Chapter 675 Guilty or Innocent

Mrs. Tang hated Su Li so much that she’d recognize her even if she were reduced to ashes. So, despite Su Li being unconscious and some distance away, Mrs. Tang recognized her in an instant.

Mrs. Tang watched with wide eyes as Su Li was carried into an alley.

Mrs. Tang wasn’t stupid; she could tell something was amiss. She carefully hid herself and stayed silent, her eyes filled with excitement.

If Su Li was in trouble, she was nothing but happy.

Mrs. Tang hid to the side, witnessing the entire event of Su Li being locked up.

It was Dazhuang’s first time doing something like this. He was incredibly nervous and his heart was pounding. Lacking experience, he never noticed Mrs. Tang’s presence.

Mrs. Tang only came out after Dazhuang had left, looking ahead in disbelief.

She couldn’t see Su Li, but she saw the large lock on the door. It wasn’t a lock she could open, not that she wanted to.

Su Li still hadn’t woken up. Afraid of alerting anyone, Mrs. Tang remained silent. Then her eyes fell on the water and steamed buns Dazhuang had left on the windowsill. Her eyes darted as a wicked idea formed in her mind.

’You think you’re going to eat? Not so fast.’

The window was low to the ground, so Mrs. Tang easily grabbed the bag.

Knowing she couldn’t be gone for too long, Mrs. Tang made her way back to the street, hiding the bag of food as she went.

The alley where Su Li was imprisoned was on a street next to the nursing home. It was once lined with single-story houses, but they were slated for demolition, so everyone had already moved out. It was a place where one could scream and get no answer from heaven or earth.

Mrs. Tang didn’t betray a thing. She offered a vague excuse and returned to the nursing home.

After paying her respects to Father Tang, Mrs. Tang muttered curses against Su Li, and a plan to blackmail her gradually formed in her mind.

At the time, Mrs. Tang didn’t know who had kidnapped Su Li. However, as the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Since they all hated Su Li, she considered them to be on the same side.

Mrs. Tang never considered saving Su Li; she was actually hoping someone would get rid of Su Li for her.

Mrs. Tang was thrilled all night, constantly scheming about how to get out the next day.

Her efforts paid off. Before dawn, Mrs. Tang got up to go for a "stroll" and actually managed to find a way out.

The nursing home’s back door led to the kitchen. It was opened every morning for vegetable deliveries and left unguarded. Mrs. Tang would slip out when no one was looking and sneak back in before it was locked.

She actually succeeded in getting out.

Just as Wa Wa Lian and his men never expected a woman paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair to get involved, they hadn’t paid her any mind that early in the morning.

The nursing home staff also never imagined that Mrs. Tang, a paralyzed old woman, would exit through the back door. The facility was semi-closed, but in practice, only the front gate was strictly managed, and that was for the residents’ safety.

With the exception of special cases like Mrs. Tang, the residents weren’t generally restricted from leaving, as long as they weren’t going out alone.

Mrs. Tang exploited this loophole, sneaking out every morning to threaten Su Li without anyone finding out.

Unfortunately, she was eventually found out when she ran right into Ye Xilan.

Ye Xilan was caught in the act, and Mrs. Tang wasn’t able to escape either.

Mrs. Tang was in much the same state as Ye Xilan, drenched in a cold sweat from pain. Her eyes, when they fell on Wu Sheng, held nothing but terror.

She never imagined the man Su Li had seduced would be this terrifying.

Mrs. Tang was a coward at heart who preyed on the weak and feared the strong. Having been caught in the act, she was desperate to escape and quickly blurted out what had happened.

"...Su Li being locked up has nothing to do with me! It’s not my fault, and it has nothing to do with my Tangyuan! Su Li knows I wasn’t the one who imprisoned her."

Both Ye Xilan and Mrs. Tang were now desperately trying to shirk responsibility. The moment she heard Mrs. Tang speak, Ye Xilan immediately shot back.

