Suddenly, Shiyue made up her mind to go to the provincial capital to visit Uncle Shen's family and find out what their current situation was.
Although she was just a child when she last visited Uncle Shen's house, as time has passed, she no longer recognizes the way there.
But it's okay.
With a mouth below her nose, Shiyue was confident she could find it.
Actually, Shiyue felt that going on this trip would also be beneficial for her.
After all, Donglin City is the provincial capital. I can just find some excuse to get some of the things I bought in the group to be accepted through official channels.
Maybe she can even get a dog.
It's impossible to find dogs in the countryside now.
However, such a big thing cannot be done on a whim, so Shiyue needs to make a lot of preparations in advance.
First, she had to wait for Bu Yu and Qiang Wei to send her the book so she could find out what would happen in the next few years.
Moreover, Shiyue is not sure if the era those people are talking about is the same as the one she is living in. What if it isn't?
If that's not the case, does that mean the terrible things they're talking about have nothing to do with their family?
But Shiyue felt that this possibility was not very high.
Although the Qianjin Brigade was relatively remote, she could still vaguely sense many things happening in the countryside.
For example, the educated youth have already gone to the countryside.
Anyway, I definitely need to get my hands on the book first and read it before I can make any further plans.
Besides waiting for the book, Shiyue also had to dig up the yams she had promised Ming'er and the ones she had prepared to give to Xiaoqian, Qiangwei, and the others.
We can't just take advantage of others for nothing.
In addition, Shiyue had promised to cover the dinner for the three male educated youths, and she couldn't break her promise.
Thinking about how much work still needed to be done, Shiyue suddenly felt a bit pressed for time.
She came out of the hut, thought for a moment, and then dragged out a small wooden box.
This is Shiyue's most precious treasure, and also their family's biggest secret.
In the past, I took Shiyue with me wherever I went, and I dared not let it have even the slightest mishap.
Once she was certain that the hut wouldn't disappear into thin air, Shiyue placed the wooden box inside and stopped worrying about it being stolen.
Shiyue took out her key, opened the wooden box, and took out a few rough sheets of white paper and a pencil that had been used down to the thickness of a finger.
Shiyue took the paper and pen and wrote the word "plan" on it very carefully.
Then she looked up and sorted through all the things she remembered to do, prioritizing them by urgency, preparing to write them down to prevent any oversights.
As she was thinking, her gaze was drawn back to the small wooden box.
Shiyue pushed the paper and pen aside and took out a hand-sewn literacy book from the box.
The notebook was clearly quite old; the paper had yellowed and become brittle, and Shiyue handled it very carefully.
The cover of that literacy book had a line of words written in calligraphy: Yueyue's Literacy Book.
The font is very elegant and graceful.
Shiyue gently stroked the words with her fingers, her eyes filled with deep longing and remembrance.
This literacy textbook was written for her by her mother, and the content was specially compiled by her mother according to her age and situation.
Everyone in the team knows that Shiyue knows a few words, and they also know that the words she knows were taught to her by her father.
People also know that Shi's father learned from his master when he was an apprentice in the city.
But no one knew that the truly learned person in the Shi family was Shi Yue's mother, a woman whose name was unknown and who was always referred to as "the Shi family".
Shiyue had heard people say since she was a child that her mother had fled famine from the north.
When she was begging for food all the way to the provincial capital, she was so hungry that she fainted at the entrance of a restaurant. She was rescued by Shiyue's father and eventually married him.
But as she grew a little older, Shiyue realized that these words weren't entirely true.
Her mother may have indeed fled to the provincial capital during the famine, but she was definitely not an ordinary woman from a rural family.
Otherwise, how could she read and write? How could she know so much?
How could there be such a box?
How could that be...?
How did she earn her father's respect and admiration?
Shiyue never dared to tell anyone about this thought, not even her parents.
She began her formal education at the age of three and was taught to read and write by her mother.
The literacy textbook was written for her by her mother.
The books she read were also given to her silently by her mother.
Back then, my family still had some money and could afford paper and pens.
Since there were no books at home, her mother would memorize what she knew and read it to Shiyue, leading her in reading...
Therefore, although Shiyue had never attended school, she knew that she knew just as much as those in the team who had.
There might be even more than them.
Later, the world changed.
Shiyue had no idea what had happened.
But she remembered one night when her mother secretly burned all the books she had previously memorized while she was asleep.
Not long after, Mom started to get sick.
The literacy book that Shiyue has left behind was something she accidentally put under the mat on the kang (a heated brick bed), and it escaped being discovered by her mother.
This is also the only thing Shiyue left behind that has her mother's handwriting.
Thinking of this, Shiyue remembered something else.
She pulled the wooden box over and took out a small, golden wooden box that seemed to shimmer with light.
This wooden box is clearly made of very precious wood; at least Shiyue has never seen such beautiful wood anywhere else.
The box wasn't very big, only slightly larger than Shiyue's literacy textbook.
The box was very light; if it wasn't shaken, Shiyue wouldn't even feel that there was anything inside.
But Shiyue didn't know what was inside.
From the time her father handed her the box before his death until now, Shiyue has never opened it.
It wasn't that Shiyue wasn't curious; it was mainly because there was a copper lock on the box.
The lock had a strange shape; it was cylindrical and only as long as Shiyue's finger.
The lock is shaped like a tiger's head at both ends, with five brass hoops in the middle, each engraved with a pattern.
The lock has no key; it is said that it can only be opened when all five copper hoops are in the correct positions.
Shiyue's father told her that the copper hoop should not be tried carelessly. If it was broken after more than three attempts, it would be completely stuck and could never be opened again.
Shiyue asked her father what was in the box.
The father gave a bitter smile and said that these were his mother's things. Before she died, his mother told him not to try them lightly, but she didn't say anything else.
With her father's words in mind, Shiyue naturally dared not make any rash moves.
After looking at it many times, Shiyue vaguely sensed that the patterns engraved on the copper hoop were ancient characters, but she didn't recognize any of them.
Before October, I had actually given up on finding out what was inside the box.
To her, this was a memento from her mother, a keepsake.
What you put on it doesn't matter.
After today's discussion in the group, Shiyue has a different feeling about these things now.
She began to worry.
She realized that both her parents had secrets.
In this day and age, if these secrets were to be revealed, it would most likely not be a good thing...
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