The 1980s: The Lame Old Man Found a Lucky Little Treasure

[Period Piece] [Adorable Beloved Child] [Farming and Prosperity] [Face-Slapping the Villains]

In 1980, Zhao Tiezhu returned to his hometown after leaving the army, only to find himself with a crippled leg. His wife ran off with their savings and another man, while his sister-in-law drove the father and his two sons into a drafty cowshed. After a mountain fog rolled in, he brought home a baby wrapped in a roe deer's hide, found in a crack in the rocks on Wild Boar Ridge. The little girl immediately called out, "Daddy, I'm hungry," then pointed toward the valley and said, "There's lots of yummy meat over there."

The next day, a three-hundred-jin wild boar charged into a pitfall set by the Zhao family. From then on, their pot was filled with the smell of meat every day. The little girl crouched by the field ridge and sniffed the soil, doubling the yield of their sandy plots. She casually rummaged through the grass and found a whole nest of five-leaf wild ginseng. The villagers all said the Zhao family had found themselves a lucky little treasure. Only Zhao Tiezhu knew that someone had taught his daughter all these skills, little by little.

His sister-in-law grew jealous and tried to snatch the child. The accountant skimmed their benefits, a seed peddler swindled them with fake seeds, and a big shot from the regional administration repeatedly sent people to search the mountains, hoping to find a woman who "should have been dead long ago."

Every full moon night, the girl would secretly climb onto the roof and call "Mother" toward the depths of Wild Boar Ridge. Fires flashed three times in the distant mountains. Who was hiding in the mountains?