At first, Jing Shu listened to their chatter as if it were idle small talk. The elderly man introduced his family's generation name scheme. His own name was Su Guosheng, and Su Lanzhi's father had been Su Guoqiang.
But since even Su Lanzhi had never met this elder, there was no real bond to speak of. The gifts they brought were purely out of respect for the two elders who had passed away.
Then the conversation veered toward Su Meimei, and the old man began lecturing Uncle and Su Lanzhi with the authority of a father. Jing Shu frowned. So the appearance of her so-called Second Grand-uncle was really tied to Su Meimei?
They were all separated by several degrees of kinship. Why was Su Guosheng so invested in Su Meimei's affairs? In the darkness, Jing Shu studied Su Meimei and Su Guosheng. Both had broad, square faces. Su Lanzhi and Uncle, however, had oval faces.
An unbelievable thought rose in Jing Shu's mind.
As Su Lanzhi listened, her expression darkened. By the end, the fire in her chest finally flared up. "Second Uncle, whether my siblings and I are united is our family's business. You just need to take care of yourself.
I do not care about the ten-odd thousand yuan from the car. What I care about is that Su Meimei and her lover, Sun Yinrui, would rather cheat me out of money than lend me any. As for the black pigs, that was repayment. They lent me money back then, so I paid them back with pigs. If Su Meimei had lent me money, I would have set one aside for her."
Su Meimei put on a wounded look. "My dear sister, I never even drove that car, and now it is not worth a bowl of white rice. If I had not scraped together more than a hundred thousand for you back then, you could not have bought that much. I gave ten thousand more than anyone else.
So give me a pig now. Is that not reasonable? If Zhang Zhongyong had not told me, I would not even know you divided up several pigs behind your own sister's back. And now you bring the tiniest sliver to 'treat' the only elder left in the family, along with those so-called pickles and marinated eggs. Brother-in-law works at a Livestock Breeding Center. Getting eggs is easy for him, yet he only brought a few.
Uncle, with my parents gone, you are all I have. You must stand up for me. I have poured my heart out for this family." Tears ran down Su Meimei's face.
Overheated, Su Guosheng undid the buttons of his Zhongshan suit. He did not want to keep up the pretense. "We are all family. There is nothing that cannot be resolved if everyone takes a step back. Lanzhi, I hear you still have pigs. Why not give your sister one? And I, as an old man, can do you a favor. I will speak to your leaders and help you get promoted to deputy director."
Su Lanzhi trembled with anger, at a loss for words. Jing An clenched his fists.
Jing Shu clicked her tongue. "Su Meimei, you must be mistaken about one thing. Someone with neither the kindness of raising us nor the duty of being a true parent has no right to point fingers at us. On what basis?
And drop the act. You say you pour your heart out for us? Then tell me, what did you serve us to eat? Those are not dried radishes. They are the free mushrooms from before, left uneaten until they dried out, right?"
Jing Shu pulled out her phone and shone the flashlight on the blackened pile of food, revealing speckled mold. "And all those garlic shoots and mushrooms on your balcony require water every day, do they not? You also have hundreds of bottles of water stacked in the bedroom. Everyone, have a look."
Jing Shu pushed open the room she had scouted earlier. The beam lit stacks of bottled mineral water. "You claim you have not a drop for guests, you do not even turn on a light, and you serve moldy mushrooms. This is your version of pouring your heart out? We cannot afford such affection."
With a crack, Su Lanzhi slapped Su Meimei across the face. "Su Meimei, I treated you with all my heart. Where is your conscience? How could you do this to your brother and me?"
"Pfft!"
A tooth flew from Su Meimei's mouth. Blood streamed from her nose, and her cheek swelled high in moments. Su Meimei stared at Su Lanzhi in disbelief, then lunged wildly, only to be shoved to the floor with a thud by Jing An.
After drinking No. 4 Spirit Spring for half a year, Su Lanzhi and Jing An probably had not realized how strong they had become.
Su Guosheng shot to his feet, agitated. "What are you doing? Do you want to turn the sky upside down?"
"Dad, you see it, do you not? This is how I live under their roof," Su Meimei sobbed. "I am done pretending. Ever since I was little, I overheard those two whispering that they should not have kept me, that one more child meant one more mouth to feed. They never treated me like a real daughter. They died and left me nothing. I married and was despised by my in-laws because I had no family to rely on. Boohoo."
Her words turned everyone to stone. They looked stunned, unable to process it. Jing Shu narrowed her eyes, memories tumbling.
Su Meimei stayed on the floor, howling as if pouring out years of grievance. "It was Jing Shu who reported me and Sun Yinrui. If I had not contacted you, they would have killed me. Look, this is her family. You keep telling me to act like I am one of them. What is the point? Whether I am their real child or not, they still bully me like this.
Those two old people must have told them about me long ago, bad-mouthing me behind my back. How else would they treat me this way?"
Su Lanzhi was still frozen, reeling from the information. Her hand shook as she pointed at Su Meimei. "So you knew. That is why you treated me like that. So everything makes sense now."
Uncle stepped forward, stricken. "Su Meimei, people say the kindness of raising is greater than the act of giving birth. Our parents raised you for over twenty years. How can you call them 'those old things'?
They never spoke of your situation. When you were brought home, you were only a few months old. I was five. I remember. Lanzhi was two and knew nothing. I do not know where you were brought from, and Lanzhi knows even less. We have always treated you as our real sister. How can you say something so ungrateful?"
Jing Shu cleared her throat. "If I am not mistaken, when Su Guosheng was sent down to the countryside as an educated youth, he had a child with a rural woman. Then he got transferred back. For the sake of his future, he abandoned Su Meimei and left her with Grandpa's family to raise. Is that right? No matter how you slice it, Su Meimei, you are a child abandoned by your biological father."
That would explain the butterfly effect. In Jing Shu's previous life, Su Meimei had lived comfortably and never faced a life-and-death crisis. She probably resented her biological father for abandoning her to enjoy a better life alone, and so she never contacted him. In this life, she had reached a breaking point with her in-laws and had turned to him for help.
In the third year of the apocalypse in Jing Shu's previous life, Uncle's whole family had been buried under their building in a massive earthquake. The truth would have died with them, leaving Su Lanzhi to carry guilt for a lifetime.
"If she is not a blood relative, then we can strike without restraint," Jing Shu thought, and her mood improved.