Chapter 584: The Son Is Dead—Is That Really Something to Be This Happy About?

"Qi Jianhua."

Yu Dazhang repeated the name over and over.

He had a premonition that the one who died was this Qi Jianhua.

Confirming it was easy: next of kin identifying the body.

An hour later.

Jinze Town, Qingpu District.

After Lu Zhongxin's four-person team arrived in town, they made some inquiries and came to the village where Qi Jiandong's home was located.

The police car drove into the village and stopped at the gate of the Qi family's courtyard.

After the four got out of the car, a burst of "Woof woof woof" barking came from inside the yard.

Lu Zhongxin walked briskly to the door and knocked on the iron gate.

Soon a man's voice came from inside, sounding very weary:

"Who is it?"

Lu Zhongxin didn't hide anything and spoke frankly:

"Police."

The gate opened, and an old man stood inside. He looked at least sixty-something, his body a bit stooped, dressed in a set of tattered clothes, but his spirits were still fairly good.

"Something you need?" the old man asked.

"It's like this." Lu Zhongxin's tone softened:

"We came this time to find out about the situation with your two sons."

Obviously he hadn't expected Qi Jiandong's father to be this old.

From the records, Qi Jiandong was twenty-nine; if you went by normal childbearing age, his father would only be in his fifties.

And in the countryside people generally married earlier, so childbearing would naturally be earlier too.

But the situation before him was exactly the opposite.

Judging by the old man's age, he didn't have his first child until he was in his thirties, which was a very rare thing in those days.

"Come, come in and talk."

The moment the old man heard it was about his sons, he immediately became much more welcoming:

"Come, inside."

As the group entered the yard, the mutt tied at the corner of the wall barked even more enthusiastically.

The old man hurried forward a few steps, grabbed a wooden stick by the wall, and gave the mutt two whacks with it; the dog immediately went quiet and stopped making any sound at all.

Practice really does make perfect… Yu Dazhang noticed the old man's stick technique was very practiced.

Though he clearly didn't look in good shape, those two strikes landed very precisely, both avoiding the dog's head and hitting its body.

And the place where the stick was kept showed it was clearly meant specifically for hitting the dog.

It seemed that whenever anyone came, the mutt would bark—much like an alarm clock—and the old man picking up the stick to hit the dog was the equivalent of turning the alarm off.

Yu Dazhang had also lived in the countryside as a child, so the scene before him felt very familiar.

They went inside the house.

At first glance it gave a gloomy, drab feeling; the tables and chairs were all very worn, and a large glass frame hung on the wall, filled with photos inside.

Glancing at the cement floor underfoot, then at the wooden bed set up inside the room, Yu Dazhang knew this family's financial situation wasn't great.

"Uncle, where are the rest of your family?" Yu Dazhang asked offhandedly.

"My old lady went to the neighbor's," the old man replied:

"Once people get up in years, they can't be left alone; if possible, they'll all go chat with the neighbors—that's about the only pleasure there is."

Not bad, fairly talkative… Yu Dazhang understood what the old man was saying.

Do you think the most miserable thing for an old person is going into a nursing home?

Then you'd be completely wrong.

Nursing homes cost money—not just anyone who wants to go can go.

And going there is to enjoy life, not to serve a sentence.

There's no denying some nursing homes have the phenomenon of abusing the elderly, but that's a very small minority.

If it were a widespread phenomenon, the state would have banned them long ago.

What's truly miserable is the solitary elderly person living alone—every meal and drink has to be taken care of by themselves, sometimes going days without seeing a single person or speaking a single word.