This is Kaoshan Village. This village has four distinct seasons. In spring, there are green willows, in summer, there are cicadas chirping, in autumn, there are sweet-scented osmanthus, and in winter, there is white snow.
Spring has finally come to the Silent Valley. Except for a few traces of white snow remaining on the top of the mountain, the mountain has been covered with light green again, and a small black spot moves there from time to time.
That moving little black dot is Li Xinghe, she is 20 years old this year.
For a long time after she was born, she had no name.
Her mother calls her ‘Nizi’ and her father calls her ‘a loser’.
Later, the superiors sent people to count the population and register her. Dad was too lazy to remember a name, so he asked the person who registered her to write a random name.
She was already very sensible at that time, so she smiled sweetly at the aunt, and the female clerk named her: Li Xinghe.
Other girls in the same village were named Lan, Fen, etc. by their families, but she was the only one who got a nice name by accident because her family was too lazy to give her a name.
Li Xinghe was lucky enough to catch up with the nine-year compulsory education. You can attend free education, but you have to continue working after school, and when you finish working, when you go to bed.
After completing compulsory education, she was naturally not allowed to continue going to school.
A beautiful teacher from the city once came to our house. "Dad Xinghe, Xinghe is a good student. With her grades, it is not difficult to get into a key high school in the provincial capital. It is really a waste to do farm work at home, so let her continue to go to school."
Bar."
Li Xinghe no longer remembers what his father said. Perhaps out of disgust, he shut those words out of memory.
However, when she sent the teacher away from home, the afternoon sunshine shone on the teacher's face, and the annoyed and regretful expression on her face was forever imprinted in Li Xinghe's mind.
The teacher walked to the door without saying a word, hugged her, turned around and left without saying anything.
In early spring, the trees on the mountain have turned green. There are not as many dead branches as there were in winter. She carefully picked up the dead branches step by step and accumulated enough to take home as firewood for cooking.
After bending down for too long, she stood up to rest.
I looked up at the blue sky without any clouds, and the village surrounded by mountains in the mountain valley. The name of the village was called Kaoshan Village. The village was neither big nor small, but you could see her home at a glance.
Because there was only a dilapidated earth-thatched house in her house, which was dark.
This forest is very close to the village, and wild beasts will not come here. If you go further inside, you will find deep mountains and old forests, and there may not be any hungry beasts.
After taking a short rest, Li Xinghe quickly continued working.
Click, click, click.
Break off the dead branches, pick them up, and stack them on the basket.
The piles should be staggered so that you can carry as much firewood back as possible. If you use the leftovers every day, your mother will not get cold.
This past winter was colder than before, because she had to go out to work every day, and she was a 'useful person' after all, so her father gave her enough thick clothes, and physical work would also keep her body warm.
But my mother's experience was different, because the continuous childbirth in just a few years was very harmful to the body. Coupled with long-term hunger and malnutrition, she was no longer able to do heavy work.
A rural woman cannot have children and cannot do heavy work. These two points added to a person are equivalent to a verdict, indicating that the rest of her life will be miserable.
"Are you out of your mind? That damn mother of yours eats and drinks for free at home every day, and you still have to pay attention to her clothes? If it gets colder, she will freeze to death? It will be just right if she freezes to death! So as not to have to serve her with an uncle.
"Like." In the coldest days of winter, when she went to tell her father that she wanted to buy some cotton to make cotton-padded clothes for her mother, this was his answer. Not to mention, if she was even slightly unhappy, her mother would be cut off from food.
Other seasons are fine. She can sneak out to find some food in the mountains and hide it for her mother. But winter, when nothing happens, is really the most difficult months for her mother.
This winter's severe cold, coupled with the constant hunger, made my mother's health worse and worse.
She was almost rested, and stopped sighing and reminiscing. She neatly arranged the high pile of baskets with her hands and feet, tied the firewood with a rope to make it stronger, and then picked up the small hoe hanging next to it.
