Chapter 10 Section VI

The Weihe River had been frozen long ago, and the boats were impassable, so they had to go by land.But the official road to the east was also blocked by heavy snow. The earth turned into a vast expanse of whiteness, shining like silver. All the bare branches are like pear blossoms in full bloom. These thousands of trees and thousands of pear blossoms not only adorn the branches, but also fly all over the sky. It seems to be far away, but it seems to be close at hand, and it will fall into the valleys and hills between their chariots and horses with a wave of their hands. The usual flying loess dust and overlapping roads and ravines are now completely covered by dry white cedar pine trees. Everything becomes bloated and ill-defined.They deceive the vision of people and livestock, and if one is not careful, they will go off the right path and fall into a dry ditch that is also covered by white cedar pines, and their heads will be broken.On this day, therefore, very few people go out except when absolutely necessary.

They almost monopolized this official road by themselves, the sparse ruts were covered by new snow, and only after a long time did they occasionally hear a series of crisp bells and shouts coming slowly in their direction. They huddled together in the bumpy and bumpy cart, and let the panting horses with steam coming out of their mouths drag them forward with difficulty.Progress is clearly slow.Sometimes when the vehicle tilted, half of the wheel would sink into a pothole. At this time, both the driver and the driver had to get off. It took a lot of effort to lift the wheels and straighten the body before moving on.Sometimes the cart turned a hillside, just facing the wind, and the wind roared like a raging wave, blowing the dry snow floating on the surface into the sky again, mixing with the flying snow in the sky, confusing the driver's eyes.At this time, the cart had to take care of the wind and turn around temporarily to avoid the limelight.Only when the wind is weak and you are walking in the middle of the official road that has not been damaged and is relatively easy to walk, and it is certain that it will not diverge, the drivers will become active, yelling loudly, and crackling the whip in the sky.This is not only for driving, but also for warming up the body when moving.

The cart was surrounded by rough felt, and it was like a sail, full of wind and snow, puffing up here for a while, and deflated there for a while.Sometimes, the felt curtain suddenly cracked, and the new wind flew in with thumb-sized snowflakes, cutting people's heads, faces, necks and hands like knives.People took this opportunity to take a breath of cool and fresh air, and saw the endless silver road stretching before them through the cracks that had not been covered in time. In people's minds, there are also endless roads. Ever since her father told her that she was going to be sent to Tokyo to finish her marriage, Erniang has fallen into deep confusion.

Qiniang is a special girl raised in a special environment, but she is still a girl. Strictly speaking, Qiniang has never experienced what most people call "family life".She lost her mother when she was still a baby in her arms, and was brought up by her father in the army.At that time, she was too young to understand the grief of losing her mother, and the price she would have to pay in her later life to make up for this congenital defect.In the army she played and exercised with other boys brought in by similar circumstances.She was the only exception in the serious and tense air of the troops, in that decidedly masculine collective.She is a flower, not raised in a greenhouse, but a wild mountain flower nourished by the mountain wind and valley rain.She was popular with her male companions, she was universally loved by soldiers and officers alike, she was wild, but lively and lovable.But as the years passed, she gradually grew into a young girl, and she soon reached and exceeded the maximum age that society allowed a girl to have contact with the outside world.This iron law is so strict, even in the army without women, there is no exception. A ruthless curtain fell, cutting off her contact with the outside world.People still have a friendly attitude towards her, but they are alienated from her virtually.Unlike other girls, she has a mother, sisters, adoptive mother and female companions at home, and she can also walk around with relatives and female relatives outside.She almost lived in a female vacuum, she dealt with daily affairs repeatedly and rigidly, how diligently she worked, how simple and orderly she dealt with her father and her own life!But in her consciousness, she sensed that something was missing here, the tender tenderness that her age demanded, especially to make up for her sincere lack.

She demands tenderness and caress from others, and she demands tenderness and caress from others.She asks for self-sacrifice, for devotion to men, but does not demand the same reward from others.The so-called "self-sacrifice", in the deepest sense, is a kind of stubborn love that does not ask for reward.She poured all her tenderness on her father, not only because she found that under the stern surface, he really loved her in his heart, but also because she had so little contact with people other than her father, which made her unable to satisfy her. Self-developing demands for self-sacrifice and devotion.

