CTF 0037

Xu Yin’s trip wasn’t in vain. 

Before she left, she bought several types of small seafood, both dried and pickled. 

Not only did she deplete the Li family’s stock, but she also bought a good amount from other families in Houhai Village. 

Seaweed and laver, for instance, were so light when dried that you could easily hold a thick stack in your hand. 

The Li family elders were concerned that she bought too much. They worried that she wouldn’t be able to finish them and they’d go to waste.

Xu Yin explained that she wasn’t going to eat it all herself. She intended to exchange what she had in surplus for other things in Tongcheng. They didn’t say anything more and gave her as much as she wanted. 

The only problem was, how could she carry all these goods on her bicycle?

The two elders originally wanted their son to borrow a cart from their village party secretary’s house to take Xu Yin back.

But she quickly declined, saying there was no need. She just borrowed two large bamboo baskets and two small bamboo baskets from the Li family. The large bamboo baskets were tied together with thick hemp rope and placed on the rear seat. They held two jars of snails, hanging from the front of the bike.

“Thank you, Uncle, Aunt. I’ll be heading back now. When I return from Tongcheng, I’ll come to see you again.”

Once she left their village, where no one was around, she placed the two large bamboo baskets in her system warehouse. Then, she took out the jars of snails from the bamboo baskets and replaced them with two bags of dried seaweed and dried shrimp. She rang her bike’s bell and headed for Da’ao.

Last night, she had thoroughly studied the geography of Tongcheng. It was predominantly a plain area, with a large lake on the outskirts. Nearby villagers primarily earned their living by raising lake sheep and lake ducks.

Even though Da’ao was surrounded by hills, they were all small hills used for cultivating tea. 

Xu Yin planned to go to Da’ao Village to get some mountain produce. She would sell it and use the proceeds to buy Tongcheng’s lake lamb, lake duck, and tea leaves to bring back. 

If she couldn’t sell it all, it wouldn’t be a problem; she’d just let her brother and sister-in-law enjoy them as extra dishes.

When Grandma Geng saw her, she was delighted and playfully scolded her for bringing something. 

Xu Yin explained that it was some seafood and that it was great to have hot soup in the summer. She also mentioned that she intended to visit her brother and sister-in-law in Tongcheng in a couple of days and wanted to bring some mountain goods with her.

Without a second thought, Grandma Geng took out the mountain goods they had and picked the best-looking ones to put in the bamboo baskets Xu Yin had brought.

Xu Yin insisted on paying, but the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law team, which consisted of Grandma Geng and Li Axiang, strongly refused.

“All of these are for you to take. If it’s not enough, I can go to other houses and ask around,” said Grandma Geng.

Li Axiang also firmly refused to accept money. As such, Xu Yin had to give up. She Would just get more lake lamb and lake duck to bring back for Grandma Geng’s family to eat.

“Stay and chat with Grandma for a while. I’ll go check with other households,” Li Axiang said as she took off her apron. “Do you want only mushrooms and dried bamboo shoots? Is there anything else you want?”

“I want just both of those. Here’s the money,” Xu Yin said as she gave her some money.

“Alright, I’ve got it.”

Li Axiang worked quickly. Xu Yin hadn’t even finished her conversation with Grandma Geng when she returned with two large cloth bags.

One bag contained dried bamboo shoots, including two types: one was dried bamboo shoot slices from large hairy bamboo, and the other was dried stone bamboo shoots, long and slender, dried whole. The bamboo shoot slices were best for stewing meat, while the stone bamboo shoots were perfect for making soup.

“Here’s thirty kilograms of big hairy bamboo shoots, and I managed to gather fifty kilograms of small stone bamboo shoots. They were all dried recently, so you don’t have to worry about their freshness. Is this enough? If not, I can go ask below,” Li Axiang had just inquired with neighbours living on the mountainside, like her family.

“It’s enough, it’s enough.”

In the other bag were various types of mushrooms, with shiitake and wood ear mushrooms being the majority. There were only a few ounces of red mushrooms and bamboo fungus, but the quality was excellent. These were all packaged separately.

The rest consisted of miscellaneous fungi, with a variety of species but limited quantity, as they weren’t specifically separated during drying. However, these mixed fungi were exceptionally delicious when stir-fried with meat or used in soup.

Apart from these, Xu Yin’s uncle, who had just come down from the mountain, also gave her a basket of ripe mountain berries, bright red and deliciously sweet.

