Ouch!

It's so cold!

A gust of wind swept past, and Tang Jiancheng shivered from the cold. He pulled his tattered cotton jacket tightly around himself, but he was still cold.

His heart, however, was warm, and his emotions were particularly excited.

Looking at the heavy snowfall all around, and the dilapidated earthen houses in the distance buried under the snow, Tang Jiancheng felt an urge to laugh out loud: "Hahaha, I'm reborn! I'm actually back in 1982! Heaven is really kind to me!"

Actually, he didn't laugh or shout, he didn't do anything, he just silently stood up, patted the snow off his body, and then walked quickly home with his head down.

If I'm not mistaken, today is the tenth day since his ninth daughter was born!

According to Daping Village custom, this day is to give his ninth daughter her first 'birth bath' since birth.

In Dàpíng Village, whenever a child is born, there will be three "birth baths," one on the tenth day after birth, one on the full moon day, and the last one on the hundredth day.

Every ritual bath is solemn.

Both mugwort needs to be burned for water and two eggs need to be boiled.

Eggs are not eaten, but used when bathing children with mugwort water. After peeling the eggshells, they are rolled on the child's body.

It is said that this can absorb the "toxins" from children's bodies, strengthen their immunity, and reduce illness.

Tang Jiancheng doesn't know the principle behind it either; his ancestors have always done it this way, and it seems to work. After three rounds of prenatal bathing, children are indeed much more resistant to disease than those who haven't undergone the ritual.

"There seem to be no eggs at home, where should I borrow two?"

Tang Jiancheng pondered as he walked.

On this day in his past life, he remembered it very clearly.

He had just returned from the countryside after drinking some sorghum liquor. Because of the heavy snowfall, the road was slippery, and he fell into a roadside ditch. His head hit the ground, causing a wound that bled profusely. He fainted for a while before being woken up by the cold.

After waking up, he didn't go home but went back to the countryside, claiming that his head was broken and he needed to see a doctor at the hospital.

Actually, he didn't want to go home because his wife had given birth to another daughter!

In this era and in the countryside, the idea of male preference over female is very prevalent!

It's not just him, the whole village is like that.

What's more, over the past decade, his wife has given birth to one daughter after another, a total of nine!

This made it impossible for him to hold his head high in the village time and time again.

Everyone laughed at him, calling him a barren man who couldn't produce an heir, saying he was Yang Bailao, working himself to death and raising nothing but money losers!

Just like in his past life, Tang Jiancheng thought the same way. He also felt that his daughters were a financial burden. That's why he didn't want to go home every day and didn't want to see his daughters. As long as he had money, he would rather drink alone in the countryside, gamble, than buy anything for his daughters.

If a daughter did anything that displeased him, he would either scold or beat her. All the daughters felt both hatred and fear towards him.

And today, because he didn't go home, his ninth daughter didn't have egg-washing 'rituals', she fell ill with a high fever that night. The next day, she wasn't taken to the hospital in time, and her ninth daughter, who was born less than twelve days ago, died.

His wife felt deeply guilty and, in addition, was often criticized and gossiped about. People said that she couldn't give birth to a son and wanted to cut off Tang Jiancheng's lineage, claiming that she wouldn't even have anyone to bury her when she got old... Overwhelmed with despair, she committed suicide by drinking pesticides before her confinement period was over.

Later on, Tang Jiancheng also wanted to marry again, but all the women learned that he had eight daughters at home and they all refused. Even women who weren't very smart found his family too much to handle.

Tang Jiancheng felt deeply hurt and enraged, so he blamed all the fault on his eight daughters.

Eight daughters' days, one can imagine how miserable they were!

Decades later, when Tang Jiancheng celebrated his 70th birthday, he realized that the guests at his banquet were incredibly scarce. There was only his large yellow dog by his side, and none of his daughters had returned!

Because his daughters died, some were left disabled, and several others ran away from home decades ago without any word... Of the nine daughters he once had, only three remained close to him, but even they had long since severed ties with him!

Only at this moment did he realize how utterly wrong his life had been!

And now, Heaven has given him another chance for redemption. He swears he'll never let his daughters leave again; he will protect them!

Thinking this way, he couldn't help but quicken his pace. The blood on his face had already dried and hung there, looking rather ferocious. But at this moment, Tang Jiancheng didn't care at all.

Every time he looked back on the past, he felt that his ninth daughter's death was because she didn't have a prenatal bath...And his wife's suicide and his daughters' miserable lives all started from this incident!

So he had to rush back today to give his ninth daughter her first prenatal bath!

What if there are no eggs?

Tang Jiancheng still had some money left, enough to go to the countryside or village and buy two things. But he didn't want to buy them because deep down, he had a thought: if Wan Yi's daughter still developed a high fever after the ritual bath, he could use his remaining money to send her to the rural health center for treatment.

Thus, the unfortunate fate of the Ninth Daughter dying at only twelve days old could be avoided.

"Sister-in-law, do you still have eggs at home? Can you lend me two?"

Tang Jiancheng thought about many people who might lend him eggs along the way, and finally chose his elder brother's house.

He has six brothers, and he is the fourth oldest.

Yang Cui glanced at him, and asked in surprise: "Why do you need eggs? Didn't you go to the brickyard with your elder brother a while ago to carry bricks? How could you be out of money to buy eggs?"

Tang Jiancheng rubbed his hands and chuckled, "I drank all the money away. Today is my youngest daughter's tenth day of birth, I want to borrow two eggs for her to take a bath."

"Hey? Fourth Brother, when did you become so concerned about your daughter?"

Yang Cuiting was even more surprised to hear what Tang Jiancheng said.

In Daping Village, everyone knows that Tang Jiancheng has nine daughters and that he hates them, often beating and scolding them. Today, however, it's astonishing to see him breaking tradition by lending his eggs to his daughter for a ritual bath. It's more shocking than the sun rising in the west.

"Lao Si, are you using your little brother Jiu's name to deceive me about my eggs?" Yang Cui then looked at Tang Jiancheng with a suspicious expression.

Tang Jiancheng touched his nose, laughing and crying, "Sister-in-law, it's only two eggs. Do I need to lie? Even if I were going to lie, I wouldn't just lie about these two, would I?"

Yang Cui listened, and she understood. She went back into the house to get two eggs for Tang Jiancheng.

To be honest, Tang Jiancheng is very good at judging people. If it were anyone else, they definitely wouldn't have lent him eggs so readily.

In this era of scarce resources, despite the distribution to households, eggs were a precious commodity in every home. You couldn't even buy them, let alone borrow them.