Chapter 189 I poisoned Yu Anan and the others!

"not good!"

Hua Qing recognized the figure swaying in the tree and jumped off the wall. In this life-or-death situation, she ignored the excruciating pain in her ankle and scrambled to the tree. She grabbed Yu Anan's legs and pulled him up with all her might, removing his head from the cap. The two girls then lost their balance and fell heavily to the ground.

Hua Qing, who was still relatively conscious, managed to avoid hitting her head when she fell to the ground. But Yu Anan wasn't so lucky; his head hit the ground hard. If the courtyard hadn't been too poor to afford paving stones, he would have been splattered with blood on the spot. But as the saying goes, two negatives make a positive—this powerful yet brainless slam happened to release the breath he had been holding in, and the corpse-like man's chest began to rise and fall on the spot.

"Sister Annan, Sister Annan..."

A sound came from afar. Yu Anan looked helplessly at the gradually blurring figures of his relatives, refusing to open his eyes. But human will cannot determine matter. Yu Anan still couldn't keep up with his relatives' footsteps. Instead, he woke up with a pain in his chest. When he opened his eyes, he saw Hua Qing's worried face and the pale moonlight hanging high in the night.

"Sister Annan, how are you? I'll go get you a doctor..."

Hua Qing kept babbling on and on, but she didn't even know what she was saying. Yu Anan breathed slowly, and when the pain in his chest subsided, he reached out and gently touched Hua Qing's head. His touch was very gentle, but unfortunately, not a single word he said was something Hua Qing wanted to hear.

"You shouldn't have saved me."

These words were hurtful, but they reflected Yu Anan's true feelings; she was truly exhausted.

Hua Qing was about to explode upon hearing this and was about to retort when she saw water droplets rolling down Yu Anan's face. These liquids seemed to have flipped a switch, and Yu Anan went from silent sobbing to wailing in an instant.

"I really have no way out..."

Yu Anan's words were filled with countless sorrows. She was born into an ordinary family, but she had a rare loving relationship with her parents and a harmonious relationship with her brother and sister-in-law. Even her name was not chosen casually—the chayote is also called the Annan pumpkin. As long as there is one planted in the family, they will not starve. Her parents named her Anan in the hope that she could receive some of the protection of the chayote and have no worries about food and drink in the future.

But people in chaotic times cannot be protected by a small plant. When Yu Anan was ten years old, his elder brother went out to work and was taken away by conscripts. He was never heard from again. His sister-in-law was so worried that she did not avoid the powerful and wealthy man's carriage when it crashed into her chest and died on the spot. When the Yu family changed her into her funeral clothes, they found that her abdomen was swollen. It turned out that she had died along with her unborn child.

In the eyes of the powerful, the lives of the poor are less than weeds. Yu's parents had no reason to retaliate and dared not, so they gritted their teeth and raised their children and grandchildren. Just when things were starting to look up, Yu's mother couldn't escape the pandemic. The cost of going out to see doctors and getting medicine was not small. Not only did the Yu family's hard-earned savings run out, but they also incurred debts. Even so, they couldn't save Yu's mother's life, only allowing her to have a brief period of lucidity before death.

But during this time, Yu's mother did something big—no one knows how she did it, all that is known is that when Yu's mother's body was thrown out of the mansion in a tattered state, the powerful family that had harmed Yu's eldest sister-in-law also contracted the same disease, and none of them survived.

The Yu family secretly retrieved Yu's mother's body from the mass grave, but dared not bury her openly. They could only temporarily place her in the mortuary under another family's name. Yu's father said that after he passed away, he would secretly place Yu's mother in his coffin and bury her together.

The day Yu's father died was ordinary, and the reason was simple: he fell into a ditch while pulling a rickshaw, and when he was found, he was already dead. Countless rickshaw pullers met the same fate, and they couldn't even be looked at.

What was unusual was that Yu's father's body was discovered by Yu An'nan, who was bringing her child home. Yu An'nan had married after reaching a certain age, and her husband treated her fairly well. However, when he went up the mountain to look for his brother-in-law who had run away, he was bitten by a poisonous snake, and when he was brought back, a white cloth was placed over his face.

The elders dote on their youngest child, and even though Yu Anan had a child, they didn't take her seriously. Allowing Yu Anan to leave with the child was already the greatest kindness they could show. As for property... Yu Anan only brought a set of clothes with her when she married into the family.

Yu An'nan originally came back to discuss their future living arrangements with her father, but she ended up being forced into becoming the breadwinner. The children were indeed very sensible, but no matter how hard she worked, she couldn't feed four mouths. In the most difficult times, she even considered selling meat, but no one wanted any of them—

I don't know who spread the rumor, but it's said that the Yu family was all cursed to death by Yu Anan. They even presented evidence: After Yu Anan got married, her father lived a good life. But when she came back, she had to collect her father's body and her husband died. Isn't that cursed to death?

