Chapter 14
"Aqing"
Wang Qing nodded, and her rough and skinny elbows tried hard to support the other half of her body so that she could be closer to Yang Ye.
Her face was covered in wrinkles and furrows, and her eyes were no longer as clear as they once were. Her small eyes, with their cloudy whites, were sunken deep into their sockets. Her vision was unfocused, as if a thin film covered the surface of her eyeballs, like a pool of stagnant water that had remained unchanged for so long, but now, a bright color had appeared on the surface.
She leaned in closer, staring intently at Yang Ye's face. Her eyes gradually turned red, tears of excitement welling up beneath them. Her lips trembled slightly, the corners of her mouth curling upwards. She opened and closed her mouth, but in the end, no words came out.
"Aqing" Yang Ye continued to call her.
"Yes, it's me." Wang Qing also recognized Yang Ye and responded repeatedly.
Tears streamed down her trembling cheeks. Her misty eyes held a warmth and genuine joy she hadn't seen in decades. Yang Ye smiled and asked, "Are you okay?"
"Okay," she opened her mouth and tried to say, "Is the madam also okay?"
Yang Ye responded, "Yeah, I'm fine too."
Wang Qing seemed to remember something, and tremblingly reached out to grab Yang Ye's hand on the rocking chair, a little nervous, "Madam, Liu Maozi came to see you yesterday. There was an accident at the gate. Please tell you to be careful."
"Mr., it's late. Let's eat fish. I'll make it."
She remembered.
Yang Ye hugged her and said, "Aqing, you don't have to do it. He is not hungry."
Suddenly, he thought of something and asked Yang Ye anxiously, "Madam, where were you yesterday? The master wanted to see you overnight."
"You go home, I'll call, my husband said," she remembered, her right hand and shoulder shaking uncontrollably.
"Ah Qing," Yang Ye held her body, tears dripping onto her clothes. He hugged her from the front, gently patting her back where the bones were visible, and comforted her, "I called him, he will be back soon."
Wang Qing's tense body seemed to relax. She breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Okay."
She was worried again, holding Yang Ye's hand and refusing to let go, afraid that if she let go, he would disappear. "Madam, the gentleman had a quarrel, don't leave, take the luggage. The gentleman went home, couldn't find the luggage, started a fire, broke the bottle, and the guard at the door wanted to shoot him. The adjutant stopped him, and he cursed, so he went out to find you."
After taking a few deep breaths, he continued, "It was curfew. He and his guards were looking for him. He came back at dawn and was smoking on the sofa. Then he went out to look for him again."
The intermittent words seemed to have drained away a lot of her strength. After she finished speaking, she no longer had the energy to sit up. She didn't hold Yang Ye's hand as hard as before, but just covered the back of Yang Ye's hand with her hand.
Yang Ye helped her sleep on the recliner. She tilted her head, her eyes still fixed on Yang Ye.
"Madam, sir, he really likes you."
Aniu just said that she fell on her head a few years ago and can't speak clearly or remember things. I don't know how she remembered these things, or if she never forgot them.
The obsession that I didn't express in the past has become an obsession that I can't forget now.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Yang Ye lowered her head, her breathing choked with sobs, her hands clenched into fists, and her tears dripped uncontrollably onto her bent legs.
She finally remembered when this happened.
It’s very small, maybe for Yang Ye, it’s not worth mentioning at all.
On the night before her wedding, her mother held her in her arms and said, "Zhao Zhao, don't be like your sister-in-law and ask for a lifelong partner. You must remember that you don't ask for love, but for mutual respect."
"Why?" Yang Ye didn't understand what his mother said at that time.
My mother only said eight words, "Love is short-lived, support is long-lasting"
Perhaps, at that time, my mother only thought of reminding me. From now on, no matter how my feelings change, whether they remain unchanged for a long time or, after a brief period of joy and novelty, I find other outlets, I must not be as stubborn as my sister-in-law, unable to tolerate those filthy women, unable to tolerate those concubines, and finally ending her life with a rope, severing the childhood sweetheart relationship between her and my brother.
