Father can be an enemy country

Chapter 1400 Hit by a Bullet from Three Years Ago

In the lobby.

After listening to Li Jiuniang's story, Zhu Zhen asked, "And then something unexpected happened, so that you haven't gotten married yet?"

"Your Highness, I am just too miserable." Li Jiuniang said with a sigh, "Not long after the two families got engaged, my mother passed away, so the marriage had to be put on hold. After I finished my mourning, I traveled through mountains and rivers to find Songmeng, and finally found out the address of my fiancé."

"I followed the address and found his place in Dashaotun. I saw my mother-in-law in the town, walking on the street with a boy."

"I excitedly went forward to greet her, but when my mother-in-law saw me, she acted as if she had seen a ghost. Without saying a word, she ran away with the child in her arms. I hurriedly chased after her and found out that Yu Min had already married and her son was already three or four years old!" Li Jiuniang was distraught and said, "I asked my mother-in-law why she played such a trick on me?"

"My mother-in-law said that she didn't know until she arrived in Yunnan that her son had remarried." Li Jiuniang continued, "And he married a Baiyi woman who can only be monogamous, so there's no way for me to marry in..." As she spoke, she covered her face and cried:
"I was clearly his legal wife, but in the end I ended up being unable to even be his concubine. If I hadn't waited for him to come back and ask him in person why he was playing tricks on me, I would have died long ago..."

"Luckily, there are many of my brother's former comrades in this town, and they arranged for me to stay. Until a few days ago, Yu Min came back from the south. I asked him why he played a trick on me, and he said that he hadn't received a reply from home for a long time, and thought I didn't agree." Li Jiuniang said sadly: "But I didn't reply to that letter. My mother agreed to their proposal at the first time."

"Then why didn't you follow Yu Min's mother when she came to Yunnan?" Zhu Zhen asked again.

"My mother-in-law did ask me to go with her, but I hadn't married yet and it would be too indecent, so I didn't agree." Li Jiuniang replied sadly, "But now she says that I refused to marry Yu Min. God can see that I just didn't agree to come to Yunnan at that time, and I didn't refuse to marry him later!"

After a pause, she continued, "Besides, Yu Min was already married at that time - he got married in the spring of 1917, and my mother-in-law told me that she wanted to come to Yunnan in the spring of 1918. So even if I had come at that time, I would have faced the same situation."

"Your thinking is quite clear." Zhu Zhen praised her, and explained for Captain Yu, whom he had never met before: "I have roughly understood your story. This matter cannot be blamed entirely on Yu Min. At that time, I was the one who issued an order to the entire army, requiring all unmarried officers and soldiers to get married immediately in the local area, and those who were married should bring their families to reunite within a time limit."

"It is very likely that he rushed into the marriage under such circumstances." Zhu Zhen then comforted her, "He really did let you down in this matter, but the matter is done, and a forced melon is not sweet. Why should you hang yourself on a tree?"

As he said this, he smiled and said, "Three-legged frogs are hard to find, but two-legged men are everywhere. I'll find you a better one - I'll bring all my thousand households here, and you can choose whatever you want, okay?"

"No, I want Yu Min. I am his in life and his ghost in death." Li Jiuniang was very stubborn. No matter how Zhu Zhen tried to persuade her, she just wanted to hang herself on the 'old Yu tree'.

Of course, if she hadn't been so stubborn, she wouldn't have reached this point today.

"You are so ungrateful, girl." Liu Zhizhou of Songmeng felt that he could not continue to watch the fun, so he took the initiative to play the villain and said, "If you continue to mess with the prince, I will kick you out!"

"Hey, stop making noise." Zhu Zhen waved his hand and said, "This matter is more important to this girl than anything else, so of course we can't just let it go. Besides, it seems that the order was a bit reckless. I am also responsible for the girl's current situation, so I have to take care of this matter."

"Yes." Liu Zhizhou of Songmeng hurriedly responded respectfully.

"I bow to thank Your Highness..." Li Jiuniang kowtowed to Lao Liu gratefully.

"Don't thank me so quickly." Zhu Zhen waved his hand and said, "I can't just listen to your opinion on this matter. I have to ask the man and the Baiyi woman, and hear what they say before I can make a decision." "Your Highness is right." Li Jiuniang was stubborn, but she was not unreasonable.

"Then I will quickly order someone to summon Captain Yu and his family." Upon seeing this, Prefect Liu said hurriedly.

"No need." Zhu Zhen shook his head and said, "I am about to go to Yanglin Thousand Households for inspection, so let's set the inspection location at Dashaotun."

"As you command!" All the civil and military officials responded in unison, but they were all wailing in their hearts. It didn't matter that the prince changed the place. All the preparations they had made in advance were useless...

~~
At Zhu Zhen's order, the group left the county town and rushed to Dashaotun, twenty miles away.

When Zhu Zhen inspected Songmeng, he came here once. He knew that the place was covered with barren red soil with nothing growing except weeds. But when he came again this time, the scene before him was completely different.

I saw that several stone bridges had been built on the Guoma River, which originally separated the north and the south. A series of water diversion channels were also dug on the river to bring the river water from the mountains into the fields on both sides of the river.

Some canals have water wheels beside them to pump river water to the higher ridges of the fields.

With the irrigation of river water and the hard work of the military households year after year, the virgin land that could hardly grow crops when it was first reclaimed has become cultivated land with abundant water and fertilizer.

As the sun approaches dusk, rice flowers bloom in the paddy fields. The green rice leaves and golden rice flowers sparkle in the sunset with an alluring glow. There are also countless frogs croaking in the rice fields, just like the poem by Fan Chengda:

The frogs croak at dusk and continue till dawn, the fragrance of rice flowers fills the water!
The summer heat has dissipated, and riding through the fields with the fragrance of rice flowers filling your nose is refreshing. You will mistakenly feel like you have returned to the water village in the south of the Yangtze River.

Led by Captain Zhang of Yanglin Station, the group entered the village.

It was the time when the soldiers, who had been busy all day, were finishing their work and going home. They drove their oxen, carried their farm tools, and walked home talking and laughing loudly.

After several years of development, Dashaotun has become a small town with a market on the main street. The nearby mountain people and the old people in the town set up stalls on the street to sell the mountain products they picked, the prey they hunted, the vegetables they grew but could not eat, and various tools and utensils they made by themselves.

Peddler would come here regularly to sell needles, thread, and various kinds of cloth. Craftsmen who walked the streets grinding mirrors and mending pots would also come to join in the fun.

These scenes, which seem common in the mainland, are of great milestone significance in Yunnan, because they mean that an environment that can ensure the normal life of Han people, not just survival, has been established.

Only when a person can live in a place can he truly take root there. Simply surviving is not enough...

(End of this chapter)