Chapter 327 Incident
For Li Laiyu, the most unforgettable day in this life is 1966.
Even though more than ten years have passed, she still remembers it clearly.
It was the third day after she met Li Guoan on the edge of the field. At night, she was awakened by the noise. Torches were flickering outside, and there were curses, shouts, and cries.
Her grandparents who slept with her were nowhere to be seen. She groped her way down the edge of the bed and ran out of the house barefoot.
As soon as I walked out of the house, a group of people came in with torches and started smashing and rioting.
Li Guangwen shouted: "What are you doing? What do you want to do? You are raping me..." Before he could finish his words, Li Guangyuan covered his mouth tightly.
Li Laiyu stared blankly at the torch-bearing men. They were all from the team, familiar faces: Hu Xinghong, Wang Changshun, the cousins she usually called out to her all the time. Now, they were all holding torches, their faces flushed red by the flames. Yet, they all stood straight, demonstrating with their actions that they were righteous and doing the right thing.
Her grandfather Li Guoping, mother-in-law Wang Chengying, and the family of the second uncle next door all had their hands behind their backs and were tied with hemp ropes.
A group of people rushed into the house and turned it upside down, then came out cursing and pushed Li Guoping and others to go to the wheat field for a meeting.
Li Laiyu burst into tears and shouted while crying, hoping to arouse some sympathy from others, but it was useless and had no effect at all.
In the dark night, the torches looked like a long dragon.
Li Lai Yu followed behind barefoot, and the stones on the road hurt her feet so much that they burned.
Her family members have no time to care about her, and no one else will care about her either.
When they arrived at the wheat field, the members spontaneously formed a circle. Li Guoan and his wife, Li Guoping and his wife, and the Huang family all stood in the middle, with their heads hung and not daring to look up.
Hu Xinghong stood there holding a torch and watched coldly without saying a word.
Wang Changshun was very excited. He held a torch in his hand and looked at Li Guangyuan and his brother. "Do you want to stand with them or with the people?"
Li Guangwen rushed forward, wanting to give Wang Changshun, that son of a bitch, a punch. They were all from the same team, so they'd see each other sooner or later. What was wrong with his family being landlords? They weren't landlords anymore. That was years ago. The land was collective now, and the houses had been divided up. It had been so long, why weren't they being let off?
Li Guangyuan held him tightly.
Wang Changshun stood there and looked at them: "Come on, either come up and spit a few times and shout 'Down with the dog dz', or you come up and stand with them."
As he said this, he called the people with him, made several large wooden signs and hung them around the necks of Li Guoping and others.
Some people in the crowd began to cry quietly.
But some people couldn't hold back and picked up something on the ground and threw it at the people in the middle.
Li Lai Yu squeezed in from the gap in the crowd and saw Li Guoping and his wife standing there like everyone else, with their heads drooping, numb like unconscious wooden stakes. Her tears gradually retreated.
There's no use crying, no use.
God is really such a fucked-up person, always making her face all kinds of things again and again. She has been trying so hard to live, but it always has to be like this.
Perhaps because the Li Guangyuan brothers were slow to make a choice, several people came and twisted them. The brothers wanted to resist, but they were pressed to the ground and beaten and kicked.
Li Laiyu wished he could still be the same as he was back then, wielding a knife to slash through these beasts with human faces and animal hearts.
But she is only six years old now and can do nothing.
All she could do was follow the adults barefoot, then stand between Li Guoping and Wang Chengying and cry hysterically, the more pitiful and miserable the better. Even though she knew it was useless, even though she knew these people had no compassion at all, she still wanted to give it a try.
When the PD conference was over, it was already dawn when we got back, and the whole family was in a mess.
The house was in a mess. Everything at the bedside and stove was turned upside down, and no one knew who had taken the bag of food.
Wang Chengying sat on the eaves in a daze, her red eyes filled with tears that wouldn't fall.
She had shed almost all her tears in her life, and now even if her head was chopped off, she would not be able to shed tears.
Li Guangwen cursed in the house: "You beasts, they are all bandits, all bandits. We make a living by our hands and labor. We don't steal or rob. Why do you do this to us? Why?"
Li Guoping leaned against the pillar and said, "Be quiet." Trouble comes from the mouth. It has come to this point. If something else happens, he himself doesn't know if he can bear it.
Why? This is the way the world is.
Before he could close his eyes, the gong for work rang. Li Guoping took a deep breath, stood up, and walked out of the yard with staggering steps.
The spine, which was already hunched, seemed to be bent even more after the humiliation that night.
Li Lai Yu was awakened by the cold.
The sun was already scorching hot at noon in April, but it was still cool in the mornings and evenings. She remembered that she was being criticized in the wheat field with the adults at home, but she didn't know when she came back.
While sleeping in bed, she accidentally kicked off the quilt covering her body.
The house was quiet, the mess had not been cleaned up, and no one was there.
She slipped out of bed and sneezed several times.
