In his previous life, Li Ye had learned a lesson with several hard-earned sums of money: when someone came to borrow money from you, never casually ask, "What happened to you?"
Because once you said something like that to someone borrowing money, it meant you had a "conscience." You would decide whether to lend or not based on the other person's particular circumstances.
After all, the ancestors had left behind a saying—help the urgent, not the poor. If someone's elderly parent or child was sick, or they had run into a hurdle they truly could not get over, then by all rights, they should be helped.
But if they were a gambler or a scoundrel, wanting to borrow a little money to win it back, borrow a little money to visit girls, or borrow money to go up Liangshan and rebel, then they should be sternly refused. No lending.
But that was how good people understood the phrase "help the urgent, not the poor." Certain others did not see it that way.
Many people who opened their mouths to borrow money did not care whether they would squander it. They only cared whether you "had money." As long as you did, even if they had to drag out their own parents to swear heaven-shaking oaths, they would pry your money out of you.
Though human feelings were like paper, punctured at a poke, the truly troublesome thing was never the person borrowing money, but the face you could not bring yourself to turn away and the old affection buried in your memories.
They exploited that old affection, constantly fabricating some miserable tale that you could not refuse, along with a reason compelling enough to make you willingly throw your money into the water.
Once you asked them, "What happened?" didn't