Lin Shu thanked the doctor and hurried back to the ward.
“Brother, I’m going home to get some fresh clothes for Dad. You stay here and keep an eye on him.”
“All right. You go.”
Getting the clothes was only secondary. She wanted to find out why her father had been so furious that he collapsed the moment he opened the door.
Her intuition told her that this had something to do with Yang Guifen.
And the truth was exactly as Lin Shu had expected.
The moment she opened the door, she saw dog fur scattered all over the floor, with blood splattered everywhere.
Hearing the commotion, Er Mao came out carrying a bowl, with a dog’s ear still hanging from his mouth.
Lin Shu covered her chest and forced herself to suppress her nausea.
No wonder her father had been so enraged that he fainted. These were dogs he had raised for ten years.
But Lin Shu quickly calmed herself down. If she told people what had happened, it would not look good.
She certainly could not say that they were pet dogs. In the eyes of ordinary people, keeping dogs as pets would be seen as a bourgeois affectation.
She forcefully suppressed her anger.
“Er Mao, is the dog meat tasty?”
“It’s delicious, Sister! My mom is really good at cooking. Even meat from an old dog can be stewed until it’s tender.”
“Lin Shu is back! You people raise dogs and keep them hidden away. Why can’t we eat them? I only found out today that you’re the daughter of a capitalist family. No wonder you’ve got that coquettish air about you and go around seducing married men. Let me make one thing clear you’re not good enough for”
“Auntie, do you know how some people end up dying? It’s because of this very mouth of theirs…”
Yang Guifen instinctively shrank her neck.
“What do you mean? Is eating a little of your dog meat really such a big deal?”
Lin Shu turned around and ignored Yang Guifen, who was clearly trying to make herself the center of attention.
She did not have the courage to clean up that pile of dog fur herself.
“Auntie Mei, are you home?”
Lin Shu went across the street and took five yuan, asking Auntie Mei to help clean up the front courtyard.
“Auntie Mei, I’m not feeling uncomfortable or anything. It’s just that there’s blood everywhere, and looking at it makes me sick.”
“Feeling sick? Why are you giving me money? I’ll go clean it up for you right now.”
Lin Shu still stuffed the money into the old woman’s hand. She carefully stepped around the pile of dog fur and went back inside to pack some things.
She had only been gone for three short hours, yet Yang Guifen had already turned the house into this state.
Anger surged through Lin Shu, but she had already come up with a way to deal with it.
Didn’t they want to stay?
Then tonight, they could enjoy themselves properly.
After packing the clothes and daily necessities her father would need, Lin Shu locked the upstairs rooms and hurried away with her bag.
In any case, she would not be coming back to live here during this period.
Lin Shu went to a public telephone and called Cui Shu’s workplace.
After hurriedly saying a few words, she hung up.
It could be said that Cui Shu had connections on both sides of the law.
On the surface, he was an obedient, well-behaved young man, but the friends he associated with were more dangerous than the next.
Still, that was convenient for Lin Shu now.
“What are you doing here?”
Auntie Mei was diligently cleaning. She was secretly wondering whether Lin Shu might be pregnant.
“Little brat, move aside. Don’t tell me you really think this is your home.”
Lin Shu had already given her a warning beforehand.
“Little boy, you look about eleven or twelve. You’d better persuade your mother to leave soon. Otherwise, she may end up gaining nothing and losing everything.”
Da Mao had no idea what the old woman was talking about. He glared at her before turning away and ignoring her.
Thinking about what was going to happen later, Auntie Mei sped up her work. Once she had thoroughly cleaned everything, she took her cleaning tools and left.
Before leaving, she deliberately did not close the door.
After night fell, Yang Guifen, who had rummaged through the kitchen and eaten until she was full, went to bed early with her two children.
Once they were asleep, a group of people openly entered through the main gate.
What followed was Yang Guifen being beaten awake from her deep sleep.
“Damn it! We thought no one was home, but there are actually three people sleeping here!”
After being slapped several times, and with the children crying for quite a while, Yang Guifen finally groggily opened her eyes.
She immediately froze in terror.
“This… you people… Oh my God!”
She had just tried to scream when a slap landed across her face. The next moment, she felt something warm running from her nose.
Lin Shu cared about her family more than anything.
Which meant that Yang Guifen’s nightmare had only just begun.
“Boss, what are we going to do with this old woman?”
