“Jiaojiao, open the door! Don’t scare your mother like this!”
“Jiaojiao, open the door! If you don’t open it, I’m breaking in!”
Li Jiaojiao’s head was splitting. Who was it? She had been fighting hard for several days straight, and had finally gotten the chance to sleep, and now someone was being so annoying, yelling in her ear nonstop. Didn’t they know that long hours of high-intensity work could kill you?
Li Jiaojiao struggled to open her eyes, and when she saw the scene in front of her clearly, she was so startled she fell backward: “What the hell!”
What was going on?
Yellow mud walls, a thatched roof, and an uneven dirt floor. She had just gone to sleep, who had carried her out of the company and dumped her in a slum?
No, was there really a slum like this in this world? This was too backward. She raised her hand to rub her eyes, and suddenly a piece of paper slipped from her hand. Li Jiaojiao hurriedly picked it up, the characters were written vertically, in traditional script, and read right to left?
What was this thing?
By the time Li Jiaojiao had struggled through reading it once, she more or less understood the meaning of the letter. It should be a letter a man had written to her, saying that no matter where he was in this life, the one he loved in his heart would always be her, and that he had been forced to marry the county registrar’s daughter in order to protect her…
She threw the letter to the ground and couldn’t help but curse: “Who’s he trying to fool?” This was clearly PUA, who did he think he was fooling?
“Jiaojiao, don’t do anything foolish! If the engagement is called off, then it’s called off, can you please open the door?”
The woman’s voice outside was so urgent. Under her banging, the fragile door was about to give way.
Li Jiaojiao frowned and was about to get up when suddenly a faint, elusive fragrance drifted past her nose. Just as she was trying to find where the scent came from, the door was pushed open.
A thin, middle-aged woman with messy hair walked in. Looking at her face, without knowing why, Li Jiaojiao’s mind suddenly supplied this woman’s identity, and she called out naturally: “Mother!”
Just as Li Jiaojiao was about to look into it further, the middle-aged woman grabbed her hand. She looked Li Jiaojiao up and down, and seeing that she was unharmed, pulled her into an embrace, crying and laughing at the same time: “Why wouldn’t you open the door? You scared your mother to death! Child, if the marriage is called off, then it’s called off! I told you before, we were reaching too high for that family, but you just wouldn’t believe me! Chen Xuan was never meant to be someone from a poor mountain village like our Xunshui Village. Let’s not think about it anymore, all right?”
Hearing the woman’s words, an image of a scholarly-looking man rose up in Li Jiaojiao’s mind. He was the only educated man in Xunshui Village, delicate and refined in appearance, and because he could read and write, he was the dream lover of quite a few unmarried girls in the village. But he had set his heart on her alone, from time to time sending her books and anecdotes he had copied out by hand, or letters he had written to her.
Because of this, Li Jiaojiao could read, though not much!
Outside the house, the indistinct sound of many people talking drifted in. The middle-aged woman’s expression changed slightly, and she hurriedly pressed Li Jiaojiao down to sit: “Jiaojiao, listen to your mother. Be good and stay in the room, don’t go out, understand? Rest well. No matter what they say, don’t listen to any of it!”
Li Jiaojiao nodded, both hands pressing against her temples, her head foggy and heavy. She wasn’t sure if it was because she hadn’t been able to rest properly for a long time, and besides, she needed to sort out the situation in front of her.
Just as Li Jiaojiao lay back down, the door was pushed open by someone. The woman was shoved to the ground, and the young woman who came in wore a face full of mockery: “Oh my, Jiaojiao, aren’t you going to go look? People have come from Chen Xuan’s family, go take a look quickly, Chen Xuan’s new wife is back, tsk tsk, what a grand affair, and she’s good-looking too!”
Seeing who had come in, information about this person surfaced in Li Jiaojiao’s mind without her meaning to: Hu shi, the wife of the youngest son of the Li family.
With so much extra information suddenly appearing in her head, and having already not rested well, Li Jiaojiao’s head now ached as if it were about to split open. She clutched her head with both hands.
“Sister-in-law, can you please stop? I’m begging you. Jiaojiao isn’t feeling well, please just let her be!”
“Now, sister-in-law, this is a happy occasion, we definitely have to call Jiaojiao to come see it!” Hu shi stood with her hands on her hips, her face full of gloating: “Jiaojiao, come on, let’s go see Chen Xuan’s new wife. I heard she’s the county registrar’s precious daughter, a real young lady from an official family. The gifts they sent filled up an entire courtyard!”
“Sister-in-law, what are you doing? You know perfectly well Chen Xuan and our Jiaojiao were engaged. Isn’t this rubbing salt in her wound? Do you think our Jiaojiao hasn’t suffered enough? You’re her own aunt by marriage, how could you do this?”
