Yu Feifei’s beautiful and gentle face bloomed with delight. She reached into her pocket, pulled out all the money, and counted it. There were 2,300 yuan in total. “Not bad. Not too much, not too little. Later on, I’ll pull off an even bigger one!”
Yu Fangfang couldn’t hold back her amusement. “These men are truly despicable. They can even bring themselves to touch a friend’s wife. Like dogs, they’ll eat anything!”
“A wife is not as good as a concubine, a concubine is not as good as a secret lover, and a secret lover is not as good as someone you cannot have,” Yu Feifei curled her lip. “I will be 20 on my ID card soon. Once I’m of age, Dong Liang will definitely make me register the marriage with him. You need to speed things up on your end, too.”
“Understood.” Yu Fangfang dismissed it lightly with an easy answer.
Early in the morning, Lin Qionghua accompanied her father to the stall. While her father did business, she ran to the bookstore to buy practice papers. Once the cold dishes and popsicles were sold out, they returned together.
Just as they entered the village, they saw a crowd of people gathered in front of Dong Liang’s house, watching the commotion.
Lin Qionghua, never one to shy away from trouble, told her father and slipped away to Dong Liang’s gate. She peeked inside and saw her second aunt standing at the entrance, neck stretched out as she cursed at the top of her lungs.
“Yu Fangfang, you little vixen! You actually incited my son to steal money. You…”
The villagers pointed and whispered at Dong Liang’s house. Dong Liang was not home, so Yu Feifei stepped out to preside over the matter. “My sister is not dating your son. In our hometown, the bride price is ten thousand yuan. If you cannot afford it, do not let your son harass my sister. You are ruining my sister’s reputation. How is she supposed to get married in the future?!”
Zhao Cuilan was so angry she nearly tipped over backward. “What did you say?! It was clearly your sister who was pestering my son.”
Yu Feifei glanced at Dafeng. “Him? Look at him. My sister pestering him? Her eyes aren’t blind! Take him away immediately and stop making a fool of yourself here.”
When it came to cursing, Zhao Cuilan was no match for Yu Feifei.
Unable to win the argument, Zhao Cuilan grabbed her son and tried to force him to leave, but he refused to go, kneeling instead to beg her, “Mom, please have a heart and bless my union with Fangfang. I truly love her.”
Zhao Cuilan was so angry she wanted to slap her son, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She could only command her husband firmly to help bring him home.
No matter how Dafeng struggled, they refused to budge.
The other villagers watching the spectacle left along with them.
After watching the show, Lin Qionghua turned and walked away.
As she entered the alley, she saw her eldest uncle standing at the entrance of the village talking to a strange man. She found the man a bit familiar, as if she had seen him somewhere before.
But no matter how hard Lin Qionghua tried to think, she couldn’t remember. Since she couldn’t recall, she gave up on it, walked over, and wanted to listen to what he was saying to her uncle.
By the time she got closer, she realized they had already finished talking. The man waved at her uncle, “Think it over carefully; I will come back in three days!”
The man rode his bicycle away. Watching his retreating figure, Lin Qionghua turned to ask her uncle, “Who is that person?”
Lin Weimu didn’t tell her, “The second uncle of the family your eldest cousin married into.”
Lin Qionghua wanted to ask what he had been discussing with the man, but Lin Weimu clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
“Uncle, why haven’t you been going to the market lately?” Lin Qionghua felt that doing business could not be “fishing for three days and drying nets for two”—it was a long-term process.
Lin Weimu sighed heavily. “What’s the use of making so much money! You can’t take it with you when you are born, and you can’t take it with you when you die. The money I have now is enough for me.”
Lin Qionghua felt helpless. The older generation held traditional thoughts; they lived their whole lives for their children. Without a next generation to carry on their surname, they felt their lineage was broken and life had lost its hope.
She thought for a moment. “I helped you persuade Sister Xinghua last time; perhaps she will stay.”
Lin Weimu, however, no longer held out hope. He waved his hand. “She has a soft personality. Even if she really stayed, I’m afraid by the time I kick the bucket, the child will eventually change her surname back. It’s better not to go through all the trouble.”
Lin Qionghua had indeed seen many cases of “returning the surname to the original clan” after three generations. Her uncle’s worry was not unfounded.
Lin Weimu asked Lin Qionghua, “Do you think it’s reliable to adopt a child to raise?”
Lin Qionghua was slightly startled. After thinking about it, she said, “Actually, it’s alright. If the child was abandoned by her parents, and if you raise her just like a boy, teaching her the ways of survival rather than grooming her as someone else’s daughter-in-law, she will definitely identify with this family in the future and won’t think about marrying out.”
