Chapter 41 007 He didn’t sleep, and he knew that he knew he didn’t sleep either…
There was not much work to do in the afternoon, so Wu Cisheng, as usual, kept switching between different radio stations, listening to the big and small entertainment gossips that happened in Chunhui City that week.
Unconsciously, my thoughts drifted away...
The woman who was not in good spirits that he asked the sentry to see at noon was named Yang Jiao, and she was Wu Cisheng's biological mother.
Back then, the young Yang Jiao was a famous beauty in the town, and the door was almost broken down by the people who came to propose marriage.
But she didn't like any of them, but fell in love with Wu Cisheng's father during a chance encounter, a handsome orphan from a poor family.
In those turbulent times, orphans were all too common. There were wars going on at the front lines all the time, and even in a small place like Wutong Town, one could often see wounded soldiers wandering around.
Most of these soldiers who withdrew from the front line were missing arms and legs, and some were deafened by the sound of artillery fire. They could only stare blankly at passers-by, unable to speak, and could only stand there waiting for their families to come and claim them one by one.
And these are already considered lucky, as many soldiers cannot even come back.
Those families whose relatives are serving in the military are even more conflicted. They want to see familiar faces, but they also don't want to see them.
Regardless of whether one has seen it or not, every time it happens, it causes a sensation, and the sobs of countless people crying and holding their heads can be heard from far away.
As for how Yang Jiao checked again and again and was disappointed each time, Wu Cisheng had no idea. He wasn't even born at that time.
He had never seen his biological father since he could remember, and as for his mother, although she was kind to him, it was only intermittent.
Sometimes she knew Wu Cisheng, sometimes she didn't. ——After receiving the news of her husband's death in battle, Yang Jiao fell seriously ill, and ever since then, her memory has always been stuck on the period of waiting for her husband's return.
The doctor said that this was because the brain was severely stimulated, so he only remembered this time.
She often wore that plain cheongsam, tied her hair into a low ponytail, and carried a patent leather bag, and went to the place where she had agreed to meet with her husband to wait for someone who would never come, and she would wait for several days.
The young Wu Cisheng didn’t understand what was going on. He just wanted to follow his mother when he saw her going out.
When his mother pushed him away for the first time, the young Wu Cisheng was stunned. He sat down on the ground and burst into tears, thinking that she didn't want him anymore.
Later, it was the grandmother who heard the sound and hurried over to pull up the cub Wu Cisheng, who was still a cub. She gently wiped his tears and coaxed him, saying that it was not his mother who didn't want him, she was just sick.
——She was just sick.
Wu Cisheng always kept these words in mind. Later, when her grandparents passed away, her aunt, who thought that her mother and son had been staying in her mother's home for many years and had tolerated it for two years, found an excuse to drive them away.
Wu Cisheng was only twelve years old at that time. He pursed his lips tightly, and his dark eyes showed a precocity that was completely inconsistent with his age.
With his thin eyelids drooping, he pulled his mother, who was having another attack, and whispered, "Mom, let's go, let's go."
Yang Jiao was still confused at the time. She frowned and looked at Wu Cisheng, stubbornly saying that she didn't know him and that she had to go wait for someone and couldn't go with him.
Wu Cisheng did not refute, and patiently followed his mother's words: "I know, but he wrote to me last time and said that the place has been changed, and we have to go now..."
"Oh, is that so?"
Yang Jiao was convinced.
The twelve-year-old boy took his confused mother along the street looking for cheap houses. It took them a whole morning to find a suitable one.
After finding them, Wu Cisheng put on a cold face again and packed up the two people's things under his aunt's wary gaze.
Not much, just some clothes for changing.
In the first month after the mother and son settled down, one day Yang Jiao did not have an attack. The conscious woman did not go to wait for her husband, but went to the house where she had lived since childhood to take a look from a distance, and then returned to the resettlement community where her son rented.
There was not much furniture in the room, which was so large that one could see the end of it at a glance, but the room was very clean overall. There were many conspicuous notes on the wall, with similar words written on them, each stroke neatly and carefully.
[Your name is Yang Jiao. This is your current home. Don't wander around after you wake up...]
[I am Xiaoci, your son...]
If you don't see me in the house, I might be out at school, or helping Uncle Liu. Call me outside or ask our neighbor, Grandma Meng...
[Don't wander around, don't talk to strangers, I'll bring you food when I come back...]
Among these words, Wu Cisheng would also thoughtfully draw some graffiti. For example, after the words "I am your son", he would draw a graffiti of a little boy, who looked like a well-behaved child.
