TCFSRMR |Chapter 6

At this moment, time seemed to stand still.

Shi Guoan looked as if he had been struck by lightning.

The frightened scream from Shi Ting, the mixed-up sounds coming from far away and then near, all disappeared from this world. In Shi Guoan’s eyes, there was only the little girl’s tearful face, and, on her wrist, that cherry blossom.

“You, you…” Shi Guoan panted heavily, but he simply could not force the words below out. The next moment, his body lurched violently, and he almost stumbled forward toward Shi Heng and the two of them.

When he reached them, he even reached out and picked up Shi Ying.

His strength was too great. Shi Heng, who had kept his head lowered the whole time and was holding Shi Ying as if guarding a treasure, was also tugged forward and nearly staggered. Shi Guoan instinctively reached out to steady him.

“Oh my, old lady, am I seeing it right? Guoan is holding a little girl?” Shi Zongyi, who was hurrying this way from afar, suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“Whose child is that?” The old lady was also somewhat dazed. Just as she was about to ask the daughter-in-law beside her, she did not expect the sickle in Miao Xiuxiu’s hand to clatter to the ground. The next moment, she ran forward like crazy.

In her dreams, she had seen the same scene more than once. That was her husband, holding their son and daughter in his usual affectionate way.

But when she was about to approach the three of them, she stopped in her tracks.

Shi Guoan happened to turn his head then. Seeing Miao Xiuxiu standing there, not daring to come closer, he opened his mouth, but his lips were trembling nonstop. After a long while, he could barely make a sound:

“Xiu, Xiuxiu…”

As he spoke, he held Shi Ying with one hand and wrapped the other around Shi Heng, walking step by step toward Miao Xiuxiu:

“Yingying, Yingying…”

But the rest of the words seemed to be stuck at the throat. He only gently held Shi Ying’s wrist and slowly brought it before Miao Xiuxiu. When that pink cherry blossom entered her eyes, Miao Xiuxiu’s body immediately went soft.

The next moment, Miao Xiuxiu tightly hugged Shi Ying.

Shi Ying, who was held between the two of them, was a little startled at first by Miao Xiuxiu’s tragic expression. When she then made out the despair and sorrow buried in those dim eyes, for some reason, she also started to feel sad.

Slowly, she reached out and softly wrapped her arms around Miao Xiuxiu’s neck.

Miao Xiuxiu suddenly tightened her arms, and the mournful cry stuck in her throat finally burst out in a hoarse scream:

“Yingying, Yingying, Yingying…”

That kind of violent grief even scared Shi Ying, but for some reason, several images suddenly popped into her mind. There were scenes of Miao Xiuxiu holding her little foot and kissing it, and Miao Xiuxiu holding her while singing nursery rhymes…

Unlike the woman now, who was like a skeleton and seemed to be on the verge of collapse at any moment, back then Miao Xiuxiu was healthy, rosy, and even beautiful, full of life…

“Xiuxiu, don’t cry. Let’s go home.” Shi Guoan forcefully wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“Guoan, who is he carrying?” The old lady Shi had bound feet, and Shi Zongyi had to take care of her, so the two of them inevitably walked a bit slowly. Seeing the family of four walking home, and hearing the faint sound of Miao Xiuxiu’s crying, they were both astonished.

Worried that something unexpected had happened, they hurriedly followed them home as well. After the two elders, Shi Guoping, his wife Yin Zhaodi, as well as Shi Guoliang and the children also rushed back one after another.

The one running at the front was still Shi Ting. When she leaned her head in, she happened to collide with Shi Ying, who was sitting on a little chair and looking out.

Shi Ting was so frightened that she jumped back a big step with an “ah”.

Only then did the whole family realize that there really was an extra little girl in the courtyard. And for some reason, that little girl looked somewhat indescribably familiar. What was even more unbelievable was Miao Xiuxiu and Shi Heng, mother and son.

Ever since Shi Ying was gone, not only had Shi Heng’s illness become increasingly severe, even Miao Xiuxiu had become more and more like Shi Heng. She often sat there dazedly, as if she had lost her soul.

Every time Old Lady Shi saw her eldest daughter-in-law in such a dazed state, she felt awful. After all, her daughter-in-law had been sent down to the countryside as an educated youth.

A perfectly good city girl, not disdaining the Shi family for being poor, married in, and yet not only did she not live any good days, both of her children also ran into problems one after another.

