On the afternoon of August 15th, Wei Qian bought two boxes of mooncakes. When he passed by the hospital, he went in and put one box down for Ma Zi's mother.

Ma Zi pushed his mother out for a walk, but Ma Zi's mother did not feel comfortable. Half of her face was covered with pits and dents from the hot oil, and she was basically disfigured. She was extremely sensitive to other people's gazes - if others looked at her face, she would panic and avoid them, but if others deliberately avoided looking at her face, she would feel scary and uncomfortable.

She could only relax when she saw Wei Qian and Sanpang. They were more diligent than Ma Zi. Even though her face was burnt into a piece of charcoal, they were used to it.

"Aunt, I bought some mooncakes. I'll leave a box for you. It's for the holiday season. You can try at least one." Wei Qian said that what he bought were not loose mooncakes, but ones with packaging boxes.

Ma Zi's mother didn't thank him, and blurted out: "Why did you buy this? You're wasting money again!"

Wei Qian readily followed up on her words: "Who said it wasn't true? I don't know what's so delicious about this greasy food. Who made my two 'bosses' love it?"

Ma Zi's mother laughed and said, "You can't spoil him like this, or he will become unmanly."

She didn't say it, but she always felt that she was a heavy burden. No one had the financial resources to hire a professional nurse for her. Most of the time, Ma Zi's mother had to live alone in the hospital, without anyone to talk to. For her, it was a great enjoyment to have an acquaintance come to chat about trivial matters.

Not to mention that her son actually took an entire afternoon to push her for a stroll outside.

Ma Zi's mother hadn't been so happy for a long time. Even though her smile was ugly that day, it was genuine.

Wei Qian was actually not used to having long talks with people. He sat with Ma Zi's mother for a while, and almost used up more than half a month's worth of smiles at once. He talked until his mouth was dry and his face was a little stiff before he left.

During this time, Ma Zi listened silently as usual.

When Wei Qian left the hospital, he felt a sense of relief as if he had let go of something. He and Sanpang had already rescued Ma Zi. From now on, as for Ma Zi's mother, they could just take turns to take care of her. He didn't have a mother anyway, so having one more person wouldn't matter.

When Wei Qian returned home and pushed open the door, the two little creatures who were originally sitting on the sofa stretched their necks and looked back in the same way as the meerkats, looking eagerly. Xiao Bao was about to complain, but he saw the box in Wei Qian's hand first, and his eyes widened. He jumped up and said incoherently: "Mooncake! The TV is broken!"

"..." Wei Qian looked at her and said, "Okay, let it fix it for you."

Song Xiaobao shook his head and wagged his tail: "Hehehehe."

Wei Qian had talked too much in the afternoon and was too lazy to open his mouth. He just stretched out a finger and pointed in the direction of the kitchen. Song Xiaobao looked in the direction of his hand blankly: "Are there moon cakes in the kitchen?"

However, Wei Zhiyuan had already jumped off the sofa as trained, went into the kitchen, and took out the toolbox from under the storage box.

Wei Qian was very pleased to find that this little dog had already cultivated to the point where he could read brain waves. At the same time, he rebuked Song Xiaobao in dissatisfaction: "Go away. I can't reason with you."

Song Xiaobao felt wronged: "You didn't say anything at all!"

His TV has been repaired more than once...everything in his house has been repaired more than once.

Wei Qian was already a skilled worker. He sat on the floor and quickly opened the cover of the TV. Song Xiaobao drooled at the mooncake box, but Wei Zhiyuan lay on his shoulder and watched him check the fault.

Wei Qian glanced at him and felt that this boy was more handsome than the little girl, and more like a caring little cotton-padded jacket than the little girl.

Wei Zhiyuan looked at him in admiration: "Brother is really amazing, I want to be a TV repairman in the future."

Wei Qian: “…”

Wei Zhiyuan stared at him with a pair of ignorant big eyes.

Wei Qian said, "I paid for your education just to let you be a TV repairman?"

Wei Zhiyuan said hesitantly: "Then... I can be a TV seller!"

Wei Qian laughed - the little brat was acting stupid and thinking he was cute.

Ever since Wei Zhiyuan started attending school seriously, his transcripts have fully demonstrated the boy's talent. Wei Qian himself was unusually precocious when he was a child, and looking back, his grades were not necessarily better than Wei Zhiyuan's.

In the evening, Wei Qian fixed the TV, divided the mooncakes with a knife, and sat down to accompany them while eating mooncakes and watching TV series.

