"Sister, look, this is for you."
Sixiang held up a huge, colorful conch shell like a precious treasure.
"I picked this up from the beach. Look how pretty it is! It even has rainbow colors on it. If you put it to your ear, you can hear the sound of the sea. Shi Cui tried to trade it with me for rice candy, but I refused."
Sixiang held the conch shell up to Su Qingci, saying, "This is for you."
Looking at the little girl's expression, Su Qingci could tell that she really liked the conch shell and was now giving her favorite thing to her older sister.
"Thank you, Sixiang. It's so beautiful, I love it."
Su Qingci accepted the conch shell and thanked Sixiang with a happy expression.
Seeing that Su Qingci liked it, Sixiang's thin, dark face lit up with joy.
Just as the two were chatting, Xu Dasheng and Liao Sigui ran in, covered in sweat.
Su Qingci quickly stood up, "Uncle Dasheng, I miss home."
Sixiang, being very perceptive, scooped up two ladles of well water that she had just brought back and handed them to Xu Dasheng and Sigui.
The two men, covered in sweat, took the water ladle and gulped down half of it.
Then he looked up at Su Qingci and said, "I've found out."
“They were all from our small town. There were fifty-four people who signed the contract, but only the two of us came back.”
Xu Dasheng's eyes were filled with grief as he looked at the families who had lost their breadwinners today...
If they hadn't been lucky enough to meet Miss Su, it would be his mother and Xiaoyu crying at home in despair right now.
Therefore, he and Sigui could empathize with each other deeply about this matter.
Seeing that the group had drunk water, Su Changzhi quickly invited them inside, saying, "Let's talk inside."
The group walked towards Su Changzhi's inner room.
Liao Fengmei, who was outside, knew that Su Changzhi and the others probably had something important to talk about, so she asked Sixiang to help her prepare dinner and told Sijia to squat at the gate and keep watch so that she could speak up if anyone came.
Inside the room, Si Gui pulled out a long bench and sat down facing Su Qingci.
He then pulled a worn-out textbook from his pocket and handed it to Su Qingci.
"Sister Su, this is what Uncle Dasheng and I found out. Apart from the two of us, the other fifty-two families are all here. Among them, some families are father and son, two families are brothers, and a few families are cousins."
"Uncle Dasheng is right. These people all come from very poor families. Their families... their families... it's like the sky has fallen..."
"Besides the wife of Haiyong who jumped into the sea with her child at Panxi Cave, two other families in Shuibian Village and Qiliu Village also couldn't withstand it. One elderly person, fearing that he would be a burden to the younger generation, secretly drank medicine. Another person hit his head against a wall, but fortunately, he didn't hit it too hard and was not seriously injured."
Tears welled up in Si Gui's eyes as she choked back sobs, recalling the horrific scene she had witnessed that afternoon. "That old man who drank rat poison... he can't be saved."
"Neither of his two sons came back. His eldest daughter-in-law died in childbirth, and his second son is not yet married. Now, only the eldest son's three children and an old grandmother are left. The oldest of the three children is no more than twelve years old."
"The old man had been sick and needed to take medicine. When he found out about what happened at home, he secretly ate rat poison when his wife wasn't looking."
"The villagers held him down, trying to force-feed him soapy water to wash his stomach, but the old man clenched his teeth and refused to open his mouth. He kept spitting out white bubbles and said to everyone, 'If I die, my food rations will be left to my grandson so that his grandson can live. Please, for the sake of our past relationship, let my young grandson...' Waaah..."
Su Qingci reached out and patted Si Gui on the shoulder, and Xu Dasheng continued.
"What I've found out here is similar to what I've found in Sigui. There are 52 people registered here, but only 37 families are involved. Most of the families left behind are the elderly, women, children, and..."
After a moment of silence, Xu Dasheng said, "There are also two other crew members who were hired in the same batch, and their family situations are not very good either."
Su Qingci was a little surprised. During this period of time, Xu Dasheng and Sigui had been harboring deep hatred for the crew members on the ship.
Xu Dasheng recalled his previous complaints to Su Qingci and turned his head away embarrassedly. "Actually, they are not all bad people. There are good people among them. These two families are alright. They have never made things difficult for us, and their families are not well-off."
Su Qingci nodded and then began to explain her own situation.
“I went to the cruise ship this afternoon. The total amount of Taiwanese dollars in the safe I salvaged was about 300,000, and I brought it all with me.”
As she spoke, Su Qingci opened the backpack next to her and pushed it towards the center of the table.
Xu Dasheng and Si Gui's eyes were instantly glued to the schoolbag.
"Now let's discuss how to divide this money, and how to give it to them?"
Su Changzhi interjected, "It's best to give it to them privately and tell them not to tell anyone. Firstly, to avoid causing unnecessary trouble, since the owner of the Ghana isn't without connections."
"Secondly, for families that lack a breadwinner, if people find out that they have suddenly acquired such a large sum of money, it might not be a good thing for them, but rather a bad thing."
"Not to mention that every family has a few troublesome relatives, even if you're lucky enough not to have such relatives, if someone with ulterior motives has their eye on this money, it might end up harming them instead."
Xu Dasheng strongly supported Su Changzhi's proposal.
“Dazhi is right. How about this? Sigui and I will handle this. We’ll go from house to house in the middle of the night and tell them that their husbands, fathers, or sons asked us to bring this back before they died. We’ll tell them not to make a fuss.”
Si Gui nodded, "Yes, we should explain the seriousness of this matter to them. We should say that when the ship sank, the contents spilled from the captain's safe. The men knew they might not survive, so their families were trying to get it back. If word gets out, the captain's family might come after them to take it back."
Inside the dimly lit room, four people sat in a circle around the table, discussing something amongst themselves. Soon it got dark, and there was a knock on the door.
"Bang bang bang~"
"Dad, Mom asked me to call you for dinner."
"Okay, I understand," Su Changzhi replied, then said to Xu Dasheng, "Dasheng, I won't hide it from you, Qingci is my niece. She came here to see us. After we finish this business, we will go back to the inland with her."
"Although what we're discussing today is a good deed, we're afraid of encountering someone who's greedy and unreasonable. If we run into one of them and get caught up in their schemes, we might end up dragging ourselves into the abyss."
"So you and Sigui go together tonight. Let Sigui show her face. If anything happens, Sigui will be the one to protect you. If anything does happen, we won't be implicated when we leave. But you..."
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