Perhaps she knew that what she had done could no longer be concealed, or perhaps these things had been piled up in her heart for too long. After being exposed by Gu Zhisang, the old lady's hands that were holding on to the door frame were shaking, and a twisted smile of resentment and satisfaction appeared on her face.

"You feel sorry for your mother, but this is all retribution for what her father and mother did!"

With a trembling voice, she told the truth about the baby swap that everyone was most concerned about.

The old lady's ancestral surname was Xia.

A few decades ago, he was a wealthy businessman and a wealthy family.

"Our ancestors were salt merchants. They contributed money and effort during the war, so we can be considered Aixia merchants. Although we declined a little later, we still have accumulated wealth and fame in the local area."

Old Madam Xia spoke slowly, with a hint of reminiscence in her slightly cloudy eyes:

“When it came to my generation, some of my relatives had fled abroad during the war, and they wrote a lot about the development of the outside world in their daily correspondence, which made me yearn for it.

So when I was 14, I went abroad to live with my relatives. I met my husband while studying abroad. We fell in love at first sight and promised to spend our lives together. "

"My husband's mother was one of the Xia people who fled abroad during the war. She married a local foreigner and gave birth to him."

According to Old Mrs. Xia, her husband is half foreign.

So his facial features were deeper than those of traditional Xia people, he was tall and handsome, and he was very good to her. He was simply a perfect lover.

The time she spent in love abroad was the most unforgettable and beautiful memory in her life.

Later, her father became critically ill and urgently summoned her back home.

In addition, her family firmly disagreed with her living abroad. On one side was her father who had raised her for more than ten years, and on the other side was her beloved lover. The young girl fell into pain and entanglement.

It happened to be the early 1960s, and there was a widespread trend of exclusion of Xia overseas Chinese in the country where her lover lived. She and her lover, who had Xia characteristics, were also excluded in school.

After much consideration, her husband bid farewell to his mother and returned to Xia with her.

The young girl was excited and happy. On the way back home, she kept imagining the wonderful life after marriage.

But she never expected that reality was different from what she imagined.

After returning to Xia Country, the two were arranged to continue their studies at a local university. It was at this school that they met their grandparents, who were also students at the school at the time.

When she said this, deep hatred appeared in Old Lady Xia's eyes again.

She rolled her eyes behind her reading glasses, fixed them on the body of 'helpless in the world', and said with gritted teeth:

"If I had known that those two beasts were so shameless, I should have spit on their faces when I first saw them!"

In her narrative, four young people of similar age and similar interests became good friends.

When they got married, although they did not dare to publicize it and they still followed the traditional Xia wedding ceremony on the surface, they actually knew in their hearts that each other was the bridesmaid and best man.

After marriage, she and her husband lived happily for a period of time, but it was very short, only about two years.

She works as a clerk in a street unit, and her husband works as a writer and reporter for a local newspaper.

Because of the nature of his job, my husband often sees some of the darkness, injustice, backwardness and ignorance hidden in society.

These are very different from the education he received and the things he was exposed to when he was growing up abroad.

In particular, some people rose up at that time and formed the Red Soldiers.

Many intellectuals who have studied abroad have been reported for having inappropriate collections of books at home or for having extravagant and petty-bourgeois behavior.

Also, because there were many people who were trying to take advantage of the situation and were actually people who hated the rich or were simply bad-hearted and fanned the flames, some intellectuals who had done no wrong, had received higher education, had knowledge and ideals, were pulled off the altar overnight.

Books and paintings in the house were destroyed, furniture and antiques were smashed, a critical note written in red ink was hung around his neck, and he was pushed in front of the people on the street to be criticized and abused.

My husband, a newspaper reporter, could not accept the miserable privilege of these people and felt very angry.

But at that time, their family was also the focus of attention and they dared not show it in front of outsiders. They only complained occasionally when they had dinner with their "helpless" grandparents and their husband would drink some wine.

Who would have thought that such a good friend whom they had known for so many years would actually betray them.

