Chapter 1 – Refusing the Marriage

At Dawa Commune in Gengle Town, at the foot of the Taihang Mountains.

In a small courtyard near the mountainside stood three old adobe houses that had long fallen into disrepair. Tong Layue woke with a splitting headache. Dazed, she stared blankly at the rain-leaking roof for a long moment.

“Bad woman! I won’t let you in! Mom won’t abandon us and remarry!”

“Even if our family starves to death, it’s none of your business!”

Outside in the courtyard, a little boy and a little girl raised their dirty little faces, trying to look fierce as they blocked Matchmaker Wang’s path. But they were still too young to stop the elderly woman from entering.

Matchmaker Wang was already in her sixties. Dressed in coarse gray clothes with an ingratiating smile plastered across her face, she shoved the two children aside and walked into the house.

Seeing Tong Layue sitting on the floor in a daze, she immediately beamed.

“Layue, forgive this old woman for coming uninvited. I’m here about the same matter we discussed before. Song Dalong has no objections. He’s quite satisfied with you. There won’t be any bride price…” She paused before continuing, “But the Song family has promised that they’ll treat your children as if they were their own.”

Tong Layue’s face was pale and haggard.

After searching for a while, she finally found a box of painkillers. She swallowed one tablet, drank a cup of hot water, and gradually the pounding in her head subsided.

She slowly looked around the shabby room, then at Matchmaker Wang, and finally at the two children clinging to the window, gazing at her pitifully from outside.

Only then did she finally realize—

She had been reborn.

She had returned to the early spring of 1989, the year she was twenty-nine… the beginning of every tragedy.

In her previous life, her husband, Zhao Guoan, had died unexpectedly, leaving behind Tong Layue and their two children.

People often said that widows attracted endless gossip, and Tong Layue had suffered greatly over the years. After observing the three-year mourning period for her husband, Matchmaker Wang introduced her to Song Dalong, a widower from the same village, and she remarried.

Who could have imagined that she had entrusted herself to the wrong man?

After moving into the Song household with her children, Tong Layue was subjected to endless humiliation and abuse. As for her two children, they were beaten and cursed almost every day.

Her son was sent to work illegally in a coal mine. When the mine collapsed, even his body was never recovered.

Her daughter was sold into the mountains as a bride in exchange for a bride price and died young from severe postpartum hemorrhaging.

Tong Layue herself was tortured until she was little more than a shadow of a human being, drifting into madness.

Every single day, she lived consumed by guilt and self-blame.

Even on her deathbed, she believed she had failed her children. She had been unable to raise them safely into adulthood.

But now…

Heaven had given her another chance.

This lifetime, she would never allow those tragedies to happen again.

She would tear apart the shackles that had devoured her family and carve out a path for her children’s survival.

“Matchmaker Wang, as for Song Dalong… let’s end the matter here. And from now on, don’t introduce any more men to me.”

Tong Layue looked toward the children outside the window and quickly walked out. She gently scolded them for climbing on the windowsill.

“Don’t fool around like that. What if you fall and hurt yourselves?”

The moment the children heard that their mother would no longer remarry, the tension they had been holding in finally broke.

Her daughter burst into tears and threw herself into Tong Layue’s arms.

Her son’s eyes reddened as well. Stubbornly lowering his head, he clutched the corner of his mother’s clothes with his tiny hand. Only after standing there for quite some time did he pull his younger sister away, looking back every few steps.

“Layue, look at you…” Matchmaker Wang hurried out after them, unwilling to give up.

“You already agreed before. How can you suddenly change your mind? If you have any conditions, just tell me. I’ll go back and discuss them with the Song family.”

She sighed earnestly.

“Layue, listen to your godmother’s advice. You’re all alone. Neither your maiden family nor your in-laws care about you. A household without a man simply can’t survive…”

If she failed to persuade Tong Layue, the twenty-yuan matchmaking fee she’d already accepted from the Song family would have to be returned.

“My demands aren’t very high,” Tong Layue replied coldly.

“I just want a man who has a house, a vehicle, both parents dead, an elder brother who hanged himself, a younger sister who’s already dead, and plenty of money.”

