Chapter 93 Don’t Laugh I Believe You Can Do It
Because he was not familiar with the road conditions, Xu Sirui took three days to find out the location of Zhujia Village.
God knows how he found his way in. Standing outside Zhu Yingning's familiar, shabby house, he felt that not participating in hiking or marathons was a huge loss to the sports world. He had drafted a plan, deciding that he would interrogate Zhu Yingning in this and that manner upon meeting her, but when he actually stood before her, he was speechless.
There is also an inexplicable anger.
After holding it in for a long time, he finally managed to utter, "Didn't you say you would come to Beijing on the tenth day of the first lunar month?"
Zhu Yingning was still immersed in the shock of knowing that he was a living person and not a product of a dream, but was awakened by this question. His heart, which had been hanging in the air, fell down and heavily fell back into the abyss.
She looked back at the half-open door and saw Liu Guifang and others still sleeping soundly inside.
How should I explain it to him?
Poverty is not a sin, it is just embarrassing.
But embarrassment is the hardest to describe.
Explaining her home's dire state to him was like digging mold from the corners of the house to make tea for a guest. No one would need to drink it; the smell and color would surely make them want to vomit.
She didn't want to entertain him with her family's hardships.
"Zhu Yingning—" Xu Sirui frowned, wishing he had a hammer to hit her head with to see what was inside. Her expression of hesitation and melancholy gave him goosebumps. "Why are you acting like Lin Daiyu? I'm asking you a question! Answer me."
Her eyes drifted away.
"Is breaking your promise your principle in life?"
She remained silent.
It was like punching cotton. Xu Sirui was furious: "You don't want to tell me? Fine, if you don't want to tell me, I'll go in and ask your mother." After that, he pushed open the half-closed door and walked into the house.
Zhu Yingning was startled by him, and quickly stopped him and pulled him back outside the threshold.
"Are you going to tell me or not?!" He glared at me.
"I'll tell you, I'll tell you..." She begged for mercy in a low voice, nodding her head rapidly, having the illusion that she was a prisoner being tortured by the interrogator.
The interrogator glared at her sternly, so she had no choice but to lower her head and timidly give a brief account of what had happened since the Chinese New Year.
After hearing this, Xu Sirui raised his eyebrows in disbelief: "That's it?"
"..." Zhu Yingning was stunned, "What do you mean by just this?"
The pain she truly felt seemed to be belittled by him as if it were worthless.
But he ignored the shock and anger on her face. He seemed even angrier than she was. He said angrily, "Did your head get caught in a door or something?! You feel sorry for your mother and plan to stay in the village to help her. So what?"
"What then?" she asked dully.
"What are you going to do then? Will you and your mom take turns taking care of your dad and grandma for the rest of your lives? Let's assume they can live another forty years. Do you plan to be trapped in the mountain village with your mom for forty years, suffering together?" He was incredulous. "Have you ever considered that as long as you continue studying, you can go out to work in six years. By then, you may be able to find a high-paying job and earn enough money to hire a caregiver, or send your dad and grandma to the best nursing home. In this way, your mom will only have to suffer for six years. In just six years, you can both be free."
He said, "You thought you were helping her by staying, but you were actually harming her, and yourself. Your mother only had to endure six years of suffering, but because of a moment of weakness, you forced her to suffer forty years, and in the process, you sacrificed your own life."
"Your mother has limited knowledge, foolish ideas, favors boys over girls, and is short-sighted. She can only see the present, not the long-term future. Zhu Yingning, it is precisely because of this that you must not be led astray by her ideas. What is the purpose of your studies? To see higher and farther than those here, right?"
Zhu Yingning was completely stunned by what he said.
After two or three minutes, she finally uttered a sound, murmuring, "But I'm just worried she won't be able to survive these six years alone. It's very hard for her. What if she suddenly becomes depressed..."
"Isn't it hard for you?" He frowned and interrupted her. "How to survive these six years is your mother's own responsibility. She has her responsibilities, you have yours, you just need to do your part well, there's no need to take on hers. Zhu Yingning, your responsibility does not lie here."
Sometimes, she had to admit that there were huge differences in their thinking. Perhaps it was caused by urban and rural culture, perhaps it was the different ways their parents raised them, or perhaps it was their innate personality.
The most obvious difference is that Xu Sirui always prioritizes himself, quantifying things in a utilitarian way, while she prioritizes others, incorporating many human factors. It's hard to say which way of thinking is right or wrong, but communicating with him often provides her with fresh insights.
It never occurred to her that pain could be measured in years.
Regardless of whether this method is reasonable, he provides her with a perspective to break the deadlock.
On a cold and silent snowy night, outside the dilapidated house, the accumulated snow crushed the branches, making crackling sounds.