My grandfather, who was "helpless in this world", had a military background, so he had a good future. He worked in a local government agency, but he offended some people because of his youthful vigor.

The other party wanted to bring him down and the parents behind him, so they made a fuss about his behavior.

At this time, the "helpless" grandfather made a decision in order to clear himself and get the family out of the dispute:

He reported Mrs. Xia's husband.

He wrote down all the other party's casual complaints and dissatisfaction at the dinner table in the letter of accusation, and expressed his determination to cut off ties with such people with bad ideas.

This action instantly pushed the young couple into a mountain of knives and a cauldron of oil.

With the accusatory letter from the "helpless" grandfather, the Red Soldiers broke into the young couple's home and searched out a large number of foreign books, as well as some dissatisfactions and poems written by the husband, a newspaper reporter.

With these books, and the fact that Old Lady Xia's husband was of foreign mixed-race origin and had a special identity, he was directly judged as a bad element.

The old lady's family background is also quite sensitive. She is a big businessman and has studied abroad, which is also quite dangerous.

But she still had a chance to escape.

As long as she reports her husband like her "helpless" grandfather.

At that time, the old lady's parents, relatives, and neighbors who watched her grow up when she was a child all came to persuade her, saying that everyone did this and that children and parents even reported each other.

Even her husband smiled bitterly and said:

"Just report me, this way you can still protect yourself. How can a woman like you endure all that torture? I don't hate you, I only hate myself for not being able to judge people and making the wrong friends!"

In the end, Mrs. Xia did not decide to report the case. She wanted to share the hardships with her husband.

But what came with it was that her identity was also judged to be of bad character.

When the couple were in their twenties, they were both sent to the countryside to be reformed and live in a cowshed.

When they were in the countryside, Mrs. Xia and her husband lived a very hard life.

The people in the village will not delve into what crime you were charged with to come here, nor will they know whether you have been wronged. They only know that those who are sent to the cowshed for reform are bad people and should be despised.

Here, Old Mrs. Xia and her husband eat the worst food and do the heaviest farm work.

Every week they were dragged to the village's empty wheat field to undergo ideological transformation, sometimes with the use of force.

Countless rotten eggs, rotten vegetable leaves, and even stones hit him.

At the beginning, Old Mrs. Xia felt humiliated, but after a long time and many times, she and her husband became numb.

The young lady, who had lived a life of luxury in the past, had her hands and face become rough and her knee joints suffered various injuries after only one year of reform in the cowshed.

They need to constantly reflect on their mistakes, and must not talk back if they are beaten, scolded or bullied, let alone fight back.

Here they are the people with the lowest status and the least dignity. Even the little hooligans who are despised and scorned in the village can come to where they live and smash things when they are in a bad mood.

There was even one time when Old Mrs. Xia was almost bullied.

If her husband hadn't tried his best to protect her, she might have met with an accident.

Even so, this incident still became a permanent shadow in her heart.

Because of this, her husband got into a fight with some bad guys and his ankle was broken. After a hasty treatment, he became lame for life and it hurt when he walked.

What Old Lady Xia could not accept the most and felt most horrified about was:

After years of reform and labor, she even had some thoughts in her mind - if she had reported her husband back then, would she not have to suffer so much now?

When she realized she had these thoughts, she felt devastated and even felt too ashamed to face her husband.

At the same time, she was deeply tortured by the guilt she felt towards her husband.

In Mrs. Xia's opinion, if she had not brought her husband back to Xia Country, he would still be living freely abroad...

Under all the pressure, resentment and pain, Mrs. Xia's mood changed greatly.

She is no longer the gentle girl who only pursues romance. She becomes depressed and collapses every day.

Of all the hardships she had experienced, what she hated the most was not the villagers who beat, scolded and criticized her, the Red Soldiers, or the villain who almost bullied her, but her grandparents who were "helpless in this world."

In Mrs. Xia's opinion, all the tragedies that happened to her and her husband were caused by the report of their "helpless" grandfather.

The ones who should have accepted all this pain and been sent to the cowshed to be criticized/struggled against were the "helpless" grandparents in this world, not them.

