Chapter 602 - 223: Hometown Affairs
Chapter 602: Chapter 223: Hometown Affairs
When family reunited, joy naturally followed. But mentioning those who ruined the mood made people frown. Unfortunately, some people had to be mentioned.
"After Lin and Mrs. Li divorced, he vanished completely," Chen Bai said.
Chen Lin had been the old couple’s only hope. With Song’s entire family moving to the Prefecture, Lin missing, the eldest grandson married off into his wife’s family, and the youngest grandson still little, the old lady could only rely on him—the son who had been married off into his wife’s family long ago.
Chen Bai wasn’t just annoyed; he was suffocating from sheer frustration. He was the least valued of the three sons. No matter how hard Song’s life had been, he had at least enjoyed a few good years. When their grandmother was alive, she doted on Song as her precious darling. If there was a single egg in the house, it would definitely go to him.
But Chen Bai wasn’t his father’s biological son. Though his grandmother hadn’t mistreated him, he wasn’t her own flesh and blood, so naturally, she hadn’t paid him much mind. He was also his mother’s stain—the spawn of a wicked man whose true identity was unknown. Even his own mother wished she could drown him. From childhood to adulthood, he had never lived a single good day.
Yet now, at the very end, with Song out of reach, Lin unreliable, and even the once-beloved eldest grandson becoming a thorn in their side, they had no one left to lean on. Only then did the old lady remember him.
She was quite capable for her age, actually knowing how to drive an ox cart. Whenever her legs failed her, she drove the ox cart to the county town every few days. Today, she would demand a liter of rice; tomorrow, she would ask for a bushel of grain. His family ran a grain business, so it wasn’t that he couldn’t afford these things. But why should he give them to her? That was the Qian Family’s property, not his. He was a son married into his wife’s family, just like a married-out daughter. How could she have the nerve to show up at her in-laws’ doorstep every day to beg for handouts?
But the old lady simply had no shame. To make matters worse, she never asked for much at once and always put on a pitiful, cowering face, as if she were enduring immense suffering. This made clueless outsiders think he was mistreating his elderly mother. They would stand around making sarcastic remarks, telling him to be more filial, lest his own children and grandchildren treat him the same way in his old age.
Left with no choice, he could only search everywhere for Lin. But it was as if Lin had vanished into thin air. Chen Bai scoured the entire county town but couldn’t find a single trace of him.
If he only had to deal with the old lady’s occasional begging, it would have been bearable. However, the old man used the debt of raising him to blackmail him into sending him back to Guanzhong. Mentioning this, Chen Bai truly couldn’t stop complaining.
"Father injured his leg, and the wound just kept lingering, never fully healing. Because of all the foul drama at home, he felt he had lost face and refused to even step out the door. He stayed inside every day, lying in bed like a living corpse. Since no one was there to wait on him, his broken leg rotted and bred maggots. He had no choice but to have the rotting flesh carved out."
But carving it out was useless. With no one to brew his medicine three times a day or help him wash, the old man was in too much pain to walk. He soiled the bed, and his wound grew even more severely infected. Before Chen Bai left for the Prefecture, he had watched with his own eyes as the doctor amputated that leg. Even the amputation was useless. Unless he received excellent care, losing the leg would soon lead to the rest of his lower body rotting away. He wouldn’t live much longer.
Before he came, he had given the clansmen a sum of money to go over regularly to clean the old man and feed him his medicine. Meanwhile, he traveled to the Prefecture to seek out Song for a solution.
"Father has made up his mind to die. He wants to return to his hometown for burial," Chen Bai finally voiced the difficult reason for his visit.
While Chen Bai was speaking, Li’an kept his head bowed the entire time, not daring to look up at anyone. But this was like burying his head in the sand; hiding was completely futile.
Chen Song hurled a boot at him. "Your grandfather and grandmother are in that state, and you’re just going to stand by and do nothing?"
Chen Bai tried to intervene from the side. "Song, don’t get violent. Li’an has his own grievances in this."
"No matter how many grievances he has, he can’t just turn a blind eye to the two elders. Half of the Silver the old couple earned went into Lin’s belly, and the other half was spent on him."
Even though they had signed a contract and Li’an had married into his wife’s family—meaning the two families shouldn’t have any further dealings by custom—the biggest difference between humans and beasts was that humans remembered the past and valued affection. If Li’an truly ignored the old couple, he wouldn’t be worthy of being called a human.
Chen Bai spoke the honest truth. "How could you say Li’an didn’t care? He went over on his own initiative to serve Father. But Father threw a chamber pot right at his forehead, leaving him bleeding all over his head. Then Mother chased him down the street with a broom, cursing him in front of everyone, saying he was wickedly immoral and a disgrace to his ancestors. She even told him to change his surname and stop being a Chen. She threatened that if Li’an dared to go home again, she would go cause a scene with Chunyue and her mother."
With things having escalated to this point, how could Li’an dare to go back? Chunyue was already pregnant; that child was the hope of both Chunyue and her mother. If the old lady actually caused her to lose the baby, how could Li’an and Chunyue ever continue living together?