Mother was wrong. She was not your sister-in-law, and Xue Shangyang was not your brother.
After they got married, Xue Shangyang treated her just as he had before, loving and harmoniously, rarely arguing. The occasional arguments they'd have, over family matters and interests, were usually resolved over a cup of tea.
Only that time, they had a big fight and neither of them was willing to give in.
She didn't remember what the quarrel was about, but she vaguely remembered that Xue Shangyang seemed to have received a phone call and left her.
Yang Ye was already angry, and being left so suddenly like that, her irritability overwhelmed her rationality. She went upstairs to pack a few clothes, ignoring Zhang Ma's advice and refusing to let the housekeeper send anyone to follow her. She went to the city and found a random hotel. That would be her runaway.
She sat on the bed in the hotel all night.
Xue Shangyang didn't come to see her all night, and Yang Ye was furious all night. The next morning, when the hotel attendant got up early to light the fire, he accidentally set the curtains on fire, and thick smoke rushed up from below to the second floor. She was so uncomfortable with the smoke that she couldn't open her eyes.
Amidst the smoke and flames, Yang Ye shielded her eyes with her hands as she stumbled and struggled to escape from the hotel. Chaos had already broken out outside, with people rushing to put out the fire, but the blaze was so intense that the innkeepers and the surrounding helpers couldn't control it.
The boss called the police, and people from the police and fire departments arrived quickly.
A line of policemen formed a circle at the hotel entrance.
When Yang Ye ran out, she was still wearing only a few layers of clothing. February and March were the coldest days of late spring, and the wind made her stumble. She also smelled of fire from head to toe. Unable to bear it any longer, she wandered around the nearby streets, hoping to find a tailor shop open at that hour so she could buy some ready-made clothes.
Passing by a tea stall at the corner of the alley, she met a few policemen who were patrolling the streets early in the morning. The chief patrolman was a soldier under Xue Shangyang. He knew Yang Ye and approached her, asked a few questions, and then sent a car and someone to take her back.
When Yang Ye got home, Xue Shangyang had just returned from outside.
He came in looking dusty and tired, not even changing out of his military uniform. Her anger, which had been subsiding, surged back up when she saw the tired look on Xue Shangyang's face and smelled the cigarette odor soaking through his body. She didn't even bother to look at him and went straight upstairs.
Wang Qing brought hot water for washing hands and saw Yang Ye coming upstairs angrily. She stood by the stairs and tried to say something, "Madam, Mr...."
"Don't mention him, just work with him." Yang Ye was so angry that he didn't listen. He went into the room and slammed the door.
Wang Qing was holding the basin, feeling a dilemma. "Mr.
"Prepare some porridge and snacks so she can eat when she wakes up." Xue Shangyang rubbed his eyebrows and went out with his adjutant.
It was clearly a very ordinary little thing, but she remembered it for so many years.
Yang Ye took a deep breath, raised his head and said in a hoarse voice: "We will never quarrel again"
Wang Qing smiled happily, "Mother Zhang is right, a simple life is the best."
"Yeah, it's just ordinary," Yang Ye also said.
If you ask her what she has learned after living for another hundred years, she would probably say that it is to go with the flow and have no desires or demands.
She had no purpose or direction, completely lost in thought. She didn't even have to think about how she should react to different people, how she should communicate with them, or even what she should do each day. Perhaps her brain had become a tool for her to gain weight. She was no different from a living dead being who could only breathe.
One day is as fresh as the day opens, and one day is as good as the day closes.
There is a well in her yard, which she hired workers to dig when she first bought the house.
The well is very deep and is about fifty or sixty years old.
The water level in the well never changed, neither rising nor falling. When she woke up in the morning, she would first draw a basin of water from the well and then pour it back out before going to bed. It was mechanical and dull, but it reminded her of the daily routine and, incidentally, reminded her that she had been lucky enough to survive another day.
The repetitive days were not broken until more than ten or twenty years ago.
