Yu Xiaxing carefully examined the contents of the video Ruan Tian had sent her.
…
Early in the morning, the old man was sitting alone in the living room.
Yu Xiaxing recognized him. He was indeed the same old man whose delayed treatment had led to his death in her previous life—the man she had seen in the news.
Sitting in the living room, the old man said sarcastically, “What kind of daughter-in-law sleeps until broad daylight and still refuses to get up? My son provides you with food and shelter, and you can’t even make him breakfast!”
His daughter-in-law shouted from the bedroom, “It’s Saturday, and Little Bao doesn’t have school. What’s wrong with sleeping in? If you’re hungry, pay for breakfast yourself and go buy it! You don’t even have a pension, yet you freeload here. We have to spend money on your medical treatment, and you still have the nerve to complain!”
The old man cursed, “Everything you spend comes from the money my son earns!”
His daughter-in-law snapped back, “Your son makes only 4,800 yuan a month. 2,300 goes toward your medication, and more than 1,000 goes to his cigarettes and social engagements! There isn’t enough left even to buy groceries! I’ve been covering our living expenses with the private savings I had before we got married!”
The old man shouted, “You actually kept private money hidden? Did you steal it from the family?”
“That’s money I saved before I got married!”
“Once you’re married, it becomes family money! So that’s why I always wondered how this family earned so much yet couldn’t save a single cent. It turns out you’ve been hiding all the money!”
…
The two of them continued hurling filthy abuse at each other.
Yu Xiaxing had no interest in listening and dragged the progress bar forward.
…
The son came out of the bedroom.
Tsk. His wife and his father had been fighting for ages, yet he hadn’t said a single word. She had assumed he wasn’t even home.
Before long, the daughter-in-law finally got out of bed and went to the kitchen to prepare lunch.
The sound of stir-frying was loud.
The grandson also got up, apparently irritable because he hadn’t slept well.
The son, the grandson, and the old man sat in the living room. They played on their phones, watched television, and left nut shells scattered all over the floor.
The grandson suddenly said, “My mom doesn’t earn a single penny, yet she has such a terrible temper. I’m never going to end up like my dad, shackled by responsibility and reduced to a provider who works from dawn to dusk to support the family while some parasite sucks him dry for the rest of his life.”
The moment he finished speaking, the sound of stir-frying in the kitchen stopped.
The daughter-in-law seemed to have heard him. She came out gripping the spatula and slapped the child across the face.
“Then don’t you dare eat the food I make!”
The child burst into tears.
The whole family started fighting again.
…
Yu Xiaxing was stunned.
She had thought the atmosphere in the Yu family was already hostile enough.
But compared with this family, the Yu family’s atmosphere was practically harmonious!
A mother despised by everyone, a father who enjoyed the greatest benefits yet remained silent, an ungrateful son, and a grandfather who constantly stirred up trouble—they bickered nonstop all day, and even resorted to physical violence.
Compared with them, the Yu family could practically be called loving.
At the very least, they only struck from behind the scenes. In front of their elders, every one of them acted perfectly obedient.
She continued dragging the progress bar forward.
…
In the afternoon, a visitor suddenly arrived.
It was Manager Ma from the property management office.
Before Fifth Brother came along, he had been in charge of property management.
In her previous life, Fourth Sister had apparently come up with the vicious idea of cutting off the electricity after taking his advice.
Manager Ma wore a broad smile. He greeted the old man first, then offered the son a cigarette, and only afterward glanced at the daughter-in-law.
After some pleasantries, Manager Ma sighed and got to the point.
“I hear the Yu family made its fortune through organized crime. Otherwise, how could you people use methods like this? You can’t keep delaying your property fees anymore. You’ll have to pay the arrears from the previous years.”
The daughter-in-law rolled her eyes. “We have no money! I’ve got nothing to give you except my life!”
Manager Ma chuckled. “Oh, it won’t come to that. This is a modern society. Do you really think organized crime would dare take our lives?”
The daughter-in-law pursed her lips. “By the way, didn’t you say last time that if someone came to investigate our health conditions, and we hid the fact that there was a sick elderly person in the household, you’d give us two bags of Maoya rice?”
Manager Ma said, “Boss Yu is still here, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to give them to you now. I definitely will once he leaves.”
The daughter-in-law asked, “When is he going to leave?”
“I’ve thought of a way to make him leave sooner…” Manager Ma said. “Your old man has always been in poor health and needs that oxygen concentrator, right?”
