Sheng Xinglian whispered, tears clinging to her lashes, on the verge of falling. She looked utterly pitiful.
The Sheng family saw Sheng Xinglian's deathly pale face, her eyes squeezed shut, with a few crystalline teardrops still clinging to her cheeks.
Her tear-streaked face was the very picture of misery, stirring an involuntary wave of pity in Mrs. Sheng and the second brother.
"I'm the one who said it. I said Gu Jiaojiao should pay back the living expenses for the eighteen years our family raised her. What's wrong with that? Shouldn't she?"
Third Sheng: ...
'His mom knows how to lie, too?'
Mr. Sheng, having reached the position of division commander, was naturally a shrewd man. He glanced at his biological daughter, then at his dumbfounded youngest son.
He said nothing, just sat sullenly on the sofa. 'This biological daughter of mine, not having grown up by my side, has really gone astray!'
Sheng Shijing glanced again at his biological sister. 'She's so petty,' he thought. 'All she knows how to do is cry.'
'Others do all the dirty work, while she does nothing. A few tears are all she needs to destroy someone without lifting a finger.'
He shouldn't have come back. He'd only returned to see Gu Jiaojiao. "Dad, Mom, I have something to take care of at my unit, so I'll be leaving."
"Shijing, won't you stay for dinner before you go?" Mr. Sheng asked, trying to get him to stay.
Mrs. Sheng was still fuming. She had no appetite herself, so she certainly wasn't in the mood to ask her eldest son to stay for dinner.
Sheng Shiwen grumbled resentfully, "It's all that ungrateful wretch Gu Jiaojiao's fault..."
"Second Brother, shut your mouth! Jiaojiao is married now, what does this have to do with her?" Mr. Sheng roared, his anger boiling over.
Sheng Shiwen was stunned by his father's shouting. He was furious but didn't dare to talk back, and his hatred for Gu Jiaojiao deepened.
He silently resolved to find a time to teach Gu Jiaojiao a lesson.
Mr. Sheng thought of that girl, Jiaojiao. 'She has a sharp tongue, but a straightforward heart. A personality like that is the easiest to take advantage of.'
'No wonder those two blockheads, the second and third brothers, are wrapped around their sister's little finger.'
'They did something so irreversible to Jiaojiao that I had to swallow my pride and go beg Su Shuochi.'
He glanced at Sheng Xinglian again. 'This daughter of mine is full of schemes. What a pity!'
Mr. Sheng didn't even want to eat at home anymore, but he couldn't be as willful as his eldest son.
A family still needs to be maintained.
And his daughter needed to be taught a lesson. "Xingxing, what are you crying about? No one has said anything to you, have they?"
Sheng Xinglian, who was in the middle of acting pitiful: ...
'What does Dad mean by that?'
"Dad, my heart just aches for my sister, that's why I want to cry~"
"Xingxing, if your heart ached for Jiaojiao so much, why did you borrow so much money from her? Don't you know the Su family is the poorest in our entire compound?
Su Shuochi needs medicine every day. Since Jiaojiao married him, she probably hasn't even had any meat to eat."
Sheng Xinglian: ... 'I really want to cry now~'
And so, she really did start crying out loud.
Mr. Sheng: ... 'Old Three really is a blockhead.'
Mrs. Sheng: ... 'She wanted to hold Old Three down and give him a beating. Could she just disown such a stupid son?'
Sheng Shijing, emerging with his luggage packed: ... 'He really wanted to laugh.'
Sheng Shiwen roared furiously, "Xiao Wu, have you no conscience? You made Xingxing cry again! Back then, Gu Jiaojiao made Xingxing cry every single day."
"I wasn't wrong. Jiaojiao gave all eighteen years of her lucky money to Xingxing. That's eight hundred yuan."
"Xingxing, give that ungrateful wretch her eight hundred yuan back! We don't want her things. Whatever you want, your Second Brother will buy it for you."
