Upon seeing Xing Zhaozhao, Xia Xiaoyue immediately ran over and grabbed her hand.
Xing Zhaozhao smiled and patted her head, then looked at Gao Yue and Xia Chen who were following closely behind, and asked, "Have you finished the examination? What did the doctor say?"
Gao Yue looked at her usually lively daughter's quiet demeanor with heartache and said, "It's nothing serious, just a bit of a fright. However, the doctor suggested that it's best to stay in the hospital for observation for two days."
"Then let's admit her to the hospital," Gao Mingcheng said, glancing at the little girl's haggard face.
Gao Yue thought so too, and nodded.
After completing the hospital admission procedures and settling the little girl in, Xing Zhaozhao was about to leave with Gao Mingcheng, Gao Hongfei, and Ying Rongrong. However, Xia Xiaoyue grabbed her hand and refused to let go.
After being kidnapped for two days by her grandmother, who claimed to love her the most, and then locked in a small, airtight freezer, Xia Xiaoyue was terrified and finally realized who truly cared for her.
She looked at Xing Zhaozhao with a guilty expression. She already knew that in the end, it was Xing Zhaozhao who had managed to tear open the thick iron chain and save her.
"Thank you," the little girl said gratefully, then paused, "and... I'm sorry."
Xing Zhaozhao smiled and patted the little girl's head: "It's okay, we're family."
After being rescued, Xia Xiaoyue smiled for the first time and asked, "Will you come to see me again?"
Xing Zhaozhao smiled and nodded: "Of course."
As Ying Rongrong left the ward, she thanked Xing Zhaozhao again, saying, "Thank you so much this time."
Xing Zhaozhao shook her head, thinking of the photos she had taken before, and smiled at Ying Rongrong, saying, "By the way, I have something to give you."
Ying Rongrong was taken aback: "Give it to me? What?"
Xing Zhaozhao took out her phone and sent a few photos to Ying Rongrong via WeChat.
Ying Rongrong heard her phone ring in her bag, took it out to look, and saw that it was a photo sent to her by Xing Zhaozhao. She wondered what Xing Zhaozhao had taken, so mysteriously. But when she saw the person in the photo, she was stunned and stared at Xing Zhaozhao in disbelief, her whole body trembling involuntarily: "This is...where did you get this?"
In the photo, she is a child, playing happily with her mother and her deceased father in a grove of trees.
She has no recollection of ever visiting this place with her parents when she was a child, or taking such photos.
Ying Rongrong looked at Xing Zhaozhao with burning eyes and an excited expression.
Xing Zhaozhao pointed at Gao Mingcheng and said to her with a smile, "A few days ago, your father-in-law came back from the front line ahead of schedule. He also brought your dad, your mom, and you to our house to play for several days."
Ying Rongrong burst into tears. Gao Hongfei had told her about Xing Zhaozhao's background, but she had always refused to believe it; it was too far-fetched. However, she believed it now, and even if someone came to tell her that she was actually a liar, she would still believe it.
Ying Rongrong covered her mouth, barely managing to hold back her tears.
Xing Zhaozhao patted her shoulder reassuringly.
"The front lines... ended ahead of schedule?" Ying Rongrong barely managed to suppress her excitement and asked in a hoarse voice.
"Mm." Xing Zhaozhao nodded.
“It’s Dad…” Ying Rongrong looked at Gao Mingcheng. Who else but someone with profound knowledge of a war could end it ahead of schedule?
Gao Mingcheng nodded slightly.
"So my dad is back safe and sound, and nothing will happen to him again, right?" Ying Rongrong looked at Xing Zhaozhao, and tears streamed down her face again.
Xing Zhaozhao nodded: "They said he was transferred to the capital."
"That's wonderful, I have a dad again." Ying Rongrong couldn't help but sob.
Gao Hongfei put his arm around her shoulder with heartache.
Ying Rongrong tilted her head, buried her face in Gao Hongfei's chest, and began to sob softly.
With people coming and going around them, Gao Hongfei couldn't care less about anything else and hugged her, gently comforting her.
Since they were in a hospital, people around them assumed something had happened at home and frequently cast sympathetic and pitying glances their way.
Xing Zhaozhao and Gao Mingcheng didn't care, but Ying Rongrong felt embarrassed and quickly composed herself: "Let's go first."
After saying that, she took two quick steps, took Xing Zhaozhao's arm, and continued walking out of the hospital, saying, "Thank you... Mom."
This was the first time Xing Zhaozhao had heard Ying Rongrong call her "Mom." She immediately smiled, patted Ying Rongrong's hand, and said, "We're all family, no need to be so polite with me."