“Boss Yu said that in the middle of the night, he’s going to cut off the power to residents like you who haven’t paid their property fees for three to five years.”
“When that happens, have your old man pretend to be sick. Make it look as though he’s in mortal danger right when the power goes out. You’ll have to make it convincing.”
“I’ll call a few journalist friends over and expose Boss Yu’s thuggish behavior, saying that they’re willing to endanger an old man’s life just to collect property fees!”
“I guarantee he’ll be forced out of our neighborhood within three days!”
The daughter-in-law immediately said, “Then you have to give me two more bags of rice!”
Manager Ma smiled. “I’ll throw in two cases of laundry detergent as well!”
“Deal!”
And just like that, the two parties happily reached an agreement.
…
Yu Xiaxing dragged the progress bar farther forward.
A little after eight that evening, the daughter-in-law returned to her room.
The old man went to her door.
“Hey, hey, I’m hungry again. Get up and heat something up for me.”
The daughter-in-law came out, cursing under her breath, and heated his food.
After a while, he called out again.
“Hey, where’s the liquor I brought back from my hometown?”
The daughter-in-law came out, grumbling as she searched for it.
Some time later, he shouted again.
“Hey! Where’s my medicine? You forgot to give me my evening dose! Are you trying to kill me?”
“Don’t think you can hide any more private money!”
“Don’t think I don’t know that your father is sick and hospitalized. You must be planning to steal the money my son earns and give it to him!”
…
Yu Xiaxing hurriedly dragged the progress bar forward.
This was the first time in her life she had seen such a truly hard-mouthed yet soft-hearted person.
Although the daughter-in-law was bullied like this, all she did was curse viciously in response. In her actions, she remained completely submissive.
She did whatever she was told.
But the next moment, Yu Xiaxing was left speechless.
At last, they had reached the crucial moment that had sent Fourth Sister to prison in her previous life!
She quickly stopped the video and watched carefully.
…
In the video, the old man was once again cursing.
“Tell your father to stop treatment already. He’s only dragging his children down!”
The daughter-in-law shot back, “Isn’t your illness dragging us down too?”
The old man flew into a rage. “You’re spending the money my son earns, so of course you should pay for my treatment! How dare you talk to me like that? Tomorrow, I’ll make my son divorce you!”
The daughter-in-law, who had been cursing and complaining all along, suddenly stopped smiling.
She looked at him calmly.
Then she walked into the kitchen.
She turned her back, making sure the old man couldn’t see what she was doing.
But Ruan Tian’s camera captured everything clearly.
She opened the lowest cabinet and pulled a small metal box from beneath a pile of miscellaneous items.
Inside was the lifesaving medicine her father-in-law needed.
She emptied all of it out and replaced it with another kind of medication.
Then she took the oxygen concentrator they had hidden from inside the cupboard and quietly cut two of its wires.
The video ended there.
Yu Xiaxing now understood the old man’s true cause of death in her previous life.
It turned out that his daughter-in-law had switched his medication and sabotaged the oxygen concentrator.
And the reason she had done these things was that the entire family had humiliated and exploited her.
She had been able to endure all of that.
But the moment her father-in-law told her to stop treating her own father, she had finally decided to kill him.
Yu Xiaxing carefully recalled the news report from her previous life.
Later, the police autopsy report had mentioned that the medication contained abnormal ingredients. But it had also said that the drug appeared to be a vasopressor, which would only worsen the patient’s condition rather than directly cause his death.
In the end, the old man died, and it was determined that the machine had failed to start in time, delaying treatment.
The family insisted that Fourth Sister’s power outage had caused it, and Manager Ma even brought many people to testify that Fourth Sister had cut the power.
Fourth Sister was cursed on the trending searches every day. Fearing that her parents would be dragged into the mess, she gave up on appealing and only wanted to put the matter behind her as soon as possible.
She came forward to admit fault, saying that the mistake had been hers in making the decision, and that she was willing to go to prison and compensate the victim’s family.
Afterward, Old Zhao’s family took the huge compensation payment and went off to enjoy a comfortable life.
Manager Ma also achieved his goal of forcing his superior out.
Yu Xiaxing immediately clipped out the key passages and sent them to Fifth Brother from an anonymous email address.
She hoped that idiot, Yu Zheng, would have some way to resolve it.
Just don’t get eliminated before me!
And if he did a good job and managed to turn around public opinion regarding Kangle Community, the operating bonus for the first phase would very likely land right in his lap. That would save her a huge amount of trouble!