Only her would-be husband and his family were an oasis in the island of her life.She recalled the past ten years ago with special tenderness.At that time, my father went out to fight against Xixia and fostered her in Ma's house. "His" father and brothers also went to the front line together, leaving only his mother, sister-in-law and him, who was not yet a child, at home.They quickly become close companions.He was five years older than her, and without accepting anyone's entrustment, he took the initiative to take on the task of educating her, teaching her to read, ride a horse, draw a small horn bow, and teach her to archery.He is so expert in all these things that he seems to be fully qualified to be her teacher.He is strict—as a teacher, he assigned her homework that must be completed within one day, and no delay was allowed. He also told many stories about ancient times and at that time, most of them were about wars, and asked her to do it the second time. Tian was able to tell him word for word easily.She complied with his request, but with a little of that revulsion a student often has for an overly strict teacher. "Father is not so strict!" She thought, "You are so strict!" So she teased him, deliberately did not finish her homework, or intentionally told wrong stories to annoy him, and waited for him to punish her When she was young, he did his homework in one breath and told the story correctly, so that he had no reason to punish her.

One day, they rode out together, and he had already trusted her riding skills enough to allow her to ride without his sight.But that time, just as she was rushing down a small hill, she suddenly slipped off the horse's back and fell to the ground.She heard him gallop forward in a panic from behind, and she closed her eyes, pretending to be seriously injured.He sobbed, calling her by her nickname, and asked her what's the matter?After asking several times in a row, she burst out laughing, quickly jumped on the horse, and galloped home without looking back.He came up from behind, overtook her, turned his horse's head to block her way, and cursed bitterly: "It's not enough for the little hoof to fall, do you want to stumble again?"

This is such a pleasant memory. He always said with a serious face on weekdays: "A good man must be made of high-quality refined iron, poured with molten steel, and after thousands of tempers, just like a knife." Unexpectedly When carrying someone behind his back, he would also weep and cry.In a quick glance, she saw that he wiped his tears with the back of his black hand, and his face was dirty.She thought: the best iron will not leak out after being hammered hundreds or thousands of times... These pleasant memories are like gossamer rippling in the sky, which can only be discovered by accident in the casual mind, but when she is serious about grabbing it, it flies to nowhere.She couldn't remember when their relationship suddenly became estranged. Even if he came to his father, he would only talk to him, and when he saw her, he nodded and walked away.Did she make him angry?She tried to find the reason for alienating him in her young mind, but could not find the answer.Later, when he joined the army and went to the front, the pleasant memories were completely interrupted.No matter how hard she tried to tie the relationship between them back and forth with the threads of memory, she couldn't.She could no longer reconnect the broken thread.To her, he was close and distant, stern and considerate.But he was only a phantom in a dream, a shadow in a mirror.

Now father clearly told her that this trip is to marry her off.She and her father traveled together for the first time, but when they came back, only father was left alone.Marriage was just a vague and erratic abstract concept to her, but separation from her father was an unavoidable reality.The first thing she thought about was that her father couldn't leave her. When father encountered something unsatisfactory and came back with a sullen face, who would tease him and make him smile?Every year in late autumn, my father develops an old problem of asthma, and gets up in the middle of the night and sits on the bedside coughing. Who will take care of him to take medicine, and gently pull the quilt on him, so as not to suffer from the cold?There is also my father, an old soldier, who has skillfully used a 30-jin iron spear for decades, but he can't pick up a small needle.His jacket is torn, revealing the cotton wool. Who will tell him to mend it?He used to be unruly and unkempt, without her, would he still remember to trim his beard and hair, and put on a decent dress?

These details of life are magnified into an insurmountable disaster in the mind of the daughter who has thoughtfully conceived. But she still had to leave her father and be sent off to marry this person who was at once intimate and distant, at once dreamy and possibly real.This is an old rule that was established hundreds or thousands of years before she was born. All girls cannot live without this fate, and she is of course no exception. This is a road that confuses her and fascinates her so much.Sitting in the bumpy big car, she thought about this over and over again, and finally she made up her mind that since she had to leave father, since she had to walk on this road, then she would resolutely go up to him. Bar!If something was lost between them, she was determined to find it, and if the thread that connected the two of them was broken, she would take the initiative to reconnect it.She was a brave young girl who demanded a perfect life--when she was at the beginning of her life, when she had beautiful visions of the world she didn't know and was about to enter.