While walking, she patrolled the surrounding land that had begun to turn green. Suddenly, the appearance of a plant made her eyes light up. A small root vegetable? She walked a few steps quickly in surprise, squatted down, and sure enough! It finally started to grow!
She dug out the small root vegetables and carefully put them in her coat pocket.
Li Xinghe is very happy. The wild vegetables have begun to grow. After a few days and a half, shepherd's purse, dandelions, etc. will all grow out. It will be better starting from May, when you can pick bracken, which city people like very much.
These wild vegetables. At this season every year, her father asked her to go to the mountains every day to dig up wild vegetables and sell them to the supply and marketing cooperative in the center of the village. They collected these wild vegetables all year round and sold them to city people who were tired of eating big fish and meat.
Every time before selling wild vegetables, Li Xinghe would secretly hide some in his clothes and leave them for his mother to add to her meal.
Afraid of breaking the hard-earned wild vegetables, she put down the shovel and used her fingers to dig at the frozen soil at the roots. The dry and chapped wounds on her fingers began to ache and oozed blood.
The long winter is so despairing. At this moment, holding a touch of green in my hand is so solid and comforting. The grievances of a winter began to condense in my eyes, reflecting the clear pupils, and finally gathered into large teardrops.
The long eyelashes fell towards the snow.
The stars fell, wetting the wounded hand. But she kept on using the hoe to dig up the frozen soil near the wild vegetables. Boom! A sharp sound that was hard to describe sounded, and the little hoe hit something unusually hard.
She lowered her head and touched the thing. The dense water vapor made it difficult for her to see what was in front of her. She quickly raised her sleeves, which were patched several times, and wiped her tears haphazardly.
But just after wiping away my tears, I looked down and saw that the thing I just touched with my hand was nowhere to be found. The place where my hand was at this moment was just a piece of ordinary soil, which was cold and a little bit frozen.
Li Xinghe was stunned and fumbled around in the pit for a few times. Maybe it was an illusion just now.
She dug up the last little root vegetable and put it away. Holding her knees, she stood up slowly, picked up the hoe, and continued to look around.
"Hurry up." She murmured and quickened her pace. She didn't dare to stay on the mountain for too long. She had to rush back to cook before dinner, otherwise she would be beaten and scolded again.
In fact, she didn't know that just now, her hand did touch a pitch-black flaky object, very black, extremely black and pure color.
If someone was watching all this just now, he would have seen something like this: a thin girl squatting to dig wild vegetables. There was a strange pure black object under her finger, and the blood oozing from the cracked finger was stained on the object.
, together with her tears, were quickly absorbed by the object. A trace of light that could not be noticed at all swam across the surface of the object, and then the next second, this strange object disappeared.
But Li Xinghe naturally didn't know all this. As she walked and searched, she got a few more wild vegetables that had grown early.
It was too early in the season, so Li Xinghe leaned against the tree trunk next to him, rested and then went home. Several villages in the mountain col not far away were already starting to smoke from their cooking pots.
Li Xinghe, who was resting on a tree trunk, frowned and raised his right hand to look at his index finger. Except that it was dirty and stained with soil and had some blood oozing from the cracks, there was nothing unusual about it. But why was this finger slightly warm at this moment?
Especially when her eyes were fixed on that finger, the burning feeling became more obvious.
She raised her hand doubtfully, brought it close to her eyes, looked at it, and gently rubbed her hot index finger with her thumb.
At this moment! A chaotic space appeared in her mind! This space was so real, it seemed like it was actually appearing in front of her eyes!
"Ah!" Li Xinghe was startled, his mind went blank, and he shook his hand subconsciously as if he had picked up an extremely ugly insect!
At the same time, the chaotic space in my mind disappeared!
She leaned against the tree trunk, and her ears could clearly hear the sound of her heart beating wildly after being frightened.
Just now? What was that? Was it a hallucination due to hunger?