Uncle Liu and his neighbor Grandma Meng were also drawn, and each of them is very lifelike. The former is a middle-aged man with a crew cut, wearing a white vest and holding a knife in his hand. He should be selling pork; the latter is a kind old grandmother with squinting eyes, a wrinkled face, short hair, and glasses.
The woman also met these people one by one. Grandma Meng held the woman's hand and sighed that Xiaoci was such a good child.
From Grandma Meng, the woman learned that her son, who was only in elementary school, had already started helping the neighbors with things within his ability during his spare time in exchange for their help in looking after his mother and a little income from Weibo.
But in fact, the family still has some savings. Grandma secretly left some for them, and uncle would occasionally give some secretly. The mother and son had no problem living, but the child still had to prepare for a rainy day.
He manages the family passbook like a little adult, recording every single entry, and the biggest expense every month is his mother's medicine.
"How old is he, and he's already starting to support a family..."
Grandma Meng kept talking about the last time she met Wu Cisheng on the street. She said she found that this child had a problem. He smiled at everyone he saw. It was not that he had a cheerful personality, but he seemed to just want to leave a good impression on others?
As they were chatting, the child who had gone out to help came back halfway because he was worried about his mother.
The sober woman also saw her son. His fair little face was so thin that his chin was pointed. His eyes were dark and bright, full of worries that didn't match his age. At an age when he should be having fun, he was wearing a dirty apron, his hands wet and covered with foam...
The little boy asked tentatively:
"Mom, do you know who I am?"
The woman half squatted down, touched her son's face, hugged him tightly, and tears fell.
"Xiaoci..."
Thinking back on those days, I still miss them quite a bit. To buy better medicine for my mother and save more money, Wu Cisheng started working in various shops and interacting with all kinds of people since he was a child...
It was during this process that he developed the habit of smiling when he saw people, learned to read people's expressions, and learned many dialect skills here.
At the age of sixteen, when Wu Cisheng first woke up and was visited by local authorities, he did not think that he had finally made something successful, but that he could make more money.
After receiving the admission letter from Capital Tower, his future plans became clearer. At that time, his uncle secretly came to visit Wu Cisheng one evening like a thief and gave him some money.
It wasn't much, just eight or nine hundred yuan in change, enough for him to buy himself a new set of clothes.
The man first congratulated Wu Cisheng on his awakening, saying that he would have a stable job in the future. Then he rubbed his hands and looked at his nephew who had grown taller, with a guilty look on his face: "Xiaoci, I have let you down all these years..."
Wu Cisheng shook his head slightly.
Perhaps he did resent his uncle in his heart when he was young, but as he grew up, he gradually understood the key to the problem. What could he do? He couldn't just let him divorce his aunt, right?
What about the two children?
Is it so easy to get divorced?
What's more, from my aunt's perspective, before she married into the Yang family, the family seemed to be well-off. But after she married in, she found out that her uncle only had a sinecure, and her married sister and children were still living in her parents' home. They had to spend high medical expenses every month, and there was not much money left in the family.
My aunt has always misunderstood my grandparents, thinking that these two old guys must have hidden a lot of treasures and must have secretly given them to their youngest daughter.
She believed that as the eldest son in the family, her uncle should have gotten the most. Moreover, they were the ones who took care of the couple in their old age. They paid but got nothing in return, so they naturally felt resentful. Therefore, they became more and more unhappy with the mother and son day by day.
My uncle is a bit cowardly. When his wife often gets angry about Wu Cisheng and his mother, he usually just smokes in silence.
Of course, Wu Cisheng had also speculated that maybe his uncle actually thought that his mother was overly partial to the younger daughter, and that he, as the eldest son, ended up with nothing?
A month before being kicked out, Wu Cisheng actually overheard a conversation between his uncle and aunt.
He clearly heard his aunt complaining in her signature loud voice about how unlucky they were. They already had two children, and now they had to support two more. And to top it off, those two elderly people had left all their savings to his sister. What a rip-off!
He heard his aunt confidently guess that the deposit must be at least one million.
She didn't know that she didn't have that much savings. She spent a lot of money taking her mother to see doctors in different places, and spent some more to help her uncle find a job through connections. The two elderly people were not in good health and needed to take medicine all the time. The expenses of the whole family were like running water.
They were just a middle-class family, how much could they possibly have? In the end, they only had a savings of around 200,000 yuan and a yard they had lived in for many years.
