In the winter of 1972, Shilianghe Village was a vast expanse of white.
[Sob, sob, so cold… This baby is about to be frozen to death by the big baddie…]
Su Nian had fallen into an exhausted sleep after a difficult birth.
As her consciousness drifted, the intermittent sound of a baby’s tearful complaint rang in her ears, making her heart clench.
Besides her family, there were no other newborns nearby. How could there be the sound of a child’s complaint?
As Su Nian thought about it, an absurd idea suddenly rose in her heart.
This voice… could it be her daughter’s?
Her daughter was about to be frozen to death?
Her heart trembled violently. She woke with a start and reached for the swaddling clothes beside her, only to find nothing.
“Chen Yaozu, where is our daughter?”
“Chen Yaozu?”
Su Nian called out several times. Before her husband, Chen Yaozu, could respond, she heard the child’s voice again.
[Huh? Mommy’s awake? Didn’t Little Book say Mommy would be unconscious until dark?]
[Whatever, it’s so good that Mommy’s awake! This baby won’t get pneumonia, and the gold bars Mommy hid won’t be tricked away by the big baddie!]
The child’s muttering exploded in Su Nian’s mind like a clap of thunder.
Su Nian froze, her hand on the door curtain. An icy chill shot up her spine, making her whole body tremble.
What terrified her was not that her newborn daughter could speak, but the enormous amount of information contained in her words.
If she hadn’t woken up early, Chen Yaozu would have let their daughter freeze until she got pneumonia, then used it as an excuse to demand the gold bars she had secretly brought from home?
In that moment of shock, a wall of a person blocked her way.
Chen Yaozu’s chiding voice sounded from above her head.
“The midwife said you shouldn’t get out of bed after a difficult birth. Why are you being disobedient? What if you develop postpartum ailments?”
Su Nian’s gaze was immediately drawn to the slightly disheveled bundle in Chen Yaozu’s arms. Her face darkened as she reached out.
“Give me our daughter!”
“Why are you suddenly angry?”
Chen Yaozu turned sideways, moving the arm holding the baby away. He said half-jokingly, “Comrade Su, your task right now is to rest and recover. Mother and I can take care of the baby.”
Su Nian’s outstretched hands froze in mid-air. Her scrutinizing gaze moved up to Chen Yaozu’s face.
The man had a square face, thick, dark eyebrows, and a perfectly concerned smile at the corners of his mouth, making him look generous and honest.
But who could have known that beneath this universally praised, upright exterior hid the heart of a wolf?
Beneath the deliberately crafted gentleness and sweetness lay a fatal poison.
Su Nian took a step forward and snatched the swaddled baby back into her arms. When she saw her daughter’s small face, blue from the cold, the anger of her daughter being harmed and the hatred of being schemed against surged into her heart at the same time. She raised her hand and slapped Chen Yaozu hard across the face.
“Even a vicious tiger won’t eat its own cubs! Freezing our daughter like this, Chen Yaozu, are you even human?!”
Smack!
[Good hit, great hit, hit the big baddie until he wails!]
Amidst her daughter’s cheers, Su Nian shook her numb hand, scrambled onto the heated brick bed in a few steps, and held her ice-cold daughter close to her body for warmth.
If only she had woken up sooner.
If she had woken up sooner, her daughter wouldn’t have had to suffer like this.
Her heart ached with every beat. Su Nian closed her eyes, and two lines of regretful tears slid silently down her cheeks.
“If I had known you were this kind of person, I never would have married you in the first place!”
Her marriage to Chen Yaozu was the result of one man-made disaster after another.
Her family, which had practiced medicine and saved lives for generations, had been branded with the label of rightist capitalism by schemers during the turmoil. Their home was ransacked, they were publicly denounced, and they were sent for re-education through labor.
Before being sent down to Shilianghe Village, she was the Su family’s precious young lady, held in the palm of their hand, admired and praised by all.
After being sent down, she became one of the children of the black five categories, scorned by the commune members and shunned by everyone.
Fortunately, she knew how to treat sprains, bruises, and common minor illnesses, which allowed her to secure a job as a “barefoot doctor” in the production team.
Nine months ago, she had gone up the back mountain to gather herbs for a member of the production team. On her way back, she was dragged into a cave by a hooligan who tried to drug and assault her. Luckily, she had a self-defense knife hidden in her Space. After stabbing the hooligan, she escaped down the mountain.
The drug was potent. She managed to reach a shack at the foot of the mountain before losing consciousness. When she woke up, her body felt as if it had been run over by a truck, and her inner thighs were throbbing with pain. Chen Yaozu was standing by the bed, buttoning his disheveled shirt, his face full of self-blame and guilt as he insisted on taking responsibility for her.
