Someone is here, but is he dead or alive? Why is he in her corn stalks?
"I’m sorry, I’m sorry..."
Granny Lu saw someone approaching and quickly stood up, not knowing where to place her hands.
"I’m just... just too cold, I’m just using your corn stalk to hide for a bit, I really didn’t take anything? Really didn’t..." She kept shaking her bony, thin hands; she was indeed frail.
Aunt Hua isn’t stingy, she was just startled, and besides, this person looked somewhat familiar.
She threw down the corn stalk in her hand and looked closely at the old woman’s face. Vaguely, indeed, she still bore some traces of her former demeanor; she did remember now.
"Elderly lady, are you... Du Family’s Aunt Lv?"
Granny Lu hadn’t expected anyone to recognize her. She squinted her eyes, looking at Aunt Hua for a long time, "Aren’t you... Ahua?"
"Yes, elderly lady," Aunt Hua felt her eyes heating up; they were from the same village after all. She was over a decade older than Du Ping, who she had watched grow up. She just never expected that before growing old, their appearances would change so drastically,
Oh, every family has its own difficult ordeal.
The Du family was poor, with two sons and a daughter. Originally, when the family was still together, they managed to scrape by. Later, when the sons reached the age to find wives, Eldest Brother married early and had already split from the family. Eldest Brother’s wife was not easy to get along with, so no one expected her to take care of the second son or the elders at home.
Seeing Eldest Brother marry, the second son became anxious; it was unjust. At his age, Eldest Brother already had a wife and had moved out, yet he had to stay at home taking care of the elderly and the young, and he had no wife.
However, by that time, the Du family was really struggling to make ends meet. It was impossible to find another wife for Eldest Brother first and then for the second son. Later, Mr. Du decided to marry off his daughter and use the dowry to find a wife for the second son, but Granny Lu disagreed.
The daughter was the youngest and weakest. Mr. Du always favored sons more than daughters, and most of the family’s food went to the two boys. Du Ping was skinny and petite, timid, and indecisive. If she married poorly, her life would be in jeopardy.
However, once Mr. Du had made a decision, there was nothing Granny Lu could do but weep helplessly as Mr. Du sold off his daughter to Qin Guohua. Back then, Qin Guohua was parentless; he was just an extra pair of hands, and he had saved some money in recent years. Seeing Du Ping was fairly good-looking, he sent someone to propose, and indeed, his wife was bought in, so he never treated Du Ping as a human being. She did all the work, in the fields and at home. Even her young son, Qin Xiangyang, was raised as labor from a young age. Poor Du Ping, who was already weak, became nearly hollow over the years. Barely managing to give birth to Qin Xiangnuan, she died a few months later. Everyone in the village knew about it later.
As for Du Ping’s family situation, Aunt Hua didn’t know much, only that after Du Ping married over, the Du family had completely split up. But poor Granny Lu, it was said that upon hearing of her daughter’s death, she couldn’t handle the shock and left home. Some said she went to look for her daughter, but Aunt Hua could guess the actual reason. The men in the Du family were raised by Mr. Du; how could they be good? Probably none of them wanted to take care of their elderly mother. Seeing Granny Lu in her current state, Aunt Gong was sure that this was truly a sin; how did things turn out this way?