Chapter 110 -110: Don’t Be Saintly to Me
Ren Tian heard a gentle voice, looked up, and saw Yuan Xi under the streetlight. She clenched her hands and said, “I have no money for noodles anymore.”
Yuan Xi said, “Didn’t you work at Mi Chen for a couple of days? You still have your salary, which should be enough for a bowl of noodles.”
Yuan Xi had asked Chen Yuan and Liang Suisui to help keep Shihuo entertained.
Then Yuan Xi and Huo Shiyan took Ren Tian to a nearby noodle shop.
Next to the noodle shop was a pajama store where Yuan Xi took Ren Tian to change into clean clothes.
The noodle shop was doing good business.
...
It was almost seven-thirty, and there were still a few tables of customers eating.
Ren Tian looked at the prices on the menu, frowned, and still ordered the most expensive beef noodles, “58 yuan for a bowl of noodles, it’s my first time eating such an expensive one, probably the last time too.”
After waiting for about ten minutes, the noodles arrived.
Ren Tian tasted a bite and immediately started crying, “It’s so bad, I can’t believe my last meal is this terrible. I hate Jiang City, there’s nothing tasty here, I’ve had enough of these awful noodles in Jiang City, how can braised beef noodles be sweet!”
The noodle shop owner frowned and said, “My shop is quite famous online, many people come from City A to eat here, how can it be bad?”
“It is bad, whose braised beef is sweet? Only you people in Jiang City like sweet beef,” Ren Tian sobbed.
Ren Tian cried on the table, “I can’t even enjoy my last meal!”
Qin Lang interjected nearby, “There’s a rice noodle shop over there, run by people from Chen County, you might like it.”
Yuan Xi said to Ren Tian, “Let’s go to the next-door rice noodle shop.”
Inside the rice noodle shop, there was no air conditioning, and the greasy ceiling fan squeaked as it spun. The owner and his wife chatted in their hometown dialect.
Ren Tian also spoke in her hometown dialect, “Black fungus and shredded pork noodles.”
The owner, recognizing a fellow local, said, “They are going to demolish this area soon, it’s hard to see people from Chen City around here these days.”
Ren Tian said, “I’m not from Chen City, I’m from the neighboring Nanxiang.”
Yuan Xi, hearing the words “Nanxiang,” felt a familiarity, “You’re also from Nanxiang?”
Ren Tian nodded, sniffing, as she saw the owner bring up a full bowl of black fungus and shredded pork rice noodles. She ate while tears fell, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Yuan Xi noticed Ren Tian eating the noodles heartily. She took a bottle of ice-cold Coke from the fridge, opened it, and after taking a sip, said, “There are still many delicious things in this world, no need for despair, there’s no hurdle in life that can’t be overcome.”
“You just mentioned that one of my diamond rings could represent several generations of your effort, and that’s truly not a lie.
But I also experienced poverty. In my first year of university, after my parents passed away, I lost everything.
During my poorest times, I lived in the company where I worked, surviving on the cheapest noodles in Shaxian for a whole month, washing up at work. I endured the hardship…
Ren Tian looked at Yuan Xi, “What you experienced barely counts as poverty! Yuan Xi, you have never really understood what real poverty is like.”
Ren Tian said bitterly, “When I was five, my dad and grandmother despised me for being a girl. My dad found a new wife while working outside, and she got pregnant with a son; he insisted on divorcing my mom.
My mom hated me, hated that she had to divorce because I was a girl, and she abandoned me.
The first time I ever ate rice noodles was after my mom abandoned me, a kind-hearted lady treated me to a bowl of black fungus and shredded pork rice noodles.
Later, the police found my mom and warned her that abandoning a child could lead to imprisonment. My mom yelled at me for remembering her name and her phone number.
To make my mom keep me, when I was six, I started helping her with chores, doing all the household tasks.”
“After that, my mom remarried—to a lazy, gambling stepfather who was terrible—and she hated me even more! She blamed me for the divorce, and she was the one who made her second marriage so bad.”
Yuan Xi listened as Ren Tian continued, “After I graduated from junior high, my mom made me start working. How envious I was of the job at the bubble tea shop you disliked!
“Because I was young, no bubble tea shop would hire me. I could only work in clandestine factories, but I ended up getting deceived. That month, I didn’t send any money back to my mom, and I didn’t even have money to survive.
