazhu returned from the hospital and lay in the house, his incontinence annoyed Bangeng and the others, so Jia Zhangshi ingeniously devised a so‑called solution at the source: control Shazhu's food and drink, since he couldn't control his bowels, let him eat and drink less, thinking that with nothing in his stomach there would be less to excrete.

A cold steamed bun.

A bowl of cooled boiled water.

That was Shazhu's daily fare; starving to the point of unbearable, he too, like Jia Zhangshi just then, shouted Qin Huairu and the others' names, and, like Jia Zhangshi, wanted to crawl out of the room.

What Shazhu once endured has now befallen Jia Zhangshi just the same.

If not karma, what is?

The plump Jia Zhangshi wept tears like rain.

She wasn't crying for Shazhu but for her own bitter days ahead.

She also recalled Shazhu's goodness; Shazhu hadn't died, and out of deference to Qin Huairu he truly attended to Jia Zhangshi as a mother—though a long‑ill parent often lacks filial children, Shazhu's treatment of the deaf old lady Long Laotaitai showed that even someone as cold‑hearted and unfeeling as Jia Zhangshi could find no fault in him.

Even if Shazhu hadn't died, Jia Zhangshi could still live a good life despite being paralyzed.

If Shazhu had died, Jia Zhangshi figured she wouldn't have good days either; early that morning, Qin Huairu, Bangeng, Xiao Dang, and Huaihua—not one of them came to see her.

If even one person had come to take a look, things wouldn't have come to this.

Daughters‑in‑law couldn't be relied on, nor could grandsons and granddaughters.

Still, a neighbor from the front courtyard heard Jia Zhangshi's voice, ran out to take a glance, saw her crawling out of the Jia family's old house, originally intending to do a good deed but, fearing trouble for helping Jia Zhangshi, sought out Yan Fugui and Liu Haizhong.

The two former head managers of the siheyuan helped shout for aid, and only then was Jia Zhangshi taken to the hospital, after which they called Qin Huairu and the others.

After finishing those errands and returning to the siheyuan, it was already noon.

The neighbors were all there.

Seeing Liu Haizhong and Yan Fugui return, the neighbors swarmed over, all talking at once as they asked about Jia Zhangshi's condition.

No wonder the neighbors are so gossipy.

It's because they've heard too much of Jia Zhangshi's glorious past and want to hear the concrete outcome.

Yan Fugui said nothing.

But Liu Haizhong snatched up the task of telling the neighbors about Jia Zhangshi's condition.

Watching the neighbors gathered around him like stars around the moon, Liu Haizhong regained the feeling he once had when he presided over large assemblies in the siheyuan.

Very impressive.

He unnaturally straightened his waist.

"All quiet, listen to me: you're so noisy, I say something and you can't hear it, don't speak, just listen to me."

The neighbors fell silent, each looking at Liu Haizhong.

Liu Haizhong glanced over the assembled neighbors and let out a hum.

Yan Fugui in the crowd shook his head speechlessly; Liu Haizhong's life has been like this—always wanting to show off, ending up good for nothing.

He deliberately coughed once.

Liu Haizhong, still trying to keep up the act, saw Yan Fugui cough and worried that he would reveal Jia Zhangshi's condition, depriving him of the chance to pretend, so he hurriedly seized the conversational opening.

"According to the doctor's diagnosis, Jia Zhangshi's legs are paralyzed, supposedly from the cold, the nerves in her legs have atrophied, and they can no longer support her walking."

The sound of drawing in cold breath.

It flew from the neighbors' mouths.

Jia Zhangshi was paralyzed.

They also didn't know whether it was a good or bad thing, just like Liu Haizhong and Yan Fugui, feeling this was Jia Zhangshi's karmic retribution.

Thinking of Shazhu, then thinking of Jia Zhangshi, only the word 'karmic retribution' can describe it.

Another explanation.

Simply cannot be found.

"Is there no heating in the Jia Family's house?"

"There is heating."

"If there is heating, why did Jia Zhangshi end up paralyzed from the cold?"

Jia Zhangshi didn't know what she was doing last night; she fell alone in the cold room and passed out. Bangeng, Qin Huairu, and the others were unaware. In the morning they got up, didn't go check on Jia Zhangshi, still thought she was sleeping in, and thus it was delayed.

"So that's the situation."

……

Inside the hospital.

Jia Zhangshi lay on the hospital bed, glaring with resentment at Qin Huairu and the others before her, hearing every word the doctor said.

It was delayed.

