254: Chapter 255 The Guilt of Taking a Bullet with One's Life!

Shen Du loosened his hand holding the mouse.

He let the red K-line on the adjacent secondary screen, which represented countless overseas hot money positions being liquidated, continue to plummet frantically.

He pushed open the leather chair.

He walked around the large office desk, strode forward, and naturally took the rubber handles of the wheelchair from his mother's hands.

"Mom, aren't you in your hometown in Zhejiang? Why did you suddenly come over?"

Shen Du's voice was kept very steady, and his tone was completely devoid of any ruthlessness, unable to be heard with even a trace of the ferocity he used to slaughter foreign capital in the offshore market.

Wang Hanmei let go of her hands and didn't explain her itinerary following her son's words at all.

Her gaze swept past Shen Du and glanced at the trading terminal that was still flashing with dense euro symbols.

Then, looking straight into Shen Du's eyes, she displayed the unquestionable majesty of an eldest sister:

"Shen Du, although now is not the time to make you acknowledge the Shen Family's household,

the person sitting in this wheelchair is your Uncle, the one Mom raised bite by bite since he was a child."

Wang Hanmei's tone sank slightly, exuding a hint of toughness:

"You can refuse to acknowledge other people in the Shen Family.

But this Uncle, you must acknowledge him."

Shen Du's fingers holding the wheelchair handles tightened slightly, his fingertips pressing against the rough rubber texture.

His gaze slowly moved down and landed on Shen Hong.

That right leg was tightly immobilized in a cast.

At the edges of the thickened medical bandages wrapped around his forearm, hemostatic powder and dried dark red blood still faintly showed.

Looking at these shocking injuries, Shen Du's breathing deepened imperceptibly by half a fraction.

In his mind, that true desperate encirclement in Europe instantly flashed back.

That was by no means some conventional interception and killing.

Rather, it was a saturated firepower network across the mountains holding AKs, with fragmentation grenades hanging from their waists, and even old-fashioned RPGs brought out.

Right in that dead end where even professional mercenaries would despair and collapse,

the two fatal bullets originally shot from a blind spot toward Shen Du's hands and feet, which were enough to completely cripple him,

were abruptly blocked by the flesh and blood of the man in front of him.

Shen Du still clearly remembered the scene at that time.

Under the circumstance where both hands and legs were pierced by large-caliber bullets,

Shen Hong didn't even let out a single groan of pain.

He merely used tactical straps to tightly bind his main artery, performing the most violent physical hemostasis.

Then he immediately raised his automatic rifle.

Under the suppression of heavy firepower across the mountains, he forcefully fought through a full twelve hours despite his injuries.

For an "elder" with whom he had no prior interaction before this,

this kind of reckless bravery that disregarded one's life in a desperate situation had long exceeded the boundaries of ordinary familial affection.

At this moment, Shen Hong, sitting in the wheelchair, lowered his head slightly, his broad back arched somewhat stiffly.

When facing Wang Hanmei,

this weathered, rock-hard and cold-edged face unexpectedly revealed a rare trace of awkwardness and bashfulness.

Shen Du stood at the rear side of the wheelchair, taking in this contrast completely.

In his cognition,

whether it was escaping death by the skin of one's teeth on the border anti-drug lines or fighting for one's life under the heavy firepower encirclement in Europe,

none of these had ever made this man retreat even half a step.

But now, facing a woman without any combat effectiveness,

this fierce lone wolf that forcefully endured in the firepower network put away all its fangs, not even knowing how to place its hands and feet.

After a brief silence,

out of recognition for that twelve hours of desperate protection to the death, Shen Du looked at Shen Hong on the wheelchair, his Adam's apple moving slightly.

"Uncle."

These two words, without any superfluous pleasantries, rang out clearly in the spacious and quiet office.

Shen Hong, who was accustomed to a hail of bullets and death threats,

upon hearing this form of address at this moment, had his broad shoulders jerked violently, clearly caught off guard.

He was stunned for two seconds, and those rough hands covered in calluses and firearm wear marks

rubbed unnaturally twice on the smooth metal armrests of the wheelchair, and he dry-swallowed in his throat.

"Mn…"

Shen Hong held back for a long time before awkwardly and rigidly squeezing out a sentence: "Hello, nephew."

The stiff pleasantry between the two had not yet landed, and the subtle sense of awkwardness in the office was still floating in the air.

Wang Hanmei didn't leave them any room to buffer.

She suddenly stepped forward by half a step.

Her gaze instantly shifted away from Shen Du and nailed itself onto Shen Hong's plastered right leg and the arm wrapped in heavy bandages.

"Shen Hong."

Wang Hanmei's voice was kept very low, yet it carried an irresistible penetrative power:

"The injuries on your body were left behind to save Shen Du's life, right?"

This unheralded straight-to-the-point question made Shen Hong's back on the wheelchair tense up abruptly.

Facing his third sister's sharp eyes that could strip away all disguises,

this tough guy who hadn't even blinked an eye in the mercenaries' firepower network

had the muscles at the corners of his eyes twitch uncontrollably twice, flashing a trace of obvious panic.

He subconsciously turned his head away, avoiding Wang Hanmei's gaze, and his originally thick and deep voice was obviously a bit tight at this moment:

"How is that possible…"

He bit the bullet and poured out excuses dryly:

"This injury of mine happened when I was fighting drugs on the border line,

accidentally surrounded by that gang of drug traffickers, and left behind when breaking through."