Before she passed away, grandma divided the house between her two children very clearly. The son got half, and the daughter got half each. However, she only gave the youngest daughter an extra 50,000 or 60,000 yuan in savings, which was not as much as one might imagine.
But my aunt never believed it. She always thought that there must be some good things secretly given to Yang Jiao and her son. Even the relatives thought so.
In the intervals between his aunt's voices, Wu Cisheng heard his uncle's voice again. He said, "Even if I gave it to her secretly, what can I do? She is in this state now, and Xiaoci is so young. If she doesn't give it to me, how can I snatch it away?"
Wu Cisheng listened in silence for a long time. When he heard his aunt say that she wanted to find a husband for Yang Jiao, and when he heard his uncle remain silent, his feet became numb from listening, and half of his body became numb from the cold wind.
But no matter what, the uncle did give the mother and son some money every month, sometimes a few hundred yuan, sometimes a thousand or two thousand, and told them to keep it secret from the aunt and not let her know.
Human hearts are so complicated. He may indeed be dissatisfied and feel guilty. Who can tell the right from the wrong?
Later, Wu Cisheng was admitted to the Capital Tower. With his previous experience in dealing with all kinds of neighbors, he was able to do everything well and soon became successful in school.
He was elected as the student council president with an overwhelming vote, and was able to participate in the subsequent construction of the tower. He earned money with his writing skills and hired a nanny to take care of his mother...
His bright and glorious life was slowly unfolding, and then... something like that happened.
*
When he got off work in the evening, Cheng Yuan came to pick him up again, and this time he brought a bunch of flowers still with dewdrops on them.
Wu Cisheng took it and smelled it. Based on the general shape of the flower and the faint sweet fragrance, he immediately guessed that it must be jasmine.
He calmly placed the flowers in the farthest back row, and mobilized a trace of his mental power to completely isolate the faint floral fragrance in the back row.
"Why are you sending flowers all of a sudden?"
"It wasn't sudden. I just saw it when I passed by and it suddenly occurred to me." Cheng Yuan paused and added in a nostalgic tone, "I remember you used to like flowers very much."
Yes, Wu Cisheng used to be drowsy all day long, and even his perception of the little ferret was intermittent. He was still very panicked and even thought that he had regressed from a guide to an ordinary person.
Without his sight and his ferret, his only channels for distinguishing objects were smell and touch, so for a while he did like to smell flowers.
His partner also filled the house with various bouquets of flowers, almost all of which were of strong floral fragrance, such as lilies, oncidiums, jasmine, gardenias, etc. Almost every day when he woke up, his nose was filled with a lingering sweet fragrance.
Later, Wu Cisheng no longer stayed in the house. He began to slowly walk out of the house, started to work, and began to recall the first lesson of entering the tower, how to condense the scattered mental power.
He gradually sensed the weakened little ferret, finally no longer relying on smelling the flowers to calm himself down.
"Oh, I forgot."
Wu Cisheng said lightly.
The partner leaned over to fasten Wu Cisheng's seat belt and chatted with him about family matters as usual.
Autumn had arrived, and the weather was getting colder. He recalled that it was a crisp autumn day when he first met Wu Cisheng. They talked about the coming winter and the last Chinese New Year...
As he spoke, Cheng Yuan tentatively mentioned whether he should go back to Yungang for the Chinese New Year this year.
Yungang is a small third-tier city near the capital Baigang. Although its name is very similar to the capital, it is actually not very famous, but it is also Wu Cisheng’s hometown.
He heard his partner mention his hometown just after he had sent the sentry to check.
The curve of Wu Cisheng's lips suddenly straightened: "Didn't I say before that I don't want my mother to see me like this..."
"I know, I just—"
"Did you go to Yungang?"
Cheng Yuan spoke faster and explained: "No, I didn't go. I just said I would go back and take a look, just like last time..."
Wu Cisheng stopped talking.
The car sped along a one-way street. The branches outside were shaking in the wind and raindrops fell, making a crisp sound on the roof of the car.
No conversation along the way.
For a moment, Wu Cisheng felt that this scene was really absurd. All the evidence found by the sentry was enough to prove that the person next to him was the murderer who caused him to lose his sight.
But when getting out of the car, the murderer carefully opened the door for Wu Cisheng, helped him out of the car, and carefully reminded him that there were puddles on the ground outside.
From the message sent by the sentry today, Wu Cisheng learned that it was now in the final stage. If nothing unexpected happened, the police would come to his house in two or three days, but his partner still seemed unaware of it.