The woman’s face turned deathly pale. She blocked Hu shi, not letting her get closer. Her thin body, in that moment, was like a mountain, standing steady and holding back the storm.
“Oh my, sister-in-law, listen to what you’re saying. We’re all from the same village, the Chen family is being generous, inviting everyone to eat, and I came in good faith to invite Jiaojiao, you keep making excuses, and now you’re throwing dirty water on me too?” Hu shi stood with her hands on her hips, a mocking curl at the corner of her mouth. “I’m Jiaojiao’s own aunt by marriage, isn’t it because I hope Jiaojiao can marry into a good family, so that we can bask in some of the glory too!”
As Hu shi spoke, she stepped forward and pulled at Li Jiaojiao.
Li Jiaojiao’s head throbbed as images that didn’t belong to her poured into her mind in a rush, frame by frame, scene by scene. This body was also called Li Jiaojiao, delicate and soft in appearance. The woman with the deathly pale face was this body’s mother, surnamed Wang, women of this era had no names, and were simply called “shi” after their surname, so: Wang shi!
That fair, young scholar, Chen Xuan, had placed first in this round of the 院試 examination, becoming the top candidate, and because of this had caught the eye of their county’s registrar, who had taken him as his son-in-law!
“Let go!”
Li Jiaojiao couldn’t shake off Hu shi’s hand. Small as Hu shi looked, she was surprisingly strong, and instead of breaking free, Li Jiaojiao found her wrist gripped tightly as Hu shi kept pulling her outward while talking.
“Jiaojiao, what are you being shy for? Go take a look. Chen Xuan’s new wife said she just wants to see what the prettiest girl in our Xunshui Village looks like. Come on, come on!”
Li Jiaojiao pulled too hard and ended up flinging herself away instead, striking her head on the corner of a cabinet. It split open instantly, and blood ran down her forehead. A round copper coin at her neck flashed with a beam of light and instantly went dark again. This all happened so fast that no one noticed except Li Jiaojiao, whose eyes had been struck by the flash!
“She’s bleeding, she’s bleeding!”
Wang shi scrambled up from the ground in fright, cupping Li Jiaojiao’s head, flustered and at a loss.
Li Jiaojiao pressed her hand to her forehead as blood ran down. She waved her hand: “It’s fine, Mother, don’t cry. Go find a clean cloth quickly and wrap it for me!”
Wang shi nodded in a scattered way and rushed around like a headless fly, looking everywhere for a clean cloth!
Hu shi gave an awkward laugh: “This has nothing to do with me, ah. I meant well, today’s such a big happy occasion for the Chen family, inviting the whole village to eat. They specifically said they wanted to invite Jiaojiao, I meant well too!”
Meant well?
Li Jiaojiao gave Hu shi a cold glance, thinking to herself that her relationship with Hu shi wasn’t particularly good or bad, but wasn’t Hu shi obviously trying to drive the original owner of this body to her death?
Now that Chen Xuan had become the county registrar’s son-in-law, everyone in the village was busy trying to curry favor with the Chen family, and Hu shi was one of them.
Li Jiaojiao, with white cloth wrapped around her head, held her head high, chest out, and swept a glance over the people gathered at the door to watch the show. She glanced at Hu shi and Wang shi again, then, supporting Wang shi, said to the people outside: “What is there to watch here? Don’t you all want to see me and Chen Xuan tear into each other? Come on, I’ll take you, let you all get an eyeful!”
Chen Xuan and Li Jiaojiao had already been engaged, but in order to marry the registrar’s daughter, the Chen family had shamelessly come to break off the engagement. Yet Chen Xuan wanted to have it both ways at home and abroad, and had secretly been writing love letters to Li Jiaojiao!
As a woman of the new era, what she hated most was exactly this kind of man, eating what’s in the bowl while eyeing what’s in the pot [1]eating what’s in the bowl while eyeing what’s in the pot (chi zhe wan li de, kan zhe guo li de, 吃着碗裏的，看着鍋裏的) Metaphor, being unfaithful/greedy, not content with what … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3210076_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3210076_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, keeping one foot in two boats, without even considering what he really was!
Wang shi clutched tightly at Li Jiaojiao’s sleeve, her expression tense and anxious. She called out softly: “Jiaojiao…”
Li Jiaojiao paid her no mind. She turned and picked up the letter on the ground, then went to under the pillow and dug out more than a dozen letters. Her eyes were full of mockery. Holding the letters in her hand, a faint fragrance lingered near her nose, and this fragrance made her head hurt even more. She found a basket, put the letters in it, and set it a little farther from herself, only then did she feel a bit more comfortable.
“Let’s go, then. Didn’t you all want to watch the show?”
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