Because of these messy rumors, people avoided her a lot, but this sentiment did not affect many men's left and right brains fighting each other. When the small head was in control of the big head, they tried to climb over the wall and knock on the widow's door at night. During the day, they had to work hard to find jobs, and at night they had to be wary of men climbing over the wall. They had to ignore other people's unconscious rejection, and they always had to count the number of people eating... Yu Anan was really too tired.

“I know that raising the children will be enough, but they are growing so slowly…”

Looking at the pale moon, Yu Anan felt a weariness seeping into her very bones. She could have endured as long as there was even the slightest hope, but she really couldn't survive!

"They will survive."

Hua Qing interrupted Yu Anan and said with certainty that she was extremely glad she hadn't wasted time. If she had waited until she woke up to come over, it would have been too late.

“Sister Annan, please listen to me…”

Hua Qing told Yu Anan in detail about Yao Xiaoyu delivering the popcorn machine. After confirming that Hua Qing was not joking, Yu Anan ran into the house like a madman. Hua Qing stumbled after him and saw Yu Anan gagging the child's throat.

"Sister Annan?!"

Hua Qing's energy was almost depleted when she saved Yu Anan, and she didn't immediately realize the hidden meaning behind Yu Anan's action, so she subconsciously reached out to stop him.

"They've ingested poison; it'll kill them. Quickly, help them gag themselves and make them vomit..."

Yu Nan'an's tearful words completely shocked Hua Qing. She immediately grabbed a child to help. After finishing with the second child, seeing that not much had come out, Yu Nan'an gritted her teeth and brought over the chamber pot to prepare to pour out the vomit.

It was disgusting, but nothing was more important than my life.

"Go find a doctor, I'll induce vomiting in them first."

Yu Anan put the toilet on the ground and said to Hua Qing, "The children are small but not stupid. After understanding what their aunt/sister/mother meant, they immediately screamed in terror. Their skinny bodies seemed to be filled with endless energy. Hua Qing was about to limp out of the yard when Yu Anan still couldn't catch a single one of them."

Hua Qing looked at the children's energetic appearance (and was frightened), and felt more and more that something was wrong. Just then, she saw that the neighbor next door had opened a crack in the door. Thinking of her foot injury, she did not intend to be stubborn and directly took out a silver coin from her pocket.

The wages of the employees in Wutong Courtyard are paid on the first day of the lunar month, but Hua Qing's wages are decided by Aunt Pang. Since she is an apprentice who can learn real skills, Hua Qing was prepared not to get paid, but Aunt Pang still gave her some, saying that little girls always have things they want to buy, and now they have come in handy!

"Auntie, could you please ask your husband to bring a doctor with you?"

When you don't have much of a relationship with someone, there's a possibility of them refusing to do something for you. But it's different when you have money. The aunt who was just standing by the door one second appeared in front of Hua Qing the next. After confirming that the silver coin was real, she kicked her husband out while yelling and cursing, making him run off to find a doctor.

Don't underestimate this small silver coin; it can be exchanged for more than ten copper coins outside. Her husband sometimes doesn't even earn that much money from hauling goods, so what's a doctor's job compared to that?

After watching the man's figure disappear around the street corner, Hua Qing went back into the courtyard and chatted casually with Yu Nan'an, who was still in the middle of a chase:

"What does the poison you mentioned look like when it takes effect?"

There are only a few ways that poisons on the market can cause symptoms: either severe abdominal pain, bleeding from the mouth and nose, or at least a listless, pale complexion. The way these three children were jumping around and running around didn't seem to be related to poison at all.

"The doctor said this medicine is colorless and tasteless, and once you take it, you'll fall asleep and won't wake up."

Yu Anan originally wanted to buy arsenic from a proper pharmacy, but the price was too high for her to afford. On her way back, she happened to run into a traveling doctor who had cheap poison, so she bought some.

After hearing Yu Anan's words and watching the children spinning, jumping, and screaming, Hua Qing's suspicions became even more certain, but she didn't show it on her face.

"Which pharmacy did you buy it from? This is the first time I've ever heard of such a poison."

Hua Qing deliberately emphasized the word "first time," but Yu Anan, focused on inducing vomiting, didn't notice anything amiss and simply replied casually:

"I didn't buy it from a pharmacy; it was sold to me by a traveling doctor."

Upon hearing this, Hua Qing's suspicions surged to nine-tenths, but out of concern that such a drug truly existed, she still didn't let Yu Anan put the toilet back. Instead, she found a relatively suitable excuse to maintain a temporary balance between the two sides—

"Using 'golden juice' to induce vomiting is ultimately a folk remedy. It's not good if it interferes with a proper doctor's prescription. Besides, that doctor selling medicine said they would fall asleep and never wake up. Look at them, does any of them want to sleep?"

While Hua Qing was trying to persuade Yu Anan, she was also giving the three children a meaningful look. The children weren't stupid; even though they had exhausted a lot of energy from their escape, they still pretended to be full of energy and managed to stall until the doctor arrived.

"...There are no signs of poisoning."

After examining the three children, the doctor made the same diagnosis as Hua Qing.