When Guo Mazi's team retreated south, they captured seventeen men from Guo Yucun.

A yellow wind blew all night, dyeing the sky and the earth yellow. An ox cart ran over the field road, raising a trail of yellow dust. A dog barked from somewhere in the distance, looking weak.

Dougua Niang stood on the ridge at the head of the village, looking around for a long time. The wind blew up her white hair, and the plowshares of time plowed her cheeks into ravines. Her frail body was wrapped in ragged clothes, and her eyes were helpless and blank, as if

A statue.

In the distant valley, there was a burst of muffled sound, which was the roar of the Yellow River. The wind passed through the mountain village, and the door panels of some houses were clanging. Suddenly, a loud cry of a baby pierced the dead silence of dawn, and Mr. Liangtian panicked.

He ran out of the village and shouted loudly to Dougua Niang: "Dougua Niang, go home quickly, Dougua Niang has given birth!"

Dougua Niang's whole body trembled, and the muscles on her face began to spasm. A pair of little feet kept switching, as if they were not walking anymore, but floating. The cry was particularly loud in the early spring morning. The dog stopped biting, and the wind appeared.

Weary, snowflakes were floating in the gray sky. The first wisp of smoke rose from someone's thatched roof. On the crooked neck tree at the entrance of the village, a couple of magpies were singing duet.

Dougua Niang rushed into the house in a hurry and saw that Quanfa's sister-in-law had already wrapped up the child. Dougua Niang was lying on the earthen bed wrapped in a quilt, with tears in her eyes.

Quanfa's sister-in-law lives next door to Dougua's house. She heard Dougua's daughter-in-law moaning loudly in her sleep. She quickly got up from the kang and arrived at Dougua's house in a hurry. She saw that Dougua's daughter-in-law's lower body was wet, her amniotic fluid had broken, and she was about to give birth.

The grief caused the new daughter-in-law, who had just been married less than a year, to have big beads of sweat on her head. However, her mother-in-law was not at home. Ever since Dougua and his son were kidnapped by Guo Mazi, Dougua Niang could not sleep almost every night.

Unsure, she got up and went to the ridge at the entrance of the village to look around. In the hallucination, her son and husband would return this morning. Her expectation was unforgettable and could make a stone shed tears.

The whole-haired sister-in-law didn't care much, and quickly arranged Dougua's daughter-in-law to lie down on the kang. As soon as her legs were bent, she could see the black hair of the newborn baby. As soon as the baby was born, he cried loudly and refused to be left alone. It was a boy, Guo

Yucun was happy to have a new baby. Sister-in-law Quanfa cut the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors. As soon as she wrapped the baby, Tougua Niang came back. Sister-in-law Quanfa helped Dougua Niang to stuff the baby's placenta into the kang hole and clean it up.

Blood stains on the kang. Seeing that everything was settled, Sister-in-law Quanfa was about to leave. Dougua Niang grabbed Sister-in-law Quanfa's sleeve and refused to let her go, saying, "We will eat at home."

Sister-in-law Quanfa smiled helplessly: There are still a bunch of babies on the kang, who will feed them?

Dougua Niang no longer wanted to stay. There was a fire in the stove, the water boiled, and the room was filled with wet mist. The child fell asleep and lay down next to Dougua Niang. Dougua Niang took a look at the child sleeping beside him.

The son next to him grinned, with a pair of dimples appearing on his pale cheeks and a pair of shiny hairy eyes.

Lifting the lid of the earthen pot, Dougua Niang scooped out the wheat noodles that she was usually reluctant to eat, and began to cook for Dougua's daughter-in-law. People in the mountains did not grow wheat, and the land was hung on the mountains. There was little harvest from planting wheat. Seeing the beans

Gua's wife's belly was swelling day by day, so Dougua's father carried a sack on his back, loaded two buckets of millet, and walked thirty miles to Wagou Town. In exchange for a bucket of wheat, he ground it into flour and put it in an earthen jar.

Waiting for the birth of my grandson.

However, just three days before the child was born, the entire village was ransacked by Guo Mazi's team. Sixteen young men were tied together with a hemp rope and held at the back of the man's head with a gun to the bank of the Yellow River.

, got on the boat and drove towards Shanxi. Dougua's father was not arrested at first, but the old man was worried about Dougua, so he kept walking behind the team, begging the officer to let his son go as he walked. The officer became impatient.

