The fast-traveling girl has no feelings for her

Chapter 398 Young Town ([-])
After noon, a middle-aged man with a straw hat came out of the courtyard of the Liu family.

He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt and old mud-stained trousers with rolled-up hems.

The door of Liu's courtyard was open, the big man stepped into his own courtyard, and got into the kitchen familiarly.

He scooped water from the water tank with a gourd ladle, poured it into his mouth, and the cold water rushed into his stomach, which made the hot summer air on his body dissipate.

After he finished drinking the water, he reached out and touched his mouth, and then he realized that his mother-in-law and son were not in the yard.

Maybe it was too hot, so the two of them hid in the house to rest.

Hmph, on this scorching hot day, he only came back after working in the fields alone. The couple are happy to rest at home!

The big man muttered, and walked out of the kitchen door towards the main house of the family.

In the master bedroom, Mother Liu was sitting at the table sorting out a small pile of bright red paper. She folded the red paper layer by layer and glued it to the lantern frame made of thin bamboo strips with rice paste. .

Not long after, a complete red lantern took shape in her hands.

The lantern at this time can only be said to have a shape, and the wick for burning inside is not ready yet.

I saw Mother Liu unhurriedly opened a lacquer box with a pattern of plum blossoms and herald spring on the table. There were a few scattered small jewelry on the top of the lacquer box, and there was another layer under the jewelry box.

She took out the upper jewelry box, and took out an object wrapped in muslin from the lower compartment.

It wasn't until she opened the muslin layer by layer that the contents inside were completely exposed.

It was a dozen sheets of paper cut into human shapes, and a small and clean clam shell.

Liu's mother first took a piece of human-shaped paper, and then opened the clam shell, and took out a small piece of the shiny, white frosty thing made of something with her little finger, and evenly Painted on both sides of the doll paper.

When she carefully put the frosted human-shaped paper into the lantern, the paper automatically stood up at the bottom of the lantern.

Before Mother Liu could take a closer look, there was a sudden "squeak" sound outside the door, which shocked her so much that she almost lost her grip on the lantern in her hand.

The person who pushed the door open from outside was a middle-aged man wearing an undershirt. He was Liu Quanshuan's father.

Mother Liu turned her head to see the person coming, and immediately gave her man a white look, "I said, can't you knock on the door and make a noise before you enter the house? Suddenly you came in without saying a word, who are you trying to scare?" Woolen cloth?"

After entering the house, Liu Quanshuan wiped his sweat with a sweat towel. After hearing what his wife said, he replied indifferently, "You are the only one who is afraid of being frightened? You didn't even close the gate of our yard. If you come in You bad guy, I want to see what you do..."

Mother Liu spat lightly when she heard the words, "Fuck, where is the bad guy in this day and night? You're the only one talking nonsense!"

Father Liu switched the sweat towel from his left hand to his right, and after wiping off the sweat and water stains behind him, he looked up and saw the red lantern in Mother Liu's hand. His hand, which was about to drop the sweat towel, froze suddenly Mid-air.

In his mind, a bunch of fragments of past memories suddenly popped up uncontrollably.

It was a picture of a man in his thirties, carefully avoiding the sight of others, and secretly knocking on a small wooden house.

The person living in the wooden house is the man's own mother.

Rather than saying that the man's mother lived in the wooden house, it would be better to say that she was locked in it.

In their town, there is an old rule that has been handed down for many years, that is, if every household has an elderly person who is 50 years old, they must pay tribute to the ancestral house in the north of the town.

Once the ancestral house takes in someone else's family, it can keep that family's house safe, and the future generations will be free from worries and diseases.

The man's mother is old. She has lived in the town for fifty years.

Although she used to be a mother who brought up her child with shit and urine back then, when her son had a wife, and the wife gave her a grandson, and even the grandson grew up, she knew that she was a child. It's time to go.

The isolated cabins in the north of the town are all prepared for old people like them.

The man's mother is the cabin he entered.

