Chapter 173: Searching for Someone

The village secretary, seeing Luo Qiao just waking up, asked, “Luo Qiao, did you hear anything last night?”

Luo Qiao pretended to think seriously for a moment. “Sounds? Oh, right. I vaguely remember hearing a loud noise when I was half asleep. It was just one sound, and after that, I didn’t hear anything else and fell back asleep. What happened?”

The secretary replied, “This morning, someone found Li Xiulan unconscious at the bottom of the slope on the path up the mountain.”

Luo Qiao asked, “Where about her?”

One of the people behind replied, “She’s been taken to the hospital. It seems she fell there last night and was only discovered this morning.”

Luo Qiao said, “Really? If she didn’t come home all night, didn’t her family look for her?”

As these words were spoken, everyone exchanged glances. How could Li Xiulan have fallen there in the middle of the night, and why hadn’t Gao Shunyi, her husband, noticed she hadn’t come home all night? The villagers began to speculate wildly.

After leaving Luo Qiao’s place, the secretary knocked on Lu Yichen’s door. Lu Yichen responded, “I went to bed early last night and didn’t hear anything.”

By noon when they finished working, the villagers were saying Li Xiulan’s face might be disfigured with scratches all over, and her leg might be broken. Because of the delay in getting help, she might end up lame.

Now everyone in the village was speculating about what Li Xiulan had been up to.

Some said she was meeting a man secretly, others suggested she was trying to steal Luo Qiao’s scholarship money. It wasn’t until Gao Shunyi’s eldest daughter-in-law, Feng Xiaojuan, stepped forward and said, “Aunties, we can’t just spread rumors.

My mother-in-law went out to find my younger brother-in-law. She slipped and fell because the path was slippery.”

But even after this explanation, rumors continued to circulate. While Li Xiulan withdrew from the spotlight, Gao Rushen, the younger son of the Gao family, became the hot topic among the villagers.

People started questioning where Gao Rushen had gone so late, and how Li Xiulan knew where he was?

Then some even suggested Li Xiulan might be facing karma for her actions.

When Gao Shunyi returned to the village, the members of the cooperative surrounded him with questions. Someone asked, “Shunyi, you didn’t notice your wife wasn’t in bed all night? If those early risers hadn’t found her, it could have been fatal.”

Gao Shunyi could only vaguely respond, “Before I fell asleep, she said she was worried about our younger son and went out to look for him. I was exhausted from a day’s work.”

Then someone else asked, “What about your son, Gao Rushen?”

Gao Shunyi didn’t have time to respond. He hurried a few steps back to his own yard and saw his eldest daughter-in-law feeding chickens there.

He asked, “Xiaojuan, has Rushen come back?”

Feng Xiaojuan turned around to see her father-in-law standing at the gate and replied, “He hasn’t come back. How’s my mom? Why did those cooperative members who helped with the transport say her leg won’t heal?”

Ignoring his daughter-in-law’s question, Gao Shunyi turned and left his yard, heading towards the home of the captain.

Shortly after, captain Gao Jiefang organized a search party to go up the mountain to find Gao Shunyi’s younger son. They found Gao Rushen by the edge of the pool just as lunch break was ending, still groggy from just waking up.

Without letting Gao Rushen fully grasp the situation, Gao Shunyi, fearing he might say something wrong, immediately began shouting at him and kicked him several times. Gao Rushen’s sudden cry startled the villagers who had come to help search for him.

Seeing his genuine pain and sweat beading on his forehead, they disregarded everything else and quickly helped him down the mountain.

Upon examination at the health station, the doctor said she needed to be sent to the hospital as two ribs were broken. Everyone looked at Gao Shunyi upon hearing this from the doctor. They wondered how much force had been used to kick her like that?