Old Mrs. Xia and her husband stayed in the countryside for nearly seven years.

By the mid-to-early 1970s, more and more intellectuals who had been sent down to the countryside were rehabilitated and returned to their hometowns to have their names cleared.

After enduring their youth, Mrs. Xia and her husband finally received accurate news in 1979 that they could be rehabilitated and return to the city.

This news is indeed great news for the couple, and it is also their wish and expectation for many years.

But it was too late for Mrs. Xia's husband.

After so many years of hard work and criticism, he had already suffered too much and his health was ruined.

My ankle is lame, my fingers are broken, and half of my ear was cut off by a sharp piece of glass...

Even the joints of all sizes in my body become unbearable in winter or rainy days.

At that time, Mrs. Xia's husband was ill and very weak, and he was ready to die in the countryside.

When he learned that he could return to the city as an ordinary person, he was very sad.

One night, the frail man held his wife's rough hand and stroked her face:

"Xiao Xia, I can't hold on until then. Let's just get the divorce certificate cancelled in the countryside, and you can go back to the city with ease."

"You are still young in your 30s, and your family is rich. If you take good care of yourself, you may find a good man and live a stable life. I don't want to be a burden to you."

Old Mrs. Xia cried heartbreakingly and refused to do so.

But life and health cannot be changed by human will.

She could feel her husband's life slipping away every day.

Looking at her husband's gradually graying temples and thinning face, Old Lady Xia made a decision:

She doesn't want a divorce.

She wanted to have a child of her own with her husband and live like this for the rest of their lives.

A year later, the formalities for returning home were completed.

But the only people who set out on the journey back to the city were Old Lady Xia, who was more than five months pregnant, and the urn in her arms.

This scared the family members who came to welcome them.

At the same time, it also made my brother and sister-in-law at home unhappy.

Because before Old Mrs. Xia returned to the city, her brother and sister-in-law had sent her many telegrams, repeatedly emphasizing that she should divorce her husband. They said that after she returned to the city, they would introduce her to a colleague who was divorced and had good character, so that the two families could take care of each other in the future.

Originally, my brother and sister-in-law thought that Old Lady Xia would definitely do as they were told, and they had already looked for a suitable candidate near home, and arranged a time for the two parties to meet after Old Lady Xia returned.

Who would have thought that the girl was back, but she was pregnant with a big belly and was holding an urn. It was impossible to hide it, and it was impossible to have an abortion at such an advanced stage of pregnancy.

Now the people that my sister-in-law had originally promised to help also became angry, thinking that the Xia family had deliberately tricked them.

Because of Mrs. Xia's experience and her deceased husband, some gossipers in the neighborhood began to gossip about her;

It is said that Old Mrs. Xia’s husband is dead, and no one knows whose child this is.

The gossip spread more and more intensely until it reached the ears of her brother and sister-in-law, making them even more unhappy and feeling that their sister had brought shame to the family.

Old Mrs. Xia has been away from home for so many years, and the family property has long been passed on to her brother. The two old people can only provide her with a little support in her life.

Despite this, when Mrs. Xia was about to give birth, her sister-in-law still found a very good hospital in the city to deliver her baby.

It was in this hospital that the old lady once again met her enemy after nearly 10 years.

The 'helpless' grandmother is pregnant with her second child and is about to give birth in the same hospital.

Unlike their family, the "helpless" grandfather successfully survived that storm, and with the help of his family, he rose rapidly and is now living a better and better life, becoming rich and powerful.

Their eldest son is six years old and is about to go to elementary school.

Seeing Old Lady Xia, the 'helpless' grandmother also recognized her.

Originally, the other party's due date was still a few days away, and she had to stay in the hospital to give birth.

After recognizing the old friend, she felt nervous and ashamed for a moment, and she even had a premature attack and gave birth prematurely.

The two pregnant women were pushed into the delivery room one after the other, and their babies were born just over half an hour apart.

