For the past ten years, he had donated to many people, allowing numerous impoverished children to have the opportunity to study.
But the present matter had left him exceedingly disheartened.
Such young children, clearly having the opportunity to study, yet they were stifled like this.
Now, he didn't even dare to fund these impoverished students anymore.
Heaven knows what these funded families would do with his money.
Facing this situation, Qin Mu softly offered a few words of consolation. Then, he earnestly asked, "Mr. Li, how much money have you donated to these three families over the years?"
Li Weiguo was startled. Immediately afterward, he tremblingly took out a notebook from his bag. The notebook was densely filled with the names of those he had funded over the years. The reason he kept this record was not actually to seek any returns. It was merely because he feared that as he got older, he might become forgetful and miss paying some children's school fees.
"So many?" Qin Mu took the notebook and was startled.
According to the records, Li Weiguo had made over two hundred donations, big and small, within ten years. The number of impoverished students he had funded was about twenty. Of course, the focus of his donations had been these three families. Over the years, he had almost poured in all the money he had saved up for half his life.
The children wanted to attend tutoring classes and coaching sessions, so they asked him for money. When a child fell ill and had no money for treatment, they asked him for money. If a child wanted a pair of sneakers, they asked him for money. If a child wanted... In short, every month, parents from these three families, using their children as an excuse, almost always came asking him for money. Sometimes it was a few hundred, other times a thousand or two. All in all, it added up to more than 130,000 yuan.
And this time, under the guise of the children entering high school, they directly asked for two hundred thousand yuan!
They were completely treating him like an easy mark!
And every time, Li Weiguo was too soft-hearted. He couldn't withstand their excuses about the children and somehow gave them the money.
"Mr. Li, you... what am I supposed to say to you..." Qin Mu gave a wry smile, looking at Li Weiguo with frustration at his weakness.
Li Weiguo's face flushed with shame. How was he to know that all his good intentions had gone to the dogs?
"Forget it. Since they've given up on their own children, I won't go looking for trouble. In any case, I won't be giving any more money!" After a long pause, Li Weiguo clenched his teeth and waved his hand in angry resignation.
Previously, he hadn't known. But now that he knew the truth, he couldn't possibly continue to be taken for a fool.
"Just like that?" Qin Mu widened his eyes, feeling more than ever that swindling Li Weiguo's money was far too easy.
Li Weiguo was taken aback. He gave a bitter smile. "What else can I do? I donated it all. It was clearly marked as a donation, so I can only chalk it up to bad luck."
He actually wanted to get his money back; after all, it was most of his life's savings. But this was a voluntary matter. If the other party adamantly refused to return it, he had no way to force them.
Just then, RING RING—
The ringtone of an old-fashioned cell phone sounded. Li Weiguo glanced at the caller ID, and his expression immediately darkened. The caller was the woman who had been constantly urging him for the two hundred thousand yuan for tuition and living expenses.
After hesitating for a moment, he decided to answer the phone and clarify things with these three families. However, as soon as the call connected, the woman's unapologetic voice bombarded him.
"Mr. Li, it's been a whole morning. Why hasn't the money been transferred yet?"
"School starts in a couple of days! What if it delays the children's registration?"
"I'm telling you, it wasn't easy for the children of our three families to get accepted into high school. You wouldn't want all that effort to be in vain, would you?"
"I'm giving you half a day! Get the two hundred thousand yuan transferred over today!"
"If you delay the children's education, you'll regret it when it's too late!"
"What? Not talking now?"
The call volume on the old phone was exceptionally loud. Li Weiguo listened, his expression growing uglier.
After learning the truth, he had developed an entirely new understanding of these people's vile nature.
The other party repeatedly addressed him as "Mr. Li." But in reality, they were just treating him as a gullible fool. When they ran out of money, they would imperiously demand more from him, even using their own children's names to threaten him.
Li Weiguo took a deep breath. He said coldly into the phone, "Going to high school? Your children dropped out in the first year of junior high!"
As soon as he spoke, the aggressive voice on the other end suddenly grew somewhat panicked. "You, you... how did you know that?" she stammered.
Li Weiguo sneered. His face grew stern, and his fury erupted as he scolded, "How did I know? I went and asked the principal of Second Middle School! You've been deceiving me for years, and you still have the nerve to keep asking me for money?"
On the other end of the phone, after the initial panic, the woman's voice turned indignant and furious.
"That's right!"
"The children from all three of our families dropped out long ago, and they've been sent to work in factories! What are you going to do about it?"
"It would have been one thing if you'd just sponsored our poor families, but you had to go and investigate us?"
"Supporting children's education, you could have bragged about being charitable and gained a good reputation! Why cause so much trouble?"
"Couldn't you have just transferred the two hundred thousand yuan and then investigated?"
"We even presented you with a commendation banner before! If we had known it would come to this, we wouldn't have wasted that money!"
Her voice grew louder, incredibly shrill as all sorts of ugly words were blurted out. After the truth was exposed, this woman had lost all her previous "politeness"; the words "Mr. Li" no longer passed her lips.
"You... you you..." Listening to the woman's endless rant, Li Weiguo trembled all over in anger. His chest heaved, his face flushed red. But as an intellectual, he was momentarily at a loss for how to refute her.
"Give me the phone." Qin Mu, who could no longer stand by, took the phone and interrupted the woman's tirade.
He said coldly, "Hello, I did some calculations just now. Over the years, your three families owe Mr. Li a total of 130,000 yuan. Please pay back the debt."
On the other end of the phone, the voice abruptly stopped, seemingly caught off guard. A few seconds later, the sharp voice erupted again.
"Who are you?"
"How did this money suddenly become a debt?"
"This was all donated to us! You want to take it back?"
"We didn't steal, and we didn't rob! It was all voluntary! Why should we pay it back?"
"I'm telling you, you won't get a single penny of that money back!"
Having said that, she hastily hung up the phone, her attitude extremely defiant.
"I'm... I'm so furious!" Li Weiguo trembled all over, so angry he could hardly speak properly.
He had, in fact, anticipated this kind of reaction. Donations are basically irretrievable. What he hadn't expected was that the very people he had supported could actually say such things. This made him extremely disheartened. The people he had supported for so many years turned out to be such ingrates! One hundred thirty thousand yuan... if he had used it to buy meat buns to feed dogs, after feeding them for a few years, at least the dogs wouldn't turn around and spew venom at their benefactor.