"I only wanted her locked up for a few days to stop her from going to the wedding! It’s all this damned old hag’s fault! She took the food! She’s the one who was trying to kill Su Li!"

Furious, Mrs. Tang spat and shot back.

"Bullshit! Who said anything about starving her? People don’t die that easily! It’s not like I haven’t gone hungry before. During the famine, I went six or seven days without eating and I didn’t die! It’s only been a few days for Su Li, how could she possibly starve to death so easily?"

Mrs. Tang’s retort was full of self-righteous indignation. Even now, she didn’t think she had done anything all that wrong.

She was scared and full of regret—but only because she’d been caught.

As Wu Sheng listened to Ye Xilan and Mrs. Tang argue, the full truth of what had happened became crystal clear. He now understood exactly why Su Li was in this condition.

Gazing at Su Li in his arms, Wu Sheng’s hands trembled uncontrollably. He felt that heart-wrenching pain again, as if a knife were twisting in his chest.

The anguish was so great he could hardly breathe.

His Su Li... His Su Li had been harmed to this extent by these two lunatics.

Wu Sheng’s eyes were bloodshot. If he hadn’t been holding Su Li, he might have truly given in to the impulse to kill them both.

Listening from the sidelines, Wa Wa Lian was also seething with anger. But watching Wu Sheng, he was utterly terrified.

He placed a hand on Wu Sheng’s shoulder, but just as he was about to speak, a voice suddenly cut in from the side.

"You didn’t die after going hungry for six or seven days because you had water to drink. Don’t you know that a lack of water is far more dangerous than a lack of food?"

Though the voice was still that of a youth, the words it carried were cold enough to freeze a person to the core.

Wa Wa Lian started, whipping his head around to look at Tang Mo.

Tang Mo had been silently trailing beside Wu Sheng, helping to support Su Li. Standing off to the side, his frame was mostly hidden by Wu Sheng and Su Li, so he hadn’t drawn any attention.

Now that he had spoken, everyone finally noticed the adolescent boy.

Mrs. Tang’s head snapped toward Tang Mo, her eyes wide with disbelief.

Mrs. Tang hadn’t noticed Tang Mo until now. She was in so much pain and so focused on escaping blame that she hadn’t paid attention to anyone else.

She hadn’t noticed Tang Mo, but he had noticed her.

He had noticed her from the very beginning.

Mrs. Tang held a unique place in Tang Mo’s life. The early years had been so wonderful, but the later years were so dark, like a painting split between black and white.

The first half was all white—all good. The second half was all black—all evil.

Tang Mo had once feared Mrs. Tang, had once loathed her. But with the passage of time and after everything that had happened, seeing her again after so long, he could finally face her.

He could face this strange, loathsome old woman not with fear, but with pure disgust and hatred.

The kind, wonderful grandmother of his memories was now buried deep in his heart, completely separate from the person standing before him.

Mrs. Tang stared, her eyes nearly bulging from their sockets, as she fixed her gaze on the tall young man before her.

"You... You..."

Mrs. Tang wanted to say something, but no words came out.

She was filled with hate and disbelief. She couldn’t believe Su Li had raised that little bastard so well. But... he had turned out so well.

His features, so strange yet so familiar, had changed and yet hadn’t changed at all. For a moment, a foreign emotion stirred in Mrs. Tang’s heart.

It was like hate, yet also like bitterness, mixed with pain, and an even deeper, bone-deep regret.

Her murky eyes swirled with a complex mix of feelings, but the boy’s eyes, as he looked at her, were filled with nothing but cold disgust.

That icy disgust was like a bucket of cold water dumped over her head.

"What... what are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about? You tell me. What did you mean when you said, ’It’s only been a few days, how could she possibly starve to death so easily’? She wouldn’t starve to death—she’d die of thirst. A person can only last three to four days without any food or water. Any longer than that... and they die."

"What you did is murder—the cruelest kind of murder. And you still have the nerve to say you’ve done nothing wrong?"