That night, Zhang Xuemei tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep.

“I said I ate too much tonight, so I should be the one who can’t sleep! Why are you tossing and turning like this?” Xu Minghan turned around and asked his wife.

Zhang Xuemei turned around as well, and the two faced each other in the darkness, so close that they could feel each other's breathing.

"No, during the day Xiaowan mentioned to me one of her friends, named Xu Tiantian, whose mother also married into our village."

The little girl's cousin from her maternal uncle's side has a friend who's going to take her cousin to work in Shenzhen, and Xu Tiantian wants to go too.

Xu Minghan listened for a while but still couldn't understand anything. "What are you trying to say? I just don't understand!"

"Oh dear, have you forgotten? Didn't a big thing happen in our village back then? For ten years, people were unwilling to marry a girl if they heard she was from within ten miles."

Xu Minghan understood immediately after hearing his wife's words. "You mean that matter? How did it involve our village? I've never heard of it before!"

"That's right, that's why I was shocked when Xiaowan mentioned it today. Do you think we should remind Xu Tiantian's mother?"

Zhang Xuemei was more than willing to tell him, but she didn't know what excuse to use! She couldn't just blurt it out! What would she say if people asked how she knew?

"Now that we know about this, we can't just ignore it, but we need to think of a good solution." Xu Minghan thought carefully about what to do.

"You know, that girl is really despicable. Not only did she do it herself, but she also dragged half the girls in the village down with her, making families with daughters for miles around ashamed."

Zhang Xuemei thought that if her daughter were tricked into doing that kind of thing, she would definitely fight that family to the death.

"That's easy to understand. One is after money, and the other has a dark side. They see that they're not clean and want to drag others down with them! That's human nature." Xu Minghan has lived for more than ten years and has certainly encountered such things.

Having accumulated a lot of gambling debts, Xu Minghan thought about getting his friends to gamble with him. He encountered such "friends" before, but fortunately, he discovered them in time.

"Alright then, let's talk about it when we go to Shilitou to pay our respects for the New Year. I suppose Xu Tiantian is also going to visit her maternal grandmother's house with her mother, so she won't be leaving so soon."

Then you tell Xu Tiantian's mother that the girl doesn't seem like a decent person. When she asks how you figured it out, you say that there are girls in Tianshui who specialize in this line of work, and their appearance and demeanor are very similar.

Anyway, we can only offer a vague reminder. We don't have any concrete evidence right now, so we don't want to end up causing trouble instead of achieving our goal.

This was the only idea Xu Minghan could come up with; whether it would succeed was up to fate.

Zhang Xuemei thought about it and realized that this was the only option. "Alright, that's settled then! Go to sleep first! Tomorrow is New Year's Day, and we have to get up early!"

Zhang Xuemei slept soundly through the night without any dreams, perhaps because she was free of debt and didn't have to worry about anyone coming to collect debts on New Year's Eve.

With a thud, the first tricycle truck to return to the village that morning came back, and Xu Minghe, the fourth son of the Xu family, also returned.

"Mom and Dad, I'm home!" Xu Minghe shouted loudly as he walked home.

Upon hearing her fourth son's voice, Granny Liu immediately came out of the house. "Why are you so late? I thought something had happened to you on the way!"

Xu Minghe put down his luggage and poured himself a cup of hot water. "Train tickets are hard to buy! In the end, I had no choice but to buy a standing ticket to come back. My legs were almost ruined."

I got off the train very late last night, and by the time I got to town, all the buses had already left. I spent the night at the security guard's office at the bus station and came back early this morning.

If Xu Minghe hadn't already told his mother he was going home, he wouldn't have needed to come back this year.

"Fourth Brother, why don't you stay at a small hotel for the night? I remember there's one right next to the station!"

Xu Mingjiang, with his hands tucked in his sleeves, looked at Xu Minghe and asked, "It's so cold in the middle of winter! At least in a hotel you can lie down for a while and have a blanket to cover yourself with."

"You little brat, do you think my eyes are just for show? Do you think I didn't see it? The price has gone up for the New Year, it's 21 yuan a night, and there aren't even any seats available."

"How clever of me! I bought the old man at the security office a pack of cheap cigarettes for only four yuan and fifty cents, and I could mooch off him there for the night. There was even a charcoal brazier to warm my hands. I could manage!"

Xu Minghe was reluctant to part with the twenty yuan. Since he was almost home anyway, he figured he might as well save some money. If it were summer, he could even skip the cigarettes and just sleep on the floor in front of the supermarket.

"Your fourth brother is a thrifty person," Xu Minghan said with a smile. His fourth brother was the most like their father among them, the most frugal and the best at saving money.

In his past life, besides the fifth brother, he was the first to buy a house in the county, and he paid for it in full.

Of course, this is also related to his ability to make money, but the most important thing is that he is frugal. He is frugal with himself, his wife and children, and of course he is not generous with his brothers. He is only slightly generous to his parents.

"Third Brother understands me best. This money should be spent wisely. Earning money is not easy! Right?" Xu Minghe didn't say that even though he earned a lot from cotton ginning this year, he still couldn't bear to buy himself a new piece of clothing!

"Alright, it's good that you're back. Hurry up and get ready. Wash everything that needs washing. This afternoon, we're taking Pighead to the ancestral hall to pay respects to our ancestors. Fourth brother, go upstairs and take a nap. The bed is all made up for you."

Granny Liu assigned tasks to her sons. Since the water was cold in winter, she decided to let her tough-skinned sons do the washing.

Zhang Xuemei's daughters-in-law spent most of the day helping their mother-in-law prepare a large table of delicious food. This year, their family was finally together, with everyone present.

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!