It was late at night and everyone was asleep. Lin Lishan and Ping An had already fallen asleep. In the study, Zhou Xiaozheng was quietly listening to his son-in-law talk about his trip to Hai City.

"Dad, this is the situation. I mentioned to the old man whether we should adopt a child from the same clan, but his face changed before I even finished speaking. Did I touch upon something so sore?"

Zhou Xiaozheng nodded. "Something must have happened. When I met the old couple, they were penniless and unwilling to return to the village. I saw that they were loyal and righteous, so I helped them. Since he doesn't want to, let him do it. He must have something to hide."

Zhang Guoqing nodded in understanding. "Then the old lady handed me a small courtyard on the north side that afternoon and said the ownership had been transferred. How could I not know? Is it okay without me being there?"

"This old lady is really..."

Zhou Xiaozheng sighed and looked at his son-in-law, "The Gu family secretly acquired a lot of private property. In addition to the assets in the hometown that were liquidated, several properties with land deeds in other places were all taken away by the old lady after liberation. Except for the two courtyards in Beijing, even Mr. Cheng didn't know about this.

After she recognized me, she secretly gave me several land deeds, but I refused them, saying that it was not appropriate for Jiaojiao to acquire more property. Logically, she later sent someone to retrieve them, so they should have been hers.

However, she told me last year that she had sold all her properties outside of Beijing for gold, and now only had two courtyards left in Beijing, which she couldn't bear to sell. The larger courtyard was originally owned by the two elders of the Gu family who planned to move to Beijing after their daughter got married, while the smaller one was for her dowry, so it had a different meaning.

Last time, she told me that she was getting old and wanted to hand it over to you as soon as possible. Aside from the large courtyard, which is not suitable for moving now, all the things she had secured for the Gu family were placed in the small courtyard.

Zhang Guoqing frowned when he heard this, "Dad, since it's her dowry, it belongs to the Cheng family. If the Cheng family takes it, they must have some ulterior motives."

"Your eldest uncle and his family are different from the Lin family. They feel that the Gu family has nothing left and Jiaojiao has been wronged. They asked the old lady to leave her private property to Jiaojiao a long time ago, saying that it is their grandmother's things that Jiaojiao should inherit."

After Zhou Xiaozheng finished speaking, he smiled and shook his head.

This person is really incomparable to others. He doesn't care about these material things. Now money is just a number to their Zhou family, but this kind of friendship is indeed rare.

Zhou Xiaozheng glanced at his son-in-law, and seeing that he was worried, he was very happy. "Okay, accept it. We don't want the big one anymore."

What else could Zhang Guoqing say? The old lady was a charlatan, not a kind person at all. She even lied to herself about something everyone had, and it turned out she was just being mysterious.

"Also, the old lady definitely wouldn't really register the house under your name. It's probably some alias. If anyone asks you about it, just say it's a relative's house and that'll be fine."

Zhang Guoqing nodded in understanding. A tall tree attracts the wind. With only five people in their family, they already had several courtyards. If they added more, they would have to settle accounts with themselves first.

Zhou Xiaozheng took out a piece of paper from the drawer and handed it to him. "You will report back tomorrow to report back for leave. This is your homework. Read the newspaper more these days and give me the answers when you come back next time."

Zhang Guoqing took it and read it, then lit the paper with a match and burned it. He smiled and said, "It's okay, I'll be leaving then."

"Go ahead and go to bed early. I need to rest early too after I finish looking at this document."

Zhang Guoqing walked and said with a smile: "Dad, have you thought of a name for Mom?" As soon as he finished speaking, he ran out and closed the door. He heard his father-in-law inside laughing and scolding him as a bad boy, and he laughed with joy.

Every time I asked myself when my wife would be back, my father-in-law would look at me with contempt and laugh at me. Now I finally got the chance.

Zhang Guoqing returned to his room, turned on the light, and watched his son sleeping soundly in the mosquito net. He stood by the bed for a while, and when he saw that no mosquitoes had entered the mosquito net, he turned off the light and went to the small study next door.

He took out the letter from his parents and family from the drawer and opened it to read it again.

The content of Zhang's father's letters is getting longer and longer. He tells them about some trivial matters in their hometown, and at the end he never forgets to ask them to live a good life and not mistreat themselves.

Zhang Laoer described the lives of his family members and the things they encountered in great detail, especially mentioning Zuo Lin.

Zhang Guoqing had long known about Zuo Lin's plan to return to Beijing. But even with connections, he wasn't guaranteed a place in Beijing these days. Even if someone accepted him, a mere county director wouldn't have much to offer in Beijing. Would Zuo Lin be willing to become just an ordinary clerk?

Putting aside these trivial matters, he continued to open the letters from his eldest brother-in-law Zhang Chunming. Compared with the letters from other family members, the letters from his eldest sister's family were always the thickest.

Thinking of his elder sister's temper, Zhang Guoqing smiled. He really didn't know how his brother-in-law could stand his wife's nagging and had to keep writing it down.

His older sister always starts with, "Do you have enough money? Is anyone bullying you at school? Have you lost weight? Did you have a fight with Jiaojiao? Has Ping'an grown taller?"

Zhang Guoqing touched the letters from his relatives, lost in thought. He wondered if they only reported good news and not bad news, or if they were truly doing well.

Thinking of his parents far away in the north, Zhang Guoqing picked up his pen and wrote a long letter to his father and the others. Too many things had happened recently, the Lin family's affairs, and his mother-in-law's affairs, one after another. Without Zhou Jiao by his side, there were many things he couldn't tell to outsiders, and he missed his family all the time.

On three long sheets of paper, Zhang Guoqing briefly mentioned his mother-in-law's life experience, Mrs. Lin's suicide, and Zhou Xiaocun's former uncle who was put in jail.

Finally, I emphasized that they should come over to get together during the summer vacation, especially mentioning Mrs. Cheng's courtyard. This time they really don't have to worry about feeling uncomfortable.

Zhang Guoqing had no desire to sleep at all and kept writing replies to the letters one after another.

It was already late at night when I finished writing. I simply tidied up, leaned back in a chair, closed my eyes and rested, while silently calculating the day when Zhou Jiao would return.

He sat there until Ping An got up to go to the toilet. Then Zhang Guoqing woke up and quickly walked into the bedroom.

Ping An half-closed his eyes and urinated into the enamel spittoon. When he heard the noise, he opened his eyes, glanced at him, and said drowsily, "Dad, go to sleep."

Zhang Guoqing happily picked him up and walked towards the kang, "Okay. Go back to sleep, Dad will accompany you."

"good."

After replacing the mosquito net, Zhang Guoqing glanced at the photo on the bedside table and whispered good night to Zhou Jiao in the photo.

When he turned off the lights, he wondered if his wife was still in a foreign country. Was it day or night? Was she with her? Had she already boarded her flight home?

Zhang Guoqing missed Zhou Jiao, and Zhou Jiao was also thinking about him, her father, her children, and all her relatives all the time.