Chapter 37 Setaria

Chapter 37 Setaria

Chapter 37 Setaria

After a brief exchange, everyone learned that the woman was a representative sent by many insurance companies for Liu Zhuhua's accidental life insurance.

Soon after, she was targeted by the Wang family. Their loved one was in the operating room and his life or death was uncertain. Anyone would feel that it was unlucky to have a salesman from an insurance company come.

Fortunately, there was a criminal policeman named Du Yu on the scene who was able to take charge of the situation. He stopped the Wang family’s riot and took the salesperson away.

They drove back to the Criminal Police Brigade. In the serious crime team's office, the salesperson was still frowning and muttering, complaining about the Wang family's brutality.

"Who are these people?"

"Calm down, too." Zhou Shi said, "Their relatives are in the operating room and they are inevitably emotional."

Du Yu asked: "How did you know we were in the hospital?"

The insurance salesman said, "Didn't you say that?"

She pointed at Xu Yiqing.

Xu Yiqing was confused: "Me?"

The insurance agent said, "You called me and told me that Liu Zhuhua had died and asked me to go to the hospital. Then you gave me the death certificate."

Du Yu and Zhou Shi looked at each other and realized something was wrong.

Du Yu asked: "Let me see, what's the call?"

The insurance agent took out his phone and opened the call log: "At first I thought it was a call from the courier!"

A virtual number is displayed in the call log.

Nowadays, many online shopping platforms, food delivery platforms and even sales calls use virtual numbers, which provides opportunities for fraudsters.

In the serious crime squad, any recent suspicious numbers will be taken seriously.

Du Yu winked at his colleague and said, "Ask the Internet police to check this number."

The insurance salesman was puzzled and looked at Xu Yiqing: "Didn't you call me? Your voice is exactly the same as the one on the phone."

"My voice?" Xu Yiqing pointed at himself: "I'm sure I didn't call you."

The insurance salesman looked at the busy criminal police around him and took out the insurance policy: "No matter what, show me Liu Zhuhua's death certificate and I'll give you the money... Is the beneficiary here? You said on the phone that you are the beneficiary's guardian."

"What's the beneficiary's name?"

"Liu Qing."

Du Yu looked at the other two people and said, "Liu Qing is Liu Zhuhua's son."

Du Yu then gave a brief account of the information that police had gathered about Liu Zhuhua and her son during their recent visits to Baxia Village and Jiangcheng brothels.

In the few years after Liu Zhuhua went to Jiangcheng, she gradually came to understand the darkness of this society.

Just when she had figured out how a small person like herself could survive in Jiangcheng, an accident broke the peace.

She discovered she was two months pregnant.

Only those who have personally experienced becoming a parent can understand the impact of having a child. Liu Zhuhua had been pregnant several times before, but none of them was as special as this one.

So she came up with an idea to give birth to the child and return to Baxia Village to live an ordinary life...even though she didn't even know who the father of the child was and had no way to find out for two months.

During that time, she hid her pregnancy and frantically amassed wealth in order to save some security for herself and her child's future. It was not until she could no longer hide it that she took the rural-urban bus back to the village.

At this time she was already three and a half months pregnant.

After returning to the village, facing the sharp looks and rumors from her fellow villagers, she endured it all silently, waiting for the birth of her child. Every day she dreamed of her planned future, and then woke up with a smile on her face.

At that time, Liu Zhuhua felt that she had endless energy, even though it was difficult for her to open a bottle of water a few months ago.

Then her son Liu Qing was born.

She named the child herself, and if she didn't know the father of the child, she couldn't register the child. Liu Zhuhua, who had little education, thought it was okay. What was the point of registering the child? The mother and daughter lived a stable life, and in the future they could find a man who didn't despise them and marry him. This life was pretty good, and they would return to their roots.

But life is not always smooth sailing. Perhaps it was because Liu Zhuhua continued to do her own thing during her pregnancy, or perhaps it was because of a high fever when she was a child that caused Liu Qing to have lower intelligence than normal children.

It was so low that he could not live independently. When his peers were already in school, he could only speak incoherently. He cried when he was hungry, cold, and hot. He could not speak, so he always used crying to express his feelings.

The crying annoyed the neighbors and broke Liu Zhuhua down. On countless nights, she cried along with her ignorant child, sometimes even drowning out the child's cries.

