In the second year of autumn, An An gave birth to a little girl, named Qiu Qiu, or Wen Qiu in full.
During his wife's pregnancy, Yin Chuan confessed his identity to Wen Qian. He was the strategist of the ruler who incited the war.
Previously, he had always wanted to improve his and his family's living conditions, so he used his intelligence to gain recognition.
His status improved significantly, but inevitably, some people always wanted to climb higher and gain more.
Yin Chuan didn't want to assist the warmongers, so he faked his own death to escape. He couldn't stop them, nor did he want to offend the powerful, so he chose this method to leave the place of strife.
The war was something he had anticipated, and he didn't want to get involved.
The name Yin Chuan was not his common name, but the one prepared for him by his parents before they changed their surnames.
Coincidentally, this new name was used in the land where he started his new life.
Wen Qian had long noticed that he was not a man who had done much manual labor, but his background still made her feel wary.
After all, escaping from a place of conflict usually involves shedding a layer of skin, and she didn't know if Yin Chuan would face any future troubles.
Yin Chuan had told An An about his situation before their wedding, but An An didn't tell her mother to save her from worrying.
Now that they had a child, Yin Chuan confessed it himself.
Although Wen Qian would worry, she wouldn't be overly concerned. After all, he had already come to such a remote place, which could be considered a successful escape.
As long as he didn't take An An south, everything would be fine, so the matter was dropped.
The birth of a new life made An An feel happy, not because it was her own child, but because she saw her mother aging and felt that she was getting closer to death.
Parents are a wall separating us from death.
When her mother grew old, An An felt very uneasy, even anxious.
This was something that others couldn't persuade or comfort her about. Even Wen Qian couldn't console her, she could only let her gradually come to terms with it.
Although everyone knows that people will die, true understanding of death often comes from the death of someone close, which makes it real.
When a new life was born and she saw the child in Wen Qian's arms, she suddenly understood why some people want to have children.
Why some adults would persuade young people to have children.
Because most older people have already lost their parents, they are facing death directly, even when their peers are dying one after another, they are afraid of death.
The only thing that could alleviate their sadness, perhaps, was the newborn child.
Whether it's the cry of a baby or the laughter of a mischievous child, it all sounds like hope to them.
Only this kind of new life can comfort them and make them feel less afraid and less desolate.
Her own mother, who was already old, had never told her to get married or have children, but left it to her and her husband to decide.
She wondered if her mother was very open-minded and therefore not afraid of death.
In fact, Wen Qian was not unafraid, nor was she insensitive to the sadness, but she would never interfere in young people's affairs because of her own fears.
She never married or had children of her own, so she certainly wouldn't force her grown child to do these things.
When An An was raising her own child, she would remember how difficult it was for her mother to raise her and would ask Wen Qian if she had been a handful as a child.
Wen Qian would tell her that she was a well-behaved child, so she wasn't too hard to raise, which made An An feel a bit better.
Qiu Qiu wasn't too difficult to care for either, but she would become very irritable when she was hungry, and this little girl wasn't so adorable when she was hungry.
As long as she was well-fed, she would be quiet most of the time, not crying or making a fuss.
Wen Qian would look at this chubby little girl and feel happy, remembering how thin An An was as a child.
Being older now, she could only watch the child every day, unable to help much.
So the responsibility of raising the child still primarily fell on the couple.
Yin Chuan's first impression of this newborn, the only person in the world with whom he shared a bloodline, was quite strange.
He also raised the child according to books, books provided by Wen Qian. It was said that An An was raised in the same way.
When Qiu Qiu could walk, one could see an old and a young person strolling in the yard.
The child's steps were quite steady. Normally, children at this age would be eager to run, but Qiu Qiu was different.
She walked slowly, mimicking her grandmother's pace, knowing that if she ran too fast, her grandmother wouldn't be able to keep up.
At this time, An An was exactly thirty years old, and Wen Qian was seventy-six, her back even more bent.
When the couple went out, Qiu Qiu and her grandmother would take care of each other.
Such a young child already knew how to take care of the elderly, it was hard to tell if she was naturally intelligent or if it was due to good upbringing.
Regardless, Wen Qian was always delighted to see this chubby child, finding it incredibly adorable that such a small child could earnestly deliver things to her.
When it came to eating, although Wen Qian's movements were slow when warming up the milk, Qiu Qiu never got angry with her.
If her parents were this slow, she would have started crying.
On a sunny autumn day, Qiu Qiu went with her parents to the forest farm to harvest grain.
Yin Chuan set up a small tent for the child and put her inside, then he and his wife started working.
By noon, An An was ready to go home and cook, but when they got home, they found that Wen Qian had already warmed up the meal, waiting for them to come back and eat.
Wen Qian was sitting on a lounge chair, smiling and telling them that she had already eaten and was waiting for them.
Yin Chuan came back later with the child. The family of three set the dining table in the yard, with Wen Qian still on the lounge chair in the hallway.
The child was talkative, but she took eating very seriously. In her eyes, eating was a big deal, so she ate well without her parents having to discipline her.
She wasn’t the kind of child who would give her parents a headache at mealtime, but rather, the kind from other families who knew how to eat.
As the child ate, she found her favorite dish, skillfully picked it up with her chopsticks, then ran over to her grandmother and fed her.
She thought it was delicious, so she gave some to Wen Qian, who thanked her after eating.
Afterwards, Qiu Qiu returned to her chair to continue her meal.
Suddenly, An An felt something strange. She turned her head to look at her mother and froze, sensing something was off.
She stood up, walked towards Wen Qian, and bent down to check her breathing, just as she used to do when Wen Qian was a baby.
Wen Qian had stopped breathing.
Just like that, without any illness, she had drifted off to sleep on the recliner and never woke up again.