“The dormitory factories required us to be at least eighteen years old, but I was only sixteen at the time. When I asked my mother for money, she scolded me viciously, calling me a useless burden. She said if I couldn’t send money back, I might as well be dead.”
Ren Tian continued, “I just wandered aimlessly, looking at the parents in Jiang City who loved their daughters, and I realized that there are actually rich families who cherish their daughters, that being a girl could mean being the most precious thing in a family—not unwanted and burdensome.”
“That was when I attempted suicide once, and I met Fu Yi, who also wanted to kill himself.”
Tears streamed down Ren Tian’s face as she took a bite of her noodles. “When Fu Yi saw me, he asked what I wanted to be in my next life, and I said I wanted to be rich.
Fu Yi said he didn’t want to die anymore. He took me to his rented room and asked me to work with him. I knew Fu Yi would always peek at Chu Yan’s life—I was so envious of her life then.
“Fu Yi told me he could make me a rich man’s wife too. He rented a car for me so I could meet a rich man through a car accident, and then date him. With my looks, I could become a rich man’s wife.”
Ren Tian added, “But I crashed three times—one with a seasoned driver, one with a factory heir, and once with that crazy Gu Hanchen!”
Yuan Xi chuckled, “Fu Yi went back to the Fu Family with Chu Yan. After all these years with Fu Yi, didn’t he give you any money?”
Ren Tian replied, “He did, he gave me 500,000. As you know, that’s enough for a down payment in Jiang City, so I planned to go back to my hometown in Nanxiang, where I met my stepfather!”
Ren Tian sighed, “My stepfather is Yu Fu. He initially thought Chu Yan was his biological daughter and went to ask Chu Yan and the Bo Family for money. The Bo Family initially agreed to give him money, but then Chu Yan divorced the Bo Family, and they didn’t give him anything.
“Yu Fu coerced me into giving him the 500,000; otherwise, he would have killed me. My mother even took an 80,000 yuan dowry from an old bachelor in the village to marry me off, and they took all my identification.
“I finally managed to escape, sold my phone for an older model, and with the 500 yuan from selling my phone, I got on a bus to Jiang City. But once there, I still couldn’t survive—I had no ID, and no factory would hire me.
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“And with only a middle-school education, many factories in Jiang City now require at least a vocational school diploma. Even the bubble tea shops wouldn’t hire me; I didn’t even qualify to be a waitress…”
Yuan Xi said, “You can reapply for an ID card. You’re only in your early twenties, right?”
Ren Tian replied, “I am twenty-one.”
Yuan Xi exhaled and said, “I can sponsor you to go back to a private high school to study. Three years later, you can still take the college entrance exam…”
Ren Tian looked up at Yuan Xi, “If you sponsor my education, I might not be able to offer you anything in return.”
Yuan Xi replied, “Consider it good karma for the baby in my belly. I’ll help you arrange a brand-new identity—one unknown to your family. You can say a proper goodbye to Ren Tian, focus on your studies—it’s not necessarily a dead end.”
Ren Tian shook her head, “No need. I don’t want to owe you anything. I haven’t studied for many years, and even when I was in middle school, I was always needed for farm work and often had to take leaves. You want me to study now, but I can’t go back to that.”
Yuan Xi said, “But…”
Ren Tian looked at Yuan Xi, “Stop playing saint with me! I don’t need your help. Don’t be a meddler.”
Ren Tian put down her chopsticks heavily.
Huo Shiyuan frowned at Ren Tian, then said to Yuan Xi, “Let’s leave her be, let’s go.”
Yuan Xi stood up and said to the noodle shop owner, “How much cash do you have? Can I swap some cash with you?”
“About six thousand yuan.”
After exchanging for the cash, Yuan Xi placed it in front of Ren Tian, “This isn’t me being a saint but not being able to stand by and watch a promising twenty-one-year-old girl commit suicide.
Here is six thousand yuan. If you choose to live, this money might last until you find a job. If you still choose to leave this world, feel free to donate this money.
Ren Tian, I’ll say it again, living is more important than anything. Your name is Ren Tian. Live on, and you’ll discover that life will eventually reveal its sweet taste.”
Ren Tian gave a bitter smile, “No, my real name is Meng Zhaodi, later changed to Yu Duoping. Yu Duoping means an extra burden. Ren Tian is the name Fu Yi gave me.”
“But now Fu Yi has Chu Yan, and he doesn’t want me anymore.”