Tong Yuqian’s voice carried sarcasm, her eyes full of disdain and contempt. She looked at him as if he were trash. That expression terrified Fan Eryong completely.
Fan Eryong shook his head frantically while making muffled “mmmph” sounds. In his mind, he thought: no wonder my niece said the eldest daughter of the Tong family is a violent woman. Wasn’t the plan to have someone injure her, then send her to the hospital afterward?
“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, then he can take his chances and live or die on his own!”
Tong Jiahui immediately carried out the order. In this family, the eldest daughter was half the head of the household. Her husband had raised her like a boy, and now she had become the backbone of the entire family.
She brought over the dirty jar used for rinsing calligraphy brushes. Tong Yuqian poured most of the water into Fan Eryong’s mouth and then stuffed his mouth shut again. The reason she didn’t use her own cup was simple—she didn’t want to be disgusted by ever using it again after it had touched his saliva.
“I’ll have to send you out. You’re not going through the front door—you’re going out the window!”
The small room had a double-paned window. It wasn’t a problem for an adult to climb out.
“Should I throw you out head-first or feet-first?” Tong Yuqian’s smile made Fan Eryong tremble all over.
It was the second floor. Falling wouldn’t kill him, but it could easily break his legs. And now that he had already been drugged—what was he supposed to do?
Before he could think further, Tong Yuqian untied the ropes binding him, pushed the window open, grabbed him, and threw him out.
With a “thud,” Fan Eryong landed on the ground. He fell on his side—no broken head, no broken legs. He was oddly lucky. But the frozen ground was hard, and the impact still caused his internal organs to feel displaced, making him writhe in pain.
He pulled the cloth out of his mouth and screamed in agony. Unfortunately, no one was around, so no one could hear him. He rolled on the ground several times before struggling to his feet and glaring viciously at the mother and daughter like a starving wolf.
“Keep looking!” Tong Jiahui snapped back coldly. “Dare to scheme against my mother again, and I’ll kill you!”
Then she and her daughter turned to leave.
Fan Eryong quickly ran home. The drug in his system was still active, and he needed to find someone to relieve the burning effects as soon as possible.
At that moment, Factory Director Hu was at home arguing with his wife. It was obvious his wife’s jealousy had flared up again—she demanded to know what he had been doing all afternoon.
He said he had gone to play chess at Old Man Zhang’s house. Han Ailian didn’t believe him and insisted on checking. Feeling humiliated, Director Hu got into a heated argument with her. Eventually, he stormed off to the office and refused dinner altogether.
The Tong family and the Hu family lived in two rows of connected low courtyard houses, so their arguments could be heard clearly by neighbors.
“Han Ailian really is something else. She turns every single day into chaos,” one of the sisters said, Tong Yuyao curling her lip.
All the sisters were at home. The second daughter, Tong Yuyao, thought how ridiculous it was that such a woman could be jealous of their mother’s elegance and beauty.
“She’s mentally ill—paranoid delusions. Stay away from her,” Tong Yuqian warned. “She even came charging into Mom’s workplace earlier. She looked like she was ready to fight someone.”
“What? She was there to cause trouble? That ugly old hag—I’ll curse her out next time!” the second sister said angrily. Unlike the eldest who preferred physical action, she excelled at verbal attacks.
“Enough. Why bother with a crazy person?” their mother said, assigning the older daughters to help with cooking while the younger ones did homework.
“Mom, our family is being targeted. With the younger sisters still small, this can’t go on,” Tong Yuqian said.
“Are they going to use my background against us? But your dad was a martyr—we are a martyr’s family!”
In the past, with her husband protecting them, no one dared to touch them. Even during earlier political movements, although her father’s family had been labeled and sent down, no one dared to attack them directly.
Her father and brother had once been accused of being descendants of bureaucratic capitalist families, but due to her husband’s influence, they avoided severe punishment.
Her husband had even arranged for her father’s family to be sent to rural Liaoning, to fertile land where a trusted comrade could look after them. Over the years, they secretly sent supplies through that comrade to help them survive.
But now her husband was gone. At first, people only showed sympathy—but after a while, some began to harbor other intentions.
“The status of a martyr’s family won’t always protect us. The problem is that someone has set their sights on our family,” Tong Yuqian said. “Dad’s pension, monthly survivor benefits, and his old job are all things people are jealous of.”
“What’s even more worrying is that some people think we’ve hidden a large amount of wealth. They’ll try every possible way to get their hands on it.”
“But we don’t have any money left! Grandma donated everything to the army. All we had was a small pharmacy.”
The Tong family didn’t see themselves as wealthy or high-status. Over generations of division and restructuring, they were no longer the once-glorious clan.
Her grandfather had been a philanderer who favored concubines and mistreated his legal wife. During the Republic era, her grandmother divorced him and took their father with her, even changing their surname.
They no longer recognized the paternal side of the family. Her grandmother’s surname was Tong, so her father followed her line and became Tong Anfu.
Their grandfather’s surname was actually Guo, and the Guo family had once been comprador capitalists. Later, much of the wealth was transferred away by a concubine’s son, and before liberation they reportedly fled to Hong Kong.
Tong’s grandmother was an intelligent and clear-minded woman, a well-known talented lady from a prominent official family. Many had said marrying into the Guo family was a waste of her.
But she was skilled in managing affairs. After marriage, she did not waste time fighting concubines. Instead, she invested her dowry and quietly accumulated wealth.
When her husband favored concubines over his wife, she used her family influence to separate from him and took both her dowry and half of his assets.
Later, through the turbulent years of revolution, warlords, and shifting governments, she aligned the family with the revolutionary side and preserved their standing.
By the time of the war against Japan, she already had considerable wealth. However, she strictly educated her son Tong’s father from a young age, making him apprentice in their pharmacy at around seven or eight years old so he could learn traditional Chinese medicine.
She believed wealth could vanish, but skills remained forever.
She pushed her son toward medicine rather than business, and avoided mentioning their aristocratic ancestry, knowing that in the new era, old official backgrounds were a liability.
Because most of their wealth had been donated during the war, only a small house and a pharmacy remained. As a result, their official class status was not high.
One has to say, Grandma Tong was a truly wise and far-sighted woman.