"Mother—my poor mother! You passed away before you even got to eat a bite of the white membrane!"
"Mom—open your eyes and look at the steamed membrane your daughter-in-law made for you!"
"Mother—!"
...
In the dead of night, heart-wrenching cries echoed through Heman Village, waking many families who had already turned off their lights.
"Honey, why does that crying outside sound so eerie? Did the Rooster Crest family leave?"
The woman, still half asleep, nudged the old man beside her.
"Oh no! It's probably true. Get up quickly, light the lamp, and get dressed. Someone will be coming to deliver the news of the death in no time!"
The old man, who had just been snoring loudly, listened carefully to the crying and immediately woke up, frantically pulling at the clothes covering him with the thin blanket.
"Good heavens! It really is! Oh, my second sister-in-law, sigh...! She was by the well during the day telling me that we would go up the mountain together to find some wild vegetables tomorrow morning, oh...! My poor second sister-in-law!"
The old woman came to her senses and started crying.
"Stop crying, hurry up and get ready. Wake up the rest of us, so we can go to their house as soon as they arrive."
The old man stopped the woman from crying and hurriedly ran outside.
Before he could even go out to call for help, his four sons and daughters-in-law were already dressed and standing in the yard waiting for him.
Before half a cup of tea had been brewed, a rapid and loud knocking sounded at the door.
The old man opened the door first, and a young man dressed in mourning clothes and wearing a mourning hat knelt down in front of him with two brothers.
"Uncle! My mother is gone!"
"Get up! Your uncle will take your brothers to see your mother off!"
As they were talking, the old man helped the kneeling man up and led his sons out the door.
Xie Ming, sitting on a long bench in the courtyard, stared blankly into the inner room.
In this life, he came to a fictional dynasty called Chen, and was a descendant of the Xie family in Heman Village.
The Xie family is not a major surname in the village, but they have lived here for generations.
Now he is over 40 years old and is the second son in his family, with a younger brother.
Xie Ming was not easy to raise after he was born, so the village elders asked his parents to take him to find a "mother".
His parents thought it made sense, so they burned incense at home, knelt and bowed three times and nine times, then carried Xie Ming out of the house, turned east and walked to the designated place to wait for "mother". Unexpectedly, what appeared in front of them was the family's shiny rooster.
According to custom, he recognized the rooster as his "maternal uncle," since he couldn't very well recognize a mother rooster after all. The village elders said that recognizing a maternal uncle was fine too, so Xie Ming now had a rooster as his "elder uncle."
Later, his body indeed became strong and healthy. His parents were grateful to the rooster, so they asked the teacher to give him the character "鸣" (ming, meaning to crow) and also gave him the nickname "鸡冠" (jiguan, meaning rooster's comb).
After his parents passed away and the family divided their property, he built a thatched hut next to the old house and started living a simple life.
The old man from before was his elder brother, Xie Liudi. The two families had a good relationship and were able to have children.
The couple had seven sons in total, and each son was married to a woman named Dali, Erli, Qili, in that order.
Among them, the eldest, second, third, and fifth are Xie Liudi's children, while the fourth, sixth, and seventh are Xie Ming's children.
Xie Liudi's family has no daughters, while Xie Ming's eldest and second daughters are not yet of marriageable age.
The old woman we just saw was Xie Zhu, Xie Liudi's wife, and the sister-in-law she was mourning was Xie Ming's wife in this life.
When asked why he didn't come to save his wife a day or two earlier, all that can be said is that the woman's fate was his doing.
Why?
Because in the previous life, the entire Xie family was almost indirectly destroyed by that woman.
Heman Village was relatively peaceful under the rule of Chen State. However, no one expected that three years later, Chen State would suffer a severe drought. In order to survive, the Xie clan chief led his clansmen on a journey to escape the famine.
However, Xie Ming's good wife couldn't bear to leave her family and repeatedly offered help, which resulted in the Xie clan's true identity being exposed to tens of thousands of refugees.
In the end, the entire tribe's food and belongings were looted, and of the more than 200 tribes, only 3 or 4 people survived. What a tragic end!
What's puzzling is that his wife's family isn't even considered her true maternal family.
The origins of this story can be traced back to Xie Ming's deceased parents.
Xie Ming's parents were kind and simple by nature. They had only three sons over the years and no daughters.
One day, the two men were returning from the fields when they found a little girl who was seriously injured and on the verge of death by the roadside. After taking her home, they asked several nearby villages, but no one came to claim her.
Unable to get any answers from their inquiries, they decided to keep the child, believing that saving a life was more meritorious than building a seven-story pagoda.
The Xie family had no daughter before, but now that God had sent them a little girl, the Xie parents were overjoyed.
And so the girl stayed with the Xie family, changed her surname, and settled down in Heman Village.
She stayed there for more than ten years, and the once petite girl grew into a young woman. Although she wasn't a stunning beauty, she was still quite pretty and adorable under the doting care of her parents.
Just when his family thought things could go on as usual, the other family's parents showed up.
It turns out that the family lived in Pianshan Village, 20 li away, and said that they had accidentally lost their baby girl years ago.
Now they've come looking for her, claiming she's engaged and they're going to take her back to marry him.
The girl vaguely remembered being beaten like a dead dog and then abandoned when she was a child, and she didn't want to go back to her parents' home.
The Xie family was unwilling to let her go in the first place; how could they let their pampered daughter, whom they had raised for over a decade, go back to suffer? Adding to the conflict, the child also refused, leading to a quarrel between the two families.
The two sides argued fiercely, and it was only resolved after the village head intervened and mediated.
How was that problem resolved?
If the Xie family offered another 15 taels of silver, that family would marry their child into the Xie family. However, her family would have to sign a letter severing ties, forbidding her from ever coming to Heman Village again.
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