Chapter 71
Chapter 71
After she had paid for her younger brother to study abroad and he returned home, he asked her to help him find a job.
She had no choice but to ask a friend to arrange a position for him at a company. Who would have thought he would be so careless at work that he caused the company to lose two deals worth several million in a row? After he was fired, he pushed her out front to apologize on his behalf, then, without the slightest guilt, asked her to find him another job.
Later, he changed jobs several times, but he always complained that there was too much to do and that the work was too tiring. In the end, he simply stayed home and waited for her to support him.
Last year, her brother got a girlfriend. Every time the two of them went out on dates or traveled, Wu Zhaodi was the one who paid for everything.
Spending so much money on her brother every year-deep down, it wasn’t as if she felt no resentment at all.
But every time she told her parents she had no money and that her brother should learn to stand on his own two feet, they would start pretending to be sick, accuse her of being unfilial, and even threaten to jump off a building.
So she could only compromise again and again, wasting five whole years like that.
She kept hoping that one day, her brother would become independent and that her parents would understand how hard things were for her.
But she waited and waited, only to end up with her parents preparing to hand her over to the Ghost Bridegroom in exchange for a bride price to buy her brother a house.
At the thought of this, Wu Zhaodi’s eyes stung with tears.
When she was little, her parents had always said the older child should take care of the younger one, so she had grown used to sacrificing for her brother.
After she went to college, because her brother needed to attend tutoring classes, her parents had no money to pay her tuition. She could only rely on herself, working summer jobs to get through all four years of university.
She believed she had done her duty to her family wholeheartedly. Who would have thought she had only raised a pack of ingrates?
When Zhao Hang came home from work, he had just finished making dinner when he saw Wu Zhaodi sitting on the sofa alone, crying again. He walked over and gently pulled his girlfriend into his arms.
The two of them had been dating since sophomore year of college and had made it all the way to today.
He had never been good with sweet words and did not know how to comfort her, so he simply kissed her on the forehead and said softly, “Dinner’s ready. Come eat first.”
Wu Zhaodi wiped away her tears and nodded. She was just about to head to the dining room when her phone rang.
She glanced at it and found it was an unfamiliar number.
As soon as the call connected, she heard her mother’s deliberately gentle, ingratiating voice. “Zhaodi, what happened last night was our fault. Your father and I have already reflected on it deeply. We’ll return the bride price we accepted before, and we won’t make you go through any Ghost Marriage.
“Your father and I want to properly apologize to you. Are you free tonight? Why don’t you come back for dinner?”
When Wu Zhaodi left the Wu family home that morning, she had already blocked every single one of their contact numbers.
Wu Zhaodi had already been deceived by her parents once last night. How could she possibly believe Mother Wu now?
She said coldly, “I already said this morning that I’ve cut ties with all of you. Don’t call me again.”
With that, Wu Zhaodi blocked this number too.
Meanwhile, in the Wu family kitchen.
After Mother Wu was hung up on, her expression instantly turned ugly. She threw the freshly washed vegetables into the sink and cursed, “That little bitch! I hadn’t even finished talking, and she hung up on me!”
Father Wu said, “Try calling her again. The groom’s family said that if we can’t handle Zhaodi, they’ll demand the bride price back.
“We’ve already used that money to buy our son a house in full. Where are we supposed to find the money to pay them back?”
Mother Wu nodded. But when she called Wu Zhaodi again, she discovered she had already been blocked.
Mother Wu was furious. “That money-losing wretch blocked me! I heard from the Xiangu who arranged the marriage that the little bitch must have something on her that wards off evil. If we don’t take that thing from her, the Ghost Bridegroom won’t be able to carry her away. Then the house we just bought for our son will all be for nothing!”
Father Wu immediately said, “Since she won’t come to us, we’ll go find her ourselves. We have to destroy that thing on her that’s warding off evil!”
Their son was getting married in a few months. They had already bought a house, but they still hadn’t come up with the bride price.
The Ghost Bridegroom’s parents had promised that as long as they could send Wu Zhaodi down to keep their son company in the underworld, they would transfer the remaining five hundred thousand yuan to them.
They were still counting on that money to help their son get a wife. They couldn’t let it slip away just like that!
The two of them quickly came to an agreement and prepared to go look for Wu Zhaodi.
But Mother Wu had only taken one step when she felt something trip her. She screamed in fright and pitched straight forward.
The kitchen counter was L-shaped, and when Mother Wu turned, she was facing the side where she had just been chopping vegetables.
She slammed into the cutting board. The kitchen knife on it fell to the floor and stabbed straight into her shoe, slicing off one of her toes.
Mother Wu let out a shriek of pain. When Father Wu saw blood on the floor, he hurried over to check on her.
But before he could do anything, the old-fashioned lightbulb above his head swayed a few times.
Father Wu instinctively looked up. The bulb exploded at that exact moment, and the shards of glass sprayed straight into his eye, blinding him in one eye.
Father Wu also screamed in agony, clutching his eye as he stumbled around the cramped kitchen. He accidentally crashed into Mother Wu, and the two of them fell to the floor together, unable to get back up for a long while.
By the time the ambulance arrived, blood had pooled all over the floor, and the two of them looked like they were barely hanging on.
The paramedics quickly lifted them up and rushed them to the hospital for emergency treatment.
In the ambulance, a young nurse looked at the miserable pair and said, “Do you think this family ran into something evil? I remember coming to their house last week too. Back then, it was a young woman whose arm had been broken after she was hit by a car. She almost died too.”
Another person said, “Come on. There aren’t that many ghosts and spirits in this world. I think this family is just unlucky.”
Hearing her colleague say that, the young nurse said nothing more.
After Father Wu and Mother Wu were taken to the hospital, Wu Zhaodi received a call from the hospital saying that Father Wu and Mother Wu had been in an accident and asking her to come over.
Wu Zhaodi told the medical staff they had the wrong number. She had no intention of going over at all.
The medical staff really thought they had called the wrong number, so they turned around and called Wu Zhaodi’s younger brother.
He did answer the phone, but it sounded like he was drinking and playing cards with other people. When he heard that his parents had been in an accident, he did not take it seriously at all. He only said he would come by when he had time, then hung up.
Father Wu and Mother Wu lay in their hospital beds. Seeing that their son had not come to visit them, they did not complain at all. Instead, they only cursed Wu Zhaodi for having no conscience, saying they had raised her for nothing all these years, and sure enough, a money-losing daughter should never have been raised in the first place.
Many of the medical staff were women. At first, they had felt some sympathy for the two of them, who were so badly injured yet had no children coming to see them. But after hearing them curse their daughter and defend their son, that small bit of pity in their hearts instantly vanished. They also understood why Wu Zhaodi had been so indifferent to their condition over the phone earlier.
With none of the family members reachable, the medical staff could only push the two elderly members of the Wu family into the emergency room first.