Just when Xu Sirui was about to say something, the door opened.
Liu Guifang came out, nervous and panicked: "Ningning, who are you talking to so late at night?"
After she asked, she rolled her eyes and saw Xu Sirui standing next to Zhu Yingning. She was shocked, "You are... you, you! You are Sirui?! Why are you here?"
"Mom, he is..."
Zhu Yingning was about to explain when Liu Guifang covered her face and screamed like crazy: "You're coming to take my daughter away! Are you? Are you?! You're going to trick her into leaving! Where are you going? You're all going to abandon me again, huh?!"
When she shouted like this, the sleeping dogs in the village started barking wildly. Some villagers were awakened by her screams and got up to turn on the lights in their houses.
The wind rustled, and Liu Guifang's face, veiled in darkness, was distorted. Her eyes, dulled by long hours of toil, with even the whites appearing yellow and dim, bulged slightly from their sockets, resembling a goldfish, or a ghost who had died by hanging, a living female ghost.
Zhu Yingning's heart was beating rapidly, and her throat felt like it was clogged with something sticky. She opened her mouth to soothe the other person, but was horrified by Liu Guifang's cold and desolate face, making her speechless. Xu Sirui, who was standing beside her, suddenly reached out and twisted her face. His hands were cold, and they felt like two pieces of ice, so cold that they burned her. He didn't look at Liu Guifang, but only looked down at her and asked her softly, as if whispering, "Do you want to go to Beijing?"
She didn't know who to look at for a moment. She looked at Xu Sirui for a few seconds, then couldn't help but glance at Liu Guifang, who was in a mental breakdown next to her. Her speech was confused: "I...but...she..."
"I'm not asking you anything else." He put some pressure on his hands, forcing her to look into his eyes. "I'm just asking if you want it."
For a moment, Zhu Yingning felt like the whole world was forcing her. If she could, she really wanted to scream like Liu Guifang. But after her lips moved violently, she still uttered the answer from between her lips and teeth: "Of course I... Of course I want to..."
After she said it, she remembered the question he asked her when he called her half a year ago. He hung up the phone so quickly that she didn't have time to answer. The delayed answer rushed out of her mouth, and she almost shouted at the top of her lungs: "I'm definitely more unwilling than anyone else!!"
This roar was totally unlike her style. After she finished roaring, she felt like an unreasonable psychopath. However, Xu Sirui was not frightened by her, he actually laughed.
He reached out and took her hand, pulling it hard.
Without any words, as if by some kind of tacit understanding, he pulled her forward, causing her to stumble a few steps. Once she steadied herself, her legs spontaneously broke into a run. The wind whistled past her ears like arrows and knives, wanting to gouge her ears out, but the surge of adrenaline made Zhu Yingning completely insensitive to the pain.
Seeing them turn and run, Liu Guifang collapsed, crying and shouting as she chased after them, her heart-wrenching cry waking up the sleeping villagers. House after house turned on their lights, and by the time she reached the village entrance, some villagers had heard the commotion and had come out to watch, bewildered.
"Catch them! Catch them!" Liu Guifang didn't have time to explain in detail. She simply pointed at them and shouted, "Some bad guys are trying to kidnap my Ningning!!"
When everyone heard this, they were furious. How dare someone break into the village and rob people in the middle of the night? Did they think everyone in the village was dead? The younger ones grabbed brooms, buckets, shovels—anything handy and inconvenient—and gave chase. The older ones followed behind with flashlights.
A group of people chased after them.
“Oh my god…!”
Xu Sirui had originally just wanted to pull Zhu Yingning away from Liu Guifang, but the more he ran, the more people followed him. It was like a full-scale attack, with more than a dozen people rushing towards him like bandits, armed with weapons and looking ferocious. And no matter how you looked at it, this ferocious group was heading straight for him.
He walked to the village in the middle of the night. He was already exhausted and felt his strength dropping rapidly after running a few steps. At first, he could still hold Zhu Yingning's hand, but later they gradually walked side by side. Later, she was the one pulling him along.
Xu Sirui wanted to ask if they could stop for a moment. If they continued running, he'd die suddenly. He thought he could talk it out with the villagers first. Unfortunately, Zhu Yingning ran with such intensity and force, like a powerful tractor-trailer. He ran so fast that the wind blocked his mouth, preventing him from opening it.
After running a long way on the wide road, she seized the opportunity and pulled him into the mountains.
The terrain in the mountains was even more complex, with snow covering the mud, wet and soft. Xu Sirui stepped in, one foot deep and one foot shallow, feeling dizzy and unsure how long he was dragged along before the noise of the villagers behind him gradually faded away.
They went completely deep into the mountains.
In the previous second, they seemed to be able to hear the echoes of the villagers, and in the next second, everything was silent. It seemed as if there were only the two of them in the whole world, and their rapid breathing one after another.
