Side Story 2: He Yuping's Dream

2008

Standing in her own yard, He Youyou looked at the clear sky outside. At 82 years old, apart from her hair and the faint wrinkles on her gray face, she still looked the same as when she was young. Time had left almost no trace on her face.

Lu Zhiheng, sitting next to her in the rocking chair, looked at her tenderly, peeling grapes for her in his hand.

"Honey, it's so lively outside right now. Why don't you take some time to go out and have a stroll?" The Olympics are being held in the capital this year, and it's especially lively outside. The streets and alleys are teeming with people. Lu Zhiheng wanted his wife to go out and soak up some of the excitement.

"No, I'm too old to go out and squeeze with the crowd..." He Yuping didn't want to go out and watch the excitement at all.

There were too many people, and she was afraid she wouldn't be able to squeeze through. Besides, she had everything she needed at home and didn't need to buy anything. The outside world belonged to young people, and it wasn't really suitable for an old lady like her.

"Didn't my great-granddaughter-in-law use the two courtyards next door as guesthouses? If I want to know what's going on outside, I just go over there occasionally, and I'll find out." The furthest He Yuping goes to visit these days is the courtyard next door and the courtyard two doors down.

The neighboring courtyard is a guesthouse and private restaurant run by his great-granddaughter-in-law; both courtyards are connected and belong to his great-granddaughter-in-law.

The neighbor on the other side is where my older brother and sister-in-law live. After my older brother reached retirement age, he bought a house here and moved out of the compound.

The eldest sister-in-law has always treated them like her own son and daughter, and she dotes on her daughter. No mother-in-law has ever treated her daughter-in-law like the eldest sister-in-law has.

He Yuping felt that her happy life started 60 years ago when she left the Qu family, and that it was also because of her beloved daughter; otherwise, her life would not have been like this.

The couple were talking when, for some reason, He Yuping felt sleepy, lay down in the rocking chair, and drifted off to sleep.

When she opened her eyes again, she discovered that she was lying in the same room where she had lived when she was a concubine in the Qu family.

This situation frightened him; he thought that what happened between him and Lu Zhiheng was just a pipe dream.

She shakily climbed out of bed, ran to the dressing table, and looked at her young and innocent face. She cried, tears streaming down her face in an instant.

She knew she didn't have Lu Zhiheng now, so she could only look for her daughter. But she stumbled and ran all over the room without finding her daughter, and could only call out for Weiwei with a sob in her voice.

A young maidservant came in from outside, and seeing his condition, she quickly ran over to support him: "Third Aunt, what's wrong? What happened?"

"Lan Cao, where's Weiwei? Where's my Weiwei?" He Yuping grabbed the little girl's hand, anxiously asking where her daughter was.

"Third Aunt, calm down. Sixth Miss just went back to her room and should be asleep by now." Lan Cao didn't know what was wrong with her aunt. Why did she wake up like this after a nap?

He Yuping stumbled to her daughter's room, pushed open the door, and found her daughter lying on the bed, fast asleep.

He Yuping reached out and touched her daughter, finding her warm. This chubby little girl looked just like her daughter when she was 5 years old.

He Yuping reached out and touched her daughter's face, then lay down beside her and held her daughter's hand. Only when Lu Zhiheng was not around could she feel at ease by her daughter's side.

On the second day, He Yuping was also in a daze, always holding her daughter's hand, and she couldn't believe it was just a dream.

The day passed just like that. When it was time for dinner in the evening, she smelled a strong scent of sleeping pills in the food.

So this is the night they were drugged, looking at the little girl sitting obediently across from her, waiting for her to serve dinner.

He Yuping originally planned not to eat these things and then wait for the fire to start so she could escape with her daughter. However, when she was about to put down her chopsticks, her hands began to move uncontrollably.

As a result, she and her daughter ate the food laced with a drug, just as he remembered, but reality was different from her dream.

In her dream, the mother and daughter escaped from here, but in reality, she was awakened by the pain of being burned by fire, and her little girl had already died due to the drug.

When He Yuping touched her and found her breath was faint, she was completely stunned. Things weren't like this; they shouldn't be like this.

Her Weiwei is still perfectly fine, still living to be seventy or eighty years old. Impossible, absolutely impossible.

She tried to pry open the door to take Weiwei to the doctor, but the door was blocked. No matter how hard she tried, it wouldn't open. As the fire grew bigger, she gradually lost her strength until the roof collapsed, and she lost all her life.

He Yuping was so frightened that she burst into tears. Lu Zhiheng went into the house to get a blanket and came out to find his wife having a nightmare, her face covered in tears, and calling out her daughter's name.

He quickly pulled out his phone to call his daughter. Fortunately, his daughter was now retired and lived in a courtyard not far from them. She came over in less than 10 minutes after he answered the phone.

"Dad, what's going on? What happened? What's the rush?" He Caiwei had just gotten up and was thinking of going to her granddaughter-in-law's for a meal when she received a call from her father, so she rushed over as fast as she could.

"I don't know. Your mother was sleeping and suddenly had a nightmare. She kept shouting for help because there was a fire. How come I didn't know when our house was on fire? She was also shouting for someone to save Weiwei." Lu Zhiheng reached out and held his wife's hand, trying to wake her up, but his wife seemed to be trapped in a nightmare and couldn't wake up.

“No, our house has never caught fire in the past 60 years. However, 60 years ago, in 1949, the Qu family, the richest family in Pingcheng, was destroyed by fire. Do you remember this?” This incident caused a great stir at the time, and Lu Zhiheng and the others knew about it.

"So your mother must have dreamed that there was a fire back then. I didn't even ask how you escaped. After all these years, does Weiwei still remember how you got out?" Lu Zhiheng thought the little girl was only four or five years old at that time. He wondered if she still remembered what happened back then after so many years.

"Of course I remember. This year we ate food that had been drugged by the First Madam. Maybe I ate less, so I woke up before the fire was lit. My mother was probably more seriously ill, because no matter how I called her, she wouldn't wake up."

“My mother’s neighboring courtyard was Fifth Aunt’s courtyard. There was a door from the kitchen of our courtyard to the neighboring courtyard. I stabbed Fifth Aunt with a hairpin. After she woke up, we packed our things and ran away with my mother.” He Caiwei downplayed the seriousness of the matter and only told the part that she could.