In The Legend of the Condor Heroes, when Guo Jing had just left Mongolia and followed the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan back to the Central Plains, there was a knock on their door.

The person knocking on the door was not strong enough and seemed a little uncertain. He knocked a few times and hesitated a few times.

Wei Qian thought it was one of his brothers, so he went to answer the door without putting on a shirt, holding a cigarette and showing his body covered in bandages.

When he opened the door, he was stunned for a moment, only to see a strange old lady standing in front of him.

The old lady had gray hair, but was in good spirits. She was not tall, not even as tall as Wei Qian's shoulders. She was dark and thin, wearing an old-fashioned double-breasted cloth jacket that was common among rural elders when they went out, and a pair of nine-point trousers that were neither too loose nor too tight. The trouser legs were hanging down, revealing her thin legs and skinny ankles.

She was carrying a dusty bag on her back and holding a plastic bag full of empty cans and beverage bottles in her hand. Her hair was combed neatly, not a strand out of place, and her clothes were clean. She was probably in her sixties or seventies, but her waist was not bent and her back was not hunched.

This old lady was probably a rag picker, but she was the most respectable rag picker Wei Qian had ever seen.

At the same time, the old lady looked at the young man in front of her with some fear. She obviously didn't expect that the person who opened the door would be such a person. But she didn't step back. She subconsciously straightened her chest and raised her head, and asked confidently: "Does Song Dawei live here?"

Her attitude was not good, and there was a hint of unfriendly vigilance in it. Wei Qian did not have time to think about it, as he felt that the three words "Song Dawei" sounded too familiar, and he could not remember who this person was for a moment.

Seeing that he looked confused and didn't answer, the old lady asked again, "Does Song Lili live here too?"

"Song Lili?" Wei Qian frowned and asked, "What do you want from her?"

Xiaobao heard it in the house and ran out jumping up and down: "Hey! Who's looking for me?"

As soon as she jumped out, the skinny old lady who tried her best to show that she was not afraid of the stage suddenly trembled. She looked at Song Xiaobao's head that was curiously leaning over greedily and intently, and her trembling became more and more violent. Suddenly, before Wei Qian could stop her, she hugged the little girl and then burst into tears in an undignified manner.

It was not until then that Wei Qian belatedly remembered that "Song Dawei" was the short-lived stepfather, Song Xiaobao's father, who had allowed him to live a good life for several years.

What is very dramatic is that this old lady is his stepfather's biological mother.

In the early years, long-distance train tickets were very expensive for rural residents in remote areas. The flow of migrant workers had just formed and was not yet a large scale. It was very normal for people who went out to work not to return home for three to five years. It was inconvenient to make phone calls in the village, and relatives mainly relied on letters and remittances to communicate.

Later, there was no news from Song Dawei. The old lady was very anxious to come and see him, but coincidentally, her husband had a stroke at that critical moment. She was too busy to take care of him in those years, and the several letters she asked others to write to her son all fell into the sea - Wei Qian's mother didn't even think of contacting Song Dawei's family at that time. She was only concerned with taking drugs and committing suicide.

Finally, just after the Dragon Boat Festival this year, the old lady's sickly husband followed in the footsteps of the ancient sages and died completely.

Old Mrs. Song became a complete lonely old woman. She sent her old man away with tears and a fuss, packed up her few belongings, barely scraped together some money, and came to this northern city that she had seen on the post office remittance slip to live with her son.

When the old lady knocked on the door, she held her head high and her chest puffed out, with a stern look on her face. Although she was holding a bag of cans that she had not yet sold, she was trying her best to maintain her country dignity in this strange city.

But this dignity was finally shattered into pieces when she found out that her son had died early.

Mid-Autumn Festival is the day for families to reunite in China. However, no one knows that in an old, dilapidated tube-shaped building, an old lady is dismayed to discover that her husband and son are all gone. Now there is no one to take care of her in her old age or to see her off to the end of her life. The first half of her life has been lived in vain, and she ends up with a miserable old age.

She sat on the ground and cried like a devil's sound piercing the ears, disrupting everyone's crying so much that they couldn't even eat their mooncakes properly.

Wei Qian looked at the old black-and-white photo that the old lady brought with her. The silly boy in the photo vaguely resembled his short-lived stepfather. He also checked the remittance slip she brought and basically believed that she was Xiaobao's biological grandmother.

After all, they are blood relatives. Although Wei Qian found this silly old woman annoying, he did not kick her out on the night of August Festival. Instead, he temporarily let her and Xiaobao live in the same room.