For fear that people would run away, the wooden house only opened an opening on the top of the head, and asked people to climb the ladder to the roof first, then tied them with ropes, sent them down into the wooden house, and put down some water and food along the way.

The man's mother is tied by himself with a rope and let down bit by bit.

The sign with auspicious times on it hanging outside his mother's house was also written by himself.

"Mother, your son is leaving, why don't you make a sound?"

The man standing outside the wooden house still wanted to hear what his mother had to say, but the people inside just kept silent.

The man didn't know if his mother hated him in her heart.

In the days after he came back, he tossed and turned all night and couldn't sleep well.

Until the auspicious day he chose for his mother passed, when he took his mother-in-law to the wooden house again, the sign on the wooden house had disappeared. The latter has already taken the person away.

The man climbed up the ladder to the roof, then followed a rope connecting the outside and entered the wooden house.

On the wooden bed covered with only a thin mat, there was a small clam resting quietly.

The man recognized the clam by its appearance.

When he was a child, his mother used the ointment of this clam to wipe paper figurines and light red lanterns for him, saying that it would bless him to grow up safely.

But now, the mother who once watched him devour food and smiled with crooked eyebrows was no longer there.

The only thing she left him was this fat clam.

After the man bent down and picked up the clam shell, he did not leave in a hurry, but walked around the wooden house where his mother last lived several times.

He found that the pot of water in the corner of the room was still full after opening the lid.He touched the inside with his hand, only to find that the inner wall was extremely wet and slippery, and moss was about to grow.

He lifted the lid of the jar next to the water tank to hold the naan bread. He saw that the naan bread inside had already been as hard as iron and stone. With the old man's teeth, he couldn't eat them at all.

Judging from the amount of water and naan bread, it is obvious that the people living in the wooden huts have survived these days without eating or drinking.

The man thought that it was very hard for him to sleep well at home, but he didn't expect his mother to stay alone in this dark cabin for several days without eating or drinking, until the day of her death arrival.

At that moment, the man's knees became weak and he knelt on the ground, his face already filled with tears.

But after he finished crying and came out of the wooden house, the incident gradually passed away.

A man has his own home, he has his own wife and son, and he has his own life to live. It is impossible to think about his old mother who has passed away all the time.

At this moment, it was only after he saw the clam shell in his wife's hand that he recalled the previous events, and he was stunned for a long time.

Mother Liu at this end has already finished the red lanterns thoroughly, and only waits for the night to get dark before hanging the lanterns out.

People who can put grease on paper figurines can make a small wish before hanging a lantern every night.

The wish Mother Liu wanted to make tonight was to ask her ancestors to bless her, and to ask her ancestors to let her son marry the girl he liked.

After finishing making the lantern, Mother Liu carefully put the clam shell back under her jewelry box, then pressed the upper layer, and finally closed the lid of the lacquer box and put a small lock on the outside.

At this time, Liu's father walked slowly to the chair opposite her and sat down.

"Why did you suddenly grease the lantern today?"

Mother Liu got up and put the lacquer box into her locker, and replied without turning her head, "You were not at home at noon today, so I don't know that your son brought back a beautiful girl from other places. I think our Shuanzi eyes The child is about to stick to him, so I simply light a lantern for him and ask my ancestors for a favor."

"A foreign girl?"

Father Liu was stunned, "How could people from other places enter our town?"

"Maybe she got lost. Didn't you forget that a foreign woman came to our town ten years ago? But the one ten years ago was already 30 years old. How can this sixteen-year-old woman come here?" The seven-year-old girl looks tender?"

Hearing Liu's mother talking about the woman from ten years ago, Liu's father's two thick eyebrows gradually frowned.

On that day ten years ago, a strange woman came to their town.

It's just that this woman is not familiar with the place here, and no one is willing to accept her. In the end, she was spotted by a family and used her as a tribute to the ancestral house.

But that family didn't just eat meat for themselves, they also took other people in their town to drink some soup, which was pretty good.

This time, after ten years, a foreign woman comes to town again. Is there any connection between the two?