She had refused his proposal and they had agreed to pretend nothing had happened.
But she never expected to get pregnant despite taking medicine in time. She certainly never expected that her pregnancy would be discovered by a rival educated youth, who wrote a letter to report her for having an illicit relationship.
Just as she was locked up and about to be publicly denounced, Chen Yaozu took all the responsibility upon himself and asked the brigade party secretary to act as a matchmaker.
She remembered Chen Yaozu’s kindness and agreed to slowly cultivate feelings for him after marriage.
After they married, Chen Yaozu kept his promise. He respected her, protected her, and was considerate in every way.
Her heart was moved, and she privately subsidized Chen Yaozu with money and ration tickets, and paid to help the Chen family buy new clothes and household items.
She never thought that a person’s greed could be as insatiable as a snake trying to swallow an elephant.
Her generosity had only whetted the Chen family’s appetite. To get more money from her, they were vicious enough to threaten her with her own daughter’s life!
“Su Nian, you!”
How dare this loose woman lay a hand on him!
Chen Yaozu clutched his face in disbelief, his expression so dark that one could squeeze ink from it.
He had coaxed her with sweet words for months, and she really thought he was giving her face!
Just as he was about to erupt, Su Nian’s emotionless words fell over him like icy water in winter, instantly sobering him up.
“Since you favor boys over girls and look down on my daughter and me, let’s not live like this anymore. After my confinement month, I’ll take my daughter and leave.”
“No!”
Chen Yaozu’s expression twisted abruptly.
He hadn’t gotten the money and gold bars from Su Nian yet. How could he let her go!
He had no idea where the bitch had hidden her things. He had searched everything she brought with her and found nothing!
Greed triumphed over pride.
“Little Su, let me explain,” Chen Yaozu humbled himself and moved closer, coaxing her in a gentle voice. “She kept crying, and I was afraid of disturbing your rest, so I had to take her to the west room. She probably caught a draft when we came back.”
Fearing Su Nian wouldn’t believe him, he raised his fingers to swear an oath. “I swear, everything I said is true!”
“She’s the daughter you went through so much hardship to give me. I couldn’t dote on her enough. How could I bear to let her suffer even a little?”
[Pah! The big baddie is not my daddy! My daddy is a big hero who can go pew-pew-pew!]
In Su Nian’s arms, the baby’s small, pale pink lips pouted. She clenched her chubby little hands into fists and waved them forcefully in Chen Yaozu’s direction.
[The big baddie is bad, bad! He paid someone to pretend to be a hooligan to bully Mommy, and then when Daddy had to leave on urgent business, he stole the credit to trick Mommy!]
So that was the truth of what happened?
Chen Yaozu had directed and starred in a drama of a hero saving a damsel in distress, but he hadn’t counted on her stabbing the “hooligan” and escaping to the shack at the foot of the mountain, where she encountered someone else.
But why was Chen Yaozu the one beside her when she woke up?
Where did the person who helped her with the drug go?
Su Nian’s mind and spirit trembled, and her hands holding her daughter shook uncontrollably.
The hooligan was fake, the antidote was fake, and the debt of gratitude was also fake!
The savior who had pulled her out of the vortex was actually the culprit who had pushed her into the water!
At the time, she had only thought that because she often went up the mountain, she had been targeted by someone with ill intentions, and that Chen Yaozu had just happened to pass by and was dragged into her mistake.
Thinking back carefully, in February, the production team had organized all the commune members to build a canal at the east end of the village. How could Chen Yaozu have so coincidentally appeared in the shack at the foot of the back mountain?
As for the baby’s biological father…
The baby said her biological father could shoot a gun, so he must be a soldier.
Many young men from Shilianghe Village had joined the army, but the only one who had returned to the village for a family visit in February was Chen Zhiyuan, the youngest son of the brigade party secretary. Moreover, he was urgently recalled to his unit not long after returning.
Since the brigade party secretary had agreed to be a matchmaker for Chen Yaozu, it meant that Chen Zhiyuan had not mentioned that day’s events to his family.
She didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to be associated with a “child of the black five categories” like her, or if he simply hadn’t had time to tell his family, which allowed Chen Yaozu’s impersonation to be so flawless.
“Little Su, I know I was wrong. Don’t be angry. Forgive me this once, seeing as I was only doing it out of concern for you.”
Chen Yaozu couldn’t hear his daughter’s voice and had no idea that Su Nian had already learned the truth from her. Seeing her silence, he proactively brought his face closer to hers, feigning a look of magnanimous self-sacrifice.
“If hitting me will make you feel better, then hit me!”
“As long as it makes you happy, I’m willing to dig out my heart for you!”