Yang Ye took a deep breath, stood up and turned to look at Li Cheng and Xiao Xiao. They all understood each other and knew that Yang Ye had something to say to the old man alone.
Li Cheng scratched his head twice and deliberately lied to A Niu, "When I came here just now, I saw that the stone behind this house looked a bit strange. Can you take me to see it?"
Ah Niu was standing far away and couldn't hear their conversation clearly, he only saw their strange movements. Grandma was very happy, she hadn't seen her smile like that in a long time, her teeth were not visible, and she held the man's hand tightly and refused to let go.
After listening to Li Cheng's question and looking at the village chief, he nodded and said, "Go this way."
"Thank you," Li Cheng smiled and said to Xiao Ding, "Go back and bring the box we usually use. Village chief, the way up here is hard to find. Could you please take Xiao Ding there? I'm afraid he'll get lost."
The village chief said straightforwardly, "What's the trouble?"
"Let's go," Xiao Xiao also said to Zhou Yiheng.
Zhou Yiheng asked, "Don't you have to wait for the boss?"
“The boss will catch up on his own.”
Seeing the two people squatting and lying in front of him, Zhou Yiheng blinked his eyes. He always felt that the scene in front of him was a little strange, but he couldn't tell what was strange about it. Most of the people had left, and there was no point in him staying any longer.
Aniu took them to the mountain behind the house. Just as Li Cheng thought, the house was built on a high platform created by a landslide.
The mud and rocks from the mountains fell together and formed this gently sloping platform.
Looking back now, the landslide must have been very severe, and the mountain structure was essentially damaged. In many places, no new vegetation has grown to this day.
Li Cheng touched the exposed stone and asked Aniu, "When did this mudslide happen?"
"How did you know there was a mudslide here? Oh, the village chief told you, right?" Ah Niu said to himself, "It's been a long time, maybe 60 or 70 years."
Li Cheng was surprised. "Sixty or seventy years?"
"yes"
Li Cheng asked, "The village chief was talking about more than ten years ago?"
"That was a flood, not a mudslide," said Aniu. "Our village is in a bad location. The ground is low, so it's easy to flood when it rains heavily. In the years when my great-grandmother came back, the village had a mudslide, and this mountain was washed down at that time."
Zhou Yiheng asked, "What's next?"
"Our old house was washed away, and the land was gone. The family my great-grandmother used to work for heard the news and sent her money so she could rebuild the house. I still remember when I was a child, there were heavy rains for several days that year, even blowing away the tiles on the roof. When the rain stopped, my father and grandfather planned to turn over the few unused plots of land at home and build a new house. When my great-grandmother found out, she ran to the village chief's house and beat my father and grandfather up."
"Why do we beat them?" Zhou Yiheng asked.
"Grandma scolded them for forgetting their roots"
Zhou Yiheng wondered, "What kind of reason is this?"
"My dad said this house is like my great-grandmother's roots. It contains things she cherished, and she wouldn't leave until she finished these things. A few years ago, my great-grandmother fell and was taken to the hospital. The doctors advised us to go home and prepare. My grandfather asked my dad to take her back, thinking that even if she had to die, she should die at home. But after seven or eight days, my great-grandmother gradually got better on her own. My dad said it might be this house that was blessing her."
"The house is really unsafe," Li Cheng said after examining the situation. "There's no solid support underneath, relying solely on the two rocks underneath. Over the years, the wind and sun have caused friction between the house and the rocks, and between the rocks themselves. A typhoon could easily cause the house to collapse."
"Grandma doesn't want to move, so we have no choice but to come up and check on her every day."
"Why won't you move?" Xiao Xiao also found it hard to understand. The mountain roads were difficult to navigate, the old man was old, and the house was old and could collapse at any time. Since there was already a new house below, why did he insist on staying here?
"You keep mentioning the family she used to work for. What did they do and what were their names?" Zhou Yiheng asked.
A feeling emerged in his head, and he couldn't imagine what it was.
Yang Ye came over and said, "His name is Xue Shangyang, he is the commander of the 17th Division of the Beiyang Government Army."
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