If she had been discovered promptly last night, promptly woken, or given a change of dry pants, Jia Zhangshi would not have ended up paralyzed from the cold.

Like Shazhu, she also had to handle eating, drinking, and excretion while in bed.

She did not want to repeat Shazhu's tragedy on herself.

So she spoke a few words concerning her own interests.

That is, how to manage three meals a day, and how to deal with waste.

She did not want to become a second Shazhu.

Because they did not know Qin Huairu had already gone mad, and with Bangeng, Xiao Dang, and Huaihua strongly agreeing that Qin Huairu should attend to Jia Zhangshi, Jia Zhangshi entrusted her daily care after paralysis to Qin Huairu.

She originally wanted to stay in the hospital.

But the old man in the next bed over passed away.

Jia Zhangshi was frightened half to death, she bluntly said it was unlucky, and finally steeled herself to move back to the Jia Family's siheyuan, where she began to enjoy Qin Huairu's care with peace of mind.

At first Jia Zhangshi noticed nothing, but after a few days she felt something was off, and the Qin Huairu caring for her became increasingly erratic.

She would feed Jia Zhangshi water, set the bowl before her, then walk off holding the bowl; when Jia Zhangshi asked, Qin Huairu said she had already finished feeding her water.

Sometimes the rice brought to Jia Zhangshi was completely raw, utterly inedible.

Moreover, she would mutter to herself while talking to the wall.

A series of abnormalities let Jia Zhangshi realize the truth: Qin Huairu was not playing a palace intrigue game with her, trying to dispose of Jia Zhangshi as she had with Shazhu; Qin Huairu was truly mentally disordered.

They found Bangeng, told him about Qin Huairu's madness, and Bangeng paid to send Qin Huairu to a mental hospital.

They also hired a nanny for Jia Zhangshi.

Jia Zhangshi's days of both suffering and happiness arrived; in front of Bangeng and the others, the nanny waited on Jia Zhangshi like an ancestor, but when Bangeng and the others were away, Jia Zhangshi endured great hardship—most of the things Bangeng bought for her ended up in the nanny's mouth. At first Jia Zhangshi tried to leverage her status as employer to control the nanny, but after being punished she became obedient, and her longing for Shazhu grew ever stronger.

If Shazhu were not dead, Qin Huairu not mad, and Jia Zhangshi not paralyzed, even a petty nanny could have manipulated her.

She spent all day washing her face with tears.

……

After Yi Zhonghai had been picking up scrap for a while, his body suddenly became extremely weak; on his way alone to the hospital, the money in his pocket was stolen.

He finally dragged his weary body back to his own doghouse where he lived.

After thinking it over, he confessed to having intercepted and mailed He Daqing's living expenses to He Yushui and Shazhu, and turned himself in to the local authorities.

But He Daqing insisted he had never mailed any living expenses.

Several more decades passed.

Yi Zhonghai's little tricks thus came to nothing.

Finally, on a cold night, starving and freezing, he met a miserable death beneath the Chengnan Overpass.

The place of his death was not far from where Shazhu died, separated only by a small green belt.

He Yushui saw this news on television, muttered that it was deserved, and switched the channel elsewhere.

……

Xiao Dang and Huaihua, distracted by Qin Huairu's madness and Jia Zhangshi's paralysis, lost focus at work, causing unknown losses to their respective units.

They respectively received punishments of eight and twelve years.

Their husbands also divorced them.

Bangeng, through her friends, met You Fengxia and obtained from her a project said to yield huge profits, in order to raise capital.

They mortgaged all the houses in the siheyuan, raised a sum of money, and handed it over to You Fengxia.

After a period of time.

They lost even their undershirts and still owed a considerable amount of external debt.

Jia Zhangshi also learned, when people came to collect the house, that the vast fortune Qin Huairu had earned by sucking Shazhu dry had been squandered by Bangeng.

She fainted on the spot.

Jia Zhangshi was awakened by the cold.

There was nothing around but a miscellaneous shed, which Yan Fugui contributed out of neighborly goodwill.

As for Bangeng's whereabouts,

Yan Fugui directly handed Jia Zhangshi a notice of corpse collection; Jia Zhangshi, having just come to her senses after the severe blow, died on the spot from anger.

He was also a ruthless person.

He took his son Xiao Geng and left together.

The Jia Family was thus completely cut off from its lineage.

Because no one paid for her treatment, Qin Huairu was eventually discharged, wandering the streets day after day in madness, shouting things like 'Shazhu, I'm sorry to you; in my next life I'll be an ox or a horse to repay you.'

We'll revise it tomorrow.