Tong Yuheng’s voice was laced with sarcasm, her eyes filled with contempt and disgust as she looked at him as if he were garbage. This demeanor terrified Fan Eryong!
Fan Eryong shook his head frantically, thinking to himself, no wonder his niece said the eldest daughter of the Tong Family was a violent woman. Didn’t she have someone beat her up and then send her to the hospital?
“Mom, use the brush rinsing jar on your desk, pour the water from your cup into it, and make Fan Eryong drink it. If it’s poison, he’ll have to pray for his own luck!”
Tong Jiahui immediately carried out the order. The eldest daughter held half the authority in the household, as her husband had raised her like a boy. Now, she had become the backbone of the family.
Tong Jiahui brought the broken cup used for rinsing brushes. Tong Yuheng poured most of the water down his throat and stuffed the cloth back into his mouth. The reason she didn’t use her own cup was to avoid touching his saliva—it would be disgusting to use it later!
“I have to send you out. Don’t even think about using the front door—you’ll go through the window!” The small room had a double-paned window, and it was no problem for an adult to climb out.
“Should I throw you out headfirst or feet first?” Tong Yuheng’s smile made Fan Eryong tremble all over.
This was the second floor. Falling wouldn’t kill him, but he could easily break a leg. And now he had drunk that medicine—what should he do?
But Tong Yuheng didn’t give him time to think. She untied the rope binding him, pushed open the window, stood on the windowsill, lifted him up, and threw him out!
With a thud, Fan Eryong fell to the ground. He landed on his side, neither hitting his head nor breaking his leg—truly a stroke of luck. However, the ground was frozen hard, and the impact shifted his internal organs, causing excruciating pain.
He pulled the cloth out of his mouth, howling in pain. Unfortunately, there was no one around, so his cries were in vain. He writhed on the ground in agony, struggled to his feet, and glared fiercely at the mother and daughter like a starving wolf!
“What are you looking at? If you dare lay a hand on my mom again, I’ll kill you!” Tong Jiahui glared back fiercely, pulling her daughter to go home.
Fan Eryong hurriedly ran back home. He had been drugged and needed to find someone quickly to relieve the burning sensation!
Meanwhile, Section Chief Hu was arguing with his wife at home. It was clear his wife’s paranoia had flared up, questioning where he had been all afternoon.
He said he had gone to Old Zhang’s house to play chess, but Han Ailian didn’t believe him and insisted on verifying it. Old Hu felt humiliated and started arguing with her! Eventually, Old Hu got so angry that he really went to the office, not even wanting to eat dinner!
The Tong Family and the Hu Family lived in single-story houses in adjacent rows, and their argument could be heard clearly by the neighbors.
“Han Ailian is really something. She can turn every single day into utter chaos!”
All the sisters were at home. The second daughter, Tong Yuyao, curled her lips, thinking how someone like her could have the nerve to envy her own elegant and beautiful mother.
“She has a psychological disorder—delusional paranoia. You all should stay away from her! She just barged into Mom’s office earlier, looking so aggressive you’d think she was there to pick a fight!” Tong Yuheng warned.
“What? Did she go there to cause trouble? That old hag—next time I’ll curse her to death!” Unlike the eldest, who preferred action, the second daughter excelled at verbal confrontations.
“Alright, why bother with this madwoman?” Tong Jiahui told the two older girls to help with cooking while the younger ones went to do their homework.
"Mom, our family is being targeted. My sisters are still young. This can't go on," Tong Yuheng said.
"Are they going to use my class status against me? But your father was a martyr! We're a martyr's family!"
In the past, her husband had protected her and their daughters. Since the start of the major movements, although her father's family had been sent down to the countryside, no one had used this to attack her.
Tong Jiahui's father and younger brother had been reported as descendants of bureaucratic capitalists. In the end, thanks to her husband's mediation, they didn't receive severe punishment.
Tong Linsheng had also arranged for his in-laws to be sent to a rural area in Liao Province—a place with fertile land, honest folk, and where his comrades could look after them.
Over the past two years, they had secretly sent supplies to his comrades, who quietly passed them on to her father and brother. They were managing well enough there.
But now that her husband was gone, people had been sympathetic at first. After a while, however, some began to harbor other intentions.
"The status of a martyr's family won't always be so useful. The key issue is that someone has set their sights on our family. Dad's compensation payment, the monthly survivor's subsidy, and the job he left behind—all of it makes people envious.
What's most worrying is that some believe our family is hiding a large sum of money. They'll definitely try every means to get their hands on it!"
"But our family has no money left! My grandmother donated all her money to the army to fight the Japanese invaders. All that's left at home is a small medicine shop.
Our Tong Family isn't some bureaucratic capitalist family either. When class status was registered after the founding of the country, our family was only classified as small proprietors, not even petty bourgeoisie."
Tong Jiahui didn't consider her class status to be particularly high. Through several branchings of clans and lineages during the Republican era, the Tong family was no longer the prominent, powerful clan it once had been.
Her grandfather had favored concubines over his wife and hadn't treated her father, his legitimate son, well either. During the Republican era, her grandmother had divorced him. Her father had followed her grandmother and even changed his surname.
They no longer acknowledged any relatives from her paternal grandfather's side. Her grandmother's surname was Tong, and her father had taken her surname, becoming Tong Anfu.
Her grandfather's original surname was Guo. The Guo family had indeed been comprador capitalists. Later, the family fortune was secretly transferred by his second uncle, a secondary son. It was said they fled to Hong Kong before the founding of the country.
Grandmother Tong was a perceptive woman. She came from a prominent family and was a renowned talented lady in her youth, the daughter of an official family. Many said she had suffered a great loss by marrying that wastrel from the Guo family.
She was skilled in management. After marriage, she didn't focus her energy on competing with the concubines. Instead, she used her dowry for investments and secretly earned a considerable amount of wealth.
When her husband favored concubines over her, she leveraged her own family's influence to separate from him. She took her dowry with her and also managed to take half of her husband's family fortune.
Later, with the rise of the revolutionary party, followed by the Beiyang Government and the warlord conflicts, she advised the family to align with the revolutionary faction. Amid the turmoil, she preserved the family's standing and still held some influence within the Tong family.
Later, during the fight against the Japanese invaders, by then she had amassed considerable assets. However, she had strictly disciplined Tong Jiahui's father from a young age. Starting from the age of seven or eight, she had him apprentice at their family's medicine shop, where he learned traditional Chinese medicine.
The old lady said that no amount of money was truly one's own—it could vanish in an instant. But skills were part of a person, always useful whenever needed.
She made her son study medicine, not allowing him to go into business. She also preferred not to mention their ancestors' official past. In the new era, having been officials in the old times was not a good thing.
Since most of their wealth had been donated during the fight against the Japanese invaders, the family was left with only a small house and a small medicine shop, so their class status was not high during the land reform.
It must be said that Grandmother Tong was a wise and intelligent woman.