She quickly raised her hands to look at them. Were these chicken-claw-like palms actually hers? She twitched her index finger and thumb in disbelief. They really were controlled by her brain. What the hell was this?
"Qianqian, stop looking around. Save some energy for the journey later," a weak voice beside her drilled into Jin Qianqian's ears.
Miraculously, she actually understood this unfamiliar rural accent.
"Where are we?" What blurted out of her mouth was actually the same language. Anyone could tell by listening that it was some local dialect, yet she could actually speak it. This terrified her a little.
"I don't know where we are either. Anyway, we just walk one day at a time. When we can't walk anymore, we'll just collapse by the roadside. Whether we live or die is up to God's arrangement."
After saying this, perhaps to save energy, the other party didn't utter another word no matter how much Jin Qianqian asked.
Jin Qianqian suddenly felt a bursting ache in her head, and a flood of memories that didn't belong to her rushed into her mind. She was now in a dynasty she had never heard of before. There was an Emperor and a government here. It was feudal and backward, and all the commoners depended on the heavens for their livelihood. Due to consecutive years of drought, her current identity could no longer stay in her hometown, so she had followed the entire clan to flee from the famine.
However, what the hell was this married status? She hadn't even dated anyone, yet she had been assigned a husband. In this dynasty where divorce as she knew it didn't exist, a woman who wanted to leave her husband's family could only be repudiated or seek a mutual separation.
Jin Qianqian's husband's family was surnamed Gu. The Gu family was considered a relatively large clan in the village, with about twenty households belonging to the same branch. The original host's husband had attended school for a few years and passed the exam to become a child student. At best, their life was slightly better than the rest of the village. However, when faced with such a massive disaster, their family couldn't bear the brunt of it either.
Jin Qianqian's mother-in-law, Li Cuicui, was highly fertile, having given birth to seven sons and one daughter.
Her husband, Gu Dashi was honest and dutiful. Though he was just past fifty, he looked like a dying old man in his sixties or seventies. Years of hard labor made it impossible for him to straighten his back, and he walked with a hunched posture. Originally, he had wanted to stay at home with the elderly of the village this time, not wanting to burden such a large family. But to everyone's surprise, Mrs. Gu Li was relentless. She insisted that the whole family had to stay together neatly. If they were to fall apart like this, she, the old woman, would directly bash her head to death in front of everyone.
Li Cuicui was not someone easy to get along with. Not only were the people of Kao Mountain Village afraid of her, but even if one walked through the entire Bainiao Valley, everyone had to give way to her a little. Although she was shrewish, what truly made everyone feel intimidated were the seven tall and burly sons she had given birth to. Coupled with the fact that her grandsons had also grown up over the years, if a family full of strong men walked out, no one would dare step forward to provoke them.
That's right, these sons of the Gu family had all inherited Li Cuicui's bone structure. Every single one of them was tall and burly. Plus, since the first and second sons knew how to hunt, the family's nutrition kept up. The height of their entire family was top-notch among these common folks. The Gu family also had another trait that made everyone even more wary: no matter how much they fought among themselves at home, when they truly faced outsiders, their fists would not reason with you.
The eldest, Gu Yuanjin, married Xie Ruyi and had three sons: Gu Letian, aged sixteen, Gu Le Di, aged fifteen, and Gu Lejia, aged fourteen.
The second son, Gu Yuanmu, married Wang Caiyue and had two sons: Gu Lehuan, aged fourteen, and Gu Lexi, aged thirteen.
The third son, Gu Yuanhuo, married Li Xiaohua and had two sons: Gu Le Ping, aged twelve, and Gu Le'an, aged ten.
Old Fourth, Gu Yuanshui, married Liu Liu and had a son and a daughter: Gu Le Kai, aged nine, and Gu Lehua, aged six.
The fifth son, Gu Yuantu, married Hong Daya and had one son: Gu Leshun, aged four.
Old Six, Gu Yuanfeng, who was also the elderly couple's only daughter, married He Tuping from the same village and had one daughter: He Chuncao, aged three.
Old Seventh, Gu Yuan Yu, married a woman from the Jin Family, namely Jin Qianqian, and the two had not yet had any children.
The eighth son, Gu Yuanlei, would have also been married by now if not for this disaster.
With such a large family, the old man and old woman naturally wouldn't take care of everything indefinitely. As soon as each son married a wife, they were separated from the main household. As the saying goes, a growing boy can eat his father into poverty. The two of them had struggled to hold up for so many years; they couldn't possibly raise their sons and then have to raise their grandsons too. Although the old woman was somewhat dictatorial, she definitely had a plan in mind. By separating the married sons out, the old couple continued to scrape by and pull up the remaining children, finally raising the little brats into adults one by one.
Just as the good days were about to arrive, they never expected that God would be unwilling to grant them their wish.
Jin Qianqian didn't want to recall the husband she had just inherited. She smoothed out the people and events in her memory, secretly reminding herself that she must never reveal too many flaws. Otherwise, relying on the ignorance of these ancient people, what awaited her might just be a blazing fire. And as for Xie Ruyi, who had just reminded her, she and the other brothers' wives who had separated from the family early on got along passably, since there were no conflicts of interest among them.
Lying on the ground, Jin Qianqian only felt that her throat was about to smoke. Right now, she especially missed the various types of beverages she had collected previously. Just as she thought of that ice-cold cola, Jin Qianqian's hand couldn't help but tighten. She quickly turned sideways, using her clothes to conceal the bottle that had suddenly appeared in her hand. That bone-chilling touch caused waves of joy to well up in Jin Qianqian's heart. She realized that her space could be opened again.
Regretfully stroking the bottle in her hand, Jin Qianqian ultimately didn't dare to make a sound. She still understood the logic that a person could get into trouble because of their wealth. It was just that while following such a large group of people to flee from calamity, she couldn't even secretly give herself a special meal on the side. There were people all around, and she couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't be discovered. She especially couldn't act alone. Not to mention she didn't have a road permit on her, even if she did have a road permit, she didn't have the courage to challenge human nature in times like these.
"Get up, everyone," Gu Dashi yelled toward the family from where he lay at the outermost edge. "The eldest son and the others have all returned. Hurry up and pack your things; don't hold the men of the family back."
Jin Qianqian had also just about figured it out. Those lying haphazardly all over the place here were all people from their entire Gu family. It was just that everyone kept their own food. To prevent others from finding excuses to borrow grain, they each had their own territory. Jin Qianqian's husband had gone out with his brothers and nephews to search for rations and water sources, which was why she was lying here all alone.
RUSTLE. The people nearby began to get up. Jin Qianqian couldn't very well continue lounging on the ground, so she placed the cola in her hand back into her space before propping her body up to sit.
Looking at her father- and mother-in-law not far from her, Jin Qianqian lowered her eyes. Among the brothers, only the two of them had married relatively late, and they had fewer belongings on hand, so they had packed up after just a couple of sweeps. As for the eunuch and her mother-in-law, they were traveling with their youngest son, and coupled with the filial piety of their other sons over the years, the things they brought out were the most among everyone.