Afternoon.
2:30 p.m.
Panting heavily, Dong Xuebin carried a huge bag of weighty copper coins back to Jiangong Hospital. After entering the Orthopedics Ward, he flung the large bag beside his hospital bed under the astonished gazes of the old man with the broken bone and his son. With a clatter, the coins jostled together, producing a pleasant sound.
The old man said in surprise, "Young man, what are you doing?"
Exhausted, Dong Xuebin smiled and sat down on the bed. "I bought some Ancient Coins."
The old man's son said, "Good lord, but you didn't have to buy this many, did you?"
"Heh, just messing around, just messing around." Seeing the man's Samsung laptop on the Bedside Table, Dong Xuebin hesitated for a moment before asking with an embarrassed smile, "Big Brother, I saw you using your laptop to surf the internet yesterday. That was a 3G wireless card, right? Um, if you don't need the laptop for the moment, could you lend it to me?"
The man was quite generous and pushed the laptop over. "Sure, use it however you like."
"Oh, thank you so much."
"Don't mention it. While I was away, your aunt helped my dad pour water and wash his meal containers plenty of times. I haven't even thanked her yet."
Afraid the nurses and doctors would gossip, Dong Xuebin did not dare dump the coins out in the open. Instead, he spread them out in the dead corner between the bed and the wall, rummaged through them with his hands, and roughly counted them. Then he deeply appreciated the saying that no merchant was honest. What fourteen hundred copper coins? This pile did not even reach a thousand. The coins were simply too small to count easily, which was why he had been fooled.