After this thought flashed through Father Liu's mind, he quickly threw it out again.

No, the two couldn't possibly have anything to do with each other.

Ten years have passed. If that woman had brothers or family, the person she was looking for would have been found long ago. Maybe she was a homeless female beggar.

Thinking of this, Father Liu spread his hands flat on his legs.

He looked at Mother Liu who straightened up after putting away the things, and said, "I think that girl who is new to the town still needs to observe and observe, and she can't just order someone casually. The matter of Shuanzi's marriage is not the same. Hurry at this moment."

After hearing this, Mother Liu walked towards him from far to near, and then sat down on the original chair.

She put her hands on the table and stretched out her fingers to count.

"How can Shuanzi get married? Look, Shuanzi is eighteen years old this year. I gave birth to him at the age of 20, and I am 38 years old this year. If he can marry a wife this year, it will be next year at the earliest. I hold my grandson."

"I'm going to live to be 50 years old, so I can only take care of my grandson for ten years at most. If Shuanzi gets married later, I will have to delay my grandson's day. How can I afford to wait? Let alone you who are the head of the family You are two or three years younger than me, you should be more anxious than me about this!"

After listening to Liu's mother's careful words, Liu's father suppressed a dull blue face, and after a long time he uttered a sentence, "You are 50 years old, aren't you afraid of that day?"

Liu's mother was shocked, she naturally knew what "that day" meant in her man's words.

She also knew where the clam fat she had just used to light a lantern for her son to make a wish came from.

She also knows that when she is over 50 years old, when that day comes, she will eventually become the clam shell in the hands of her daughter-in-law to pray for her grandson.

Things that are passed down from generation to generation, these are the rules and they cannot be broken.

How can there be a mother in this world who doesn’t wish for the good of her child, and a grandmother who doesn’t wish for the good of her grandson?

Even if there really was one outside, it would never happen in this town.

It's not like she hasn't heard from older women in the past that some women are unwilling to have children or can't have children, and they want to avoid the fate of paying tribute.

But the final fate of these individuals was that they paid tribute earlier than others, and even when they were in their forties, they were sent into the cabin by the whole town and hung a wooden sign with the auspicious time.

The older women say this is life.

Women who can bear children are better off than women who cannot bear children, so they can be filial to their husbands and live longer.

In this regard, Liu's mother deeply agreed and believed in it.

So the question Father Liu asked didn't frighten her, on the contrary, it strengthened her belief in marrying a daughter-in-law for her son to carry on the family line.

She replied in a strong tone, "Isn't that day still early? The matter of Xiaoshuan marrying a wife has to be done quickly. If it is not enough for me to light a lantern today, tomorrow or later, I will Keep going! I don’t believe that our Liu family can’t find a daughter-in-law based on their conditions!”

Regarding Liu's mother's words, Liu's father was noncommittal.

He stood up slowly holding the table, waved his hands at her and said, "Alright, you can do whatever you want. I'm tired, I want to go to sleep first."

Mother Liu looked at her man's slightly tired expression, and she swallowed the words that were about to accuse him of disregarding his family.

Forget it, which man can help a woman take care of her family these days?

If you want to count on him, you might as well rely on yourself!

Mother Liu is still actively preparing for her son to marry a wife. On the other side, a girl from a foreign country who she regards as a candidate for a daughter-in-law just happened to come out of the ancestral house that everyone in the town respects.

Outside the ancestral house, the afternoon sun was still scorching the earth.

The air convection, distorted by the heat permeating the air, can almost be seen with the naked eye.

But the land around the ancestral house is shady and cool.

The person who walked out of the old house looked back at the dilapidated house behind him.

She had been checking inside and outside for a long time, but she didn't find anything unusual.

However, the strange feeling that this house brought to her has never dissipated.

Just as she lowered her head and thought about whether to investigate other places in the town, there was a sudden sound of someone knocking on the door of a small wooden house closest to her.

The girl with extremely sensitive hearing suddenly raised her head to look at the wooden house that made the sound.

(End of this chapter)