Chapter 17 Enough!
"The marriage contract was between two old men..."
Before Sun's mother finished her words, the cowhide envelope in Xue Han's hand made a dull sound on the wooden table.
The postmark in the northwest Gobi Desert turned dark red in the humid air, just like the bloody fingerprint left by Sun's father when he falsely claimed the mining accident compensation.
Xu Yao's fingertips stroked the mining accident certificate on the cover page of the account book, and wild rose petals fell on the yellowed paper.
She looked at the mud spots on Sun Zhiqiang's trouser legs - they were from when he deliberately went around to rub against the wall of his third sister's house after the heavy rain yesterday. There was also a pair of men's overalls hanging on her third sister's windowsill that she hadn't had time to put away.
"When Uncle Xu broke his leg in December of 1973," Xue Han suddenly drew a circle on the table with a kettle, the body of the kettle was covered with the unique salt frost of the northwest Gobi Desert, "all the strong laborers in the village were repairing the reservoir, only the third son of the Sun family was digging ditches in the labor camp."
As he spoke, the old scar on his Adam's apple rose and fell slightly, left by the time he helped Xu's father stop a runaway donkey cart last year.
The gray hair in Sun's mother's bun suddenly trembled violently: "Back then, it was the girl from the Xu family herself..."
"Is this the marriage I promised myself?"
Xu Yao suddenly chuckled, and the wild rose on her wrist brushed across her third sister's bleeding wrist. "On the day of Jingzhe in 1975, you brought Sun Zhiqiang to my house and said that if I married you, you would use your connections to get Dad a new hospital bed."
She suddenly pulled out a green prescription from the account book and said, "But you turned around and gave the hospital's letter of introduction to my third sister, causing my father to have a high fever for three days in the clinic and almost developed pneumonia."
The mist drifting in from the window was filled with the fragrance of locust flowers. The village chief's fingers, covered with age spots, paused at the signature on the prescription.
Next to the bright red commune seal was the crooked handwriting of Sun Zhiqiang's signature.
"Yaoyao, how could you wrongly accuse Zhiqiang like this!"
The third sister suddenly rushed to the table, with fresh blood oozing from the bandage on her wrist, "He even gave up the housing assignment at the mine for you..."
Before she finished her words, an aluminum lunch box suddenly slipped out of her arms, and half a piece of wheat bran cake printed with Double Happiness rolled out - it was the hospital meal that Xu Yao had sent to the clinic for her father yesterday.
The crowd suddenly heard the peddler Zhang's sneer: "I was wondering why I saw Accountant Sun climbing over the wall from the backyard of Third Sister's house this morning, with his belt tied backwards."
Sun Zhiqiang's pale face instantly turned red. He grabbed the bleeding wrist of his third sister and said, "Don't listen to their nonsense! Xiao'e and I are innocent..."
"So innocent that he put the life of the Xu family in the hands of his mistress?"
Xue Han suddenly used a dagger to pick up the longevity lock on the ground. The blurred word "Xu" on the back was shone in the sunlight, and it was clear that the new marks covered the old marks.
When the tip of the knife passed over the side of Sun Zhiqiang's neck, it lifted up half of the pink bellyband that was turned out from inside his collar - the material was exactly the defective cloth that had arrived from the supply and marketing cooperative last month, and only the third sister had bought it in the entire commune.
Xu Yao duly unfolded the evidence of the mining accident: "On the 16th day of the 12th lunar month in 1972, when my father broke his leg in the mine, Uncle Sun was clearly in the next commune eating a pig-killing dinner. How did the eyewitness signature on the certificate become his?"
She touched a certain ink stain with her slender fingertips. "This ink is the new seal that the commune used only last year, but the release certificate from the labor camp used the old ink. Is Accountant Sun's time going backwards?"
The third sister suddenly screamed and threw out a crumpled piece of letter paper: "Xu Yao wrote a letter of guarantee not to cancel the engagement! She wrote it herself..."
"Let me see."
Barefoot doctor Aunt Wang squeezed over and twisted the corner of the paper with her fingers dipped in herbal juice. "Oh, this paper is newly printed manuscript paper from the commune. It was distributed to the teams only last fall."
