She Only Cares About Cultivation-Chapter 850 - 793: Famine Era 34 (Second Update)

On the early morning of the second day, father and brother braved the heavy snow to send them to the county. Originally, they wanted to see them off on the train, but the weather was bad, so Tong Zhan refused, and could only watch as they boarded the bus. She waved her hand to let them go home, and when she turned back, her eyes were already moist.

"Why are you crying? If you miss them, just come back more often during holidays."

"I’m not a sentimental person, but scenes like this always make me uncomfortable. Especially when I see the increasingly hunched back of father, I can’t help but want to cry. And brother, every time I see his hands, I feel heartbroken, and your scars, you all, aren’t you supposed to be heroes?"

Why did those unfair things happen later?

"Alright, why say these things? Your family is full of kind people; you should feel happy. Unlike me, always wandering outside since I was young, never feeling any warmth from family. Even when adopted, I had to use my strength to exchange for food. After all, there’s no free lunch in the world, right?"

"I’m sorry, for making you recall your sad memories."

"Why so polite between husband and wife? I’ll start work on the eighth. After we return, let’s visit the old house in Beijing. We haven’t been back for so many years. Who knows if the house still belongs to us?"

The return train journey was quite smooth. Upon arriving in Beijing, they went directly to a small alley within the second ring, where they found the Courtyard. Though decades had passed, because there were not many changes around, Tong Zhan easily found the house from his memories.

Their luggage was already placed in a nearby inn, so the couple entered the courtyard dressed in ordinary folk clothing. It was a closed-style three-sided courtyard. A three-sided courtyard, as it is said, is without the reversed house or the back room that makes a four-sided courtyard.

Typically facing south.

The main hall was in the center of the north side, with a living room and a granary on either side. The east wing room served as a kitchen and dining room, and the west wing room as a bedroom.

In a closed-style three-sided courtyard, walls surrounded it or walls linked the east and west wing rooms, with a gate opposite the main hall within the wall. In an open-style three-sided courtyard, there were no walls.

The center of the courtyard was mainly used for drying and sometimes planting flowers and fruit trees around the periphery.

Of course, this layout division was for a regular family. After the late Qing Dynasty, with housing shortages, several families moved into three-sided courtyards. In this Courtyard, three families lived — one in the main hall, one in the east wing room, and one in the west wing room, cooking under their porch. The toilets were outside, shared public facilities.

Tong Hao’s family lived in two rooms of the west wing room.

Just as they entered the courtyard, an Old Lady emerged from the east wing room: "Comrade, who are you looking for?"

"Aunt Guan, do you remember me? I’m Mengzi, Liu Meng, the son of Shoe Maker Liu from the west wing room."

When this Aunt was around, he was only twenty or thirty years old, still quite young. Yet over twenty years had passed, and she was probably already in her fifties now?

Aunt Guan stared at Liu Meng for a while and then suddenly slapped her thigh: "Oh my heavens, it’s really Mengzi! Old Man, Old Man, come quickly, look, Liu Tiejun’s son has returned!"

Old Man Guan came out from the room with a hunchback, observing him up and down, nodding in recognition.

"You do look like Tie Jun. Are you really Liu Meng? Where have you been all these years? Why haven’t you come back to visit?"

When Liu Meng left, he entrusted the house to the Guan Family, so seeing them recognize him made him quite happy.

Taking Ye Huan forward: "Hello Uncle, Aunt, this is my wife. Isn’t it liberating now? Our jobs are stable, so we thought of coming back to check, just don’t know if my house..."

As soon as he mentioned his home, the Uncle and Aunt’s faces changed dramatically, and then secretively, they pulled them into the east room.

"Mengzi, you probably don’t know, right? Five years after you left, your mother returned, bringing a kid with her. Now, they are living in your house," 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Your expression shows you didn’t know. Where have you been all these years, why didn’t you leave any information? Now that they’ve gone out, you..."

Liu Meng’s face abruptly turned very ugly, "Whose name is the house under now?"

"Of course it’s yours. After your father died, wasn’t it changed to your name? Back then, when your mother ran off with someone, your father divorced her. Everyone on our street knows about it, so when your mother tried all means to change the house to her name, she faced opposition from everyone. So even now, the house is still in your name, you..."