If the grandson’s illness had nearly taken half of Miao Xiuxiu’s life, then the granddaughter’s disappearance had taken the other half of Miao Xiuxiu’s life away as well.

From the time the granddaughter was gone until now, Miao Xiuxiu had not smiled once.

Yet right now, facing the little girl in the courtyard, even though her eyes were red, she was genuinely smiling.

What was more, when she noticed Shi Zongyi and the others who had returned, Miao Xiuxiu actually stood up for the first time in ages and returned to the soft, gentle way she used to speak:

“Dad, Mom, come over and sit…”

Ever since her daughter was gone, Miao Xiuxiu had lived as if she were a wandering soul in this family. Not to mention with her parents-in-law and younger brother-in-law, even with her husband, she did not have a few words to say to him in the course of a whole year.

And yet now she not only knew how to smile, she also took the initiative to speak?

While everyone was still stunned, Miao Xiuxiu had already bent down and said softly to Shi Ying:

“Yingying, be good. Call Grandpa and Grandma…”

As soon as those words came out, Old Lady Shi’s face went white. Yin Zhaodi, the wife of Shi Guoping who was following behind her, instinctively thought of what Shi Ting had said before, “My younger sister’s soul has come back,” and hurried to look at the shadow on the ground. When she saw that Shi Ying really did have a shadow, she finally let out a long breath, but just as she was half done breathing out, she got stuck again.

That didn’t make sense. Back then, they had found Shi Ying’s little clothes and little shoes in the river. It was right during the summer flood season then, and with that surging river water, not to mention a child falling in, even an adult would not have survived.

Besides, if the little girl really hadn’t died, why didn’t she come back then? Why had she come back only after so long?

Miao Xiuxiu seemed to have seen her doubt, and bent over to speak softly to Shi Ying:

“Yingying, be good. Let’s let Grandma take a look at your hand, okay?”

Shi Ying nodded and obediently rolled up her sleeve, and that cherry blossom birthmark was then displayed before everyone’s eyes.

Yin Zhaodi immediately sucked in a sharp breath.

Old Lady Shi came back to her senses, and then she completely could not hold back anymore:

“My good granddaughter… all these years, where have you been… do you know, back then… Grandma’s heart was almost shattered…”

Shi Zongyi beside her kept shedding tears too, and Yin Zhaodi also felt sad looking at it. The whole family immediately cried into a heap.

Unlike the Shi family, who were overjoyed to the point of going crazy because they had found their daughter again, the situation in Niu Erzhu’s family was as if the sky had fallen.

It was not that they were worried about what had happened to Shi Ying, but that the patch of wheat in their private plot had been stolen.

The first person to notice something was wrong was Qiu Guihua.

When she came off work in the evening, she was already so tired she could hardly straighten her waist. But when she was about to reach the private plot, Qiu Guihua still lifted her head high.

Because she had not been able to get pregnant for several years after marrying, Qiu Guihua had heard plenty of gossip. More than once, she had been mocked as “a hen that can’t lay eggs.”

Qiu Guihua had a strong personality. Every time she heard people say such things, she was so angry her liver trembled, and she wished she could spit in their faces.

Now it was good. She not only had given birth to a big fat son, she had also grown the best crop in the whole village!

With the current conditions, having such a patch of wheat meant that until the next wheat harvest, she would be the envy of everyone in Xiawa Village.

Every time she walked to the private plot, Qiu Guihua had to stop, and no matter who she caught, she had to show off a bit.

Wasn’t it still the same today?

Just after work, there were especially many villagers who were dragging their exhausted bodies home in a stagger.

Qiu Guihua stood in front of her own field, her back so straight it was practically rigid:

“Oh, tell me, is there any child luckier than our little Bao?”

“Ever since our little Bao was planted in my belly, our family has been turning its luck around. You tell me, we have all been doing farm work for our whole lives, who has ever seen such good crops?”

“When we were little, let alone eating corn pancakes, having some wild-vegetable buns mixed in to fill our stomachs was already not bad. But when it came to our little Bao, he gets fine grain every day, and still can’t finish it…”

“Even parents like me and Erzhu get to benefit from him. Whatever little Bao can’t finish, we can still eat some…”

If Qiu Guihua were showing off something else, the others might have sneered at it. But when it came to wheat, everyone really only had envy.

