Siheyuan: Starting from 1958

Five minutes later, Yan Fugui finally snapped out of his despair.

Looking at his anxious wife beside him, he replied with a dejected expression, "Old woman... our world has collapsed..."

"The police just came to the courtyard and told me..."

"What Xu Damao was doing outside wasn't foreign trade at all, it was smuggling..."

"The three Jie brothers were all arrested by the police for participating in smuggling with Xu Damao, and the radios and televisions they smuggled were also confiscated."

“Not only did the 5,000 yuan invested in Xu Damao go down the drain, but the three Jie brothers may also be sentenced to prison, with a minimum sentence of three years.”

“If we are willing to pay a fine of three thousand yuan to each of them, we can reduce the punishment for the three people, and they can be released in about six months…”

“All our family’s money was invested in Xu Damao and went down the drain. Now we can’t even scrape together a thousand yuan, how could we possibly raise nine thousand yuan to pay the fine…”

"Even selling the house we live in now wouldn't be enough to redeem one person..."

"But if we don't bail them out, and they're sentenced to prison, they'll definitely have a hard time finding jobs after they're released in three years..."

"My wife and I haven't done anything wrong, so why is God treating our Yan family like this? Isn't this driving us to the brink of despair?"

"Jie Cheng and the others have been arrested..." Yan Fugui's wife, who was squatting next to him, slumped to the ground and asked her husband with a look of despair on her face.

"How can this be……"

"How did a perfectly good foreign trade business suddenly turn into smuggling..."

"Could the police have made a mistake...?"

Yan Fugui shook his head: "I asked the two policemen who came looking for us..."

“Xu Damao has always been involved in smuggling and has never done any foreign trade. We’ve all been deceived by him…”

Yan Fugui's wife immediately panicked and cried out, "I told you from the beginning that Xu Damao was unreliable and that you should invest less money, but you wouldn't listen..."

"Now it's all over. Not only has all the money I invested been lost, but my three sons have also been arrested by the police."

"I do not care……"

"Old man, you must redeem my three sons..."

"Didn't the police say they'd be released in six months after paying the fine? What are you still standing here for? Hurry up and raise the money..."

"I'd sell the house if it meant getting the three Jie brothers back..."

"Quickly..."

This was the first time a woman who never lost her temper at home had ever yelled at Yan Fugui, especially the last few words she just uttered, which she practically shouted out with all her might.

Yan Fugui was startled by his wife's reaction. He never expected that his wife, who had always been obedient to him, would lose her temper. As the head of the family, even if the Yan family's sky had fallen, Yan Fugui would not allow his wife to climb over him.

He cursed without any politeness: "What are you yelling for..."

"Do you think I don't want to redeem them as brothers?"

“But the police want a fine of nine thousand yuan, not nine hundred yuan. How am I supposed to raise that much money in such a short time?”

"Even if we sell the house we live in now, we'll only get less than two thousand yuan, which isn't even enough to redeem one person."

"What should we do then..." Faced with Yan Fugui's outburst, his anxious wife immediately cowered, looking at him with a worried expression. "We can only try to pay one person's fine first..." Yan Fugui seemed to have made a great decision, letting out a long sigh as he answered.

The wife is aware of the family's current situation. Although she really wants to redeem all three brothers, it is basically impossible given the family's current circumstances.

After thinking about it for a long time, she had no choice but to accept her man's decision.

Then, frowning, he asked, "So, who do you plan to pay the fine for first..."

"The third child..."

Yan Fugui answered with a frown.

A look of confusion immediately flashed across Yan Fugui's wife's face.

She could understand why Yan Fugui didn't pay the fine for his eldest son.

The eldest son is a man of deep thoughts. After this incident, even if we redeem him, he will become estranged from his parents and will not be filial to them.

But his wife couldn't understand why her husband would rather choose his third son, who worked odd jobs, than his second son.

You should know that the second son has a wife, who receives a salary of over one hundred yuan every month from Dongjun Restaurant.

If the fine is paid for the third son but not for the second son, the second son's family will definitely start to have opinions about the elderly couple again, and his wife will no longer take care of the family.

That's an income of over a hundred yuan. Even if they only hand over one-tenth of their income to the elderly couple each month, it's still more than ten yuan.

If the whole family can use all their resources to redeem the second child, the second child's family will definitely be extremely grateful to the elderly couple.

With the second son's wife's current income, plus the income from the second son's odd jobs after his release from prison, even if the several thousand yuan of retirement money invested in Xu Damao were all lost, that salary income would be enough for the two of them to live a good retirement life.

Yan Fugui seemed to sense his wife's lack of understanding.

To put it simply: "Although the second son's wife earns a high salary, they have their own son and their own family to support. Even if we sell the house to help the second son pay the fine, he won't be as grateful to us as the third son."

"Moreover, it was my suggestion to do foreign trade business with Xu Damao, and it was also my idea to mortgage the house to borrow money. Who knows, the two of them might hate me to the bone now."

“If I hadn’t suggested that they follow Xu Damao in applying for foreign trade loans, and if I hadn’t suggested that they mortgage their houses to borrow money, this accident wouldn’t have happened.”

"If we actually pay the fine for the second son, we might end up with nothing."

"The third one is different..."

“He is unmarried, has no children, and has always lived with us. He is the closest to us.”

“If we abandon the eldest and second eldest and only pay the fine for him, the third eldest will definitely be extremely grateful to us, and he will be willing to hand over his future salary to us.”

"Even if the salary isn't much, my pension is enough for both of us to live on in our old age, so that's the safest option."

"Anyway, our relationship with the second and eldest brothers will only get worse because of this incident. Rather than rescuing an enemy who hates us to the bone and will become alienated from us in the future, we might as well rescue the third brother who is grateful to us."

Although the wife was very reluctant to give up on the eldest and second sons, she had to admit in her heart that her husband's analysis was correct.

Since the couple is destined to drift apart from their eldest son and sister, spending money on them would be a waste. It would be better to spend the money on the youngest son, who is most likely to be grateful to the couple.

After a painful period of hesitation, she made a decisive decision: "Old man, I'll listen to you..." (End of Chapter)