Chapter 6

Chapter 6

I heard several voices outside.

“Lin Xuzhou, how are you still in the mood to sit at home eating hot pot?” My eldest uncle’s voice carried in from outside. Clearly, he’d smelled the aroma-and seen that my front door was wide open.

Then came my aunt’s voice. “Do you have any idea how much the elders have suffered because of him? He’s completely heartless!”

“…”

Several of them had come together, and from the looks of it, they were presenting a united front. They’d probably already discussed it in private.

They were all thinking of how to squeeze money out of me together.

But when they gathered at the doorway and looked inside, the four grown men sitting beside me all turned to look at them, then stood up in unison.

Every one of them was tall and imposing. Unlike my eldest uncle’s kind of fat, theirs was real muscle built from working out.

When those guys stood together, the sheer pressure they gave off was honestly intimidating.

“Lin Xuzhou, what kind of people have you been hanging around with?”

“If your parents knew what you’d become, they wouldn’t be able to rest in peace!”

“You’re so young and already learning all the wrong things. How long do you think the money your parents left you will last? One of these days, you’ll squander it all on these lousy friends of yours!”

“…”

Convinced they held the moral high ground, they marched inside.

Xing He and his friends took two steps forward. Just those two steps were enough to scare them into retreating several steps back.

“Lin Xuzhou, what is the meaning of this? You brought these thugs here to threaten your elders?” my eldest aunt was the first to speak.

She had a fiery temper, but even she was wary when faced with several unfamiliar, towering men.

Xing He looked at them and spoke first. “Since you’re all his elders, this kid lost his parents not long ago and is all alone. We won’t ask you to help him, but the money his parents lent you before-shouldn’t you be paying it back?”

Those so-called elders of mine had never even considered paying back the money. At his words, their expressions all changed in different ways.

“What money? When did they ever lend me money?” My youngest uncle was the first to deny it, swearing up and down that it had never happened.

Then my eldest aunt chimed in. “Lin Xuzhou’s father did transfer us money, but wasn’t that the support money he gave his parents a few years ago, before his grandparents passed? We never borrowed any money!”

My aunt said more or less the same thing.

My heart went numb. I had clearly known long ago what kind of people they were, yet I still felt that everything my parents had done for them had been unworthy.

“My parents’ phones are still here. The chat records on them don’t say that,” I suddenly said. “And youngest uncle, have you forgotten? The year before last, you borrowed fifty thousand yuan from my parents. You even wrote an IOU. Do you want me to take out the chat records and the IOU so we can compare stories?”

Their eyes widened in unison. They had been coming over so often lately precisely because they wanted money, so how could they possibly be willing to cough up any themselves?

In truth, no matter how nicely they’d put it when they borrowed the money, they had never intended to pay it back.

The front door suddenly slammed shut. They turned around and only then realized that Curly had somehow circled behind them and closed it.

Xing He said, “Nobody leaves today until the accounts are settled.”

Now those people started to panic. They spun around and tried to open the door to leave.

Naturally, there was no way out.

“What are you trying to do? Believe me, I’ll call the police!”

Big Guy laughed. “Go ahead. Let the police come and see who’s shameless here. Paying back what you owe is only right. If he’s got evidence that you owe money, it won’t be hard for him to sue you for it either.”

Seeing that they couldn’t reason with the others, my eldest uncle turned his gaze to me.

“Lin Xuzhou, is this how you treat your own family? You’re just going to let them bully us?” he said with an air of righteous indignation. “Are you even a member of the Lin family anymore?”