Even though they were unhappy inside, they still could not help stopping to click their tongues and praise Niu Erzhu’s wheat:

“Isn’t that so? This wheat really grows well…”

“…Such big ears, there must be at least several hundred jin…”

Niu Erzhu’s private plot was originally the most barren piece of land in this area, and because of that, it had been allotted several extra tenths of an acre compared with the other families.

Don’t let five or six tenths of an acre sound like much, but nothing could really be grown on it. Before, it had basically just been left barren there all along.

Who could have imagined that their wheat could grow this well?

When the grain came in, Niu Erzhu’s family would be able to eat steamed buns made with white flour every few days. Those were white-flour steamed buns. In the past, only landlords and rich capitalists could eat that.

The first person to notice something was wrong was Niu Erzhu’s younger brother’s wife, Zhao Qiaoling.

Zhao Qiaoling and Qiu Guihua were sisters-in-law, but they had never gotten along.

Unlike Qiu Guihua, who had not been able to have a child for several years after marrying in, Zhao Qiaoling entered the family with good news. What was even more infuriating was that her very first pregnancy gave birth to a big fat son.

Because of this, the more Qiu Guihua looked at Zhao Qiaoling, the less she liked her, and she had tripped Zhao Qiaoling up more than once.

Zhao Qiaoling was thin-skinned at first and had been taken in by Qiu Guihua several times. After her mother at her natal home woke her up to what was going on, she came to hate Qiu Guihua.

At this moment, seeing Qiu Guihua so pleased with herself, Zhao Qiaoling found her extremely irritating. Right then and there, she curled her lips and said in a drawn-out voice:

“Whether little Bao has any luck, we don’t know, but from what I see, Daya is really lucky… Just look at this private plot. We all saw it clearly. From weeding to watering to taking care of it, it was all Daya doing it by herself…”

If Zhao Qiaoling were to say it, her second brother and second sister-in-law were simply heartless. They treated their own son as a treasure and their daughter as just grass. A child that big was made to work like an ox or horse, and they still had the nerve to show off?

Qiu Guihua snorted and rolled her eyes:

“Daya is lucky? If she’s so lucky, why didn’t she come back as a boy? If she were a boy, would her parents not want her? Since you say all of this is Daya’s luck, then when the time comes to exchange seed wheat, you can go find Daya to swap with you. My family’s seed wheat has nothing to do with yours…”

Seeing that Niu Erzhu’s family’s private plot had a bumper harvest, the villagers were also extremely envious, and quite a few families had already greeted Qiu Guihua, wanting to use the wheat they had been allotted to exchange for their family’s seed, planning that next year they would also plant the entire private plot with wheat.

Whether they grew vegetables or not did not matter. Being able to fill their stomachs and eat fine grain was the real skill.

Qiu Guihua had already worked it out. By then, she would keep some for herself and exchange the rest with her neighbors.

Those grain seeds were precious. Qiu Guihua had already made it clear to the people who asked: two and a half jin of wheat for one jin of seed. Even so, the number of families asking was still not ordinary, and once the wheat from the field was threshed, it would not be enough to exchange.

Zhao Qiaoling had also thought of this point.

Her man had also gone to Qiu Guihua to ask about it before. Hearing that she did not plan to exchange seed for their family anymore, he had immediately felt a bit regretful. But he also knew Qiu Guihua was petty and vindictive. Since she had said it like that, then their family was definitely out of luck.

In anger, she swung hard at a wheat stalk beside her. The wheat stalk fell at once, and just happened to lash against Zhao Qiaoling’s bare foot.

Zhao Qiaoling suddenly felt that something was off.

With such a big ear of wheat, why did it feel so light when it hit her foot?

She instinctively bent down and pinched it with her hand. Seeing this, Qiu Guihua immediately started cursing:

“What are you doing? If you won’t exchange grain seed with me, then you’re ruining my family’s wheat, Zhao Qiaoling, why are you so black-hearted…”

Unexpectedly, Zhao Qiaoling not only did not rein herself in, she even reached out and pulled the wheat down.

“What are you doing?”

Qiu Guihua was so angry she was about to run over here at full speed. Before she even got close, she heard Zhao Qiaoling burst out laughing:

“Oh, so this is good seed? With such a big ear, it didn’t even set many grains, did it? Tsk, wheat like this, not to mention exchanging it for grain from home, even if you gave it to me for free, I wouldn’t want it!”