She suddenly sniffed the ink. "The blue-black Hero ink that Miss Xu usually uses, but this handwriting is written with the carbon ink from Accountant Sun's office. When you secretly stamped the seal, did you not notice that the color of the ink didn't match the private seal of Miss Xu?"
Xue Han suddenly placed the military kettle heavily on the table, with the bottom of the kettle pressing down on the yellowed work ID card.
That was the miner's certificate that Sun's father had used to impersonate someone else. There was a grain of sorghum rice stuck on the corner of the photo. Xu Yao remembered it clearly. During the famine in 1973, the Sun family came to propose marriage with sorghum rice in their hands, saying that if she married, she could eat this every day.
Sun's mother suddenly picked up a long bench and was about to smash the account book, and the shadow of the old locust tree just passed over her ferocious face at this moment.
The wild rose on Xu Yao's wrist was suddenly blown up by the wind, and the petals fell on the trembling tip of the village chief's pen.
"Stop it!"
The village chief suddenly coughed and unfolded the certificate of the mining accident. Sun Zhiqiang's hand with bulging veins flashed across his reading lenses - that hand was quietly reaching for the butterfly bone on Xu Yao's lower back, and the ring finger was stained with fresh blood seeping from the third sister's bandage.
Sun Zhiqiang's bloodshot eyes suddenly flashed with ferocity. He raised his palm, which was wrapped in the fishy and salty smell of sweat, and fanned towards Xu Yao. The wind from the copper watch strap on his wrist lifted up the strands of hair at Xu Yao's temples.
The taut muscles under Xue Hanjun's green shirt suddenly bulged, and the arm that stretched between the two of them was like a cast-iron gate, shocking Sun Zhiqiang so much that he staggered back and knocked over a bench.
"Are you going to use force?"
The old scar on Xue Han's Adam's apple shone coldly in the morning light, and his knuckles holding the military canteen made a slight crisp sound.
Xu Yao smelled the scent of salt frost and mint on his body, and suddenly remembered that rainy night in her previous life, when these hands dug out her father, covered in blood, from the collapsed mine tunnel.
The third sister suddenly grabbed Sun Zhiqiang's belt buckle at the back of his waist and said, "Brother Zhiqiang, don't be impulsive!"
Her nails stained with marigold juice dug deeply into the soft flesh on Sun Zhiqiang's waist, but at an angle that no one could see, she quickly drew a circle on the palm of his hand with a blood-stained bandage - that was the secret code they agreed on when they were having an affair.
Xu Yao saw it all.
She stroked the secret pocket sewn on the inner layer of her cotton-padded jacket, and her fingertips touched the stack of tear-soaked letter papers.
In the deep winter of 1975, when my father was dying, I knelt in the snow and begged for money for his life-saving. It turned out that my mother had exchanged it for these threatening letters with withered plum blossoms between them: "Want to cancel the engagement?
Take your father away from the clinic first! ”
"Uncle village chief, please look."
The letter she unfolded rustled, and the scent of wintersweet wrapped around Sun's mother's crooked handwriting, "Last year on the night of Frost's Descent, Aunt Sun brought three uncles from my family to smash my window, saying that if I dared to cancel the engagement, I would replace the painkillers my father got from the barefoot doctor with Guanyin soil."
The peddler Zhang suddenly spat: "No wonder Brother Xu always said the medicine was bitter, it turns out that the Sun family was fooling people with mud balls!"
The colorful silk thread wrapped around his waist swayed with his movements, just like the lover's knot that the third sister secretly tied on the tree in the backyard of the Sun family last night.
Xue Han fished out an aluminum cigarette case from his military uniform pocket and poured out three painkillers covered in Gobi sand. "Uncle Xu was coughing up blood last month, and asked his comrades to bring medicine from the Corps Hospital." His cold eyes swept over the silver hairpin dangling from Sun's mother's bun. "Unlike some people, who even cut the meals for sick patients."
The third sister suddenly covered her face and sobbed: "How could Sister Yao frame me like this..."
Under the handkerchief with which she pretended to wipe her tears, half a piece of wheat bran cake crumbs was stuck to the corner of her lips - it was the leftovers that she had stolen from Xu's father's lunch box this morning.
"False accusation?"
