It was still the adobe house, and it was the courtyard where there was nothing, except for an iron ploughshare with a broken horn outside the yard, which was almost the most valuable thing in the house.

Zhang Xiaoying stood in the courtyard, looking at the familiar courtyard, only to feel that her body was light and fluttering, and she was wandering in all directions for a while, as if she was in a dream.

She clearly remembered that she hanged herself from the crooked neck tree at the entrance of the village, and the pain in her neck could still be felt faintly, but why did she get here in a blink of an eye?

In a trance, there seemed to be a voice saying to her, "It's good to be back, it's good to be back." ”

The voice was familiar, but it was so unfamiliar that I couldn't remember where I had heard it.

She pinched herself hard, trying to clear her mind, when she suddenly heard someone talking in the hall, it was the voice of her mother and eldest brother.

"Iron head, you are thirty years old this year, when will you be a head if you don't get married? Our Zhang family still has to pass on the ancestry. ”

The elder brother Zhang Xiaoqing in the house was silent for a while, he held a dry tobacco pouch in his hand, knocked lightly on the corner of the dilapidated table, and said: "Mother, then you can't marry Xiaoying to Wang Kidnapper, he is eighteen years older than Xiaoying, not to mention lame, his temper is not good, even his wife scolds, can Xiaoying marry her?" ”

Aunt Du sighed, "It's all the meat that fell from my body, can I not feel sorry for Xiaoying?" But what can be done? Our family is poor, we can't afford the bride price, no girl is willing to marry, and now the Zhang family proposes to change relatives, Xiaoying marries Wang Guizi, and the Zhang family will marry a daughter. I inquired about that girl, her name is Cuilan, she is beautiful, she is real, twenty-five years old, and she is just right for you. ”

Zhang Xiaoqing shook his head, "No, I don't want to sacrifice Xiaoying, she is only sixteen years old this year, so she can't be ruined like this." ”

Aunt Du was angry, "If you don't want to, then watch me die?" Your father died early, and I brought up the two of you alone, hoping that you could get married and have children, so as to continue the incense for the Zhang family. If you don't get married, even if I die, I won't have the face to see your father. I'm not alive......" she said, covering her face and crying.

It is not easy to be a widow, in this era, a woman has lived with two children for so many years, and the sourness can be imagined.

Zhang Xiaoqing let out a long sigh in the room, his voice was helpless and sad, "It's all my incompetence as an elder brother." ”

He feels sorry for his mother, but he also feels sorry for his sister.

Zhang Xiaoying listened outside and sighed.

Everything is going to happen again, is her misfortune going to happen again?

Although her brother was unwilling, he did not resist his mother in the end. His mother threatened him with death, so he agreed to change his relatives and married himself to Wang Guizi, who was eighteen years older, and he married Wang Cuilan, the sister of Wang Guizi.

After marriage, my brother's life was barely happy, poor was a little poor, but the sister-in-law of the Wang family was virtuous, hard-working, and gave birth to a son and a daughter, and the family was still harmonious.

It's just that in the end, it hurt her, and she married Wang Guizi, which was the beginning of her miserable life.

In the first year, the Wang family treated her well, but after a year, she didn't move in her stomach and didn't give birth to a child, the Wang family changed their faces, and her mother-in-law made all kinds of difficulties for her, and even Wang Kidnapper began to yell at her, sometimes punching and kicking her when she was unhappy.

Later, a year later, when Wang's younger brother got married, and his brother's daughter-in-law entered the door, her pain reached its peak.

The younger brother-in-law has a good family background, and she can speak, and her mother-in-law is smiling, she is pregnant in less than half a year after entering the door, and with her backing, she has no way to live.

The mother-in-law often laughed at her behind her back that she was a hen that could not lay eggs, and asked the king to call her hard. She did all the hard work and dirty work at home.

Every morning, she has to feed the pigs and chickens, make breakfast for the family, and work in the fields. On the contrary, the second daughter-in-law drank tea in the house with Erlang's legs crossed, ate melon seeds, and chatted with her mother-in-law, and most of the time the two were together to say bad things about her.

She suffered for ten years and was tired for ten years, and finally became ill and got cancer. The family chose not to treat her, and her husband told her to die outside, she was very bitter, and just now, she hanged herself from the crooked neck tree at the entrance of the village.

But who knew that in the blink of an eye, she didn't die, not only did she not die, but she also returned to ten years ago, when she was sixteen years old.

The past is vivid, and when I think about it, I feel that my heart and lungs are throbbing. If she had to live like that again in this life, then she would rather hang herself from the crooked neck tree again.

She took a breath to calm her emotions. There was still that voice in my ear, "Come back, just come back." ”

It's very light, it's as if it came from a distant place, and it came here after a century.

She pinched herself again, and it hurt.

This shouldn't be a dream, right?

Aunt Du heard the sound in the house, looked out of the window, saw that it was her, and hurriedly greeted: "Nan Nan is back, come into the house, what are you doing standing in the yard." ”

Nan Nan is her nickname, which was given to her by her father when he was still alive, which means "baby girl", indicating that she is the baby in the palm of her father's hand. But although her father loved her, he died young, and when she was three years old, she went up the mountain to quarry, but as a result, she landslided and was stoned to death.

My brother's nickname is Tietou, and most of the boys in the village have nicknames, either Tiedan, or Tietou, or rotten eggs, dog eggs, dog eggs, or whatever. There is this custom in the countryside, and it is thought that it is easy to make a living by taking a cheap name.

Hearing her mother call her, Zhang Xiaoying answered, but she didn't step into the house.

Because she knew that it wouldn't be long before the Wang family would come to propose, and half a year later would be the day she married into the Wang family, and at the same time started her ten-year miserable life.

Now that God has let her come back and live a new life, she doesn't want to be a pawn played by others anymore. She wants to go to school, and she must finish her studies and get admitted to university. In this life, she just wants to live for herself.

The village they are in is called Wharf Village, and there is a river, which may have been used as a wharf for loading and unloading goods in ancient times, hence the name of this village. It's just that the river dried up later, and the prosperity of the year was no longer what it used to be. It's remote and poor, and because of poverty, many people can't marry a daughter-in-law.

In order to pass on the lineage and continue the incense, families with daughters will make it conditional on their daughters marrying each other's brothers, and exchange a daughter-in-law for their sons to reproduce. or under the matchmaker's matchmaking, the Zhang family brothers and sisters or brothers and sisters and the Wang family sisters or brothers and sisters marry each other; There are also three families that change relatives, that is, three brothers and sisters or sisters with roughly the same conditions marry each other, such as buying and selling, and equivalent exchange. And if the family is too poor and there are no sisters to change relatives, they can only fight singles.

Under this bad habit, the mother inevitably started the idea of changing relatives, that is, to exchange her brother for a sister-in-law.

The first thing she had to do now was to get her mother to dispel the idea of changing parents.