Lactic acid fermented in his muscles, producing a sharp sour taste. His legs felt so weak that he wanted to squat down, but Zhu Yingning held him tightly, preventing him from doing so: "You can't squat right after running."
Xu Sirui was so tired that he couldn't even utter a curse word. He panted and said, "Then I'll lie down."
"Okay." She relented.
He collapsed on the ground like a pile of mud, no longer caring about cleanliness or not.
Zhu Yingning took a moment to relax, feeling her breathing become more even and her legs less shaky. Then she squatted beside Xu Sirui and asked softly, "...Are you okay?"
Xu Sirui lay on the snow, sweating profusely from running in the middle of winter. His black hair stuck to his pale face, like ink against porcelain. His peach blossom eyes were half-closed as he said weakly, "Do you think I look okay?"
She answered seriously: "Not really."
“…”
After lying there for a while, he finally sat up, propping his palms on the mixture of snow and mud. He let out a breath and managed to gather enough strength to complain, "Are the people in your village crazy? We're not eloping, so why are you chasing us like this?"
After he finished speaking, he realized that his choice of words was inappropriate. Damn, what elopement? His cheeks flushed red, and he wanted to take back what he said, but the words were already out, so he could only pretend to be calm.
Fortunately, Zhu Yingning's attention didn't seem to be on this sentence. She stared at the tree roots in a daze, not knowing what she was thinking. Xu Sirui breathed a sigh of relief but also felt inexplicably disappointed.
After a moment of silence, she suddenly asked, "Xu Sirui, just now outside the house, you didn't persuade me to ignore my mother, you just advised me to change the way I care for her. Why?"
He was stunned for a moment, then smiled softly: "I advise you not to do anything, will you listen?"
"You knew I wouldn't listen, so you didn't try to talk me out of it?"
"Um."
"Then...what if it was you?" She lowered her voice unconsciously, "If you were me, if you encountered this kind of thing, what would you do?"
He restrained his smile and looked into her eyes. His expression suddenly became indifferent, as if he was looking through a layer of frosted glass. He paused for a few seconds before answering, "I won't care."
"Absolutely not?"
"I don't care at all."
"But my father is in a vegetative state, and my grandmother has dementia. If we don't take care of them, they will die without a financial source..."
"Then die," he said. "I don't think ignorance needs any salvation."
Her heart skipped a beat.
Xu Sirui's eyes were chillingly cold as he spoke these words. She couldn't tell if he was simply responding to the scenario she'd raised, or if it reflected his attitude towards Zhou Tianlan. In his eyes, what kind of person was Zhou Tianlan? Was he the same ignorant person as Xu Zhengkang? Was his death irrelevant? Or was it something else entirely? She didn't dare ask.
Silence spread between them. Seeing that the atmosphere was a little awkward, Xu Sirui broke the silence and said, "You don't have to be like me."
"Yeah." She hugged her knees and looked down at her arms.
"But I'm really curious... why on earth do you insist on saving them?" He bent one leg, resting his hand on his chin, his eyes narrowed with a sense of composure. "Saving these people would be asking for trouble. I don't have the energy. I'm exhausted just trying to save myself."
"You're right, but..." She picked at her pants and said stealthily, "I'm telling you what I think, and you can't laugh at me."
Seeing her expression of facing a great enemy, Xu Sirui wanted to laugh, but he still held back his laughter and nodded seriously: "Okay."
"Because I think..." She lowered her eyelashes and looked at the ground. "If ignorance means deserving death, means being destroyed, then wouldn't the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China be whitewashed as a just act? After all, the Chinese people at that time were all ignorant. I hope that I can do things to save, not destroy, like the revolutionary martyrs. Moreover, I don't want to see ignorance passed down from generation to generation, constantly harming new people..."
"Fuck." Xu Sirui was stunned. "You actually have such a high level of ideological awareness."
Zhu Yingning looked up at his face and yelled in anger, "You just promised me you wouldn't laugh!"
"I'm not laughing."
“You laughed!!”
She rushed over and pinched his face.
Xu Sirui burst into laughter.
Her face flushed with shame and anger. While trying to suppress the upward curve of his lips with force, she defended herself without any momentum: "I know I'm very weak now. I can't even save myself, let alone others. But in five years, ten years, twenty years... who can predict what will happen in the future? Xu Sirui - don't laugh anymore!"
He finally put away the wanton smile on his face and reached out to hold her wrist, otherwise he felt like she would twist the flesh off his cheek.
Although he stopped laughing, there was still a smile in his eyes. It was not a teasing smile, but a softer and longer one.
He looked at her dark and lively pupils, hummed in a deep voice, and said in an unprecedented serious tone: "I believe you can do it."
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