, he simply forced Dougua Daddy onto the boat and became a cook for Guo Mazi's team.

There was deathly silence in Guoyu Village. Almost all the women and children were huddled in their homes, sitting on the hot kang, thinking about when their husbands, sons, or fathers would come back. Because Guo Mazi once said before leaving that he was not

Instead of arresting soldiers, he conscripted these young people to be porters. As long as the troops were sent to their destination, he would immediately let these porters go home. Guo Mazi still had some reputation in the Wagou Town area. This troop originally belonged to General Yang Hucheng's Tenth Army.

Seventh Route Army. After the Xi'an Incident, General Yang Hucheng's Seventeenth Route Army was reorganized, and Guo Mazi's troops were ordered to go to the anti-Japanese front line in Shanxi to fight the Japanese.

While making the noodles, Dougua Niang murmured in her heart: Dougua's daughter-in-law is not yet due to give birth. Is this child born prematurely or... She didn't dare to think about it. Except for the Guo family, who is an old resident of Guoyu Village, other families

They all had the experience of escaping from famine, and it’s hard to tell their family backgrounds. Maybe a man and a woman met each other on the way to escape famine and became a family. They are both fallen people in the world, so no one needs to laugh at the other. But Dougua Niang is heartbroken.

Unwilling to do so, when Dougua's father picked up Dougua's daughter-in-law, Dougua's mother was not willing to do so. The woman looked like a fairy, and at first glance she was not the master of life.

Unexpectedly, Dougua Lao was a loser and fell in love with the woman when he saw her. The two flirted with each other and soon became attached to each other. The old couple had no choice but to set up a banquet and invited several elders from the village to give them a treat.

Dougua gets married.

The daughter-in-law's belly became bulging not long after she got married. She often stood in front of her hut with a big belly, spitting out melon seed peels from her mouth. The green-skinned young men in the village always flirted with Dougua's daughter-in-law when they passed by.

She said some cute words. Dougua's wife smiled at everyone, and her thin cherry mouth was like a knife, which made those green-skinned young people very happy. For this reason, Dougua once said to Dougua, "I want Dougu."

Gua cares about his wife. Helplessly, Dougua dotes on his wife, and acts like a turtle grandson in front of her, not daring to express his arrogance.

Dougua's wife was so hungry that she couldn't wait any longer. She forced herself to sit up and leaned against the wall of the Kang. She watched her mother-in-law put the noodles into the front pot, pour a drop of sesame oil into the back pot, and cook a little chopped green onion. Suddenly, she was full.

The house was filled with fragrance. Wife-in-law Dougua swallowed a mouthful of saliva, the door was quietly pushed open, and a furry head squeezed in.

Dougua Niang drove the dog away, closed the door, put the noodles into a bowl, mixed it, and served it to Dougua Niang's daughter-in-law. Then she had the opportunity to climb on the kang and take a look at her newly born grandson. This child seemed to have been well cared for in her mother's womb.

Very good, it doesn't look like a premature birth at all. Dougua's daughter-in-law just immersed herself in eating noodles, sweating profusely from eating, and in an instant her bowl was upside down. She looked into the pot, opened her mouth and said, "Mom, put in another bowl."

Dougua Niang was captured by an emotion, and the doubts in her heart grew bigger and bigger. She pretended not to hear, closed her eyes, and did not move.

Dougua's wife was a heartless woman and couldn't see clearly the expression on her mother-in-law's face. Seeing her mother-in-law lying motionless on the kang, she thought she was very tired. Fortunately, the pot stand was close to the kang, so she could reach out and touch it.

Dougua's daughter-in-law took the pot by herself and filled another bowl. While eating, she said to her mother-in-law: "Mom, you should eat some too."

The child woke up and cried loudly. Dougua Niang tremblingly picked up the newborn baby, and recalled in her mind the severe drought in the Central Plains that year, thousands of miles away in the wilderness, and people dying of hunger everywhere, but it was Dougua Daddy who picked her up from the pile of dead.

... A person's life is full of twists and turns, and fortunes and misfortunes are unpredictable. Maybe this child has a fate with this family in the previous life. If you think more openly, you will feel calm in your heart. After dinner, Dougua's wife took the child and said to her mother-in-law:

"Mom, people in the village say that Guo Mazi has been stationed in our area for decades and is a man of his word. Nothing will happen to my father and Dougua. You'd better eat some food and don't worry about your health."
Chapter completed!