After the betrothal gift negotiation collapsed, I turned around and married a wealthy man.

Rundown was her first impression of this place.

Many houses have collapsed, and the rotten houses are covered with weeds as tall as a person. Some of the houses that have not collapsed are the kind of bungalows made of mud bricks, with pits on the walls, and traces of time are everywhere.

The village was very quiet, except for the occasional barking of dogs.

Passing by several houses, the doors were all locked.

After walking for a while, I finally saw a gray-haired old woman sitting in a dam.

Wang Ye seemed to have seen a savior. He quickly walked over and asked about where Lily's family lived.

The old woman couldn't understand what he said, and he couldn't understand what the old man said, but the old man talked a lot. The two of them talked nonsensically for a long time, but they didn't even get a clear answer.

Qiao Xing glanced at Qin Ce. He put his hands in his pockets and looked around.

Qiao Xing suddenly felt that his worries were not unreasonable. In this kind of ravine, there was a language barrier and transportation was inconvenient. If something happened, the sky and the earth would not respond.

She tried to think about it. If Qin Ce wasn't here and it was dark now, she would definitely be scared.

But now that he was by her side, she felt inexplicably at ease.

Soon, a man in his 40s came back with a hoe. He stared at the three of them warily and spoke in dialect.

Although I couldn't understand it, I could roughly guess what he said from his tone.

Wang Ye quickly stepped forward and said, "Uncle, we are here to find someone. Do you know where Hu Lili's home is?"

When the man heard that they were looking for someone, he carefully looked at the clothes of the three of them. His face became less wary, but he did not put down the hoe in his hand.

He spoke in broken Mandarin mixed with dialect, "Hu Lili? Is it Hu Li? Is it Hu Mazi's family?"

Wang Ye scratched his head, who was Hu Mazi?If the surname is Hu, it should be correct. He nodded like a chicken pecking at rice, "Yes, yes, I am Lily's boyfriend. Lily and I are getting married. I came to pick up her parents to attend the wedding."

Hearing this, the man also started gossiping.

"Oh, Xiaoli is successful. She has found a boyfriend in the city! I will bring you a stool."

After saying that, the man ran into the house, brought out a few small stools and handed them to the three of them, "Come and sit down, I'm telling you, Hu Mazi is doing evil."

Qiao Xing didn't want to sit down at first, but after hearing this, she and Wang Ye became interested and quickly sat down to eat.

Qin Ce shook his head and turned around to go to the intersection. He was not interested in listening to these gossips because he already knew them all.

Wang Ye quickly asked: "What's going on?"

The man said: "This Hu Mazi died two years ago. He died of illness. You don't know. He died and neither his daughter nor son came back."

Qiao Xing and Wang Ye looked at each other and saw the shock in each other's eyes.

"Why?" Wang Ye asked.

"Hey! What a sinner, if you ask me, it's his own fault. When he was young, he gave birth to a precious son. He loved it so much that he sold everything so that his son could study..."

The couple favored boys over girls, especially Hu Mazi, who also had a bad temper. They only wanted their children to become successful. The son didn't like going to school, so he forced his son to study. If he didn't go, he would be beaten.

When his daughter wanted to go to school, he refused to let her do farm work. The five or six-year-old girl carried a basket on her back and went to the fields to move corn and dig sweet potatoes. If she was slow, she would be scolded and beaten.

As for his son, he does nothing. Hu Mazi thinks that he is good at studying and will be successful in the future, so he only needs to be responsible for studying.

He raised his son so that he was good at eating and lazy. Although he later became good at studying, he went away to college and never came back. He did come back once last year and swindled his mother's pension money away.

Hu Mazi's daughter-in-law was a little better. Seeing that her daughter wanted to study, she secretly saved money to pay for her daughter's tuition.

Unfortunately, after only two years of schooling, Hu Mazi took her back from school and continued to force her to work.

The daughter also tried her best, picked up the books her brother didn't want, and studied secretly on her own. Later, she took the money saved by her mother and went to the junior high school in the next town. Later, she heard that she was admitted to a good high school. Hu Mazi then put aside her prejudices and Agree with her to continue studying.

Who knew that my daughter would go to college and follow her brother's example and never come back.

When Hu Mazi died, he couldn't contact the two of them. He cried sadly when he died, but he only cried about the unfilial piety of his children, and he didn't know what he had done wrong until his death.

Now Lily's mother is left alone guarding the old house. She is old and has bad legs and feet, so she cannot work.

Her son came back last year and said that his grandson was studying in a key primary school and wanted to buy a house in the school district, so he asked the elderly to lend him his savings to buy a house.

When he bought a house, he took her to the city to live in her old age. But this unfilial son disappeared after taking the money, and he didn't care about his mother's life or death.

Now the old lady is living a miserable life, growing fruits and vegetables in the field outside her door. When the millet is harvested in autumn, she will go to the field to pick up some missing rice ears and grind them into rice for food.

The people in the village saw her as pitiful, and would give her some of the vegetables they grew too much.

When Wang Ye heard this, his fists clenched and he said angrily: "Why is his son like this! What a beast!"

The man sighed, "Who knows? Hu Jun is born without a conscience, and so is Xiaoli. Her mother is so kind to her, but she doesn't even bother to come back to see her."

Perhaps, in Lily's eyes, her mother obeyed her father and did not dare to resist him, so she became his father's accomplice.

If he was really good to her, he wouldn't have chosen to remain silent when Hu Mazi took her back from school.

Even if he was nice to her, he would only do it secretly.

Qiao Xing didn't want to express an opinion because she didn't live in such an environment, but she knew how much damage a family that favored sons over daughters would cause to childhood.

No wonder Lily always wants to show her glamorous side in front of others. This is probably brought about by her original family.

Use what you think is the most dazzling side to cover up the scars in your heart and cut off the unbearable connection with the past.

"Where is her home?" Wang Ye asked.

The man pointed to the back of the house, "Just go through the bamboo forest."

Wang Ye's face was heavy, and he didn't know whether he was angry or worried about Lily's past.

He stood up, thanked the man, and left with Qiao Xing.

Qin Ce turned around and looked at the two of them. It could be seen that both of them had complicated moods.

"Let's go to Lily's house." Wang Ye said.

So, the three of them walked through a bamboo forest and finally arrived at Lily's house, which was also an earthen house that was about to collapse.

There was a white-haired woman sitting at the door of the house. She was peeling an old pumpkin with great effort.

"Is she Hu Li's mother?" Wang Ye came to the woman and asked.

When the woman heard the word Hu Li, she stopped moving her hands and looked up at Wang Ye.