With the help of her uncle, Xu Yin managed to carry the two large bags of mountain delicacies down the mountain and onto the back of her electric bicycle.

Luckily, it was an electric bicycle; if it had been a traditional bicycle, she doubted she could even push it.

On the way home, she once again took advantage of the absence of onlookers to throw the two bags of mountain goods into her system inventory, leaving only two baskets of dried seafood and fresh mountain berries outside.

By the time she got home, her mother had already started preparing lunch.

Seeing her return with two baskets of heavily fishy-smelling dried goods and pinching her nose with a disgusted look, her mother commented, “What’s there to eat in this? Isn’t what we have at home enough for you to take to Tongcheng? You even spent money buying this. It’s only been a few days since I said you were wasteful and your itch to shop has already returned…”

Xu Yin took them out and showed them off to her. “They’re all dried recently. Look at the size, Mom, aren’t they big? I specially picked them out for you and Dad to eat. When the weather gets hot, make a dried radish and clam soup, or shrimp and seaweed soup. They’re so fresh! They’re also very appetising to eat.”

Mother Xu wasn’t impressed. “Do you have any meat? That’s what makes a meal tasty.”

“…”

Comrade Geng Jinhua, you’ve broken the rules! 

Could these two things even be compared?

That being said, Mother Xu cooked a soup with dried scallops, meat, and dried radishes, and stir-fried dried razor clams for lunch, just as her daughter requested. Surprisingly, it was appetising and tasted good with rice.

The next day, Xu Yin bought a piece of pork ribs from the morning market. 

Initially, Mother Xu was dismissive. “What’s so delicious about bones? If you want to eat, you should’ve gotten some meat.”

“This is delicious,” Xu Yin said.

She made a pork rib soup with seaweed and also prepared a dish of spicy and sour shredded seaweed. The fragrant yet not greasy pork rib and seaweed soup, combined with the appetising and refreshing spicy and sour shredded seaweed, heightened Father Xu’s appetite.

After they tasted them, the food didn’t turn out to be so bad. It only seemed strange because they hadn’t tasted them before.

Gradually, Mother Xu grew not to dislike the seafood sent by her in-laws as much as she used to.

Three days later, Xu Yin got off the train at Tongcheng Station. 

Xu Zhinian came to pick her up in a jeep, but he had something else to do and just dropped her off at the compound before heading back to work. 

Xu Yin’s sister-in-law had been busy for several days. She had cleaned all the rooms and washed all the mats. Today, she had bought some meat and made fried meatballs, pan-fried egg dumplings, and a soup with dried bamboo shoots and old duck.

As soon as Xu Yin arrived, her sister-in-law served her a bowl of duck soup. 

“I’ll cook seafood noodle soup for you later.”

“Thank you, Sister-in-law.”

“Oh, don’t thank me! If you like it, I’d gladly cook it for you every day. It’s much easier to buy meat here than in our village, and the price is much more reasonable here, too,” her sister-in-law said with a smile on her face. “I’ve been looking forward to you visiting.”

Ever since she joined her husband at the military residential compound, her husband had entrusted her with his salary and allowances. She had to send fifty yuan back home each month and manage the rest to cover the expenses of their family of four.

The money wasn’t much. However, she felt good finally holding financial power. 

Plus, she could sew clothes, and occasionally, she would help the families in the building with some tailoring work, earning a little extra for pocket money. Life was quite enjoyable for her here.

Speaking of it, whether it was smoothly giving birth to their second child or earning money from sewing clothes, she owed it all to her younger sister-in-law. It was all thanks to her.

The doctor and nurses had told her that, given her condition during the birth of her second child, she had faced a risk of complications which would’ve endangered her life had she tried to give birth naturally. 

If she hadn’t come to the hospital for a prenatal checkup and opted for a C-section, she would’ve had to give birth at home with the help of only a midwife. 

If the birth didn’t go smoothly and they had to rush to the hospital halfway through, there might have been fatal complications, and it could have been a life-or-death situation.

She was now able to accompany her two children as they live in the military residential compound because of her sister-in-law, too. Without her sister-in-law’s persuasion, considering her mother-in-law’s personality, she would have never been allowed to leave their village.

Thinking about this made Xu Yin’s sister-in-law more convinced that her younger sister-in-law was her lucky star. She was determined to treat Xu Yin as well as she could.