“If the Song family can’t satisfy these small requirements, they should give up.”

Matchmaker Wang froze speechless.

“…”

No matter how hard she tried to persuade her afterward, Tong Layue remained unmoved.

In the end, Matchmaker Wang could only leave in frustration.

After she was gone, Tong Layue closed the courtyard gate and chased away the villagers who had gathered to watch the commotion. Only then did the yard finally become quiet.

She picked up a shovel and dug some soil, mixed it with wheat straw, added water, and kneaded it into mud.

Although she was already exhausted, she gritted her teeth, carried the basin of mud up a ladder onto the roof, and patched the spots where it leaked.

As soon as she climbed back down, she saw her son awkwardly approaching with a flushed face.

When he reached her, he slowly opened his muddy little hand.

Inside lay a single egg.

“Mom… I found this egg in the mountains.”

“You’ve been sick… If you boil it and eat it, it’ll help you get better.”

“As long as Mom is safe… that’s all that matters…”

His voice grew softer and softer until it was almost inaudible.

Over the past few days, he’d watched his mother collapse from hunger and couldn’t bear it anymore.

So he had secretly stolen an egg.

He knew stealing was wrong.

But every day he saw his mother curled up painfully on the heated brick bed because of hunger.

He had felt he had no other choice.

Seeing her thoughtful son, Tong Layue suddenly felt her nose sting.

She had two children.

Her son was Zhao Daniu, eight years old this year. He was dutiful and ambitious, though somewhat impulsive.

Her daughter was Zhao Da’e, only five years old, and rather timid.

Years of malnutrition had left both children frighteningly thin.

Their clothes were tattered, and neither of them even had a proper pair of shoes.

Tong Layue truly was starving.

The family had been out of grain for three days.

The only thing they had eaten recently was a strip of elm bark her son had secretly brought home.

Tree bark was one thing…

But how could anyone simply “find” an egg these days?

Tong Layue knew perfectly well where the egg had come from.

Looking at her frail son, countless emotions surged through her heart.

Squatting down, she didn’t scold him for stealing.

Instead, she gently stroked his hair.

“Don’t steal again in the future.”

“In a little while, boil the egg and share it with Da’e.”

“As for me… I’ll go outside and find us something to eat.”

One stolen egg…

And even that had to be shared between two children.

Tong Layue’s heart ached.

Originally intending to rest first, she instead grabbed a hand hoe and a small basket before heading out.

Leaving the house, Tong Layue walked toward the eastern edge of the village.

Beyond it lay a stretch of wilderness, and farther east was a small mountain valley filled with wild vegetables.

Most importantly…

In her previous life, she had once discovered a large patch of wild baikal skullcap (Huangqin) growing there.

Huangqin was an ordinary-looking medicinal herb.

It had long, slender stems with many branches and bloomed with small purple flowers.

Unless someone was extremely knowledgeable about medicinal plants, it looked almost identical to purple alfalfa.

Most villagers mistook it for alfalfa and harvested it as livestock feed.

In her previous life, Tong Layue had become familiar with many medicinal herbs after years of illness and hardship.

An old traditional physician had once told her about Huangqin.

Unable to afford medicine, she had climbed the mountains herself to dig for herbs to treat her illnesses.

That was how she had learned to identify many medicinal plants, Huangqin being one of them.

Step by uneven step, she made her way forward.

Whenever she came across sow thistle (Jumacai), she dug it up.

It was one of the few wild vegetables that could be eaten in large quantities without harming the body.

Its taste was slightly bitter.

It could be dipped in sauce, mixed with cornmeal to make vegetable pancakes, wrapped into dumplings, or stir-fried.

Truthfully, Tong Layue had only come to try her luck.

So many years had passed that she wasn’t even sure whether the Huangqin still grew there.

But at the very least, the basket of wild vegetables would keep her children from going hungry today.

Soon, the basket was full.

She continued deeper into the valley.

Before long, on a sunny hillside ahead, she spotted a patch of plants blooming with reddish-purple flowers, flourishing freely in the sunlight.

It was exactly what she had hoped to find.

Wild Huangqin.