Chapter 525: Caihua’s Downfall (Part 5)

"Why, why... AHH!"

"Su Li sold Tang Mo, not me! AHH..."

Qin Shanshan roared and struggled, her bloodshot eyes fixed on Su Li and Little Tang Mo.

If looks could kill, Su Li and Little Tang Mo would have been dead several times over.

Su Li pulled Little Tang Mo behind her, watching the endlessly struggling Qin Shanshan being dragged away, and closed her eyes.

Seeing Qin Shanshan now, it was as if she was seeing her past self.

How many times in her past life had she screamed so desperately—out of indignation, resentment, and regret?

When she was wrongly accused, when she fell into despair time and again, when she sought out Tang Mo only to return disappointed... she had been just like this.

Time... after time...

What Qin Shanshan was suffering now was nothing more than what she herself had already experienced.

’Besides, what does she have to feel wronged about? What is there to hate? She wasn’t even falsely accused.’

Su Li took a deep breath and patted Little Tang Mo’s shoulder. "Let’s go, Little Mo."

But Little Tang Mo didn’t move. He tilted his head back and looked at Su Li seriously.

"Mom, if I had really gotten lost and you couldn’t find me, would you have been wrongly accused?"

For some reason, seeing Qin Shanshan and hearing her words made Little Tang Mo feel extremely uneasy.

Su Li froze for a moment when she heard Little Tang Mo’s question. She looked down into his earnest eyes and unexpectedly thought of the Tang Mo she had seen just before her death in her past life.

The last time she had seen Tang Mo.

The Tang Mo from back then slowly began to overlap with the Little Tang Mo before her now.

Su Li squatted down, stroking Little Tang Mo’s head. She looked up at him and nodded. "Probably."

Sometimes, things in this world were just that ridiculous, that illogical.

Even though she had rescued Little Tang Mo, those traffickers had still insisted that she was the one who sold him.

"Mom." Hearing her say "probably," Little Tang Mo’s heart suddenly ached terribly.

He raised his hand to her face and murmured, "Don’t be sad, Mom."

Without any hesitation, he mimicked what Su Li used to do for him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her head.

"If only I were your biological son... then you wouldn’t have to listen to such awful things..."

Su Li froze, her heart softening immensely. She wrapped her arms back around Little Tang Mo.

"In my next life, in my next life I want to be your son again, your biological son."

"Okay," Su Li said at once. "Then it’s a deal."

Little Tang Mo perked up. "Mom, from now on, I won’t let anyone talk about you like that again. I’ll protect myself, just like this time."

’As long as I’m here and okay, no one can hurt Mom.’

As mother and son spoke at the top of the stairs, Tang Yuanxiao stood frozen on the landing, his face a mask of complex emotions.

He had rushed over after hearing that Qin Shanshan had also been involved, but he hadn’t expected to overhear Little Tang Mo’s question.

Little Tang Mo’s words instantly reminded him of the past.

The misunderstanding with the people from Xinghua Village, the captured traffickers unanimously claiming Su Li had sold Tang Mo, and... everything he had dreamed of before.

’If... if Su Li hadn’t rescued Little Tang Mo a few years ago, then would things between her and me... have turned out exactly like they did in the dream?’

This was the first time Tang Yuanxiao didn’t think of that nightmare as just a nightmare.

The answer to the question he asked himself was a definite yes.

’Yes, if Su Li really hadn’t saved Little Tang Mo, I might very well have been driven to strangle her...’

’And at that time, Mrs. Tang, not yet knowing Tang Mo wasn’t her biological grandson, would have very likely abused Su Li...’

Tang Yuanxiao’s face went deathly pale, and he took a weak step back.

In the end, he didn’t continue up the stairs. Instead, he turned and left.

Su Li and Little Tang Mo had no idea that Tang Yuanxiao had been there. Once they had calmed down, their thoughts turned back to Miao Zhi’s whereabouts.

Qin Shanshan didn’t know where Miao Zhi was. Beard refused to say where she was, even on pain of death. He even brazenly claimed they would never find her, because Miao Zhi was "in a place no one in the world would ever think of."

For some reason, Su Li felt a strange sense of familiarity with that sentence, as if she had heard it somewhere before.

But no matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t come up with anything.

Su Li and Little Tang Mo spent the whole day at the station. After coming up empty-handed, they took Mr. Zhang’s advice and went home.

She mustered her energy to make dinner. As they were eating, the phone rang, and Su Li went to get it.

The person on the other end was none other than Su Dan.

Su Dan had been scared witless and had only just now calmed down. Too afraid to go looking for Qin Shanshan, his only option was to call Su Li.

"...Su Li, what crime did Qin Shanshan commit? Can you find out for me? I’m scared to death. Is this going to affect me?"

He was terrified of being implicated, afraid he’d be arrested too.

Su Li heard the panic in his voice and was utterly speechless.

"I don’t know. If there’s nothing else, I’m hanging up."

When Su Dan heard she didn’t know, he grew anxious. After some thought, he decided to flee back to his hometown first.

So he packed his things overnight, took what he had on him, and went to the train station.

Su Li hung up, sighed, and went back to her meal. She’d only had a couple of bites when the phone rang again. Thinking it was Su Dan, she didn’t answer at first.

But then it rang a second time.

Su Li took a bite of rice, then went to answer it again, deciding to unplug the phone if she had to.

But it turned out to be Li Li.

Li Li was calling Su Li because school was about to start.

And Su Li still hadn’t gone back to her internship.

They had been interning together at a newspaper office, but after the trouble started with Su Li’s family, she hadn’t gone back. With school starting soon, Li Li was worried and called to check on her.

Hearing Li Li mention the start of school, Su Li finally remembered it herself.

’That’s right, school is about to start...’

’Miao Zhi should be starting school too, but right now, her fate is unknown.’

"Barring any accidents, I’ll be there when school starts. I’ll have to wait until then to continue my internship."

After talking with Li Li for a while and telling her not to worry, Su Li hung up.

After dinner, Su Li couldn’t resist pulling out a map of Huaguo.

The chances of Miao Zhi being sold abroad were slim, so she was probably still in the country. ’But if she’s in the country... where exactly could she be?’

Su Li and Little Tang Mo scanned the map from top to bottom, left to right, looking it over completely.

As Su Li stared at it, she felt like she was on the verge of grasping something, but it always slipped away.

By ten o’clock, their eyes were blurry from staring. Su Li and Little Tang Mo finally decided to go to sleep.

Before falling asleep, her mind was still filled with the map, all those place names, such a vast country... ’Where is Miao Zhi?’

She thought about it as she drifted off, and she was still thinking about it in her dreams as she fell into a hazy sleep.

After a series of chaotic, jumbled dreams, Su Li suddenly dreamed of a news story she had seen in her past life.

She had seen it on TV while she was working as a cleaner at the television station. It was a report about a woman who had escaped after being trafficked for several years.

She had been a promising university student who was tragically abducted and sold to a remote mountain village. It took her years to escape, and by the time she did, her mind was broken.

The story was reported on for several days in a row. Besides the woman’s tragic experience, there was another reason for the extensive coverage: the place where she had been bought and held captive for years.

It was a place that had just been discovered by travel writers and was being hyped up as a "paradise on earth."