The Lei family did not care about her pittance of work points either; during busy farming seasons, they merely had her cook and deliver meals at home.
The Lei family’s son did not look down on this foolish girl who had entered their home, and even taught her to recognize characters from time to time.
When Xiaoya reached her fifth year with the Lei family, the Lei son suddenly contracted a strange illness. He lost his appetite every day, felt completely devoid of strength, and no doctor anywhere could find what was wrong.
Gossip and rumors began to circulate in the village, claiming that Tong Xiaoya’s bad luck had dragged the Lei family down.
Tian Juhua began to feel relieved that she had let the Lei family raise that jinx, or else it would have been her own son suffering.
Others said Lei Wanqiang gelded too many animals; performing sterilizations on livestock meant cutting off their line of descent, accumulating too much karma.
The Lei family had good conditions before; later, when land was contracted out to individual households, Lei Wanqiang contracted the village’s veterinary clinic, making his family the first in the village to buy a television.
Yet, as soon as their son fell ill, their savings were completely drained.
They traveled to major hospitals all across the country and even sought out fortune-tellers who claimed to cure spiritual afflictions, but nothing worked.
In the blink of an eye, four years passed, and his condition only grew worse.
Even so, the Lei couple could not bring themselves to send the foolish girl back to the Tong family.
Xiaoya was two years younger than the Lei son, and over the years she had grown into a remarkably graceful young woman; with the Lei family raising her well, the girl’s underlying features were naturally lovely too.
Wang Yumei no longer dared to let Xiaoya go out alone; a girl who was both foolish and exceptionally beautiful was a disaster waiting to happen.
If she were bullied then, things could never be made clear.
Around this time, a fortune-teller offered a suggestion, spouting a bunch of flashy nonsense that ultimately meant the Lei family should find a wife for their son to marry in order to ward off ill fortune and bring good luck.
It was a new era now, and such feudal superstitions were forbidden.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and the couple had entertained the idea; however, given their son’s condition, if things went wrong, it would ruin a girl’s entire life.
The couple never even considered Tong Xiaoya.
They simply had not thought of it at all, as they had never raised her to be a child bride in the first place.
However, while they had not considered it, someone else had.
Although Tong Xiaoya did not often move about the village, she was still seen frequently; let alone for such a beautiful girl, plenty of eyes were fixed on her.
Tian Juhua never expected that a crazy girl would actually be raised by the Lei family into a celestial beauty; if she were not a fool, the Lei family’s threshold would have been broken by suitors.
The village was very large, divided into three areas. Where the Lei family lived was the village center, near the former village brigade and current village committee; Tong’s second uncle lived in the gully below the village—equivalent to one living near Tiananmen and the other living in Changping District outside the Sixth Ring Road.
Usually, there were really not many opportunities to meet.
Particularly after Tian Juhua heard that the Lei son was sick, she took a detour whenever possible, terrified that the Lei family would return the jinx to her household.
When she heard others talk about how beautiful the foolish girl had become, she did not believe it, but when she secretly snuck over to look, she felt she could hardly recognize her.
That waistline, that face, not a single detail was not alluring; if she were a bachelor, she could immediately drag this fool into a cornfield.
It just so happened that her younger son needed money to get married, so she turned her sights onto Tong Xiaoya.
Never mind that decent families were unwilling to marry a foolish wife; those lazy bums and rogues in and out of the village who could not secure a wife would definitely be willing.
Even if just for matters in bed and bearing heirs, they would break each other’s heads fighting for her.
This time, she took the initiative to come to their door, pulling rank as her second aunt and claiming it was for her niece’s own good, having found a good family for her.
Wang Yumei refused to accept it; had she raised the foolish girl for nine years just to let someone ruin her?
What good could possibly come out of this Tian Juhua, a woman so greedy she would pull a leg off a passing fly?
In less than three sentences, Wang Yumei tricked the truth out of her: Tian Juhua wanted to marry Xiaoya to a lazy bum in the neighboring village, a man nearly fifty years old, not much younger than Tong Xiaoya’s birth parents.
The lazy bum’s wife had died without leaving an heir; because he was lazy, extremely poor, and ugly, marrying a foolish wife was solely for carrying on his family line.
If Tong Xiaoya married him, she would certainly have no good days ahead.
Wang Yumei decided on the spot: rather than letting someone else ruin the foolish girl, it was better to keep her at home; even if she remained unmarried her whole life, it was better than a living hell.
Marrying her to her son to ward off bad luck—if it worked and her son woke up, everyone would be happy; if he could not pull through, it was still keeping good fortune within the family, and they would raise her like their own daughter.
Upon hearing this, Tian Juhua felt that marrying Xiaoya to anyone was fine, as long as it was to make a profit.
Bypassing her was impossible because the household registration was at her house.
She immediately opened her mouth wide, demanding one thousand yuan.
Currently, the bride price for a girl from a decent family was at most no more than one thousand yuan, but the circumstances were different.
Forget the fact that those girls’ families previously saw the Lei family’s good condition and the son’s good looks, viewing him as prime material for passing the college entrance exam and rushing to the Lei family’s home.
Now, the Lei family was heavily in debt, and their son had one foot in the grave; which family would be willing to marry off their daughter?
In the end, Wang Yumei bargained, offering the family’s “three big items” as the bride price: a fourteen-inch black-and-white television, a radio-cassette recorder, and a bicycle.
They simply could not produce cash anymore.
These were worth quite a bit of money too; though not brand new, there were still plenty of households in the village without a television.
It was more, not less, than the five hundred yuan promised by the lazy bum.
Besides, the Lei family did not covet that house either.
Wang Yumei immediately had Tian Juhua hand over the household registration, took Tong Xiaoya to the town to take a photo, and using her son’s previously taken ID photo, found someone to obtain the marriage certificate.
Without networked microcomputers back then, marriage certificates could be obtained without both parties present, as long as one knew someone and had photos.
It was not like those domineering CEO web novels where the Civil Affairs Bureau felt like their own home; rather, management was lax with loopholes, leading to many bigamous marriages and unexpected divorces.
The photo on the marriage certificate did not need to be a joint photo either; sticking two individual photos together was enough.
Upon returning, Wang Yumei hosted the wedding for the two of them.
With one lying on the kang bed unconscious and the other completely foolish, the marriage was finalized just like that.
According to the fortune-teller, the young couple had to be left alone in one room that night, with the bride watching over the groom.
The fortune-teller had even carefully matched their birth charts, claiming the two were a great match—whether true or false, nobody knew.
The Lei family’s son had probably died the moment Xiaoya stepped into the room.
However, what happened to Xiaoya remained unknown.
Looking at Tong Xiaoqian’s eyes, she must have cried quite severely.
Presumably, she regarded the Lei family’s son as family, and seeing a family member leave her once more, she could not take the shock and ascended to heaven on the spot.
Hearing Lei Yihong finish his story, Tong Xiaoqian was instantly numb.
This was far more exciting and dramatic than the eighteen-episode TV drama series she had imagined in her head.
She originally thought she would hear a melodramatic plot about a wealthy child swapped at birth, never expecting to hear a story that was simply beyond absurd.
She looked at Lei Yihong, then at the furnishings in the room, and finally let her gaze settle on the calendar on the wall, her expression beyond description.
As if remembering something, Lei Yihong lifted the pillow; underneath, there indeed lay two marriage certificates.
They had been stuffed under the pillow by Wang Yumei after the marriage certificates were obtained.