Xu Yao suddenly opened the last page of the account book, and two blood-stained buttons fell on the table with a clink.
That was the work button that was torn when Sun's father falsely collected the pension. The initials of the old man Xu's surname were engraved on the copper button. "On New Year's Eve in 1973, Uncle Sun got drunk and grabbed my father's collar and said, 'Your daughter from the Xu family is a member of the Sun family, and you must be buried in the Sun family's graveyard even after you die.' This button was thrown into the stove at that time."
The village chief's fingers, covered with age spots, suddenly trembled violently, and his reading glasses slipped to the tip of his nose.
He saw Xue Han pick up the button with the tip of the dagger. The cold light from the blade reflected the bulging blue veins on Sun Zhiqiang's neck - there were still teeth marks left by his third sister last night.
"Nonsense!" Sun's mother suddenly pulled apart Xu Yao's gray and white hair, and pointed the silver hairpin in her hair directly at her forehead. "It was your mother who touched the bed in my house and talked about marriage..."
"My mother touched the jade bracelet left by the old man of the Sun family, not the silver-plated bracelet you redeemed from the pawnshop!"
Xu Yao suddenly pulled out a red silk bag from her bosom and dropped a half-broken jade bracelet.
The transparent jade body rippled in the morning light, and the seal characters "Xu's Heirloom" on the inner wall were clearly visible. "On the Spring Equinox of 1975, you said you would keep the heirloom for us, but you melted the jade bracelet and turned it into earrings for my third sister's dowry."
Barefoot doctor Aunt Wang suddenly exclaimed, brushing aside the hair at the sideburns of the third sister: "Xiao'e, this pair of jade pendants has a nice head, but the silver-inlaid pattern..."
Her fingernails, soaked in herbal juice, scraped across the silver tray, revealing the edges of the seal characters that had not been melted away.
Xue Han suddenly slammed the military kettle on the table, causing the stack of forged guarantees to scatter all over the floor.
The northwest gravel stuck to the bottom of the pot fell down, mixed with the snow and mud slurry that Xu Yao swallowed when she knelt in front of the Sun family and begged for a divorce in her previous life.
"Enough!" The village chief suddenly coughed violently, and the cracked pipe made a dull sound on the table.
The shadow of the old locust tree swayed on his wrinkled face, just like the oxygen mask swaying in front of Xu Yao when he died in his previous life.
Xu Yao felt Xue Han's body temperature coming through the fabric of his military uniform, and his taut back was like a warm wall.
This reminded her of the night she was reborn, when she curled up in a leaky woodshed and heard the sound of this "wall" repairing the roof for her in the heavy rain.
Sun's mother wanted to argue, but was stopped by the village chief's trembling gesture.
The old man took off his reading glasses, and the mess on the ground was reflected in his cloudy eyes: "That's all for today, tomorrow at noon..."
He suddenly choked and coughed violently, and the blood splashing in the spittoon made Xu Yao's pupils shrink suddenly - that scarlet color was so similar to the blood foam he spat out when he was dying in his previous life.
The third sister suddenly fell to her knees and said, "Grandpa Village Chief, please have mercy on me!"
She dug her fingernails stained with marigold juice into the cracks in the blue bricks, but quietly pressed down the half-burned letter of guarantee with her knee.
The moment Xue Han's military boots rolled over the cracks in the bricks, she heard the crisp sound of her little finger bone cracking.
As dusk drifted into the ancestral hall, most of the wild roses on Xu Yao's wrist had withered.
Xue Han walked silently at the back half a step, the military water bottle making light sounds with his steps. The mint water swaying inside was mixed with the snow lotus honey he brought back from the Gobi Desert - that was the throat water he specially prepared for Xu Yao this morning.
Outside the courtyard wall floated the sharp curses of Sun's mother, mixed with the third sister's artificial sobs.
Xu Yao clenched the broken jade in the red silk bag, and suddenly heard Xue Han's low voice mixed with the fragrance of locust flowers: "The gate of the courtyard has been reinforced. It's windy at night."
She looked at the newly replaced jujube wood door bolt of her house, and suddenly remembered a snowy night in her previous life when the loud noise of Sun Zhiqiang kicking the door and entering overlapped with the cicada's chirping at this moment.
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