The Road Home

Chapter 16

Before Lu Yanchen got back, she stayed in the security gatehouse and chatted with that old man.

The old uncle did not like the cold but also felt that heaters were not good, so he had lit an old-style coal stove for himself to keep warm.

When Gui Xiao was in middle school, a coal stove would be set beside the podium in every class to provide warmth. At the time, she had sat in the first row, so she had benefited most from it, but she had also needed to provide physical labour, such as every once in a while replenishing some lumps of coal or using the fire tongs to open up the fire and get some air to the embers. More than ten years had passed, but now as she did these again the actions were still easy and familiar. While tending to the coal stove, she listened to the old uncle talk about the affairs of a few of the rich families in town.

Naturally, the Meng family was the first mentioned.

Within a few years after she married, Meng Xiaoshan had made several successive donations to the middle school to renovate the washrooms and change out the entire school's water supply to potable water, and had also donated a brand new sports field... Each one was a wonderful charitable deed that would save up merit in heaven for her for the future. Once he finished describing those good deeds, the old uncle then talked about that wedding banquet of Meng Xiaoshan and Qin Feng, which had stirred the entire town and been so incredibly grand. After their marriage, the young husband-and-wife couple lived a successful, prosperous life that evoked envy in others.

Finally, the old uncle heaved a long sigh. "The Qin family must have done lots of good deeds in several previous lifetimes in order to earn the blessing of having Meng Xiaoshan as their daughter-in-law. Truly, the Hai family does not have such good fortune."

The way he was speaking so feelingly over this made it sound as if he had witnessed with his own eyes those matters of love and hate between the younger generations of those three families.

Giving a smile, Gui Xiao stretched her fingers, which were stiff from the cold, over the flames and continued warming herself.

It was not that the Hai family did not have such good fortune; it was that Hai Dong was too capable of making trouble.

And hence, he himself had helped to bring together those two people into a wonderful marriage.

Back then, Meng Xiaoshan had set her heart on marrying Hai Dong. Hai Dong, though, had been too fond of playing around and unable to keep his playboy ways in check. He had enjoyed talking flirtatiously to young girls, going out to eat with them, and just playing around in ambiguous relationships. He had felt that he was simply getting himself a few "younger godsisters" and had not believed he was doing anything that crossed the line. Hence, he had been certain that Meng Xiaoshan would not break up with him. In fact, at the time, other than needing to have a wedding banquet and register their marriage, the two very early on had already been no different from any other ordinary young, married couple.

Alas, he still had not understood Meng Xiaoshan's temperament. She was a woman who could harden her heart. With that breakup, she had declared that they were cutting things off, and she had carried through on those words. The ruckus raised had been so great it had practically shaken the heavens and earth, and the entire town had known. Hai Dong had knelt outside of the Meng home for an entire night and had asked all sorts of people to put in good words for him, but even so he had been unable to persuade Meng Xiaoshan to change her mind.

However, this had been her first love, after all. Her first night, and all those other things, had been given to him—everything that carried the word "first" was somehow related to Hai Dong. To say this had not pained her would be a lie, and for a long time Meng Xiaoshan had wallowed in despondency because of this matter. Even after two months, she had not recovered and would stay in the arcade from morning to night and not go home, suffering away to the point that she had lost all semblances of a normal human being.