Flip the table and divide the family property! Take his wife and daughter into the mountains and eat

The cold night wind was like a series of dull knives, cutting back and forth along the dirt road leading from Kaoshantun to the county town.

In the corridor of the county hospital, the walls were blackened by kerosene smoke, and the strong smell of Lysol couldn't mask the nauseating stench of blood. Together, they made one's chest feel tight.

Li Baotian squatted in a corner at the end of the corridor, his hands, calloused from years of using a large saw, digging into the cracks in the cement floor, his fingernails turning red.

After an unknown amount of time, Wang Xiulan, lying on the hospital bed, trembled slightly and finally slowly opened her eyes.

The bright incandescent light overhead made her eyes sting.

It felt like there was a dull lump of iron stuck in the back of her head; any movement sent throbbing pain through her temples. She frowned, took a couple of breaths, and her vision gradually focused.

A person was sitting on the edge of the bed. His back was hunched, and his hands were rubbing together. When he heard a noise, he suddenly raised his head, his eyes were bloodshot, and the anger and panic that had been building up all night were suddenly revealed on his face.

Wang Xiulan paused for a moment, her voice weak and trembling:

"...Why are you back?"

Li Baotian immediately got up and went over, first tucking the blanket up over her shoulders, his voice very low:

"The business outside is almost done. I came back with Shanhe. Don't move yet, you just woke up, take a break."

Wang Xiulan seemed not to have fully recovered her senses. Her eyes darted around slowly for a moment before she asked in a hoarse voice:

"Where am I?"

"County Hospital".

Li Baotian stared at the bandage around her head, his Adam's apple bobbing as he tried to speak carefully: "The cut on your forehead isn't big, you just hit the back of your head. The village doctor was worried there might be something wrong with your head, so he took you to the county hospital for a proper checkup."

Wang Xiulan closed her eyes, and her memories began to flood back little by little.

A noisy cacophony of voices.

Offering table.

Zhao Shanlin's collision.

Wang Xiulan's face paled slightly, and her fingers tightened.

The next second, as if suddenly remembering something, she opened her eyes wide and her voice became urgent:

Where is Zhao Xiaoyu?

Li Baotian paused:

"Don't rush—"

"Where's Zhao Xiaoyu?!"

Wang Xiulan tried to sit up by bracing herself on the bed, but the sudden movement caused a sharp, stabbing pain in her forehead, which made her face turn pale.

Li Baotian quickly pressed down on her shoulders, his voice trembling:

"Don't move! The wound is going to reopen!"

But Wang Xiulan seemed not to hear him at all, staring intently at him, her voice hoarse yet firm:

"Li Baotian, I'm asking you, where is Zhao Xiaoyu?"

The ward fell silent.

Li Baotian looked at her, and after a couple of breaths, he finally sighed.

"Don't get agitated."

After he finished speaking, he got up and walked to the bed next to him, and slowly lifted the half of the curtain separating them.

Behind the curtain, Zhao Xiaoyu lay quietly.

Half of her face was wrapped in gauze, with her forehead, temples, and chin all bandaged. The exposed skin was patchy with bruises, and there were black scabs on the corners of her mouth. Her lips were almost bloodless.

He was extremely thin, lying there looking as if he had been smashed to pieces from head to toe and then barely pieced back together on the bed.

When Wang Xiulan saw that look, she paused for a moment.

Li Baotian stood beside her, his voice low and heavy. "The doctor said that she scratched her face so badly that her fingernail tore all the way from her cheek to her mouth, tearing the skin and flesh open. She just got stitches. Besides that one, her forehead and temples are covered with bloody scratches from Li Cuihua, a dense array of them."

As he said this, his Adam's apple bobbed suddenly: "Even if it heals completely, this face... will probably never be the same again."

Wang Xiulan's lips trembled slightly, and her eyes immediately reddened.

She stared at the person on the bed, speechless for a long time.

After a long while, she spoke in a hoarse voice, almost as if talking to herself: "How old is she...?"

"My face is like this... How am I going to live from now on..."

These words only made the anger in Li Baotian's chest feel even more stifled.

Looking at the injury on Wang Xiulan's head, and then at Zhao Xiaoyu wrapped up tightly on the bed next to her, he felt as if a piece of red-hot iron was stuck in his chest.

