The next morning, many women and elderly people were standing outside the old Zhou family house in Zhoujia Village to see them off.
There had been strong winds blowing in the early morning, but now the sky was clear, the wind stopped, and the snow stopped. Several superstitious women kept muttering that good people will be rewarded, and even God was giving them favors.
Mrs. Huang, the old lady of Zhou, was a kind person. She had returned to Zhoujia Village and had cured many villagers in her early years. Many of the women who came to see her off had received her kindness.
Even though the Zhou family had a bad reputation, the common people who had received favors from the old lady still remembered the old lady's kindness and quietly waited outside the old house, intending to see her off.
Even though the common people were illiterate, they still had their own principles. They despised the Zhou family and disdained to coexist with them, but they still stayed outside.
Zhou Xiaocun, dressed in mourning, walked in front with his eldest son, followed by the remaining children, grandchildren, and their wives, then the old couple Zhou Dagu, and their children and grandchildren behind them.
The people who were seeing them off followed the hearse and walked towards the mountain.
On this day, Mrs. Zhou, who had experienced many twists and turns in her life, disappeared from this world.
The absence of Zhou Xiaozheng and his daughter once again made everyone realize that the only kind-hearted person in the Zhou family had left, and the two families had reached a point of no return.
Less than a month later, another lonely grave was found not far from Old Lady Zhou's new grave. I don't know what the Zhou family was thinking, knowing that the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law didn't get along, yet they arranged for them to be buried not far away.
Compared to the mourning hall that had been set up for Old Lady Zhou for a long time, Huang Zhaodi's funeral was held quietly.
The next day after receiving the notice, Huang Zhaodi's body was secretly transported back to the old house by Zhou Xiaocun and his eldest son.
The cause of death of Huang Zhaodi, who was originally fat but now became as thin as a bag of bones, is unknown, but it is not difficult for Zhou Xiaocun to see that his wife was starved to death.
The four sons glared at their father. They couldn't understand why the food rations they saved every month made their mother, who took the blame for their father, so thin.
Thinking of Zhou Xiaocun's widowed mistress, thinking of that woman's fair and rosy face, how could they not know into whose mouth their food went?
Even if their mother was not rich, all her greed was for them. For Zhou Lidong and his four brothers, their mother brought shame to them, but she also loved them with love.
The four brothers, with tears in their eyes, pushed their father Zhou Xiaocun away and stood opposite him. Behind the four brothers were their three daughters-in-law who were cleaning Huang Zhaodi's remains with disgust on their faces.
Faced with his sons' anger, Zhou Xiaocun was speechless and could only remain silent.
He did subsidize the pretty widow and even nearly considered marrying her. But he also didn't give up on Huang Zhaodi. She was his wife and the mother of his four sons. Would he dare?
He wasn't a fool. Compared to the pretty widow, Huang Zhaodi was devoted to him. They had been in love in the past, and even though his wife was old and faded, as long as she was alive, he never thought of abandoning her.
But now he explained that he had indeed given his wife food coupons, would they believe him? No! These were all private subsidies given to him by the old lady, and there was no evidence to prove it.
Where did the old lady get the food coupons?
That was given by that bastard and that idiot from the Zhang family.
Zhou Xiaocun once again wondered if this was a trap set by the father-in-law and son-in-law. Perhaps even the pretty widow's seduction of him in the first place was also their ploy?
"You're not worthy of being our father!"
Zhou Xiaocun listened to his eldest son's roar. He laughed bitterly and said quietly, "If I say I never intended to abandon your mother, would you believe me?"
"If I say I've never wronged your mother, do you believe me?"
The eldest brother, Zhou Lidong, said coldly, "If you have the nerve, tell my mother...you didn't cheat on her. You worried about her day and night, and you didn't sneak into someone else's house in the middle of the night."
Zhou Xiaocun looked around at his four sons, seeing four pairs of resentful eyes, and felt a pang of pain in his heart. These were his good sons. They had never understood his normal needs as a man, and had made him lose face in front of his daughters-in-law.
At this moment, he thought of his mother, the old mother who stuffed money and food coupons into his pocket even when he gave her a cold face.
Oh my god, is this retribution?
Zhou Xiaocun sat down on the chair weakly, lowered his head and remained silent.
Seeing this, Zhou Lidong's four brothers simply ignored it and gathered there to discuss the aftermath.
The four brothers tacitly agreed not to discuss how to retrieve their mother's body, a criminal. Their only thought was to bury their mother before the rest of the family knew about it and could object.
"The second and fourth sons will stay with mother, while the third son and I will go dig the kang. Tomorrow morning, when the time is right, we will give mother a ride."
The second oldest, Zhou Lixi, shook his head in objection. "The children didn't have time to send their grandmother off. You're the eldest, so you have to keep vigil. The three of us brothers will go."
Zhou Lidong stopped objecting, nodded, and watched them leave. He waved goodbye to his wife and sister-in-law, then quietly leaned against the cabinet, looking at Huang Zhaodi's remains.
He still remembered when he was a child... His mother wasn't as unreasonable as she later became. She would hold him tenderly, humming a song, and would do everything she could to make sure he lived no worse off than others.
When his younger brothers and sisters were born, his mother would tell him that she still loved him the most because he was the eldest son of the Zhou family and everything would belong to him in the future.
Later, he remembered that it was the appearance of that beautiful and generous aunt that made his father gradually dissatisfied with his mother. In particular, he would say that he could not compare to his uncle because he was held back by his mother.
Then, everything changed...
The mother who loved money became greedy, became inferior, and her body expanded rapidly. And his father started staying out all night and ignoring them.
The gentle mother finally turned fierce and beat his father down again and again. After that, it seemed that force had conquered everything, and the family began to return to normal.
With the death of his uncle, a beautiful and well-behaved baby came into the family. Everything began to change again, and his mother finally became a knife to his grandfather and his father.
The knife transferred the anger towards the young aunt to the baby. They succeeded, but his mother was changed beyond recognition and could never be restored to her original state.
His mother told them that the baby's mother was a bitch and that her father no longer loved them. What did he think then? Oh, I remember now...
All the mistakes started from that day.
His mother was ruined by the Zhou family and the Huang family. Her parents and her husband's family joined forces to force her to become a hideous devil.
Recalling this, Zhou Lidong walked to Huang Zhaodi's body, held her hand, and tried to warm the cold hand with his palms.
Damn it, he'd been foolishly exploited his entire life. He was left with a bad reputation, and didn't even have a spare coffin, let alone a grand funeral.
In the early hours of the morning, the four brothers wrapped Huang Zhaodi's body in a new mat, and took their wives to bury their mother's body in the rain and snow, avoiding passers-by.
If it weren't for the sound of a few firecrackers, no one would have noticed this newly added lonely grave.
When the Zhou family members learned that the "criminal" Huang Zhaodi was buried in the ancestral tomb, they were furious but could do nothing about it. They couldn't just abandon the coffin and the body.
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