Nan Yuanman quickly stepped forward to block Yin Yanhui, gripping the copper coin sword and warily looking at the extremely angry female ghost.
Yin Yanhui froze, afraid that the female ghost named Lan'er would stab her to death without warning, just like in her dream. She was about to explain when she saw a line of bloody tears streaming down Lan'er's face.
She cried out, "My lord, you are a heartless man. I knew it, I knew it... You wouldn't marry me. You lied to me all those years ago."
Yin Yanhui: "!"
Meng Qingwan looked at her and hissed.
Nan Yuanman scratched his head, not knowing what to do with the female ghost for the time being. If she directly attacked him, he could perform a physical exorcism on her, but she was just talking and now she was crying.
Yin Yanhui was also numb. Lan'er seemed to have been truly heartbroken by her. She sat limply on the ground, crying her heart out.
Meng Qingwan's heart softened a little from crying. She poked Yin Yanhui's back and gestured towards Lan'er with her lip: "Why don't you try to persuade her? Letting her keep crying like this isn't a solution!"
Yin Yanhui scratched her hair anxiously, then sighed heavily with helplessness: "Don't cry."
"Tell me first, what was our relationship in our past life?"
Lan'er gently wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes, and said with a face full of resentment, "I...I am the wife that Mother arranged for you to marry..."
In her previous life, Lan'er was hired by Yin Yanhui's mother with a bag of rice and a bed.
In her village, there is a marriage custom where if parents have a daughter but not a son, they will betroth her to a family early on, with the agreement that the girl will marry him when he grows up.
She could become his child bride or his official wife.
This girl has a local name: "Waiting-for-My-Husband Girl".
Lan'er is a girl waiting for her lover.
After being hired, she lived in the home of Yin Yanhui from her previous life, waiting for her mother to give birth to her groom.
Ke Lan'er was unlucky; Yin Yanhui's mother's first child was not a boy, but a girl.
Fortunately, Yin Yanhui's mother was a gentle person and did not blame her for not being able to give birth to a son, unlike the mothers-in-law of other women waiting for a son. She also made sure that Yin Yanhui was well-fed and clothed every day.
Finally, when Lan'er was ten years old, the groom she had been waiting for was born.
Yin Yanhui's mother named him Wei Zefeng and had Lan'er call him her husband.
From the moment Wei Zefeng was born, all his affairs, big and small, fell under Lan'er's care. She took care of the child and did housework at the same time, slowly raising her 'groom'.
Wei Zefeng was a clever child. He had a good father who taught him to be responsible for Lan'er. So even if the ignorant children in the village made fun of him for having an older wife, he would firmly hold Lan'er's hand and scold them back.
It's perfectly normal for Lan'er to fall for him.
Lan'er originally thought that she could be like the other girls in the village who were waiting for their husbands, and that she could marry Wei Zefeng and become his real wife when he reached the age to get married.
When Wei Zefeng was eighteen, a peddler came to the village.
The peddler used some novel Western gadgets to win over Wei Zefeng's heart. He held Lan'er's hand and said he wanted to go out and make his way in the world.
As Lan'er spoke, the image of the spirited young man holding her hand and sitting with her on the haystack flashed through her mind, and tears fell again. She murmured, "He said nice things, like that our family is too poor and we need to go out and make a lot of money."
"You must prepare a huge dowry for me, buy me an expensive sewing machine, and give me cosmetics that only the daughters of wealthy landlords can afford. You must make me the most enviable woman in the village..."
The prospect he described was so attractive that Lan'er was filled with longing. She held Wei Zefeng's hand tightly and told him that she also wanted to go out and explore with him.
Wei Zefeng refused her: "Lan'er, it's not that I don't want you to come with me, it's just that there are wars everywhere outside, and nowhere is safe. You're a girl, and you'll suffer a lot if you go out with me."
"Besides... my parents are getting old. You need to stay at home and take good care of them so that I can work hard without any worries."
Lan'er felt regretful, but she also knew he was right. Moreover, she was a little scared when she heard that there was a war going on outside.
She wanted to persuade Wei Zefeng not to go, but looking at his bright eyes and his spirited appearance, she couldn't say a word.
Lan'er hesitated, then finally whispered, "Then... before you leave, can you consummate your marriage with me first?"
"I... I'm already twenty-eight years old. I'm an old maid. Zefeng, if you don't marry me, I'll have no choice but to cut my hair and become a nun..."
Before she could finish speaking, Wei Zefeng covered her mouth with his hand: "What nonsense are you talking about? Silly girl, you are the wife I, Wei Zefeng, have chosen!"
"Wait for me for three more years, three years at most. After three years, I will definitely come to marry you with gold and silver jewelry and a grand sedan chair carried by eight men!"
Lan'er believed him.
She waited three years after three years after Wei Zefeng left.
When she was almost forty, the village was affected by the war. She died under enemy fire while covering her parents-in-law, and she never got to see the young man who said he would marry her in a grand sedan chair.
How could she not resent this? How could she not hate it?
For more than thirty years, she waited... she kept waiting.
Even now, Lan'er doesn't know what the point of her waiting is.
After hearing what Lan'er said, Meng Qingwan and Yin Yanhui remained silent for a while, their feelings complicated, and they even felt a little suffocated.
They couldn't judge Lan'er, nor could they stand on the sidelines and ask her: "If Wei Zefeng isn't coming back to marry you, why don't you just marry someone else? Why are you so foolish as to wait for him obediently?"
They knew that Lan'er, given the social environment at the time, had been thoroughly disciplined.
That's what all the women in the village do.
That was all she could do.
Nan Yuanman is still young and doesn't understand these things about love, but that doesn't stop her from asking directly: "If he doesn't come back to marry you, then he's bad. If he's bad, then you're bad too. Why not just not marry him? Why wait for him obediently?"
Lan'er paused for a few seconds, then subconsciously retorted, "Maybe he had something to do at the time, which is why he didn't come back to marry me?"
"Besides... I'm the wife my mother bought, and he himself has acknowledged it. How can I marry someone else?"
"So, is your biggest obsession right now that he should marry you?" Nan Yuanman was confused. She scratched her head, deciding not to dwell on it, and asked Lan'er directly.
Yin Yanhui also held her breath, nervously watching Lan'er.
Lan'er sat on the ground for a while, opening her mouth as if to admit it, but no matter what she said, she couldn't get the words out.
Did she really wait so long for him to come back and marry her?
Nan Yuanman scratched his head, looking somewhat troubled, and said, "Humans and ghosts are different, so the underworld will not approve of your marriage."
Lan'er didn't rush to answer. She looked at Yin Yanhui carefully, and in a daze, it seemed as if she saw the young man from her past life and the woman in her present life overlapping.
“No…” she murmured, “I do want an explanation.”
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