Chapter 173 Sincere and Frank Tenderness

The more this person spoke, the more the topic deviated, and it was twisted in a direction that Sang Zhixia could not control.

Sang Zhixia's ears suddenly turned red. She hurriedly pulled her hand away, shook off Xu Yu, and strode forward. However, her voice sounded hollow, "Nonsense."

"Where did you get the child for me to raise?"

Xu Yu strode after him, his tone lazily saying, "Aren't you going to give me a chance to be your father?"

Sang Zhixia blushed and said angrily, "Why are you dragging me down with you whether you are my father or not?!"

"If I don't talk about you, where can I be a cheap father?"

"Other families do have kids who are ready to call their parents dad, but I can't just go to their house and rob them, right?"

Sang Zhixia was completely speechless.

Xu Yu curled his lips confidently and said with a smile, "But there's no rush."

"When you grow up a little, there will be plenty of time."

"Sooner or later I'll hear a baby calling me daddy."

Judging from the current age for marriage, Sang Zhixia is indeed not young.

She is already seventeen years old. If she were in a family where people get married and have children early, she would already be holding one child by her hand and carrying another on her back at this age.

But Xu Yu thought she was too young.

Sang Zhixia had heard Xu Wenxiu and the others talk about the reason during their casual chat.

Xu Yu originally had a biological aunt who was just fifteen years old when she got married, which should have been the best age. Not long after her marriage, she became pregnant, which was originally a happy thing for everyone.

But during the delivery, the little aunt was unable to survive.

Others may just feel sad, thinking that it is a pity that he lost his life at such a young age, and then just sigh and let it go.

But the year when this little aunt died in childbirth, the young Xu Yu remembered everything.

He was already close to his aunt who died young, and every word the imperial physician said at that time was rooted in his heart.

The imperial physician said that the aunt died because she was too young and the baby in her womb was too big to be born.

Giving birth too early will damage a woman's roots and make life difficult. At the very least, she will suffer from old illnesses, and at worst, she may die.

Others just treated it as idle talk, but Xu Yu put what he remembered into practice.

He wanted to wait for Sang Zhixia to grow up a little bit more.

Xu Wenxiu even said to Sang Zhixia in a joking manner, "Yu'er has been putting it off and not wanting to get married. I initially thought he wasn't interested."

"Later, I made a fool of myself and offended the wrong person. He was whipped and made to kneel in the ancestral hall. When I questioned him, I found out that he thought you were too young and wanted to keep you at your mother's house for two more years."

"But you are at the prime of your life. How can you waste your time at home until you are seventeen or eighteen? That's why you want me to rush over to ask for your hand in marriage."

The Xu family apologized and explained, explaining everything clearly from beginning to end, and also pointed out that the person they wanted to marry was Sang Zhixia.

But the Sang family was dissatisfied with Xu Yu's replacement and had other intentions. They deliberately concealed their intentions from the Xu family and made Sang Zhixia, who was trapped in the inner house and knew nothing, suffer a lot. Until she was carried into the Xu family, Sang Zhixia, who was stuffed into the sedan chair, mistakenly thought that she was there to marry in place of someone else.

The situation was so chaotic at the time that no one cared whether it was a misunderstanding or not.

Later, because of this incident, Sang Zhixia almost had a grudge in her heart.

Fortunately, Xu Yu was able to speak out with dignity and he didn't care about being embarrassed, so there were no further twists and turns.

What this man hides beneath his debauchery is his pure sincerity and frankness, which has been crushed and spread out, and his incomparable gentleness.

It is the tenderness that falls only on Sang Zhixia.

Sang Zhixia's face turned red but she was barely holding it together. However, when she turned her head and saw the twinkling stars in Xu Yu's eyes, she could no longer hold back and smiled softly.

Seeing her smile, Xu Yu's eyes rippled with tenderness.

Finally I laughed.

After being annoyed by Xu Yu's jokes, Sang Zhixia saw the rice seedlings in the field and temporarily forgot what he originally wanted to ask.

Xu Yu walked for two hours and came back to pick her up when dusk was setting.

He took the basket from Sang Zhixia and said in a voice that only Sang Zhixia could hear, "I've taken the residue to someone for a checkup. It's fine."

"Doctor Hu said that even after taking so many medicines, Grandfather's illness still didn't get better. This is because the doctor we found at the beginning diagnosed and treated him in the wrong direction. The medicine didn't have the right properties, which delayed his recovery."

The tense thread in Sang Zhixia's brain buzzed, and she felt as if a huge rock had fallen into her stomach.

She exhaled sharply, looked up and said, "Where's that person?"

He came to the old lady late at night and said a bunch of ambiguous words. Although she couldn't hear much at the time, she still felt it was strange when she thought about it.

Xu Yu said calmly, "My second uncle called me."

Before Sang Zhixia could even begin to suspect anything, he said, "Second Uncle's life is miserable in the county town gambling den, where Xu Minghui is watching him. He doesn't dare return home and risk bad luck against Grandfather, so he can only secretly complain to the old lady, hoping she can come up with a solution."

This is in line with Uncle Xu's temperament.

Sang Zhixia didn't think much about it, but paused and said, "If I make a fuss about nothing, won't I be making a fool of myself in front of Grandfather?"

Xu Yu laughed dumbly, pinched her nose and whispered, "How could that be?"

"Grandfather praised you for your cleverness and was very satisfied with his teachings. If you don't believe me, why don't you go back and ask?"

"Forget it."

Sang Zhixia pushed his mischievous hand away, wrinkled her nose, and snorted softly, "You have no idea how desperate I've been these past few days, and I still have the nerve to ask for a reward after all this?"

There was nothing strange about the old man's illness, and there were no signs of human intervention. This was a blessing in disguise.

She had finally managed to calm the restless minds of everyone in the Xu family, and now they could barely be said to be making progress together. If any more man-made disasters happened at this time, she would be really exhausted.

In her previous life, Sang Zhixia grew up under the red flag and was blessed by the righteous spirit. She had only seen poisoning and killing people in TV dramas, and ghosts and monsters were active in film and television dramas. Her glass heart, which only grew in the soil, really could not withstand the setbacks of human life.

It can’t be said that I’m afraid, I’m just simply at a loss and not used to it.

If it was really as she had guessed at first, she would be really confused.

Fortunately not.

Xu Yu was not surprised to see this. His hand slid onto Sang Zhixia's shoulder and he squeezed it soothingly.

"What are you panicking about?"

"I'm here."

Since Xu Yu said not to panic, Sang Zhixia took a few deep breaths and really calmed down.

As long as the old man's illness can be cured, the family is safe, the land can be planted, and life can go on, everything is still good at the moment.

That's good.

Xu Minghui was highly valued by his boss in the county town, so he had time to come back when his father was seriously ill. However, he was still begging for food under his boss, so when his work was almost done, he had to leave.

Xu Minghui left the village in the evening of that day, and Xu Yu took over the job of boiling and feeding medicine to the old man.

The old lady still went out every day to throw away the medicine residue, and the people at home were used to it and didn't say anything. However, no one noticed that Xu Yu quietly swapped the medicines in the medicine jars every day, and the medicines the old man took every day were no longer what the doctor had prescribed.

As Uncle Xu's swollen hands gradually returned to normal, bowl after bowl of dark medicine was brought into the main room like flowing water, and the old man's illness began to improve.

Sang Zhixia breathed a sigh of relief, and the haze that had been hanging over the Xu family dissipated silently.

But in the dark, there was a person hiding in fear.

How could that be?