From Broken Family to Life Winner: A Reborn Mother's Journey

That night, after falling asleep, Tang Yuanxiao came down with a high fever. He didn’t regain consciousness for the next two days and two nights.

Sickness comes like a landslide, but leaves like unraveling silk.

Tang Yuanxiao’s illness came on suddenly, like an avalanche, but recovery wasn’t going to be so easy.

After two days of IV drips, Tang Yuanxiao’s high fever still hadn’t broken, and he remained unconscious.

Mrs. Tang was frantic with worry, crying until her voice was hoarse.

The doctor, both exasperated and impatient, finally barred her from the infirmary.

Tang Yuanxiao was admitted directly to the infirmary, with Yu Le ultimately taking care of him.

As a nurse, Yang Xiangyun was eager to help, but neither Yu Le nor the doctor dared give her the chance.

Tang Yuanxiao had just barely escaped one disaster with Qin Shanshan; he couldn’t fall into another one with her.

So, in the end, Yu Le became his caregiver.

”You were strong as an ox, and now you’re suddenly sick. Pretending to be in a coma, even. I’m going to be making fun of you for this forever.”

On the third day, Yu Le was wiping Tang Yuanxiao’s face, muttering complaints as he did.

He felt awful, too.

They had faced many difficulties before, but things had always gone relatively smoothly. But the moment Mrs. Tang arrived, everything changed.

Originally, Yu Le had been a little resentful of Su Li for insisting on divorcing Tang Yuanxiao, especially since Tang Yuanxiao was still in love with her.

But after this period of time, after seeing what Mrs. Tang had done, Yu Le finally understood why Su Li had been so determined to get a divorce.

Even her own son couldn’t stand her, let alone Su Li.

And Su Li wasn’t the kind of woman who couldn’t survive after a divorce, forced to suffer at her mother-in-law’s hands.

Yu Le looked at Mrs. Tang and thought his own mom was the absolute best in comparison.

As for his brother, Tang Yuanxiao, all he could feel was sympathy.

”Forget it... If you want to sleep, then sleep a while longer. It’s rare for you to get a rest like this.”

Yu Le sighed and said.

The doctor said Tang Yuanxiao hadn’t woken up because he was exhausted. He hadn’t been sleeping well before, so this was his body’s way of catching up on rest and recovering his strength.

As for the fever, it was because of the extreme measures Tang Yuanxiao had used to purge the drug from his system. The drug was of poor quality and had severe side effects.

The fever, in fact, was largely caused by that drug.

This was the conclusion the doctor reached after questioning Mrs. Tang when Tang Yuanxiao collapsed.

Every time Yu Le thought about it, he couldn’t help but sigh.

He remembered how Tang Yuanxiao used to talk about Mrs. Tang, always saying how gentle she was, how she was the best to him, how virtuous she was, and how well-regarded she was in their village.

Yu Le had believed it back then, and he’d eaten plenty of the food Mrs. Tang had brought for her son.

Who would have thought the real Mrs. Tang was like this?

”When is he going to wake up? If he doesn’t wake up soon, I won’t be able to go on living.”

”It’s all my fault, all my fault! If heaven wants to punish someone, it should punish me! Why make Tangyuan sick?”

”Doctor, what are we going to do if Tangyuan doesn’t wake up? You have to think of something...”

Mrs. Tang’s voice, a mixture of crying and talking, drifted in from outside. Hearing it, Yu Le sighed again.

Seeing that Tang Yuanxiao still hadn’t woken up, Mrs. Tang cried for a whole day before starting a fuss about wanting to go out.

She said she was going to find Qin Shanshan and settle the score, but the caregiver Tang Yuanxiao had hired sternly stopped her.

”No, you can’t go out. You can’t leave the family courtyard.”

Tang Yuanxiao had learned his lesson. This incident had truly hardened his heart, and he was determined to keep his mother in check.

He realized that being a filial son didn’t mean indulging her. Indulging her, or rather, not strictly controlling her, was actually harming her. So, he had completely changed his strategy and resolved not to be soft-hearted again.

