Chapter 500: Chapter 212: Top-grade Classical Literature (Part Four)
Suddenly, He Tiantian felt a warmth in her nose and a viscous liquid meandered down.
He Tiantian reached out to touch it, and upon inspection, she had, unsurprisingly, started to bleed from her nose.
She pulled out a blue-checked handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the blood from her fingers and nose.
She absentmindedly pinched her wrists and thighs.
She was far too thin, clearly malnourished.
According to the script, the period she was currently in was the late 1950s.
Though it was a parallel world derived from a novel, it still bore some key historical junctures, like the Three Years of Difficulty.
And this year was the first of those years; disasters hadn’t yet peaked in their severity, but food shortages had already begun.
Normally, with the status and identity of He Yaohua and Wu Zhuoya, the He Family’s living conditions wouldn’t be too bad.
But during special times, money couldn’t buy food.
Let alone that He Yaohua was a typical old Party member; honest, selfless, despising nepotism and special treatment.
Furthermore, in recent years, He Yaohua and Wu Zhuoya had been supporting some old comrades and colleagues.
The household’s financial situation wasn’t great, but it had gotten better once the children grew up and started working or studying.
However, over the past few months, the He Family had been facing difficulties.
It was because their youngest daughter, who was sent away for foster care, had returned.
When He Yaohua and Wu Zhuoya saw the dark, thin, timid, and insecure girl, they were overwhelmed with guilt.
The year He Tiantian was born happened to coincide with the Devil sweeping through, He Yaohua was fighting at the front while Wu Zhuoya moved with the logistics team.
During the move, He Tiantian fell ill, and due to malnutrition, Wu Zhuoya had no breast milk to feed her.
To give her child a chance to live, Wu Zhuoya quickly found a local family with a lactating mother, left some money and a keepsake, and entrusted He Tiantian to them.
The family was decent, knowing she was a child of the Eight Route Army, they cared for He Tiantian even more diligently than their own grandchild.
Sadly, the entire country was impoverished and in turmoil, and they were just ordinary farmers, so the care they could provide He Tiantian was truly limited.
Throughout her childhood, the deepest memories in He Tiantian’s mind were of hunger and cold.
After disasters and fleeing soldiers ravaged their village, that family moved elsewhere along with their neighbors.
Thus, after the war ended, when He Yaohua and his wife sent people to look for her, they found nothing.
Over the following years, after much inquiry and searching, they finally found He Tiantian.
He Tiantian was already seventeen, and the grandfather who had agreed to adopt her had long passed away.
The elderly man departed hastily, not having the chance to make any final arrangements.
Her foster parents only knew she came from a lineage of the Eight Route Army but didn’t know any specifics.
Even if they wanted to help He Tiantian find her biological parents, they had no way to.
Seeing the child growing up day by day while girls her age were already considering marriage,
Her foster parents, unable to wait for her biological parents, thought to find her a husband too.
This couple might not have been as upright as the grandfather, or as kind-hearted, but they harbored no ill intentions.
They always remembered the old man’s advice to treat the child as their own flesh and blood.
But the problem was, in the village, even their own biological daughters were left to fend for themselves; when girls reached sixteen or seventeen, it was time to consider marriage partners.
And during marriage, if a bride price was received, generous parents might provide two quilts and two bowls as dowry.
If they were heartless, they wouldn’t even give a new set of clothes and just sent the daughter away.
The foster parents did not mistreat He Tiantian; they treated her just like their own daughter.
Considering a marriage partner for her, well, the boy was three to four years older than He Tiantian, not particularly good-looking,
But the young man was tall and strong, worked efficiently, and was well-known in the production team as a robust worker, able to earn a full twelve points of work a day.
His family had both parents and two younger siblings; they had just built two rooms last year, so there was a place to live upon marriage.
What a good family it was, even better than the one her foster sister had married into.
At that time, He Tiantian didn’t know her origins and didn’t have a very strong reaction, just felt that the man was too ugly and too taciturn, couldn’t utter a word even with three proddings.
Just as they were about to finalize the engagement and exchange dowries, He Yaohua and Wu Zhuoya found her.
To hear that she was actually the cherished daughter of city officials, her grandfather a Red capitalist and her grandparents university professors.