Siheyuan: Sizhu starts blindly and takes a new path

"Three hundred and eighty for one, no more." The old man put the gold bar on the scale and weighed it carefully, his narrowed eyes flashing with shrewdness, "Now the inspection is strict, this business will cost you your life."

Qin Huairu stared at the small copper scale, her heart clenched. The two gold bars only brought her 760 yuan, 40 yuan short of the 800 yuan Li Huaide had said.

"Master..." Qin Huairu's voice trembled, "Please be kind and make up the total..."

The old man glanced at her over his reading glasses and said, "Girl, who dares to go out with a lot of money these days?" He patted his empty pockets and said, "That's all. It's my last money."

"Okay...Okay." Her voice trembled and her nails dug deep into her palms.

The old man took out a cloth bag from his bosom and peeled off the layers, revealing stacks of ten-yuan bills. He counted out seventy-six bills with his saliva on his face, "Seven hundred and sixty, count them."

Qin Huairu took the money, her fingers shaking violently. She counted it three times and was about to put it into her underwear pocket when a sharp whistle suddenly came from outside. "The inspection team is here!" someone shouted, followed by chaotic footsteps. In the dim alley, several people wearing red armbands rushed in.

The pigeon market was in an uproar. People packed up their bags and ran away. The aunties who were buying vegetables threw their baskets aside. The scene was in chaos.

The old man's face suddenly changed, and he quickly stuffed the gold bar into his arms: "Hurry up! The inspectors are coming!"

Before Qin Huairu could react, she was dragged towards the back door. Someone bumped into her in the dark, and she stumbled a few steps, hurriedly stuffing the money into her pocket. The old man turned into a narrow alley with familiarity, and Qin Huairu stumbled after him, with the chaotic sound of footsteps and her own heartbeat filling her ears.

"Run separately!" The old man suddenly let go of her and took another fork in the road.

Qin Huairu was panicking. The flashlight beam swept over her from behind. She heard shouting and scolding and the sound of heavy objects falling to the ground from behind. She didn't dare to look back and just ran forward with her arms around her chest. A bamboo basket suddenly rolled out from the side. She stumbled over it, but her left cloth shoe was stuck in the mud and couldn't be pulled out.

"Stop!" someone shouted from behind.

Qin Huairu threw off her other shoe and continued running barefoot. Cold muddy water squeezed out from between her toes, and the walls on both sides of the alley blurred into a gray shadow. She turned into a dead end alley full of baskets, and in a hurry she stepped on the stacked baskets to climb over the wall, her knees rubbing against the rough brick surface.

There was an abandoned yard on the other side of the wall. Qin Huairu sat slumped in the weeds, her chest aching as if it were on fire. She pricked up her ears to listen to the movement on the other side of the wall - the footsteps and shouting gradually faded away.

She collapsed on the ground, her clothes soaked with cold sweat. After a long while, she finally remembered to check her pocket to see if the money was still there...

The pocket is empty.

Qin Huairu's blood froze instantly. She turned out all her pockets like crazy, even the insoles of her shoes - nothing, nothing.

"Impossible...Impossible..." She muttered to herself, lying on the ground and searching the yard first, then climbing over the wall and searching the same path again. There were only a few rotten vegetable leaves and broken bricks in the alley, so how could there be any trace of money?

The sky gradually brightened. Qin Huairu walked out of the alley in a daze, and every step felt like she was stepping on cotton. Seven hundred and sixty yuan! That was Banggeng's life-saving money! She suddenly remembered the time she was hit, and it must have been at that time...

It was already daybreak when Qin Huairu pushed open the gate of the courtyard. She was covered in dust, her trouser legs were stained with muddy water from the alley, and there were a few strands of dry grass hanging in her hair. Jia Zhang, who was drying quilts in the yard, raised her head and was about to scold, but was stunned when she saw her daughter-in-law's face.

"You..." Jia Zhang's hand, holding the clothesline, hung in the air, "Which rat hole have you been to?"

Qin Huairu walked through the yard with a blank look in her eyes, without any reaction to her mother-in-law's words. She walked in a strange way, as if she was stepping on cotton, with one foot deep and one foot shallow, and she almost bumped into the clothesline several times.

Jia Zhang suddenly felt uneasy. She had seen Qin Huairu cry and throw tantrums, she had seen her pretend to be pitiful and aggrieved, but she had never seen her like this - her face was as pale as the paper on the windows, her lips were full of bloody marks from biting, and the most frightening thing was her eyes, dark and lifeless.

"Hey!" Jia Zhang bravely blocked her way, "I want to ask you a question!"

Qin Huairu slowly raised her head, her eyes seemed to penetrate Jia Zhang and look at some distant place. The corners of her mouth twitched, as if she wanted to say something, but in the end she just shook her head slightly and walked around her mother-in-law into the house.

Jia Zhang subconsciously took a step back. This was wrong, too wrong. If she had dared to stop him like this in the past, Qin Huairu would have cried and complained. She hesitated for a moment and followed him: "You...you should explain clearly..."

In the room, Xiaodang was combing Huaihua's hair. Seeing their mother come in like this, the two children were shocked.

"Mom?" The wooden comb in Xiaodang's hand fell to the ground.

Qin Huairu ignored everyone and walked straight to the kang, falling down like a felled log. She lay face down, motionless, with only the slight rise and fall of her back proving she was still alive.

Jia Zhang chased in and saw Qin Huairu's dirty body pressed directly on the clean bedding. She immediately became angry again: "You are asking for death! You get on the bed without taking off your dirty clothes!" She reached out to grab Qin Huairu's arm, "Get up! Wash yourself first..."

As soon as her hand touched Qin Huairu, she felt something was wrong. Qin Huairu's body was terribly hot, like a piece of red-hot charcoal. Jia Zhang hurriedly turned her over, only to see that Qin Huairu's face had turned from pale to blue, and her lips were an abnormal purple.

"Huai Ru? Huai Ru!" Jia Zhang slapped her face and her voice began to tremble.

Qin Huairu's eyelids trembled, and she suddenly started to cough violently. She arched her body and sprayed a mouthful of dark red blood directly onto Jia Zhang's front. The blood spots splashed on the blue cloth shirt, like a bunch of strange little flowers.

"Mom——!" Xiaodang screamed and rushed over.

Qin Huairu had already fallen back onto the kang, her eyes half open but out of focus. Jia Zhangshi trembled as she tried to feel his breath, her fingers brushed by the faint breath, and then she sat down on the ground and yelled at the frightened Xiaodang: "Go across the street and call your great grandfather! Hurry up!"

Huaihua burst into tears out of fear. Jia Zhang frantically wiped the blood from the corner of Qin Huairu's mouth with her sleeves, but the more she wiped, the more blood there was. She couldn't wipe it clean. The blood spread on the pillowcase, like a hideous map.

"You can't die... You can't die..." Jia Zhang muttered incoherently, "Bang Geng hasn't come back yet... The children are still young..."

There were hurried footsteps outside the house, and Xiaodang rushed in with an old man. The old man saw the situation and said, "We have to rush to the hospital."

Jia Zhang's lips trembled: "We have to go to the hospital again. How much will it cost?"