That’s why he had laid out the conditions when he hired the caregiver.

After the caregiver learned what Mrs. Tang had done, and given that her employer was Tang Yuanxiao, she naturally followed his instructions. Seeing Mrs. Tang trying to leave, she spoke bluntly.

”No, you can’t go out. Your son gave clear instructions. If you insist on making a scene and find a way out, and you leave twice, he will send you back to your hometown, no questions asked. It doesn’t matter what you do out there. I’d lose my job, too. There’s no way I’m letting you out.”

The caregiver’s attitude was very firm.

Mrs. Tang was furious. The caregiver cost a lot of money, which already pained her heart. It would have been one thing if the caregiver were easygoing and compliant, but this one was as tough as nails.

She didn’t listen to a word Mrs. Tang said and kept her under tight watch, forbidding her from leaving the family courtyard.

To Mrs. Tang, this was basically a form of house arrest.

Mrs. Tang was not happy about it, but she was completely powerless against the caregiver. With Tang Yuanxiao sick, all she could do was cry out of anger and frustration.

Her constant crying was an unbearable racket, so the doctor banned her from the infirmary, let alone the patient’s room.

Whenever Yu Le wasn’t working, he came to look after Tang Yuanxiao and tell him about these things.

Tang Yuanxiao was oblivious to all of Yu Le’s chatter.

He was even more oblivious to his mother’s wailing and complaints.

His condition was somewhat mystical. He was half-comatose, half in a deep sleep, and all the while he was dreaming a series of chaotic dreams.

Fragmented, nonsensical, yet very real dreams.

Just like the two dreams he’d had before, they felt less like dreams and more like things that had actually happened.

One moment it was Su Li, the same as always, telling him over and over that she hadn’t sold Little Tang Mo, while he choked her again and again until she passed out.

The next, it was Mrs. Tang, who had cried herself blind, wailing as she searched for Little Tang Mo.

Then it was Qin Shanshan. At first, she was thanking him, but in the blink of an eye, they were married.

The same slap. The same words.

In another flash, the resentment in Qin Shanshan’s eyes intensified. She was pregnant, clutching her belly as she roared at him.

Su Li and Qin Shanshan appeared in turns, but in truth, Su Li appeared far less often than Qin Shanshan.

The strange thing was, besides the arguments, there were also many moments of peace and quiet.

And then came the endless search for Little Tang Mo.

Over and over again, he ran to countless places, each time leaving full of hope, only to return in disappointment.

The scenes flashed by in a blur.

Then, Tang Yuanxiao saw a grown-up Tang Mo. It was clearly Tang Mo, but he no longer went by that name. He was cold and distant, and he couldn’t speak.

Tang Yuanxiao dreamed he heard people regretfully discussing how Tang Mo was a mute. They said what a pity his life was, that he had become mute because he was abducted...

Tang Yuanxiao dreamed of his gradually aging self, wailing loudly, then screaming Su Li’s name, his voice filled with a bone-deep hatred.

And then, there was an old woman, thin as a skeleton.

She was a stranger, yet she had Su Li’s eyes.

”Tang Yuanxiao, right under your nose all along. You really don’t recognize me?”

A strange, mocking laugh. ”What? You want to choke me to death again?”

A chaotic argument, heart-wrenching accusations, still revolving around the sale of Little Tang Mo.

”Tang Yuanxiao, I didn’t sell Tang Mo! I told you he was lost by accident! I didn’t sell him!”

”I’ll say it one last time, I didn’t sell him! If I had sold him, why would I have spent over twenty years looking for him?!”

”Su Li, you’re utterly unrepentant! Everything that’s happened today... it’s your retribution! It’s heaven’s retribution for you!”

”Tang Yuanxiao, anyone can say that my current plight is heaven’s retribution, but not you! My stomach cancer, the state I’m in today—it was all thanks to your Tang Family...”

After the chaos, the scene shifted to a tombstone in a cemetery.

The tombstone clearly bore the two words ”Su Li”.