Ying Rongrong put down her bag and, as excited as a little girl, asked in a flurry of questions, "You took my parents and me into the mountains to play?"
"Yes." Xing Zhaozhao recounted the events of that time to her in detail.
Ying Rongrong listened with great interest and asked, "Are there any other photos?"
Xing Zhaozhao took out her phone and showed it to her directly.
Ying Rongrong saw that there were photos of Xing Zhaozhao and Gao Mingcheng's family of five inside, as well as photos of their home, and she wanted to go over to them all.
Gao Mingcheng and Gao Hongfei followed closely behind, but they seemed to have been completely forgotten by the two women walking ahead, and their expressions were rather unpleasant.
Gao Mingcheng nudged Gao Hongfei with his elbow and gave him a wink: "Hurry up and do something about your wife, stop hogging my wife."
Gao Hongfei helplessly shrugged, indicating that he had no other choice.
Gao Mingcheng rolled his eyes at him. Useless thing.
Gao Hongfei returned his gaze with a defiant look. "If you're so good, you do it."
Gao Mingcheng glanced at Xing Zhaozhao, who was chatting enthusiastically with Ying Rongrong, and decided to forget about it.
It was getting late, and Xing Zhaozhao was already preparing to go home. After all, she had been out for half a day, and if she didn't go back soon, her husband would probably start to worry.
Ying Rongrong insisted on taking the person back home. After they had eaten, she had the driver take them home, along with a bunch of things for her father-in-law, her husband who was still a child, her brother-in-law, and her sister-in-law. She also arranged a time to meet Xing Zhaozhao next.
Gao Mingcheng suddenly felt that it might be quite good if his daughter-in-law had a closer relationship with him and could come here more often.
As usual, the driver took Xing Zhaozhao to the foot of the mountain.
Xing Zhaozhao carried large and small bags and easily slipped into the mountain, completely unaware that a man wearing a windbreaker, carrying a hiking backpack, and wearing gold-rimmed glasses was walking towards her from the roadside just twenty or thirty meters away.
This man was none other than Professor Tan Zhe, whom Assistant He had specially recruited from abroad for the new company.
Tan Zhe has recently visited all the villages built on the mountainsides in the surrounding area, but he still hasn't found the stone house with a cellar that his mother has always been thinking about, which is built halfway up the mountain. Feeling somewhat frustrated, he couldn't stand staying in the lab today, so he decided to go for a walk and climb the mountain by himself.
Unexpectedly, he saw a Mercedes-Benz parked at the entrance to the mountain road in the distance. A somewhat familiar figure got out of the car, carrying large and small bags, and went straight into the mountain. He couldn't help but wonder if there were any villages in the mountains that he didn't know about or had never been to.
Tan Zhe immediately hurried after them, but when he reached the entrance to the mountain path, he found that the people who had gone up the mountain earlier had already disappeared.
Just as he was about to continue chasing, another electric scooter suddenly appeared beside him. The rider was an old man in his sixties or seventies, wearing a sun hat, and carrying a lot of fishing gear. He looked like he was out fishing. He had looked at the map and remembered that there was indeed a large reservoir nearby.
However, the old man stopped his electric scooter at the entrance to the mountain road and didn't move. He looked at the road leading into the mountains with a worried expression and sighed repeatedly.
Tan Zhe hesitated for a moment, then walked over curiously and asked, "Old man, are you here to fish? Why don't you go up?"
The old man frowned and said, "Do you think I don't want to go? I'm scared."
Tan Zhe turned his head and glanced at the dense forest in front of him: "What are you afraid of? I've never heard of any man-eating wild beasts in these mountains?"
The old man rolled his eyes at Tan Zhe and said, "Do you think I'm afraid of wild animals? Am I afraid of ghosts?"
The old man was none other than Uncle Kun, who had accidentally bumped into Xing Zhaozhao once while fishing at the reservoir and thought he had seen a ghost.
"Ghosts?" Tan Zhe was taken aback for a moment, then quickly laughed and said, "Uncle, you're overthinking it. There are no ghosts in this world."
Uncle Kun stared at him with wide eyes and said, "It's true. I saw it with my own eyes. In a flash, it disappeared into an abandoned cellar. It wasn't just me, but also a group of young people. They didn't listen to my advice as an old man and insisted on going up the mountain to see for themselves. As a result, they were all taken down by that ghost. It caused a huge commotion. After that, many people were afraid to go here anymore, for fear of encountering something unclean."
When Tan Zhe heard the word "cellar," his heart tightened. He looked at Uncle Kun with burning eyes. He said a ghost had slipped into that cellar and disappeared. Could it be...?
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com