"That's right, Xingxing. Whatever you want, your Big Brother will buy for you. I make fifty-eight yuan a month, I'll give it all to you."
Sheng Shijing watched his dear sister with a mocking gaze.
"B-Big... Brother... I already spent that money on clothes~ It's all gone~" Sheng Xinglian said pitifully.
Inwardly, she was cursing Sheng Shiwen to death. 'That damn idiot, whose side is he on?!'
"What? You spent it all on clothes? Eight hundred yuan is almost a year's salary for Big Brother and me combined!"
Sheng Shiwen stared at his sister in disbelief. He couldn't believe she was such a spendthrift.
Sheng Xinglian had thought that after driving Gu Jiaojiao away, she would become the treasured favorite of the Sheng family. However...
As things stood now, she was worse off than when that fool Gu Jiaojiao was around to serve as a foil.
At least that idiot would take the blame for her, and it was so easy to provoke the Sheng family's anger towards her.
The very person Sheng Xinglian was thinking of, Gu Jiaojiao, was just now slowly waking up. She opened her eyes to see the man sitting in his wheelchair, reading a book.
In his hand, he was holding the heart-shaped gemstone pendant her grandfather had given her. She excitedly leaped out of bed.
She threw herself at Su Shuochi and eagerly snatched the pendant.
"Oh my god! How did my gemstone pendant end up in your hands?"
Su Shuochi hadn't actually been reading. With Gu Jiaojiao pressing down on him, it looked as though she had him pinned.
In reality, Su Shuochi could have taken her down with his little finger.
But he was even more shocked than Gu Jiaojiao. 'She said this stone is hers? Hers?'
Gu Jiaojiao squeezed the gemstone pendant and tried to enter it with her mind—and she actually did.
This was the medical space her grandfather had given her, filled with hundreds of billions in medical supplies.
It contained the most advanced medical equipment from the future: a 75cm ultra-wide bore 3.0T MRI, stents for intracavitary therapy guided by endoscopic ultrasound.
There was an electronic laparoscope composed of an electronic mirror structure including a high-resolution imaging objective lens.
Advanced temporary pacemakers, cancer chemotherapy equipment, the best medicines...
Not to mention all the medical supplies, just the food and daily necessities she had cleared out before she left were enough for her to live a life of ease in this other world.
As her consciousness scanned the space, Gu Jiaojiao even tried eating a few nuts. Haha, they were real.
She didn't stop to think about why her space was in Su Shuochi's hands. After all, if she herself could transmigrate into a book, why couldn't her space?
Gu Jiaojiao withdrew her consciousness from the space, her small hand clutching a few of her favorite nuts.
Now, looking at the impossibly handsome man, she found him much more pleasing to the eye. Since she had her space back, she would forgive him for throwing her off the bed for now.
That charming and radiant smile was like the brilliant sun tearing through the haze, shining into Su Shuochi's world, which was on the verge of fading to black.
The gloom in his heart dissipated slightly. "How much longer do you plan to lie on top of me?"
"Huh?"
Gu Jiaojiao stood up awkwardly, still clutching the gemstone pendant tightly. This was her treasure.
As the warmth in his arms vanished, Su Shuochi's heart felt a little empty. "That piece of junk stone is mine."
"What do you mean, 'junk stone'? This is a gemstone..." Gu Jiaojiao almost blurted out the word "space."
"Gemstone? Weren't you the one who called it a junk stone?" Su Shuochi's tone was calm, but in reality, he was suppressing his heart-pounding terror.
"When did I say that? This is my gemstone pendant. How did you get it?"
"An old man I saved during a mission out west gave it to me. He said it belonged to... my future wife."
Su Shuochi was telling the truth. The old man's original words were: 'Kid, you saved this old man's life.'
'I don't like owing people favors, so I'll give you a treasure.'
'In the future, when you've hit rock bottom and can't get back up, someone will force you to marry. Just go ahead and get married without worry.'
'If the wife you marry is the owner of this stone, then you will be able to follow her out of the abyss. Otherwise, your life is over.'