Family planning was extremely strict now, and she had seen baby girls left on the side of the road, euphemistically called “free-range raising.”
Lin Weimu was slightly stunned and waved his hand. “I’m never raising a girl again. None of my three daughters were willing to stay and have a husband marry into the family; I won’t take such a big risk.”
Lin Qionghua felt he couldn’t be so biased. “Uncle, you can’t blame my eldest and second cousins. The eldest cousin married out because the family’s situation was bad, and you didn’t have the ability to have a husband marry in; the second cousin was due to health issues. Only the third cousin explicitly refused you.”
Lin Weimu sighed, “Isn’t one failure enough?! I don’t want to try again. At my age, I don’t have that much energy to raise children. There is only one chance left.”
Lin Qionghua always felt he was acting strange. Could it be that her uncle wanted to adopt a boy? But she had only seen baby girls abandoned on the roadside, never a baby boy.
She returned home and focused on her practice exercises, then ate dinner. Until the night, she tossed and turned, unable to sleep, always feeling that there was more to her uncle’s words. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright; she seemed to have remembered who that man was.
In her previous life, when she and her mother returned to visit relatives three years later, they saw a trafficker’s poster on the bus window. It had been too long, which was why she hadn’t remembered it immediately.
It was already late, so Lin Qionghua couldn’t go to find her uncle. The next day, before dawn, she went to find him.
Lin Weimu had just finished breakfast and wasn’t at home; he had gone to the fields.
Lin Qionghua rushed to the fields without stopping and saw her uncle watering the vegetables.
She walked up to him in a few strides and asked, “Uncle, is that man planning to sell a child to you?”
Lin Weimu almost dropped his ladle. He froze for a moment and continued watering, “What nonsense are you talking about? It’s not selling; he is the second uncle of your cousin’s husband. We are close relatives. He couldn’t possibly scam me.”
There was no such thing as “the buyer is as guilty as the seller” at this time, but if a child trafficked by a human trafficker were one day identified and taken back, everything would be lost.
Lin Qionghua was helpless; people at this time generally believed that relatives could not deceive them. She didn’t correct his claim. “Where did the child come from?”
Lin Weimu explained, “He has a friend who worked at a construction site and died after falling from a high place. The wife is young and abandoned the child to remarry. The old couple is old and relies on farming to support themselves. They can’t afford to raise the child, so they want to hand the child to me and have me give the old couple a sum of money for their old age.”
The reason was impeccable; Lin Qionghua couldn’t find a flaw, but she wouldn’t be mistaken—that man was a human trafficker, and all his reasons were lies.
She looked at her uncle. “Did you agree?”
Lin Weimu sighed, “I didn’t agree! I don’t want to raise someone else’s child. I have my own children; raising someone else’s child makes me feel like a sucker!”
Lin Qionghua nodded. Her uncle was not just obsessed with the inheritance of the surname; he also cared about bloodlines.
She didn’t tell her uncle the man’s identity and asked, “Will he come back in three days?”
Lin Weimu straightened his back and looked at her. “He said he’d bring the child over in three days and let me take a look; maybe there will be a connection!”
He didn’t know what “connection” meant, but the idea of raising someone else’s child made him feel uncomfortable.
“Then why did you say yesterday that you wanted to raise a boy?” Lin Qionghua watched him. How could her uncle change his tune every day? This was too unreliable.
Lin Weimu didn’t deny it. “I did think about it, but I can’t overcome that hurdle in my heart.”
Lin Qionghua felt the human trafficker was right; perhaps once her uncle saw the child, his psychological defenses would break. After all, according to the trafficker’s story, the child’s father was dead and the mother had remarried; her uncle adopting the child could be considered a good deed. When doing a good deed, how could his mood be bad?
She turned and left. When she returned home, she saw Song Lanfang’s black face.
“Where did you die? You didn’t eat breakfast and disappeared early in the morning.”
Lin Qionghua clutched her bottom, dodging her mother, and ran to the main room. “I just went to see my uncle.”
Song Lanfang brought the food from the kitchen and set it on the table. “What business did you have with your uncle so early in the morning?”
Lin Qionghua told her about her uncle possibly adopting a boy.
Song Lanfang thought her brother-in-law and sister-in-law were a bit muddled. “They are at that age; raising an infant—twenty years later, when the child is grown, will they still be alive? Is this not just being bored and having nothing to do?!”
Although the Lin family consisted of three brothers, the parents had a total of ten children, seven of whom survived. The eldest, Lin Weimu, and the youngest, Lin Weishen, were nineteen years apart. The eldest brother was 50 this year; in another twenty years, he would be 70. How many men could live to that age in this day and age?!
Lin Qionghua responded in agreement.
