If you want a husband, you have to fight for it.

Xu Muyu turned his head completely to look at Wan Chuncao, trying to distinguish the truth from falsehood in her words.

Her tone was so ordinary, as if she was talking about today's weather.

Are you kidding? Are you serious?

"It's true."

Wan Chuncao rested her head on her hands, still looking lazy: "I was picked up and raised by my mother."

Xu Muyu confirmed it again, is it really true?

He considered his words carefully and spoke cautiously: "So, what's going on?"

Compared to Xu Muyu's careful choice of words, Wan Chuncao herself didn't care. She said, "I was abandoned not long after I was born. Later, my mother met me and took me home to raise me."

She looked up and asked Xu Muyu: "Do you want to hear it?"

Would that hurt her?

Xu Muyu still felt that he shouldn’t ask any more questions: “If you don’t want to say it, it’s okay.”

Wan Chuncao didn't seem to care as much as Xu Muyu: "What's the big deal? If you want to know, I'll tell you."

She seemed to really not care. Xu Muyu looked at her and waited quietly for her to continue.

Wan Chuncao didn't need to prepare her emotions, and said without thinking: "One day, my parents went to work in the fields. They came home for lunch at noon. When they were almost home, they heard a baby crying on the slope behind our house."

"It was such a hot and muggy day, there wasn't even a cicada chirping, how come there was suddenly a baby crying?"

"At first my parents thought they had misheard and ignored it. Then they heard the crying getting smaller and smaller, like a lump of phlegm stuck in the throat. They couldn't even cry, as if they were about to die. They were afraid it was really a child, and since it wasn't far away, they went to check it out."

"Later, they really saw a baby under a short tree. The baby was wrapped in a small blanket and placed in a broken vegetable basket. In order to avoid the sun, a straw hat was deliberately placed on the basket."

"When my parents first saw it, they thought someone had left the child here while working in the fields. Otherwise, why would they leave the child under the shade of a tree and cover him with a straw hat to block the sun?"

"But if you think about it, you'll know it's not like that."

"No family in the village has a newborn baby. The youngest baby is only six months old. It is even more impossible that someone from the neighboring village left the baby here, because the land of other villages is not adjacent to ours."

"Later, my parents found a note in the quilt."

"The note didn't say anything else. It just said that I hope anyone who sees the child can give the child some water to drink. If by some unfortunate chance the child dies, please help by digging a grave and burying the child."

Guan Chuncao said: "The note also wrote my date of birth and my name. There was no surname, just 'ting', which means 'graceful and elegant'."

Slim and graceful? She?

Xu Muyu turned his head to look at her face, not knowing what he was thinking, and waited for her to continue.

Wan Chuncao went on to say, "At that time, I was born not long ago, not even thirty days old, not even a full month old. It was not easy to raise a baby of that size."

"Even if you raise the child, you can't just take him home. Who would be so bold as to pick up a child on the street and take him home?"

"If you are mistaken for a human trafficker, or if someone secretly sets up a trap like this and leaves a child here, as soon as you pick up the child, the family will jump out and accuse you of stealing the child, beat you up, grab you and force you to pay compensation, or blackmail you, you can't say for sure."

She said: "My parents were unsure, so they looked around the place, but there was no one."

"Later, my crying almost stopped. They made up their minds to take me home even if they had to bear the consequences. So they took me home, untied the quilt for me, and gave me some water."

"Seeing that I was alive again, my parents didn't dare to delay and took me to the village chief's house to ask what to do."

Guan Chuncao burst out laughing when she imagined the scene. She told Xu Muyu, "It was still the busy farming season. The village chief was so scared that he asked his son, who had graduated from high school, to hurry back from the fields. His son brought back almost half of the adults in the village on a tractor. Even those who couldn't ride on the tractor walked back to join in the fun."

"The village chief's house was packed with people. Everyone stood in front of them and said they had never seen a child like this, let alone heard of any relative having a child."

Guan Chuncao told Xu Muyu: "The countryside is not like the city. The land is so small. Not to mention that if there is a pregnant woman at home, no one will know about it. Even if a couple kisses at night, the whole village will know about it the next day."

Xu Muyu could probably imagine the smallness of the countryside. Information would naturally spread faster in such a small place.

"Anyway, the adults all came back, and they hadn't heard of any missing children. After their curiosity wore off, the adults started talking about what to do with me."

Wan Chuncao said: "My parents picked me up at that time, so everyone naturally thought that this troublesome matter should be solved by my parents. Moreover, my parents had always wanted a child at that time, but my mother was in poor health and could not have one, so they said that my parents should just raise the child."

"My parents had some ideas in mind, and after the villagers' persuasion, they were convinced."

"But how can you really take a living child home just like that?"

Guan Chuncao didn't know if Xu Muyu could understand: "We are all simple farmers with little knowledge. People of my parents' generation are even more so. They were born in the 1950s and 1960s and were poor. They were sent to school by their families, and a junior high school education was considered high. In their minds, the relatively serious official is the police station in the propaganda."

"The village chief's son, who had graduated from high school, persuaded my parents to ask the village chief to write a letter of introduction and take it to the police station for a checkup."

"My parents thought the same thing. They should take the child with them. If even the police station can't find my biological parents, they might as well just keep the child."

"So, the village chief's son took my parents, the village chief, and a letter of introduction. The four of them, along with a little kid like me, went to the town."

"The transportation was not convenient at that time, and the police station was not as well-established as it is now. It was in a town far away, and there were only five police officers, four of whom were senior officers."

From Xu Muyu's perspective, he probably couldn't imagine how poor and backward it was. He would definitely think that it was something from the last century. After all, everything is modernized now.

But it takes only a few years for modern people to have enough food to eat, let alone in rural areas.

Guan Chuncao said: "If I say this now, some people may think I am joking or talking nonsense. But the police station at that time was not like it is now. There were not many people, and the management was not as modern and rigorous as it is now. Most of the time, they focused on serious cases."

Of course, the missing child is also a serious crime, but not as serious as murder and dismemberment.

"A police officer who is as old as my dad told my parents that they could investigate the four of them, but it wouldn't happen so quickly. They still had to visit and investigate, and wait and see if any parent with a missing child would come forward to report the case."

Wan Chuncao said bluntly: "Actually, these words are just to comfort the four of them."

"The old policeman said something unpleasant but true. He said, I am a girl."