In the mid-1970s, it was not popular for hospitals to have obstetrics and gynecology departments, and even if they did, the equipment was not complete enough.

Although the hospital where Old Lady Xia and the "helpless" grandmother worked was the largest hospital in the area, the obstetrics and gynecology department here was just a large flat floor.

There are only 20 beds in the room, with two to three beds in each ward, and the equipment provided is just simple equipment such as wooden barrels, kettles, porcelain washbasins, etc.

After Mrs. Xia gave birth, the hospital nurse cleaned the blood stains on the baby's body with warm water, wrapped the baby in a red swaddle, and placed it next to her.

The wounds on her body still hurt and her brain was dizzy, but she couldn't close her eyes.

Her mind was full of the 'helpless' grandmother she had seen not long ago.

We are both in our 30s, and the other is a mother of a child, but when the two of us stand together and compare ourselves, I look more than 10 years older.

I heard that the bastard grandfather who once reported her husband - 'the world is helpless', is now the head of a certain department, with a good monthly salary, as well as various subsidies and receipts.

But what about me and my husband? We were tortured and looked down upon.

One was covered in injuries and the other had passed away.

All that the other party enjoyed was stolen by them using despicable means, and was taken away by stepping on the corpses of their husbands and drinking their own blood.

This happy and peaceful life was supposed to belong to their family!

Old Mrs. Xia hated it.

The more she hated it, the more obvious the pain became, and the more she couldn't sleep.

I don’t know how much time had passed, but there was a hustle and bustle outside the ward.

She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, and then heard her "helpless" grandmother being sent to the hospital next to her.

When only the two women in labor and their newborn were left in the room, Old Lady Xia opened her eyes again and stared coldly at the pale-faced woman with her eyes closed on the bed next to her, with hatred in her eyes.

Why should the victims be left with nothing and have everything destroyed?

But the perpetrators are living a happy and fulfilled life? !

She was unwilling to accept it.

I don't want to let this family have an easy time.

Old Mrs. Xia knew that this was her only chance and she had to make a decision as soon as possible.

Soon the 'helpless' grandfather would learn that his wife had given birth prematurely and would come to the ward to visit his wife and newborn daughter.

After leaving this ward, she never had the chance to get close to or take revenge on this family again.

How could a widow like her shake the section chief of a government agency?

So Old Mrs. Xia forced herself to support herself with pain and walked step by step to the bed next to her, regardless of her torn wounds.

Looking at the naked woman and the peaceful sleeping faces of the child, she slowly picked up the pillow, wanting to smother both the mother and daughter.

But when she was about to do it, she heard her daughter's mumbling behind her and she calmed down all of a sudden.

She knew in her heart that if she killed the mother and daughter and avenged her husband, her daughter would become the descendant of a murderer, and in this era she would be drowned in spit. It was imaginable what a miserable life she would lead since childhood.

It is impossible for her brother and sister-in-law to treat her as well as they would their own child.

Looking at the two beds and two sleeping baby girls, a bold idea came to her mind.

Not long after, the nurse entered the ward again and saw two pairs of mother and daughter who were "sleeping soundly".

When newborns are born, their skin is red and their appearance is pretty much the same.

Therefore, the most obvious way for obstetricians to distinguish children is the different colors of their swaddling clothes.

After making sure the color was correct, the nurse checked the child's temperature again. Everything seemed normal so she didn't think much of it.

The nurse could never have imagined that the 'sleeping' woman lying in one of the ** scenes had her heart beating like a drum and could not calm down for a long time.

Old Mrs. Xia exchanged the two children.

She has done all kinds of work in the countryside, raising chickens and ducks, and delivering pigs, and has long since developed a pair of skillful hands.

She only needed to take a close look at the swaddling clothes when she opened them to know how to wrap them and in what order to wrap them.

And no one discovered what she did.

Afterwards, her grandparents, who were "helpless in this world", came to her and expressed their apologies, saying that they had no other choice at that time.

They have been living in guilt all these years, and they signed and agreed to the letter of rehab written by Old Lady Xia and her husband as soon as it was drafted together.