Song Lanfang couldn’t sit still and ran to her sister-in-law’s house to scout for information.
Mu Xiaocao was at home cleaning. Seeing her come over, she asked, “Something up?”
Song Lanfang wasn’t very close to her sister-in-law. When they hadn’t separated the household, the two had bickered, but the conflict wasn’t huge; it was just a matter of keeping up appearances. She asked her sister-in-law if she wanted to adopt an infant.
Mu Xiaocao sighed, “I have that intention. After the two daughters marry, there’s only Lihua left; what will she do in the future? Adopting a child and treating her as if she were Lihua’s own—that would work.”
Song Lanfang suddenly understood; so that was it. “You’re raising her as a granddaughter? Then Lihua won’t get married?”
Don’t let Lihua’s low intelligence fool you; women never struggle to find a husband.
Mu Xiaocao was also considering this. “Some time ago, Old Zhou proposed marriage to his eldest son.”
This Old Zhou wasn’t Zhou Qiang, but his second brother, Zhou Gang, who had three sons with very low intelligence. Usually, people called them “fools,” but actually, they just had low IQs, a bit stupider than normal people. Normal IQ is 90-110; theirs was about 80, a little better than Forrest Gump. They could do both chores and farm work.
Song Lanfang really hadn’t known about this, but she thought getting married was fine. “Old Zhou is an honest man. Now that Dalin Village has been demolished, his three sons probably can only afford to marry a wife for one of them. If the money stays in their hands and they don’t spend it recklessly, it’s enough for their family to live on.”
She had once seen a female lunatic whose parents had both died. No one would marry her, so the village bachelors would sneak into her house in the dark, and she would get pregnant once a year, eventually dying when giving birth to her eighth child.
The eldest brother and sister-in-law were getting old. If they were gone in the future and Lihua never married, it would be quite dangerous. If she married Old Zhou’s son, at least no one would dare to bully Lihua openly.
Mu Xiaocao was worried. “But Zhou Daliang isn’t bright in the head; I’m afraid they’ll give birth to another fool. How will they live their lives then?”
Song Lanfang felt Lihua’s child might not necessarily be a fool, but she couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t be. She chimed in, “Yeah. It’s really hard to choose.”
Mu Xiaocao was torn. “Lihua wasn’t born a fool; she only became one after getting sick when she was little.”
Twenty years ago, medical conditions were poor. There wasn’t even a hospital in the town. To see a doctor, one either went to the village clinic or the county hospital. Lihua had been cured into a fool by a doctor at the clinic who prescribed the wrong medicine.
Song Lanfang remembered that Lihua before the age of five had been clever, lovely, and laughed whenever she saw people.
Mu Xiaocao said indignantly, “But Zhou Daliang’s three brothers weren’t sick; their family has hereditary stupidity.”
Seeing her torn like a person arguing with themselves, saying both the positive and negative, Song Lanfang felt helpless. “Where is there hereditary stupidity? His parents aren’t fools.” Song Lanfang thought for a moment, “If you are worried, then don’t let Lihua have children.”
Mu Xiaocao sighed, “Once a woman is married, she belongs to the in-laws; it’s not my place to speak. Besides, why would they spend money to marry Lihua if not to let her have children?”
Song Lanfang couldn’t say anything more. “Then think about it carefully. This is indeed a big matter.”
She stayed for a while and then went home.
Seeing her return, Lin Qionghua hurried to ask, “Did eldest aunt want to adopt a baby boy?”
“She did mention it.” Song Lanfang sighed. “But she hasn’t made up her mind yet.”
Lin Qionghua put away the test papers. “Mom, these papers are too simple. Take me to the Xinhua Bookstore in the county. I want to buy a few more sets of papers to improve my grades.”
When it came to her daughter’s studies, Song Lanfang was very willing to spend money. She returned to the room to get the money and lifted her chin. “Let’s go!”
Arriving at the Xinhua Bookstore in the county, Lin Qionghua picked out several sets of test papers. After paying, their stomachs were growling with hunger. Song Lanfang wanted to take her to a nearby snack bar to eat, but Lin Qionghua pulled at her. “Mom, I know which place is delicious; let’s go eat there.”
Song Lanfang was amused by her. “You’ve only been to the county a few times; how do you know which shop is good?”
“Mom, believe me, this shop is really delicious.” Lin Qionghua was adamant. “I passed by that shop when I was on the bus before, and a lot of people were queuing at the door. If it weren’t delicious, why would there be so many people?”
Song Lanfang thought that sounded reasonable. But when they arrived at the destination, she was stunned. Pointing at the gate of the “Public Security Bureau,” she looked at her daughter in disbelief, “Are you sure this is a place to eat?!”