"How can you talk like that? Who is a thief? Who is a thief?" Li Pingwang was annoyed. When he was young, he was the team leader of the production team. He was a clean man. How could he be a thief?

"Then tell me, what's going on with the money?" Chen Xiaoying pressed him again.

Li Pingwang has a bad temper. He has lived to be fifty-eight, and he has the final say in this family. He can still tolerate the old woman's temper: "Okay, I tell you, I borrowed it, okay?"

Chen Xiaoying was so nervous that she didn't dare to relax. She widened her eyes and asked, "How much did you borrow?"

"I just borrowed 28,000." Li Pingwang sat back in his chair impatiently and rolled himself a cigarette.

I can’t bear to buy a cigarette, so the cigarettes I smoke every day are crushed and rolled by myself.

He is reluctant to eat or wear anything. He will not buy a new pair of shoes until the soles are worn out with holes.

He borrowed twenty-eight thousand!!!

Chen Xiaoying's eyes went dark and her body fell backwards.

The sons were terrified.

"Mom, what's wrong with you?"

"Mom! Open your eyes and look."

"mom!"

They all helped Chen Xiaoying and put her back on the chair.

Chen Xiaoying felt like she couldn't even cry. She opened her eyes and asked him in a trembling voice, "Twenty-eight thousand? Twenty-eight thousand? This is a house in the county town. You just lent it out?"

“Where does the money come from?”

This is no small number.

The eldest brother, Li Hongwei, was also shocked: "Dad, you only borrowed this much, how are you going to pay it back?"

He had heard that his father had borrowed money from someone, and he thought he had only borrowed two or three hundred yuan. Everyone in the village was poor, so he couldn't borrow much money.

But what about the 28,000 yuan?

Li Hongwei suddenly had an idea in his mind, but he didn't dare to think about it.

"Dad, did you go to Laowagou?"

From their side, five or six villages to the east, there is a village called Laowagou. In Laowagou village there is a sheep dealer who ostensibly raises sheep, but in fact, he is a money lender.

Li Pingwang frowned. He thought that it was not a big deal, so why did his wife and eldest son act like the sky had fallen?

"What can I do? Hongyan cried like a child in front of me. My wife refused to get engaged without a gift. Pengfei went out drinking every night because of this. He would lie on the kang and cry when he came back. How could she, as a mother, feel good?"

As he spoke, he wiped away his tears and said, "Xiaoying, we are both parents, how can you be so cruel? You just lent her some money, what's wrong with that?"

Everyone in the room was dumbfounded.

Chen Xiaoying took a long time to come to her senses: "Did you borrow it?"

"It must be me. I'm her father, how can I ignore her?" Li Pingwang puffed out his chest and widened his eyes.

"You are the father of the eldest children, so why don't you take care of them?" Chen Xiaoying couldn't understand why Li Pingwang only treated his eldest daughter Li Hongyan as a human being and his other sons as grass.

He loved to please people and thought that his eldest daughter Hongyan was capable and smart, had given birth to three sons, was strong-willed, talked and laughed loudly wherever she went, and seemed to be very popular.

The sons all had a hard life and were laughed at by everyone in the village.

Parents all want to "rob the rich and help the poor". They want the successful ones to help the unsuccessful ones so that the whole family can live a good life.

He doesn't.

He specifically tried to curry favor with Li Hongyan, who was "promising", and was the first one to look down on his sons who were unsuccessful.

"Where's the IOU? Show it to me."

Chen Xiaoying told herself not to get angry. If she got angry again, she was afraid she would faint. She was old and it would not be worth it if she had a cerebral hemorrhage or something.

"What are you looking at? I don't have the money to pay back now." Li Pingwang was worried and started to think: "Why don't you take out the money you earn and use it to make ends meet?"

Speaking of this, he seemed a little uncomfortable himself.

"We are all family. After this incident, Hongyan doesn't have any grudges anymore. You two are mother and daughter, so you can't get over any conflicts."

He said this as if he had done a good deed by borrowing such a large sum of money.

Moreover, he also learned the word 'turnaround', which didn't sound like something he had come up with in his head. Could it be that Li Hongyan taught him this expression?

"Li Pingwang, what's wrong with you? Why does Li Hongyan have a grudge against me? Did I use my hard-earned money to support such an ungrateful person like her? Huh?" Chen Xiaoying said that she didn't want to be angry anymore, but was the old man Li Pingwang speaking human language?

Li Pingwang almost dropped the pipe he was holding between his fingers: "What are you shouting about?"

"Where's the IOU? Let me see it." Chen Xiaoying's heart was bleeding. Li Hongyan, oh, Li Hongyan, this is not a daughter at all, she is a heartless jackal.

People are all made of flesh and blood, so why isn’t hers the same?

"Why are you yelling?" Li Pingwang thought that he couldn't pay the money back anyway and had to rely on his wife, so he went back and took out the IOU from the notebook in the drawer.

"Here you go, look."

Chen Xiaoying took it.

"Mom, I'll read it to you." The eldest son Li Hongwei remembered that his mother Chen Xiaoying was illiterate, so he spoke quickly.

"I learned it when I opened the shop. I know it." Chen Xiaoying said, glancing at the IOU. It was clearly written in black and white that 28,000 yuan was borrowed, and the interest rate was 25%.

The most important thing was the signature at the bottom. The three words "Li Pingwang" were written by Li Pingwang himself. She recognized his handwriting and even pressed her bloody fingerprint on it.

"Dad, 25% interest, are you crazy? Do you know how much you have to pay back?" Li Hongwei also saw it from the side and was almost angry to death.

When Liu Lanxiang's daughters-in-law heard this, their faces turned pale.

Only Wang Xiaoqin had never been to school. She asked Liu Lanxiang, "Sister-in-law, 25%, how much is the interest?"

"If I borrow 10,000 yuan, I have to pay 2,500 yuan in interest, so the total amount I have to pay is 12,500 yuan." Liu Lanxiang said gritting her teeth.

"That's all." Zhao Xueyan, who was standing by, was a little slow to react. When she heard this, she also became anxious: "Dad, why did you borrow so much money? How can we pay it back? What are you thinking?"

Even Zhao Xueyan knew that Li Pingwang, the father, had borrowed the money. He was an old man and the farmers in the village could not afford to pay it back, so it was up to them, the sons and daughters-in-law, to pay it back.

But how can they afford to pay it back?

Li Pingwang was stunned when he heard this: "Two thousand five, isn't that two hundred and fifty?"

"Li Pingwang, you have a pig brain. 25%, do you need someone to teach you what it is? How did you do as the team leader in your early years?" Chen Xiaoying didn't want to cry, but this time she couldn't hold it back, and tears welled up in her eyes.

Those people in Laowagou Village are not easy to deal with.

She had heard in her early years that before the reform and opening up, the ancestors of the villagers in Laowagou were bandits in the hills near them.

The world was in chaos back then, and they committed all kinds of theft and robbery.

Later, with the reform and opening up, the government took charge and sent people to the village every now and then to promote education and send the children of Laowagou out of the mountains to study and learn culture.

With culture, people are no longer barbaric, but the older generation in Laowagou and some people with crooked intentions are still involved in lending money.