Doctor Ryan and His Healing System

Chapter 28 Fail to Pay off the Debt

Ryan took his mother’s surname as his father married into and lived with his mother’s family.

His parents loved and respected each other. However, his mother died of difficult labor and it was his father who raised him up.

Fearing that Ryan could face abuse from a stepmother, his father had been living alone for years.

At the age of forty, his father broke a leg when working down the pit, and he could only maintain a meager life since then.

His father’s name is Tom Farmer.

Tom had borrowed a lot from loan sharks to pay Ryan’s school expenses, and he faced frequent visits from them after falling behind with the payments.

He felt desperate but had no money to pay.

One day Tom was roused from reverie by a heavy pounding on the door, then he staggered to answer the door.

He thought it was Ryan, but it turned out to be the loan sharks.

The moment the door was half-open, the leading big, burly man gave Tom a fierce kick, sending him down to the ground.

A moment later, the burly man came in and pressed a glistening dagger against Tom’s neck, which made Tom tremble with fear.

“Give me the money, or I’ll stab it into your neck.”

Tom was scared to death, but he didn’t have even a penny.

“I want to pay off the debt. I don’t have money now. You can search my house.”

The loan sharks didn’t care about his reason, and the man in charge reached forward and gave Tom a slap.

Tom was cross with their cruel behaviors though he had no strength to fight back.

Later they gave him two more hard kicks.

Tom was lying on the floor with blood dripping down out of his nose. It seemed that he was at his last gasp after such horrible tortures.

A few minutes later, they lifted him up from the floor. They would bury him alive. Tom shuddered at the thought.

If he couldn’t pay off the debt, they would dig a pit by the river and throw him in before refilling the pit with water.

When night fell, he would be drowned by water.

“Please let me go, please. I’ll borrow money to pay you back. If you bury me alive, my son will call the police.”

Tom’s speech didn’t work and even made the loan sharks pissed off.

“Do you think we are afraid of your son? We’ll bury him together with you.”

Tom looked at them in despair and he didn’t know what to do. Sooner, they reached the river bank.

“Dig a pit here.” The big, burly man pointed to low land and instantly his fellows began digging with spades and shovels. The pit became bigger and deeper as minutes ticked away and the channel linking the river and the pit was also put in place.

When they were done with the pit, a deep sense of despair overwhelmed Tom.

“Throw him in.” Two men held him up and swung him to the pit. Tom uttered a cry of despair but was ignored by the loan sharks.

“Take me out, please. I’ll pay. Please.”

Tom begged not because he was afraid of death. He wanted out because Ryan would come back today and he hoped to meet his son for the last time.

He didn’t care about his own life anymore.

The loan sharks remained unmoved when Tom kneeled down to beg. They took a strong stand that Tom had to pay, either money or his life.

“Tell us where we can get the money. Otherwise, you’ll be drowned.”

Tom was in complete despair as he realized these loan sharks are not the kind that he could reason with.

Later, the loan sharks went away and the water began flowing down to the pit.

Tom raised his head to the sky and the sunset cast a golden color over his face. Would he end his life in this pit?

An hour later, the water in the pit was higher than his mouth and gradually higher than his nose. He found it hard to breathe and got drowned by water.

He was then overcome by a terrible fit of coughing. The water was still flowing in.

He struggled to move upward, trying to take a breath. But his efforts were in vain.

After a while, he was worn out. He closed his eye in the exhaust and slipped into a coma.

Before losing consciousness, he had a delusion that Ryan was coming to his rescue.

When Ryan turned up in Windrush in his plainly-looking clothes, he was greeted with vicious remarks from his neighbors.

“He looks nothing like a university man. He must live a poor life in the city.”

The villagers talked in whispers. Ryan didn’t take their harsh remarks seriously and he did not intend to prove his success in both career and business.

He went straight home, filled with joy, only to find the front yard in a state of disorder. Chairs and tables were scattered on the floor. He entered the house, finding the shattered bowls and plates lying in fragments on the floor.

The fragments shocked and disturbed him. He had a sense of foreboding that something bad had happened to his father.

He ran out of, reached a neighbor Ralph Potter’s house.

“Hi, Mr. Potter, did you see my father? He’s not at home now.”

Ralph was sympathetic and he never judged a person by his fortune.

He respected Tom for his efforts to stand on his own feet and they were in a good relationship for years.

“Your father had borrowed a lot from loan sharks in the past few years. I saw he was dragged to the river by several burly men. I had no guts to stop them.”

Ryan’s face clouded and turned incandescent with rage. He hated to think about his father being tortured by the loan sharks.

He didn’t respond to Ralph but ran madly to the river. Sooner, he found his father drowned in the water and seemingly had no breath left.

He wasted no time in jumping down to the pit, holding his father Tom up and pushing him out of the pit.

He pressed Tom’s chest to drain water out of his lungs, then used his magical healing skills to make him awake.

A moment later, Tom opened his eyes and cried bittersweet tears.

“Ryan! You finally come back.” Tom had thought he would never have a chance to meet his son, so he felt extremely excited and content to snuggle up against Ryan’s shoulder.

“I am back, dad. What happened? Who threw you into the pit?”

Tom knew well about Ryan’s temperament and he was sure Ryan would risk his life to take revenge on the loan sharks.

Hence, he decided to hide the facts. He shook his head, “Nothing. I fell into the pit by mistake.”

Ryan was fully aware that Tom was protecting him from a conflict with the loan sharks.

“I knew it! I’ll kill the bastards.”

Ryan sprang to his feet and dashed away. Tom heaved a deep sigh looking at Ryan’s back become smaller and smaller in the sunset.

In Tom’s view, Ryan was a perfect son except for his short temper.

He feared that Ryan would put himself in danger when fighting with a tribe of strong men.

“Come back, Ryan.”

Tom shouted in an unexpectedly high voice, expecting to call Ryan back. However, Ryan didn’t even look back and a few minutes later, he went out of Tom’s sight.

Tom was desperately worried about Ryan’s safety.

The loan sharks were having wine in the room and they seemed very depressed by the failure to make Tom pay.

“I can’t believe we lost money on that old man. We can’t lend money to people who have no ability to pay back.”

His partners nodded in silent agreement.

“You are right. The old bastard must be dead now.”

The other people were also very definite about Tom’s death. After all, he couldn’t crawl out of the pit by himself, especially with the water flowing in.

“He’s a dead man now, ha, ha.” The group burst into a loud guffaw.

When they were immersed in chatting and drinking, they heard a loud bang. Then the door was kicked open.

They were like ducks in a thunderstorm when Ryan made an appearance in front of them.

They gasped with surprise at Ryan’s strength.

However, when they found the man breaking the door had a thin stature, they felt relieved.

“Who are you? We don’t expect you to come.”

“Did you push my father down to that pit?”

They did not intend to absolve themselves from responsibility because they were not afraid of Ryan.

“Yep. We pushed him down because he refused to pay off his debt.”

Ryan was furious at their attitude and the way his father had been treated. He was resolved to take their lives.

“If you say so, you are dead.”

They found Ryan’s threatening absolutely preposterous. How was it possible for him to defeat the group?