This is impossible.
Cheng Yuan will definitely do something.
After returning home, Wu Cisheng was very alert throughout the night. He awakened the little white weasel, which was also blind, from his sea of consciousness, checked every inch of the air around him, and tensed every nerve.
Even the slight sound when sitting down on the sofa and sinking down was lighter than usual.
Everything was no different from usual, except that before going to bed, his partner went to the kitchen to busy himself for a while and brought him a bowl of warm health-preserving soup.
Lily, lotus seed and bird's nest have the effects of nourishing the heart and calming the mind, strengthening the spleen and stomach, moistening the lungs and relieving cough.
He stirred it gently with a spoon, and wisps of hot steam came out. The porcelain spoon collided with the edge of the bowl, making a crisp sound.
"Would you like to try some? Last time you said it wasn't sweet enough, so I improved it a little this time."
Wu Cisheng moved calmly towards the edge of the sofa. His spirit sensed his master's inner vigilance and instantly emerged from his sea of consciousness.
The little ermine has a small and exquisite body, and its snow-white fur is soft and fluffy, like a light cloud. When it was just woken up, it was dozing off with its fluffy tail in its arms. The next second, it immediately entered working mode and walked forward skillfully to "check for danger."
The first step was to check the food in front of him. Since the little ferret couldn't see, it used its front paws to grab the edge of the bowl, and its wet nose kept sniffing the bowl to see if there was any suspicious smell.
Soon, it finished the inspection.
Through sensing, Wu Cisheng realized that it was indeed an ordinary bowl of health-promoting soup, but he still had no intention of taking it and drinking it.
"I don't have much of an appetite."
He made a lame excuse.
Not only did Wu Cisheng refuse to drink the soup his partner handed him, he even refused to drink the water. The little ferret was extremely busy, its small figure sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the bedroom, and sometimes in the stairwell.
It carefully touched the ground with its little paws, groping inch by inch, and from time to time slightly raised its head and sniffed with its little nose.
——Yes, it is busy checking every corner of the room for dangerous items.
His partner was an ordinary person, he couldn't see the little ferret's movements, he sighed softly.
"Ci Sheng..."
During the usual rest time, Wu Cisheng and his partner lay down as usual, no one spoke, but the gaze became more obvious.
Wu Cisheng knew that his partner was watching him, and knew that he must not have slept. At the same time, he knew that he knew that he knew that he had not slept.
In this silence, a rustling sound was heard, followed by a warm body coming up.
His partner's kiss deflected to the ends of his hair because Wu Cisheng avoided it. He smiled slightly, then pinched a strand of Wu Cisheng's hair and kissed it.
"Cisheng, we haven't done this for a long time. I think...is it okay? Today..."
When he spoke, there was a pleading tone in his voice, and his gaze seemed to become material and lingered on Wu Cisheng's face. The person being looked at still closed his eyes and said the words he often said during this period.
"I'm not in the mood. Maybe next time."
Ever since he discovered that he could avoid his partner's kiss last time, that invisible force completely loosened and Wu Cisheng was able to refuse.
“…”
Another sigh, and then the partner's compromising voice: "Well... okay."
The night outside the window deepened, and the rain that had stopped started again at some point. Drops of rain fell on the window glass, making a dense and light sound, which made the room seem even quieter for no reason.
Wu Cisheng suddenly thought, the weather forecast says that the rain will stop in three days, will it stop?
The climate in the city is unpredictable when spring comes, and the weather forecast is always accurate.
Wu Cisheng doesn't have a particular favorite weather. In his life, it is always drizzling in his world, and there are rarely sunny days.
He adapted quickly. He would put on more clothes when it was cold and hide under the shade of trees when it was hot. No matter what the weather was like, he could always find a way to deal with it.
But perhaps this autumn rain lasted too long, and he suddenly began to miss the bright sunny days.
Even though you can't see it, your skin can still feel the warmth of the sun.
All night long,
The little ferret lay quietly beside the bed.
Its snow-white fur glowed softly in the dim light, and its small ears remained erect at all times, not missing any slightest sound.
Outside the window, there was only the rustling sound of branches blown by the wind. The little ferret stood up instantly, with its hair all over its body slightly standing up, ready to deal with danger at any time.
After a while, when it was confirmed to be safe, the little guy lay back on Wu Cisheng's neck and continued to guard his master. His white-filmed eyes stared vigilantly at the figure beside him.
.
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