“We don’t even know whether she knows this family. If she does, then she’ll have seen us stealing things, right?”
Several unruly-looking men, blood still staining their clothes, sat right in the middle of the living room, casually playing cards.
“I think we should just…”
The man made a slitting motion across his throat.
A rag had been stuffed into Yang Guifen’s mouth, so she could only make muffled noises as she desperately shook her head.
Unfortunately, no one paid attention to her.
Desperate, Yang Guifen felt that she had somehow become the Lin family’s scapegoat.
All kinds of foul curses continuously flashed through her mind, and for the first time, she regretted her decision to stay at the Lin family home.
But now, faced with these vicious-looking thieves, her legs had gone weak and her mind had gone numb.
She could not even spare a thought for her children.
“Stupid woman, stop screaming! If you make another sound and bring people here, I’ll kill you right now!”
Yang Guifen silently shed tears, thinking that she was going to die in this place tonight.
After the men played cards for a while, the leader glanced at Yang Guifen, who looked as though she was about to pass out, and slightly raised his chin.
One of the men slapped Yang Guifen awake.
“You want to die right now? Fine. Open your eyes and keep them open.”
Then they tied her to a pillar in the backyard.
“Brothers, let me put on a blindfolded knife-throwing performance for everyone!”
Someone lit a fire in the backyard.
Illuminated by the firelight, the group of men clapped and cheered.
By this point, Yang Guifen could no longer move. All she could do was watch helplessly as sharp knives repeatedly passed dangerously close to her body.
The man had been performing for less than two minutes when Yang Guifen fainted.
What woke her was the sound of her two children crying beside her.
“Who told you to move around?! Beat him.”
A grown man bullying children was certainly cruel, but they had been given orders from above. These two children could not keep their hands and feet still.
So when Yang Guifen opened her eyes, she saw several men holding bamboo strips and repeatedly striking the children’s palms.
“What are you doing?! Why are you bullying the children?!”
“Oh, you’re awake. Perfect. Then the mother can pay for what the children did. Brothers, keep going!”
Yang Guifen had only just regained consciousness before she fainted again from sheer terror.
This time, the knives really did pass dangerously close to her.
Even after being slapped twice, the unconscious Yang Guifen still did not wake up.
The men changed tactics and poured two basins of water over her.
Yang Guifen gasped for fresh air.
Her mind had endured an extreme amount of torment that night.
She looked utterly exhausted, as though she might not survive much longer.
“All right, we’ve got everything. Let’s go. I’ve already found out that the old man of this family is staying in the hospital, so no one will be here during the day or at night. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
The man openly discussed their plan right in front of Yang Guifen.
Then he crouched down and spoke harshly.
“You can either pretend you’re blind or pretend you’re mute. If I find out you say even one word about this, I’ll kill your two children first, then send you down to keep them company.”
The scar on the man’s face looked especially terrifying in the firelight, like a demon that devoured people.
Yang Guifen was already nearly fifty years old, and she had almost lost her life in the Lin family home.
She desperately nodded, swearing that she would not tell anyone.
The men put out the fire, carefully erased all traces of their presence, and leisurely walked out.
Before leaving, they even remembered to close the front gate of the Lin family home.
Left behind, still tied up, Yang Guifen lay on the ground.
After a long time, she finally let out a breath.
Remembering that the men had said they would come back tomorrow, she immediately began struggling desperately.
Her two children also imitated her, wriggling and crawling toward the house in search of something sharp.
After struggling for nearly an hour, Yang Guifen was completely exhausted and had not even a shred of strength left.
She took a kitchen knife, locked the house up with her children inside, then pushed a cabinet and table against the door.
She ordered the two children to pack their belongings.
They had to leave immediately.
What if those men returned?
Their faces and bodies were covered in scars. They looked like hardened gangsters who did not care whether they lived or died.
If she stayed in the Lin family home any longer, she would lose her life.
Before dawn, Yang Guifen carefully slipped away with her children, looking like a thief herself.
She took anything the Lin family had left unlocked food, household items, anything she thought might be useful.
Then she left with the children and headed toward the railway station.
Her face was wrapped in a thick scarf, leaving only her eyes exposed. Her eyes were bloodshot and filled with frightening red veins, and there was a wound across the bridge of her nose.
The moment she left, someone appeared at the entrance of the Lin family home and made a phone call to report the burglary.