I picked up all the items that had fallen on the floor in the house, and then took a broom and cleaned up bit by bit.
At the main hall door, Hu Laixi was looking at her from there. She pretended not to see him and called out to him, "Laiyu, are you going out?"
Li Lai Yu pretended not to hear.
Last night, the clear-cut scene of watching the fire from the other side of the river kept replaying in her mind.
Their family is different from Hu Xinghong's family, and she is different from Hu Laixi, they have been different from the beginning.
Just as Hu Laixi was about to enter the house, her mother-in-law Zheng Xiulan's voice came from the yard: "Laixi, what are you doing? Come back quickly!"
Hu Laixi walked to the door of his house with his short legs, and Zheng Xiulan scolded him: "Don't go there anymore, okay? And don't go out with Lai Yu anymore."
"Why? Lai Yu is my sister!"
"No reason, you're still young, you wouldn't understand even if I tell you, but you're not allowed to join in, okay?" It's not that she was mean and wanted to pick on a child, but she just thought that this was the way it was, the Li family had a problem with their background, and whoever got involved with them would be in trouble.
The two families lived in the same yard, with doors next to each other, and Li Lai Yu heard her words clearly.
The corn that was being harvested at home was stolen by someone, and she had no food left. She didn't know what to do. There was a stone mill next to the yard, but she was too tall to move it.
There are quite a few things in the space, but they are unprocessed and cannot be eaten, nor can they be taken out and eaten casually.
After thinking about it, he picked up the basket, closed the door and went into the field.
There are wild vegetables in the fields. I dug a basket of them, washed them in the ditch, and brought them back.
She held the ladle and added water to the pot.
There are potatoes at home. Although they have sprouted, they can still be eaten after removing the sprouts. She also has a lot of them in her space, so she can mix most of them in.
There was no oil, but there were pheasant eggs in the space. She had saved a lot of them, so she could put more in. Even if they were mixed up, it wouldn't be noticeable. When the potatoes were cooked through, she stood by the stove on a chair, holding a spatula and crushing them all. That way, she couldn't tell the difference at all.
Then pour in the wild vegetables.
This was the first time in her two lifetimes that she had been on the stove. She didn't know how to use the matches to light the fire, so she just watched the adults use it. She wasted two matches before she could light it. She was very unfamiliar with it, but now she has finally found some feeling for it.
People are forced to do things. If they are forced, they will do anything.
By the time those who worked in the fields came back, the meal at home had already been cooked for a long time.
Wang Chengying was stunned when she entered the room. Then she looked at her little granddaughter whose face was covered with soot and looked like a tabby cat, and she sat there and burst into tears.
She didn't cry after being tortured all night. She thought she would never cry in her life, but she couldn't hold it back at this moment.
Li Laiyu hugged her and said, "Grandma, don't cry. The meal is ready. I cooked some potato dumplings and wild vegetables. They are also edible."
Even Li Guangyuan, who usually ignored her, couldn't help but pay a few more attention to her.
Li Lai Yu was abandoned by everyone in her previous life. No one understood how much she cherished her present life and how much she cared about Li Guoping and his wife.
She knew in her heart that even though she had the memories of her previous life and a special system space, she would not be able to survive without the old couple.
He is a relative and also a benefactor.
But how can a flesh and blood body withstand repeated torture and humiliation?
The most terrible thing is the biting of each other at times like this.
The people on the team told them that Li Guoan's family next door might have hidden something like small yellow croaker. They were brothers and it was impossible for them not to know about it. As long as they could find the things hidden in Li Guoan's family, they would no longer have to stand with Li Guoan and his family.
Both brothers were educated people, but Li Guoping was the eldest and did not have as much cultural knowledge as Li Guoan. He inherited the family business and became a DZ, while Li Guoan became the principal of the commune junior high school.
The Li family was once very famous in Xiangshuigou and lived a prosperous life, but they never expected to end up like this today.
Long ago, because of DZ's bad background, the two families completely separated and had no contact with each other.
It's been 10 or 20 years, how would they know what other people have?
Li Guoping never imagined that the members of the team were so cruel that they asked him to report his own brother. How should he report it and what should he report?
What he didn't expect was that he had no intention of reporting Li Guoan, but he was reported by someone else.
People from the commune, brigade, and production team dragged him away and locked him up, forcing Wang Chengying to hand over the treasures they had hidden.
The house was turned upside down again, and even the grain cellar was found.
Li Guangyuan had been silent for so many years, but he finally couldn't help but fight with someone. After being beaten, he slept for a few days and then went crazy.
Li Guoping finally fell down.
As soon as he fell, the backbone of the Li family collapsed in an instant.
Thinking about those two years and those days, Li Lai Yu didn't know how he managed to get through them.
The whole family died or went crazy, and in the end only she, her mother-in-law Wang Chengying and her uncle Li Guangwen were left.
They were an orphan and a widow, struggling to survive, but in the end no one bothered them anymore.
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