The future depicted in the dream was shattered.

At first Liu Zhuhua still had hope, but as Liu Qing got older, she finally accepted the reality.

A woman of pleasure, who had no experience in being a mother, could not possibly raise a foolish child with her determination alone.

Liu Zhuhua cultivated the few acres of land left by her grandfather, but because she had no experience, she had no harvest. The money she had saved in the early years was also spent, and she cried all day long.

Finally one day, Liu Zhuhua couldn't stand it anymore. She wanted to use her remaining beauty and youth to hook up with a man who could guarantee her life for the rest of her life.

And this man could not possibly be from the village.

The child became a burden.

So one morning, she took her son to kowtow to people from door to door, leaving some of the remaining food and oil for the child, and gave the rest to the villagers. She spent all the money she had on buying cheap cigarettes and alcohol at the village store. She gave away TVs, freezers, spatulas, and even power strips to whoever wanted them, just to save a bed for the child.

Immediately afterwards, Liu Zhuhua disappeared, and went to Jiangcheng with only three dollars for bus fare, leaving her stupid son alone in the village.

At the beginning, some kind-hearted people in the village who couldn't bear to see Sha Qing suffer so much went to bring him some food, and made hot meals out of the grain left by his mother to prevent him from starving to death.

But as time went by, people's kindness gradually wore away. Sha Qing was a fool who didn't know what gratitude was, and sometimes even fought with the children in the village.

No one could bear it. If you cooked for him in the morning, he would wrestle with his grandson in the afternoon...even though it was the village bully's child who provoked Sha Qing first.

In this way, Sha Qing became an orphan and no one cared about him anymore.

He walked from one end of the village to the garbage dump at the other end to pick up vegetable leaves to fill his stomach, and when he was thirsty he went to the moss-covered bay at the edge of the village to drink water.

Finally one day, Sha Qing ate himself to death.

He wailed and cried all day long in pain. The villagers couldn't bear to see it and tried to feed him medicine, but he thought the medicine was too bitter and vomited everywhere.

Later, the villagers met Liu Zhuhua in the city and told her about her son's situation.

People speculated that Liu Zhuhua should have given up on her son at this time and thought he was dead, but the description of the villagers aroused the last bit of conscience she had left as a mother.

So Liu Zhuhua returned to Baxia Village and saw her son who slept in a dilapidated house and picked up garbage to eat all day.

Before she even reached the door of her home, she couldn't stop crying.

She then took Liu Qing to Jiangcheng People's Hospital for examination, and the results came out soon.

Stomach cancer.

After many years, she once again fell into a breakdown as a mother.

The hospitalization fee was an astronomical figure. After staying in the hospital for a period of time, the hospital also tactfully told her that her son's condition was special and he was not suitable for hospitalization unless he could afford to stay in a single room.

On the day of completing the discharge procedures, a lively parade was held in Jiangcheng.

She knelt in the snow, feeling the sufferings of the world.

Liu Zhuhua took Liu Qing to get a haircut, ate noodles for five yuan a bowl, and bought a set of fairly neat new clothes.

Unexpectedly, Liu Qing, who was tortured by illness and had a mood swing that day, did not cry or make a fuss. Even though he had a severe stomachache, he still ate the whole bowl of noodles without leaving any soup.

Even though at night he vomited the noodles all over the floor.

No one knew what decision Liu Zhuhua made, but she left again near the end of the year, so everyone in the village said that Liu Zhuhua would never come back.

The next time she showed up, she was knocking on Li Cheng's door, carrying a bunch of gifts and dragging a sack of honeycomb coal.

"During the days we visited, we occasionally encountered Liu Qing returning to that shabby house. He wouldn't say anything when we asked him, and we couldn't communicate. He couldn't eat anything because of the stomach pain... Sometimes we saw him kneeling on the ground in pain, banging his head against the door frame, and shouting for his mother."

Du Yu said: "If you buy him noodles, he will eat them all quietly...although he will spit them out in the end."

He sighed heavily. "When you first went to Baxia Village, you remember that there were a lot of foxtail grass planted near Liu Qing's house, right? He would pull the young spikes of foxtail grass and suck on them. The young spikes were sweet. And that sweetness was one of the few sources of happiness for him."

(End of this chapter)