Chapter 1840 — Hard Going, Part Two
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Of course, money like this would have meant nothing at all to the Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu of the old days—but now it was a staggering sum.
Every cent in Gu Mengyao's hands had to be sent to Uncle Qing tomorrow, by whatever means she could manage, for her father's medical bills—and even that might not be enough. As for Wei Zhao's medicine, that could only be scraped together by scavenging day after day. And that was not all: they had to save up more still to send to Uncle Qing...
Thinking of such hand-to-mouth days, Gu Mengyao's head swam. A young lady who had never once fretted over money now learned, for the first time, the agony of having none.
"Yao Yao, even if Brother Arrow can wake up within a month, we'd still have to pick up at least five thousand yuan of junk every single day just to keep going..." Shen Yushu had quickly worked out their daily drain. Wei Zhao's medical fees plus Gu Pengzhan's made for an enormous outlay.
"Five thousand..." Gu Mengyao smiled bitterly. How could that be possible? Scavenging was not panning for gold—how could anyone pick up five thousand yuan worth of junk a day?
Having said her piece, Shen Yushu pressed her lips shut. Luckily, the two of them had brought some jewelry when they left home; though neither cared for ornaments in daily life, they did wear jewels and trinkets on formal occasions.
So, though there was not much, they could sell part of it for money—only it would not fetch much either, since neither owned anything truly precious, just ordinary pieces.
...
Shen Yushu's figure happened to be about the old woman's, so she could fit into the old woman's cast-off clothes—but Gu Mengyao could not. There was no help for it. She could only dig out the plainest-looking garment she owned and then deliberately soil and crumple it, so that its true worth could no longer be seen; it looked like something bought for a few dozen yuan off a street stall, something left untended for years.
The two looked at each other's slovenly appearance and could not help smiling bitterly at the same instant. Never had they imagined they would one day fall so low.
But now that the day had come, Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu accepted it with composure.
They say the road from thrift to luxury is easy, and the road from luxury to thrift hard; yet in the hearts of the young lady and Shen Yushu, for Wei Zhao's sake, such hardship was nothing at all beside what Tang Zhi had given. Think of Tang Zhi, who for Wei Zhao would rather endure the torment of love alone. Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu felt that at least they could still stay by Wei Zhao's side—was that not a kind of happiness too?
It was only the next day that Uncle Qing heard from Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yuxuan of the upheaval at the villa. When he learned that Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu had fled and vanished without a word, with no telling whether Yu Liu had caught up to them, his heart clenched with anxiety.
There beside the intensive care unit of the hospital, hearing Qiu Lingshan's account, Uncle Qing instinctively moved to call Gu Mengyao.
"No use calling. We already tried yesterday—both their phones are off," Qiu Lingshan said with a bitter smile.
"Off? Could Yu Liu have caught them already?" Uncle Qing asked, startled.
"Two possibilities. One: they switched their phones off to evade Yu Liu—after all, phone-location technology isn't complicated; if the Yu family put their minds to it, they could easily track them down through their numbers," Qiu Lingshan said. "The other: Yu Liu caught them and switched the phones off himself. But that's less likely, because what Yu Liu wants is Wei Zhao, not Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu—taking them would serve no purpose at all... So my reading is that they slipped past Yu Liu. Otherwise, if Yu Liu had truly caught up with them and made a move on Wei Zhao, they would surely have contacted us afterward."