Chapter 1955 — Depressed, and Then Depressed Again
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Yu Xiaoke had been going out of her mind lately. The orphanage's construction had now got onto a proper footing, and most of the buildings had been put up free of charge by Lai Pangzi's construction company — but she was still short of money. Yes, desperately short of money!
There was no other reason: Qiu Lingshan had recently broken up a criminal ring that specialized in abducting children and taking in vagrant children to train them as beggars, street performers, and thieves. The ring's boss was An Jiande — but An Jiande had been beaten half-crippled by Wei Zhao and sent back to the Fire Wolf Gang by Dr. Yin, after which his fate was unknown. His underlings knew nothing of all this and were still waiting bitterly for An Jiande's return when the police came knocking and wiped out their criminal den in one stroke.
The criminals were packed off to prison, but the abducted and vagrant children they had rounded up became a headache to place. The police published photographs of the children and waited for their parents to come claim them, while in the meantime sending them to the city orphanage to be fostered.
Of course, everyone knew perfectly well that apart from the few parents who might recognize their own children and take them home, most of the children would remain in the orphanage forever. Some had been sold off or abandoned in the first place by heartless parents — how would such people ever come to claim them back?
All at once the orphanage had more than two hundred extra children out of thin air — and that was more than two hundred extra mouths to feed. However rich Yu Xiaoke might be, she could not support them all. The money Wei Zhao had given her last time was essentially gone, and Yu Xiaoke was so frantic she was about to go back to her old trade!
In fact, the orphanage could perfectly well have refused to take in those two hundred-odd orphans. The orphanage's finances were not in good shape as it was, and taking on so many children all at once would surely add an enormous burden.
But Yu Xiaoke and the old director were kind-hearted people, and they had never run this orphanage to make money — it was done purely out of love. Yu Xiaoke had even gone to hospitals to adopt abandoned infants. Faced with so many homeless children, how could she possibly turn them away?
"Master, so many children... food, clothes, daily necessities — the expense is simply too great, we can't carry it... How about we talk to Boss Lai and borrow some money?" Unless it was absolutely unavoidable, Yu Xiaoke still did not want to borrow. She did not know why Wei Zhao was so good to her. Last time he had not only given her a sum of money, but now he had Lai Pangzi help build facilities for the orphanage in the spare time left over from the factory construction.
True, much of the material used was left over from the factory construction, and the work started at no fixed time, only whenever his construction company had spare capacity to come and help the orphanage build. The progress was slow, but even so, not a single cent had come out of the orphanage's pocket.
And so Yu Xiaoke was a little puzzled. What exactly was Wei Zhao after? She had made herself perfectly clear to him — that she had someone she liked and that there could never be anything between them — and yet he still did this, so clearly that could not be his motive...
But if it was not that, then what was it?