Sweet Nostalgia of the 80s
Chapter 364: The Smoke-like Past Reveals the Truth

Chapter 364: Chapter 364: The Smoke-like Past Reveals the Truth

"Junping, Junping!" It wasn’t until Qin Ru Hai waved his hand in front of her that she realized she had lost her composure. She quickly composed herself and, noticing Ning Yibin’s empty rice bowl, hurriedly took it, "I’m going to get you some more rice."

The topic was not pursued further, but the scare was already given.

After dinner, the Ning Family couple found an excuse to go rest but stood behind their house.

The kitchen window was open, and Li Junping’s low sobs came from inside, soon followed by Qin Ru Hai’s sighs.

"The child still died! He was still so young, he lived barely over two decades."

Qin Ru Hai drew heavily on his pipe, "This isn’t bad either. If the child had stayed in our hands, I fear he wouldn’t have lived past six months."

"It’s all my fault!" Li Junping slapped herself hard on the face, "I don’t know what came over me when I was pregnant, I just craved alcohol. You told me not to drink, but I drank in secret. As a result, our child was born with congenital heart disease. My poor son was also born premature... A month premature, it’s a miracle he survived at all."

"So, don’t be sad. He’s been living in this senior officer’s home for so many years, how happy he must have been. It’s not like Qin Jian, who’s had a hard time getting by in the village these years. Your breast milk wasn’t good enough, so we fed the child rice porridge to grow up on. He began doing household chores before he was six, and started gathering pig grass at the age of ten, going to the fields to earn work points." Qin Ru Hai felt extremely sorry for the Ning Family couple.

Li Junping wiped her tears and nodded, "At that time, my mom and sister fainted when they saw the female soldier give birth. They persuaded me to just swap them. Seeing their newborn was bigger than our one-month-old child, I really... I thought since the father was a soldier, he must have had better living conditions, and the child would surely receive better treatment. It seems we made the right move."

"Yes. Over the years, we’ve not even dared let Jianzi know his real birthday, just in case it ever came to light, and now..." Qin Ru Hai took a few puffs from his pipe bowl and continued, "Now that they’ve come over, what if they’re here to look for their son? Can’t we see through this? Don’t you think they can too?"

"No way!" Li Junping refused adamantly, "I doubt they can tell, and even if they do, we’ll deny it to the death. What can they do? Jianzi is about to become a battalion commander, and in the future, he might even be a brigade or division commander. We’ve raised him for thirty years; we can’t just let someone take him back. Besides, I can’t bear the thought! I’ve already come to regard Qin Jian as my own son..."

"Have you come to regard him as your own son, or as a return on your investment?" Out of nowhere, Zhang Yun had made her way around the back of the house and approached the kitchen from the outside.

She glared at the Qin Family couple, her eyes practically spitting fire.

No wonder they had treated her so well, killing their chicken to make her soup, going all over to find goat’s milk for her to feed her child—they weren’t being kind to her, but to their own son.

She had been so touched, not knowing that she had been in shock after giving birth, that they had switched her baby.

They made her and old Ning live in fear and on edge for so many years over a frail baby, born premature with congenital heart disease. Even though old Ning’s rank kept rising and his allowances increased, they lived every day with just as much hardship.

Why? All because of that sick child!