Although it was too late, they still wanted to make up for their guilt and compensate Old Mrs. Xia.

Facing the couple's guilt, Old Lady Xia just said very calmly:

Let the past be the past, I don’t hate them anymore.

She held the child in her arms, looked at the couple's backs as they left, a satisfied smile on her face.

She really didn't hate it anymore.

Because her daughter will get the best of everything, the love of her parents and brothers, a wealthy and fulfilling family and a smooth life, and she will be spoiled like a little princess.

My daughter will get back the life she deserves.

After saying all this, Old Lady Xia stared at the dull-looking 'World Helpless' and asked gloomily:

"Now you come and judge, is your family innocent or is my family innocent?"

The throat of "The World is Helpless" was dry, and after a while he said in a hoarse voice:

"But, but these are all grudges of the older generation and have nothing to do with the younger generation! These emotions should not be vented on us!"

Old Lady Xia smiled coldly: "Yes, everyone always says that children are innocent, but has anyone ever thought about what kind of life a child who has no father, whose mother is looked down upon, and whose family has no money will live?

Isn’t my daughter innocent? !”

"If your grandparents hadn't done those things, I wouldn't have needed to change the child, because my daughter would have lived a good life since she was born. It's your grandparents who deserved to be sent to labor camps, and it's your mother who deserved to live a hard life!"

As she spoke, she laughed foolishly twice: "I just put everything back on track."

"I didn't do anything wrong, they were wrong."

“They deserve it.”

Looking at the crazy old woman, Gu Zhisang sighed lightly.

She knew that the old lady had gone mad many years ago, on the night her husband died in the countryside.

The audience in the live broadcast room were speechless for a long time, not knowing how to express their current feelings.

A highly praised comment was finally pushed to the top, representing the voices of countless viewers:

[Another messy debt that cannot be settled...]

Many people think that Mrs. Xia is indeed suffering and they can understand her desire for revenge, but the mother and son are indeed innocent.

If she wants to take revenge, she should take revenge on the person who reported her husband, instead of torturing the younger generation.

'There is no helplessness in this world' Looking at the old lady's face full of hatred, I just felt very tired and aggrieved.

He looked at his haggard mother lying on the bed and said with a nasal voice:

"Grandma, I have called you grandma for more than 20 years, and my mom has called you 'Mom' for almost 50 years. We have never failed to be filial to you, even though you have a strange temper and even though you don't like my dad..."

"You have been mother and daughter for fifty years, and you don't have any emotion or softness in your heart?"

Old Mrs. Xia's body suddenly stiffened, and she couldn't speak for a long time.

The audience in the live broadcast room then realized that she had never glanced at the bed from beginning to end.

Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's remorse.

Gu Zhisang sneered, his meaning unclear: "She is touched and soft-hearted, but she can't beat the fact that your mother and your grandfather are growing more and more alike, and you are a generation apart and look alike to your grandmother."

"Looking at you and your son, the hatred in her heart cannot be reduced at all. She may really want to treat your mother as her daughter, but she can't do it when she looks at that face."

From the complicated and entangled relationship between Mrs. Xia and her children, it is enough to see that her feelings towards her "helpless" mother are extremely complicated.

Gu Zhisang lowered his eyes slightly and said, "But one thing is certain, the luck-transfer spell on you was indeed cast by her on purpose, but the demon on your mother's body... or should I say a demon? A devil? In short, it has horns on its head and looks like a beast. It doesn't look very smart and weird. This thing has been entangled with and tortured your mother for so many years, but it was not cast by her on her own initiative to torture and hurt your mother."

She paused for a moment and thought of a more accurate statement:

"It should be said that the old lady never intended to hurt your mother subjectively, but the pain your mother suffered was indeed caused by her."

"The person who is actually being haunted by the devil should be your grandmother." Gu Zhisang:

"Mrs. Xia, I'm right, right?"

The author has something to say:

It has nothing to do with the times, please don't talk about these qwq. It is mainly the choices made by the two families that have caused a series of consequences.