He tried to hold back, but ultimately couldn't, and his voice deepened:

"Don't worry about her for now, just get some rest. The doctor said that since you suffered a head injury, you shouldn't get angry. There's a doctor watching over Zhao Xiaoyu, she won't die."

Wang Xiulan did not respond to that sentence.

Her eyes remained fixed on the bed behind the curtain, her heart pounding with a heavy weight. After a long while, she finally muttered a curse under her breath:

"The Zhao family is truly wicked. They've driven such a good girl to this state..."

Seeing that she was still thinking about that place at this point, Li Baotian finally couldn't hold back the fire in his chest any longer, and his voice became a little deeper:

"Why do you care about them? Don't you know what kind of people the Zhao family are? Shanhe has cut ties with them long ago, why are you still getting involved?"

As soon as he said that, Wang Xiulan turned to look at him. She had just woken up and was still weak, but her gaze was filled with fire:

"What do you mean?"

Li Baotian was taken aback.

Wang Xiulan stared at him, her voice hoarse, yet each word grew harsher than the last:

"If the mountains and rivers don't care, that's their business. I'm the women's director; if I don't care about this, who will? Should I just stand by and watch them push us into a fire pit and pretend I'm blind?"

The ward fell silent.

Li Baotian's earlier assertiveness vanished instantly after a few words from her.

He opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything. Wang Xiulan was already dizzy, and this anger made her temples throb with pain, and her face turned even paler.

Upon seeing her like this, Li Baotian's resolve immediately crumbled, and he quickly stood up.

"Okay, okay, don't rush me. I'm bad with words, I was just talking nonsense. Just lie down, okay?"

As he spoke, he quickly turned around to reach for the mesh bag on the bedside table, frantically rummaging through it to find an apple, then went to look for the knife, all the while trying to cover it up:

"Don't get angry with me. The doctor said you can't get agitated right now. I'll peel an apple for you so you can calm down."

Wang Xiulan glared at him, still angry, but seeing his clumsy and obviously flustered appearance, she decided not to argue with him anymore.

Li Baotian was peeling an apple with his head down. His hands, which were usually very steady when holding a saw or swinging an axe, seemed a little awkward when holding a small knife. The apple peel was peeled in pieces, and some of it fell onto the bed.

Wang Xiulan glanced at it, and couldn't help but let out a soft snort.

"Do you even know how to slice meat? Look at how you sliced ​​it, it looks like a dog chewed it, you've spun all the meat away."

Li Baotian said in a muffled voice:

"Even if I don't know how, I have to cut it. I can't just watch you stare blankly."

After saying that, he handed over the unevenly peeled apple, his voice noticeably softer:

"Want some or not?"

Wang Xiulan, who had been keeping a stern face, softened her temper a little upon hearing this.

She didn't take the apple, but slowly turned her gaze away from Zhao Xiaoyu's bed. After a long while, she asked in a hoarse voice:

Where is Zhao Laizi?

Li Baotian's face darkened immediately.

"They've been rushed to the hospital. We don't know if they're truly dead yet."

Wang Xiulan's fingers tightened, and after taking a couple of breaths, she whispered:

"What about the Zhao family?"

Li Baotian did not answer immediately this time.

The ward fell silent for a moment, with only the occasional footsteps coming from the corridor outside and the soft sound of IV drips falling by the bedside.

After a moment, he finally spoke, suppressing his anger:

"Li Cuihua and Zhao Shanlin were bitten by Shanhe's dog. The bites were quite severe. They're in the hospital right now, lying in their wards."

He paused for a moment, and the suppressed anger in his eyes slowly resurfaced.

"Zhao Laizi's gang has also come over after smelling the scent."

Upon hearing this, Wang Xiulan's face paled even more, and she instinctively tried to sit up.

"What about the mountains and rivers?"

"Has she come back yet?"

Li Baotian looked at her and nodded: "You're back."

"They came back with me."

"He already knows what's going on here."

Upon hearing this, Wang Xiulan seemed to relax slightly, her eyes welled up with tears, and she sank back into the pillow, her voice lowering: "...It's good that you're back."

"With her around, things won't get too chaotic."