The moment his words fell, Shen Hong's physical movements completely betrayed him.

Facing the third sister who had raised him bite by bite since childhood,

the extreme guilt brought by this clumsy lie made his physiological defense lines directly collapse.

That right hand, covered in calluses from holding guns year-round, lifted up completely out of the brain's control.

The rough fingertips, along the edge of the medical bandage on his left arm,

began to instinctively scratch the slightly itchy skin scab-forming near the wound one after another.

In the quiet office, one could even hear the faint rustling sound made by nails scraping against dry skin.

In the quiet office, that extremely faint "rustling" scraping sound appeared exceptionally harsh.

Wang Hanmei stared at his right hand that had nowhere to rest, and the last shred of luck in the depths of her eyes was completely shattered.

She quietly looked at her younger brother in the wheelchair, sighed softly, and shook her head helplessly.

"Shen Hong, you were fed bite by bite by me since you were a child."

Wang Hanmei's voice was crisp and decisive, directly tearing away his layer of clumsy disguise:

"Ever since you were little,

whenever you lied out of guilt in front of me, you couldn't control yourself from scratching the itchy area near your wound.

Decades have passed, and you really haven't changed this bad habit a single bit."

The scraping sound stopped abruptly.

Shen Hong's fingers instantly froze in mid-air.

Then they drooped down powerlessly onto his thighs, his rough finger bones faintly glowing cyan-white due to excessive force.

Looking at the battered and helpless appearance of this lone wolf covered in wounds amidst a hail of bullets at this moment,

Wang Hanmei's tone softened completely.

The toughness of the eldest sister transformed into deep heartache and tolerance:

"Sister pointing you out is not to call you to account.

Sister just wants to… properly thank you."

The two words "thank you" pierced straight into Shen Hong's heart like a red-hot steel needle.

His spine, which had originally been as taut as a full bow, completely collapsed at this very instant.

He subconsciously raised his head to glance at Shen Du standing at the rear side of the wheelchair.

Then he turned his head back to look at the deep fine lines carved by time and hardship at the corners of his third sister's eyes.

Shen Hong finally abandoned all disguises belonging to a tough guy.

Helplessly, he spread open those hands covered in shrapnel scratches, and a bitter laugh overflowed from his throat.

"Sister, it's not that I wanted to hide it from you."

Shen Hong's voice was completely hoarse, and a layer of extremely suppressed bloodshot veins welled up in the depths of his eyes:

"I was afraid you would blame me, blame me for not even protecting my nephew well, almost letting him lose his life with me in Europe."

He took a deep breath, his broad chest heaving violently, his two hands tightly gripping the metal edges of the wheelchair:

"I clearly knew how hard your life has been these past few years, yet I couldn't even help out a little bit!

No matter how big of a disaster I caused when I was little, you were always the one following behind cleaning up my messes and taking care of me orderly.

But when you reached your most unbearable and desperate times, I, as a younger brother, didn't contribute a single bit of effort!"

Guilt and self-loathing

spread frantically across the face of this man who had never shed a single tear even when his leg was broken by a large-caliber bullet,

about to swallow him completely.

"I feel so guilty!"

Shen Hong's voice was completely torn due to excessive force, and the veins on his neck bulged out one by one.

With blood-red eyes, he stared at the wool carpet in front of the wheelchair, wanting to vomit out all his decades of remorse:

"If I could have grown up a bit earlier back then, if I could have had some real skills in my hands… back then, brother-in-law perhaps wouldn't have encountered that accident!"

The two words "accident" were like a pulled fuse, instantly detonating the tight string in the air.

Wang Hanmei's gaze, originally full of heartache, instantly froze the moment she heard these two words.

She stared hard at Shen Hong, her lips trembling violently out of control.

That psychological defense line, which had been suppressed for more than ten years and wrapped by time to look seemingly indestructible, was completely blown through at this moment.

Large tears burst out of her eyes, pattering down onto the collar of her washed-out coat.

"Stop talking…"

Wang Hanmei suddenly raised her volume, carrying an extremely out-of-control hoarse crying voice, abruptly cutting off Shen Hong's self-blame:

"That was fundamentally not an accident!

Nor was it your fault…"

She tightly clenched her withered fingers, her whole body trembling due to grief and deep-seated hatred.

A sentence suppressed for more than ten years, carrying blood and tears, crashed down shrilly in this cold, desolate office:

"That was Shen Che's fault!"

Shen Du, standing at the rear side of the wheelchair, had not chimed in from beginning to end.

He was like a temperatureless sculpture, coldly watching this emotional breaching belonging to the older generation.

But the moment Wang Hanmei shouted out the two words "Shen Che",

Shen Du's fingers resting on the rubber handles of the wheelchair tightened abruptly, his knuckles turning a grim, icy pale.

Deep inside his eyes, which were originally as calm as stagnant water, his pupils suddenly contracted.

Shen Che was his eldest Uncle whom he had yet to acknowledge.

He didn't understand why his father's death had something to do with this eldest Uncle.

This was also the closest Shen Du had ever been to the truth of his father's death across his two lifetimes.

But he didn't pursue the questioning either.

Because these were all matters of their older generation.

Even having controlled a trillion-dollar commercial empire, he couldn't interject a single word.