“Mingming! Don’t hand over all your money this time. You brothers are all of marriageable age. Your father is a fool who treats this little girl like a treasure. She’s just a money-loser; she’ll get married sooner or later…”

The people next to Xie Ming kept talking incessantly in his ear, making his head feel like it was buzzing.

Having just landed, he was unaware of the situation and was still looking around at his surroundings.

It has to be said that the mountain roads here are really rugged, but who would have thought that 30 years later, after a tunnel is built, this place will become the city's back garden?

Realizing he had entered another world, Xie Ming shouldered a bag of luggage and ran off, completely ignoring the shouts and cries of his fellow villagers behind him.

This time, he came back to that special era, only a few years earlier than the 1970s, in 1966, when everyone had just recovered from the famine.

Xie Ming is a member of the Hongqi Production Brigade in Xiadongyang Village, Tianyun County.

The people in their village weren't native to the area; they had fled there during the war and settled there. His mother also married his father after arriving there.

After getting married, the couple honestly farmed and raised children. Over the course of more than ten years, they had three sons and one daughter, which was considered a small number of children in the village.

The eldest son of the Xie family is named Xie Jin, the second son is Xie Ming, the third son is Xie Hou, and the youngest daughter is named Xie Tiansheng.

The brothers were born in three consecutive years, so their names are easy to understand: this year, next year, and the year after.

The person who registered them was a cultured gentleman who, after listening to their explanation, changed the characters for "today," "tomorrow," and "afterward."

As for Xie Tiansheng, she can only blame herself for being born too late and not meeting that right person.

The couple's initial excitement about having children quickly faded, so they didn't show favoritism towards any of the children and treated them all fairly, which was quite rare.

As for their youngest daughter? It was a completely unexpected event. But since it was a child born after more than ten years, the couple still cared about her, though not as much as the fellow villager had described.

Xie Ming's family was poor, but the siblings were united and considered a harmonious family in the village. Even during the famine a few years ago, no one in his family was left behind and they all survived intact.

But his family's peaceful days were not going to last long, and the reason for this had to do with Xie Ming's cousins.

Xie Shuigen, Xie Ming's father, brought his younger brother Xie Mugen with him when they fled here. The two brothers arrived empty-handed, truly starting from scratch.

With no money, no land, and no other relatives, the two of them relied on each other to avoid being bullied when they first arrived.

After settling down here, they all got married and had children when they reached the appropriate age.

After marriage, Xie Shuigen had three sons in a row, while Xie Mugen had six daughters in a row.

His six daughters are Xie Fang, Xie Zhou, Xie Cai, Xie Pandi, Xie Laidi, and Xie Youdi.

His family and Xie Shuigen's family were in similar situations; the old gentleman had also changed the names of their first three children.

Otherwise, his daughters would have been given simple names like Fanfan (rice), Zhouzhou (porridge), and Caicai (vegetables), reflecting Xie Jingen's wish that they would have enough to eat and drink. As for the later ones, he simply let them go.

On the other hand, Xie Mugen was actually quite envious of his brother's sons getting into so many jobs.

However, he didn't cause any trouble, since his many daughters would still need their cousins ​​to support them in the future.

Besides, if their daughters all get married, they'll really have to rely on their nephews for old-age support. So they're basically treating the three brothers as backup plans for old-age care.

The couple's good attitude was just for show. They kept their true intentions hidden. This is understandable; they probably feared that children who weren't their own wouldn't be reliable.

Xie Shuigen had no idea what Xie Mugen and his wife were planning.

He still treated his younger brother like a child before he got married, and he had to take care of him in everything.

He had to worry about whether his younger brother's family had firewood, whether they had rice or flour, and even whether they should have a son...

Compared to his children, he undoubtedly valued his younger brother more. Having escaped from a place engulfed in war, his brother's life had long become his hope and expectation.

Xie Mugen enjoys the love his brother gives him and will reciprocate with the same affection; the two have a rare and deep brotherly bond.

It was because of these reasons that Xie Shuigen's wife, Cai Luhua, and Xie Mugen's wife, Xu Jiamei, did not get along very well.

Cai Luhua felt that having given birth to so many sons, she should have a strong back, but the old man treated her and her sons like suckers, which made her very uncomfortable.

What about Xu Jiamei? She felt inferior to Cai Luhua because she didn't have a son. But with her uncle around, not having a son was almost the same as having one.

The two sisters-in-law, each harboring their own grudges, got along very awkwardly.

The two families can simply stay together like this without making any major mistakes. There's no life-or-death feud between them, and they can support each other through major disasters.

The problem lies with two of Xie Mugen's daughters.

In the past few years, there was a great famine and everyone was starving. All the food in the family could only be given to the boys, so naturally the girls would go hungry from time to time.

The logic is easy to understand. The two families mainly relied on their sons to go out and find food. In the face of disaster, if there were no strong laborers in the family, people would really die. But even so, Xie Mugen's two daughters couldn't bear it.

Feeling wronged, the two sisters thought their family would eventually sell them for dowry.

Did Xie Mugen have the idea of ​​"selling" his daughter? Actually, yes, he did, wanting to get a higher dowry to save for his retirement. If he really had a daughter he didn't want to marry, that would be fine too; he could just find a son-in-law!

Six girls were left at home, and the dowries for the other sisters were enough for the family to find husbands. But he also felt sorry for his children and wouldn't deliberately send the girls to bad families.

Xie Shuigen never imagined that he would sell his niece to arrange a marriage for his own son.

If he were to really sell, it would be to sell his son to support his younger brother. There's no way around it; he's just biased towards his younger brother.

When Xie Ming came over again, he could only chuckle after learning the whole story.

Those two sisters are hardly normal people. One, Xie Fang, is a reincarnation, and the other, Xie Laidi, is not much different from her.

In her past life, she married into the wealthy Shuang Li family in the village, becoming the wife of their third son. Unfortunately, she didn't live the affluent life she had imagined after marriage.

Her sister-in-law's poor husband would be kicked out of the house with nothing two years later, and then live a "hidden" good life in the village by reselling on the black market.

Xie Fang's in-laws had a much better life because they followed in her sister-in-law's footsteps.

In the 1980s, seeing the dramatic changes in policy, that poor boy transformed himself into a well-known wealthy man in the neighborhood, earning over ten thousand yuan.

Xie Fang was filled with regret, wishing she had married the poor boy first, so she wouldn't have had to suffer the hardship of working in the fields.

Unexpectedly, after she died peacefully, she returned to the time when she had just made an engagement with the third son of a wealthy family.

With the opportunity right in front of her, Xie Fang immediately changed her mind and prepared to break off her engagement and marry the poor boy.

There are hardly any ugly people in the Xie family, let alone the girls who haven't suffered much hardship.

Apart from a period of hunger a few years ago, Xu Jiamei has never mistreated her own daughter.

Therefore, Xie Fang, who was in her prime, was a rare beauty in the village, and she had a great advantage over her former sister-in-law.