But who would have thought that this old woman was so ungrateful? After wiping away her tears, her eyes, which were exactly the same as Wei Qian's stepfather Song Dawei's, were full of shrewdness and cunningness. She knew at a glance that Wei Qian was not a good guy. She asked him a few questions in a roundabout way. He was very friendly at first, but later she learned that he was actually a gangster who worked as a waiter in a nightclub. The old lady finally couldn't stand it anymore.

In those days, rural old ladies didn’t understand what gangsters and underworld were. In their eyes, Wei Qian was just a bad bastard.

...Of course, there is some truth in her view.

Of course the old lady couldn't let her precious granddaughter live with a stinky hooligan, but she could also see that Xiaobao was very dependent on this big brother.

This old thing has experienced the entire modern history of China in her lifetime, including two wars, changes of dynasties, and even various movements after the founding of the People's Republic of China. She enjoys fighting against heaven and man, and is so smart that she would not change even if she were three monkeys.

She knew that everything required a strategy, so she did not get angry with Wei Qian in person. She decided to wait and see and think about how to "rescue" her granddaughter from this nasty gangster.

But Wei Qian didn't have time to care what she thought because something happened that night.

At 3:30 in the morning, the door of Wei Qian's house was banged hard. Wei Qian jumped up with a start. It was very strange that he was woken up so rudely when he was sleeping the deepest. His first reaction was not to curse, but to break out in a cold sweat - as if he had a premonition that something had happened.

Wei Zhiyuan got up in a daze, wrapped in a blanket. He didn't know what had happened. His mind was a mess. He instinctively jumped off the bed barefoot and followed Wei Qian to open the door.

Before Wei Qian opened the door completely, something stuffed in the crack of the door suddenly fell out. He picked it up and saw that it was an envelope with a wad of money in it.

The fat man at the door was still shirtless, wearing only slippers and shorts, revealing his white fat body. He had obviously just rolled off the bed. He was holding an identical envelope in his hand. Before Wei Qian could react, the fat man said quickly, "It was Ma Zi! I saw this envelope when I got up in the middle of the night to pee. It must have been stuffed by Ma Zi's grandson!"

At that moment, Wei Qian's mind was surprisingly calm. He asked in a low voice: "Where did he get so much money?"

Sanpang: "I won't sell it to others again..."

"Impossible!" Wei Qian interrupted him, "Impossible, Third Brother, you don't know those people. They want you to work for them for a long time, so they will definitely keep you hanging. It's impossible for them to give you so much money all at once."

Realizing that Wei Qian was hinting that Ma Zi might have done something even more serious than drug trafficking, Sanpang looked at him in a rare panic.

"I saw him this afternoon... I should have known that something was wrong with him," Wei Qian's mind raced. He reached for the phone on the table, dialed a number, and called a brother who was on duty late that night. After a long while, Wei Qian put down the phone, his face looking terribly ugly.

"What..." Sanpang held his breath unconsciously and lowered his voice.

"Something happened over there tonight. I heard a large group of police came and searched the place inside and out. They also took away a lot of people," Wei Qian quickly put on his coat and shoes. "I didn't see Ma Zi. I hope he has nothing to do with this..."

Sanpang grabbed his arm and said, "What does he...what does he have to do with this?"

Wei Qian lowered his voice: "How should I know? I'll go over and take a look. You go to the hospital and ask the nurse on duty to see if he's there at night."

Wei Zhiyuan hurriedly trotted to catch up with Wei Qian. Wei Qian grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the house: "Why are you following me? Go back to sleep. You don't have to go to school tomorrow?"

Wei Zhiyuan: "I'll help you find Brother Mazi."

“You little brat,” Wei Qian glared at him impatiently, “You’re doing me a big favor by not causing me any more trouble.”

Wei Zhiyuan's steps suddenly stopped, and his bright eyes immediately dimmed.

He suddenly felt his own contradiction - if he showed his precocity, it would be difficult to get the attention of his elder brother, but if he acted as silly as Xiaobao, although he usually pleased his elder brother, but at critical moments, he would be treated as a child like Xiaobao.

The two "adults" were already panicking at this time, and no one cared to guess Wei Zhiyuan's heart full of contradictions.

"Qian'er..." Sanpang didn't move, his palms were covered with cold sweat, and his voice was very dry, "What will happen to him if he is caught by the police?"

Wei Qian raised his head and glanced at him in the dark living room. His eyes were black and white, and his gaze was as sharp as a knife.

"What do you think?" he asked back.

Sanpang's heart sank.