Cui Tie and Li Hua had adopted Gu'er, which should have been a good thing. But tragically, only half a year after they took her in, Cui Tie came down with a sudden illness and passed away.
After he died, everyone started cursing Li Hua behind her back, calling her a "husband-killer," and cursing Gu'er for being a jinx. Cui Tie's brothers also believed they were bad luck, so they kicked the mother and daughter out of the Cui Family.
Li Hua had to survive, so she chose to remarry.
A few men were interested in her because Li Hua was an honest and capable person. But none of them would agree to let her bring Zhou Gu'er along. Since she was just a child they'd picked up, they told her to abandon Zhou Gu'er.
Li Hua refused. She said she would only marry if she could bring Gu'er with her; otherwise, she wouldn't marry at all. This was why she later agreed to marry Zhou Mazi. Even though Zhou Mazi had nothing to his name, he was willing to let Li Hua bring Gu'er into their home, and for that, Li Hua was grateful to him.
After so many years of marriage, she had never known a good day. Later, her biological son and daughters refused to support her. If it weren't for her adopted daughter, she probably would have starved to death in the streets.
As Zhou Gu'er finished thinking about all this, her heart truly ached for her adoptive mother. She gently took her mother's arm and rested her head on her shoulder.
"Mom, don't you worry. From now on, I'll definitely be a good, filial daughter to you. I'll make sure you can live a comfortable life with me."
Zhou Gu'er's voice wasn't loud, but it was firm. She meant every word. Just for the fact that her adoptive mother hadn't abandoned her to get married, she had to repay her. Otherwise, she might have starved to death long ago.
"Silly girl. Mom doesn't want anything from you. I just want you to marry a good man in the future. My life... well, this is just my fate. I'm not a fortunate person, but my Gu'er has to have it better than me. If you can marry a good man, give him a big, healthy son, and live a good life, then Mom can rest easy."
Li Hua stroked Gu'er's hair. She sincerely hoped her daughter could find a good match and not suffer as she had. As for relying on Gu'er to support her, the thought had never crossed her mind. She had a son, after all. "Raise a son to provide for your old age"—she would have to rely on her son in the future.
Zhou Gu'er didn't say anything. With reddened eyes, she leaned quietly on her adoptive mother's shoulder, cherishing this rare moment of warmth.
"Li Hua, where the hell did you go? Aren't you going to prepare the kang? Do you not want me to sleep? If you don't get back here, I'll beat you to death!"
Suddenly, Zhou Mazi's shouting came from outside.
"Alright, I'd better go prepare the kang. You get to sleep early too. If it gets cold at night, put some extra clothes on top of your blanket. Don't catch a chill."
Li Hua gave these hurried instructions and quickly left.
Listening to the yelling from the other room, Zhou Gu'er shook her head. 'It's just preparing the kang, all she has to do is lay out the bedding and it's done. And he has to call Mom over to do something so simple? There are several people over there.'
'Just how lazy are Zhou Feng'er and Zhou Duo'er? It's a two-minute job, and they can't even do that? They have to wait for their father to yell for their mother, to curse at her? They're his biological daughters, and they just listen to it all. How can they live with themselves!'
The noise from the other room gradually faded, and Zhou Gu'er sat in the darkness.
This storage room was very dark, gloomy, and a little creepy.
After a long while, Gu'er finally lay down on her bed.
It was indeed very hard. The wooden planks were unyielding and the mattress was too thin, making it uncomfortable to lie on. Gu'er sat up and rearranged her quilt, using half of it as a mattress and the other half as a blanket, which made it a little better.
Zhou Gu'er did not sleep well that night.
The bed was too hard, the storage room had a musty smell, and the mix of excitement and loneliness from living alone kept her awake. She tossed and turned until the middle of the night before finally falling asleep.
She hadn't gotten enough sleep before she was shouted at to get up. There was no helping it; it was time to get to work.
During the day, Zhang Da came over. Zhou Gu'er didn't go into the main house. She didn't want to hear anything, nor did she want to see Zhang Da, so she slung a basket over her arm and went out.
In truth, she hadn't decided where to go yet, but carrying a basket made it look like she was heading out to work, so no one would bother her.
Zhou Gu'er followed a path across the fields and walked all the way to the mountain behind the village.
At the foot of the mountain, she found a spot and sat down.
She stuck a blade of grass in her mouth, propped herself up with her hands behind her, and looked up at the sky.
'The sky is so blue, the clouds so white. The environment really is nice these days,' she thought, recalling the recent events.
She had been reborn. It felt surreal, but she had truly been given a second chance. She had rejected Zhang Da's marriage proposal. She had moved out of the room with the large kang and into the storage room.
While these might seem like small things to outsiders, to her, they were monumental. In her past life, she had never once talked back, never said no. She had simply endured everything.
A new life, a fresh start. She wouldn't marry Zhang Da. She would change her destiny. There was so much she wanted to do, but all of it depended on her being capable.
If she wasn't capable, it would all be just empty talk.
'To start making a lot of money right now and become some kind of female CEO in the future—that's impossible.' Zhou Gu'er understood this point clearly. She didn't have that kind of ability.
In her past life, she had been a very ordinary, and one could even say, a very timid woman. Even with a second chance, there were many things about herself that couldn't be changed overnight. She was well aware of that.
Zhou Gu'er wasn't greedy, nor was she in a rush to succeed. She knew you can't get fat from one bite. Everything had to be done little by little, solved one step at a time. And right now, the most important thing was to make money.
Thirty yuan. A one-year deadline. This was the first thing Zhou Gu'er had to consider, the first thing she had to earn.
Thirty yuan... In later years, that would be nothing at all. Even the poorest families wouldn't think twice about thirty yuan. But right now, it was a challenge that truly stumped her.
How was she going to earn that thirty yuan?
'Where is my startup capital?'
'What is there in this village that can make money?'
Zhou Gu'er thought hard.
In the village, almost every family was the same. They relied on farming. Some families had a member with a job in the city, which was enough to feed the whole family. Others had a craft that could earn a little money, or they raised some animals to sell. But none of these brought in a large income; they were just enough to get by.
Getting a job in the city was impossible for now.
'As for a craft, what do I know how to do?'
She was a good cook, and her dishes were quite tasty. She was especially skilled at steaming buns and breads. Besides the local red bean buns and sticky bean buns, she also knew how to make the steamed jujube cakes from Shandong. She could steam them into all sorts of shapes—longevity peaches, carps, human figures, and more. She knew how to do it all, but there was no way for her to turn these skills into money right now.
People here rarely ate wheat-based foods. Besides, no one had much money these days; even if she steamed the buns, no one could afford to buy them. Moreover, the steamer, the white flour, the ingredients—they all cost money. And what she lacked most was capital.
As for raising pigs, chickens, or ducks, that was also out of the question. She had no capital to buy the young animals. Even if she did raise them, they would belong to the Zhou family, not to her. If they were sold, her adoptive father would never count the money as hers. So, that path was a dead end.
That left only things that didn't require any capital. But what could she do that didn't require capital?
Zhou Gu'er looked at the vast mountain, the fields, at everything around her. 'Even farming needs seeds,' she thought. 'Only the things from the mountain don't require any capital.'