Back to the Seventies: The Genius Fixer Rewrites the Plot
Gu Zhuo had never been one to fit in, not even as a child. Her inability to conform was so pronounced that her family considered her ill-fated, foolish, and incapable of letting go. Widowed young, she was urged by everyone around her to marry again. "You have most of your life ahead," they said. "You can't live it alone, can you?" She remained silent, yet in her heart she thought: does not remarrying mean life is over? When her daughter was abducted, she exhausted every means to search for her. Everyone advised her to give up. "How many stolen children are ever found? What if you search your whole life and never find her? Will you spend a lifetime looking?" Again, she was silent, but thought: as long as I live, I will search. Even if I never find her, at least I gave everything. I brought her into this world, not for the benefit of kidnappers. When she went to the city to work as a nanny, everyone tried to dissuade her. "Serving others is shameful. You’d be better off helping your brother raise his children; that way, when you’re old, someone will care for you." She never replied, simply went her own way. Gu Zhuo spent her life in silence, never swayed by others’ opinions, never caring how they judged her. Even if, in their eyes, she was timid, stubborn, ignorant, or foolish, it meant nothing to her, and she saw no need to explain herself. Either one erupts from silence, or one perishes in it. She was likely the latter. Yet what she did not expect was that after death, there was not oblivion, but a new beginning. The truth arrived unbidden—her daughter had not been sold, but murdered. The news of her husband’s death was a lie; he had become a vegetative patient, and, after waiting in vain for her, faded away in silence. Her life was never meant to be like this, if not for those so-called protagonists.
Back to the Seventies: The Genius Fixer Rewrites the Plot
Dusk was deepening, and the evening breeze drifted gently, flowing through one mountain hollow after another. Gradually, traces of human life began to rise with the faint smoke curling from homes. Each house was low and scattered sparsely across the landscape.
At the far end of the village lay a stretch of reed-filled riverbank, where only one household stood nearby—a four-room house, with a sizable yard enclosed by a bamboo fence.
In the yard, an elderly woman craned her neck to peer through the small wooden window, but the twilight was too dim, and no lamp was lit inside; she could hardly make out anything.
“Mother, I’ve finished preparing the chicken!” Xie Ning called, carrying a chicken from the back yard.
“Keep your voice down,” Chen Xinwan whispered anxiously, quickly pulling her head back and taking the chicken. “Go see if your sister-in-law has woken up.”
With a worried sigh, she turned and busied herself once more.
On the small wooden window was a faded, curled double happiness character, a sign that this was the room of a young couple.
Xie Ning knocked lightly, then cautiously peeked inside. Seeing her sister-in-law still lying in bed, she withdrew quietly.
Her sister-in-law was especially fastidious about cleanliness, particularly after giving birth to Yinyin. While Xie Ning wasn’t careless herself, living at school made it hard to avoid lice. She usually stayed away from her sister-in-law’s room out of consideration.
Because she hadn’t gone in, Xie Ning didn’t see the pain and torment contorting Gu Zhuo’s
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