After Zhaozhao woke up, she was surprisingly quite calm when facing the unfamiliar surroundings. She firmly remembered her parents and relatives’ phone numbers and her home address.
It was just that Hu Laifu and his wife did not understand very much of what they heard. However, this was not important. They extracted some useful information from Zhaozhao’s words.
For example, her surname was He. The He family was rich, very rich.
For example, she was her parents’ only child. Many people came to her birthday banquet, and she received many gifts.
For example, there was a whole big box at her home filled with rings like the ones she wore on her hands. She even said that after she returned home, she could give them all to Madam Zheng.
Madam Zheng became extremely excited upon hearing this and looked over those few rings again and again.
As for the other things they could not understand, they did not take them to heart. She was only a three-year-old little child, after all. Sometimes children talked nonsense and mistook dreams and fantasies for reality.
What was more, when it came to more real information, Zhaozhao still subconsciously concealed it. Although she was little, she also knew that many private matters could not be told to outsiders.
What troubled her was that Hu Laifu and the others did not know what a mobile phone was at all.
The two sides lived together like this, with all sorts of bumps and difficulties, for more than half a month, yet no one from the He family came looking for her. Hu Laifu even went to the town and the county to inquire about the situation, wanting to know which wealthy household had lost a child. But whether in the town or the county seat[1]县城 (xiànchéng) – the administrative center of a county. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3335720_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3335720_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, there was no wealthy gentleman with the surname He.
That left two possibilities. Either Zhaozhao was lying, or the He family was not in the county seat. They might be in the prefectural city, or even somewhere farther away.
If that was the case, then it would be troublesome.
The Hu family’s patience completely ran out after half a month. They had been providing this little girl with good food and drink every day, and their son was already very dissatisfied. Their family could not possibly eat well at every meal either. They could not afford it. Originally, there was a wealthy gentleman with ten thousand strings of cash dangling in front of them. Now, it seemed that even if there really was such a He family, they had probably already given up on this little girl and had no intention of looking for her at all.
They could not possibly keep serving Zhaozhao like this forever. Who knew when it would end ah?
After once again being unable to get any more clues from Zhaozhao, the husband and wife’s attitudes changed drastically. They had already taken the clothes and jewelry from Zhaozhao, so now it was impossible for them to take them out again. They did want to throw her back at the foot of the mountain, but at the time, in order to make it set in stone, they had told the village chief that they were taking Zhaozhao as their goddaughter. After giving him some benefits, they had even registered the little girl’s household registration under the Hu family.
Moreover, after providing her with food and drink for so long, they also felt that letting her go now would mean suffering a loss.
The husband and wife thought it over again and again, and finally decided—to make Zhaozhao their family’s child bride.
Hu Baodun of the Hu family had something wrong with his mind. Put nicely, he was a simple-minded person. Put it harshly, he was a fool. Not only was he a fool, he also had a violent temper. When he suddenly felt unhappy, he would beat people indiscriminately.
For a person like this, it would probably be difficult to marry a wife after he grew up. Even if he could marry one, they would definitely have to spend a great deal of money.
Zhaozhao was good-looking. If they started training her from now, then in the future she would certainly obediently serve Baodun. Moreover, she had no backer and no maternal family to rely on. Would she not simply work hard without complaint and let herself be beaten and scolded?
If Baodun did not like her in the future, or if there was a better choice, they could also sell Zhaozhao and still get a sum of money.
Of course, this sum of money would definitely be more than what they spent raising Zhaozhao.
And so, Zhaozhao became the Hu family’s child bride just like that.
Seeing this, the system was already so angry that its CPU was about to burn up. How could the Hu family be so shameless? They had already taken away all the valuable things on Zhaozhao, yet they still were not satisfied.
However, there was something even more infuriating afterward.
After Zhaozhao went from being a goddaughter to becoming a child bride, she was still very young, yet she had to get up early and work until late at night.
Poor Zhaozhao. How could she know how to do these things? If she could not get the fire started behind the stove, she would be scolded. If she went to the fields to pull weeds and accidentally pulled out a vegetable leaf, she would be beaten. If she could not promptly bring tea and water to Baodun, she would be kicked. If she was even a little slow when feeding the chickens and ducks, she would not be allowed to eat. At such a young age, she constantly had new injuries added to old ones, and she quickly became much thinner.
What did a three-year-old child know? Although she already tried very hard to endure it, when she was in pain or hungry, she still could not help crying. After she cried so much, Shangliu Village naturally gained many rumors and gossip.
Some people saw that Zhaozhao had to work at such a young age, and that she was beaten when she did not do well, even becoming Baodun’s punching bag. Unable to stand watching it, they would say a few words.
At first, the Hu couple would even argue with people, telling them to meddle less in their family’s affairs. Later, more and more people could not stand watching it, and one household even offered that if the Hu family did not want to raise Zhaozhao, they could raise her instead.
The Hu family naturally refused. If Zhaozhao left, their plans would fall through. Besides, who knew whether those people were acting out of sympathy for Zhaozhao, or whether they wanted the jewelry Zhaozhao originally brought with her?
Just at this time, the Third Brother Jiang of the Jiang family, the Hu family’s neighbor on the left, was discussing a marriage proposal.
And on the day the girl’s family came, while Hu Baodun was playing at the doorway, he maliciously wanted to burn Zhaozhao’s hair. Zhaozhao dodged it, but the sparks flew onto the pile of dry grass that the Jiang family had stacked in the corner by their doorway, instantly causing a huge fire.
When Third Brother Jiang hurriedly escaped from the house, he accidentally pushed the girl’s parents. Good heavens, the girl’s mother sprained her ankle right there and almost could not stand up.
And just like that, the marriage that had originally been agreed upon for next month fell through directly.
Actually, the fire was not very big. It was just that the smoke that drifted up while it burned looked somewhat frightening. It did not even burn past the threshold, and it was extinguished after a few basins of water were poured over it. The problem was that Third Brother Jiang was afraid of dying. Thinking that a huge fire had broken out, not only did he run away without caring about whether others lived or died, he even pushed his future mother-in-law.
The Jiang family naturally went to settle accounts with the Hu family. Seeing the Jiang family members coming aggressively, Hu Laifu pushed Zhaozhao out to take the blame without saying another word.
It was just that Zhaozhao was completely alone, so even if the Jiang family wanted compensation, there was nothing they could do. The Hu family was also shameless and unreasonable, refusing to pay.
In the end, Third Brother Jiang slapped Zhaozhao, cursed her out, and even said that she was a jinx.
It was precisely this word, “jinx,” that gave Madam Zheng a sudden flash of inspiration.
Good, then. Were the villagers not speaking up for Zhaozhao? If this little girl was a jinx, let’s see who would still dare approach her or have designs on her.
And so, the husband and wife began subtly ruining Zhaozhao’s reputation. Anyone who became close to Zhaozhao would, the next day, either find that the crops in their fields had been trampled by a dog, or that the chickens at home had been carried away by a weasel, or that their clothes had somehow been snagged and torn while they were out. In short, bad luck kept coming, and it was extremely unlucky.
As these things happened more and more often, fewer people sympathized with Zhaozhao, and naturally, people said she was a jinx more and more frequently.
By now, there were already only a few people in the entire Shangliu Village who still spoke to Zhaozhao.
The little girl was now almost in a state of being isolated and helpless. If her luck were just a little worse, she could lose her life and there would not even be anyone to stand up for her.
The system felt terribly guilty. Thankfully, thankfully, it had rebooted now and could send its host back.
It secretly let out a breath and prepared to discuss returning with Zhaozhao.
References[+]