Chapter 9 Land Distribution

But seeing Lin Chuntao's confident look, he nodded.

"Sure, I'll draw up the building plots for you after I finish measuring the land this afternoon."

Lin Chuntao thanked her with a smile.

With the matter settled, Lin Chuntao borrowed a hoe and sickle from Sun Shi to prepare for settling into the old house.

The group remained calm about living in the old house, including Pei Ying.

Lin Chuntao smiled, as if such hardship was nothing to worry about.

When Chunhe saw her laughing, she was even more puzzled, "Sister, what are you laughing at?"

"I'm happy."

Pei Ying was cutting weeds when she heard this and raised an eyebrow.

Lin Chunhe then asked, "What are you so happy about?"

"I'm glad you weren't afraid or cried when you faced this situation."

Lin Duo'er ran over with a grin and said, "Sister, I was so scared when you said you'd take us to find the cave."

"Now it's great, we don't have to live in caves anymore, hehe."

Lin Chuntao curled her lips into a smile, saying that her claim of living in a cave was just an excuse.

It wasn't that she wanted to take advantage, but this rural area is a society based on personal relationships. In the city, you can rent a house and settle the matter once you've paid the money, but it's not like that in the village.

When she came back in the morning, she saw several old houses like this. She thought that if no one took the initiative to ask, she would go and ask. She thought that if she paid a few coins, people might rent to them. But they would definitely build houses and move to new homes in the future. When they moved away, people would have no income and might be unhappy.

Now that Mrs. Sun has offered them this place to live, Lin Chuntao will definitely be grateful. After things are settled in a few days, she will buy some things and go to thank her. She will gain a good reputation and receive gifts, which will also make the village look good. When they move out in the future, the relationship and the favor will still be there, so there's nothing wrong with it.

But she didn't tell her three younger sisters about her complicated situation; she just gently patted her youngest sister's head.

"I'm sorry, I scared my sister."

Lin Duo'er shook her head, "My sister didn't do anything wrong to us."

Lin Chuntao smiled and patted her, "Okay, I understand, let's get to work."

After working for more than an hour, the group finally cleared away all the weeds inside and outside the house and removed the rotten windows, making the room much brighter.

The old house was a three-room thatched hut. Two rooms had intact walls, but the wall of the left room was cracked. Lin Chuntao and the others were going to take it out to store firewood.

There's an open space in front of the house. After clearing away the weeds, it looks quite spacious. When we have some free time, we can build a bamboo fence around it.

After cleaning, Lin Chuntao called Pei Ying to help carry a few stones into the house, build a fire, and then take a pot to get water.

They didn't even have a bucket to carry water; they were truly... penniless.

I'm so glad I had this pot and this half-sack of brown rice.

But even though it's said to be half a sack, it probably weighs less than thirty kilograms. It wouldn't last four or five people a few days, so they need to earn money quickly.

Lin Chuntao had just started cooking rice when she heard the system's voice in her ear.

"The sign-in points have been credited to your account, please check them."

Lin Chuntao quickly opened the system control panel.

A points mall panel appeared before her eyes, and she checked her points balance: 143.

Looking at the exchange shop, it's even divided into sections like the Life section, Seed section, and Recipe section, but each section is grayed out.

"This still can't be redeemed?"

"Please continue to sign in. You can choose to open a new server after signing in seven times."

Lin Chuntao was silent for a moment before asking, "Are there any other places to sign in besides the mushroom nest?"

"Yes, it also has partitions. It will be activated once the host has enough points."

That's alright. It's mushroom picking season now, so we can pick a lot and sell them for money.

While cooking, Pei Ying took a sickle to the mountainside to cut bamboo. She thought he was going to cut it to make doors and windows, but she didn't expect that he would first split a few bamboo tubes and carve out a few pairs of chopsticks.

Lin Duo'er's eyes widened as she looked at the bamboo chopsticks and bamboo bowl.

"Brother-in-law, you're amazing! You can even make bamboo bowls."

Pei Ying seemed to have little experience with children, and gave a perfunctory "hmm" before falling silent.

Duo'er looked at Lin Chuntao and playfully stuck out her tongue.

If you cook rice in an iron pot, the heat will be too high and it will burn; if the heat is too low, it will cook too slowly. Burnt rice doesn't taste good. Rice is precious, so it's better to cook it slowly than to burn it.

Seeing that many people in the village had finished lunch and gone back to their courtyards for a walk, Lin Chuntao and the others hadn't even started eating yet.

No one from the Lin family went to the fields this morning. Zhang was thinking of finishing lunch early so she could go to work in the fields.

I went to the old lady to get the key so I could cut some cured meat to stir-fry, but she didn't give me the key. The boiled eggs I promised my grandsons last night are also gone.

She now finds fault with all her daughters-in-law and even her son.

Tian didn't give her the key to the cabinet, and Zhang didn't have anything to cook, so she steamed some buckwheat buns, boiled some greens in plain water, and made some potato and wild vegetable pancakes, which should be called dry-fried because there wasn't a drop of oil in them.

When the meal was served, everyone in the room fell silent, but the old lady ate by herself, as if to say, "Eat it or not, it's up to you."

Thinking of Lin Chuntao and the others who had been kicked out, everyone wisely started eating.

After lunch, Lin Changhe was curious about where Lin Chuntao and the others had gone, so he sent two boys from the fourth branch of the family to find out.

Lin Jiacai and Lin Jialiang from the fourth branch of the family, one ten years old and the other twelve, are at an age where they can be ordered around but are not yet very smart.

Without much thought, I obediently went out to investigate.

Not only did they inquire, they also went directly to the old house of the village head.

The two noticed that the yard was clean, but there was no one in sight. Driven by curiosity, they slowly approached the yard to see what Lin Chuntao and the others were doing.

"Brother, can you smell something fragrant?"

Lin Jialiang sniffed, "It smells so good, it's the smell of rice!"

The two followed the scent across the yard and arrived at the door of the house.

Lin Chuntao was staring at the rice in the pot when she suddenly saw two heads poking in. She turned around sharply and saw that it was the two boys from the fourth branch of the family.

Her expression darkened slightly. "What are you doing?"

The two boys completely ignored Lin Chuntao's question, their eyes fixed on the rice in the pot, swallowing hard.

Pei Ying looked at the two children's eyes and slowly took out the pig-slaughtering knife from behind her back.

The two brothers, who were initially drooling over the aroma of rice, were so frightened that they ran away as fast as they could.

Pei Ying said, "Don't cook it anymore, just eat it like this. Otherwise, those two little brats will go back and call the adults."

Lin Chuntao nodded. She had originally planned to cook it slowly to let the moisture evaporate a little more.

But it's best to eat it now.

At this moment, Lin Jiacai and Lin Jialiang rushed into the courtyard shouting for help.

Yang, from the fourth wife's family, thought her son had been beaten and rushed over, asking, "What happened? Who chased you?"

"That scarred man! He was holding a knife and trying to kill me and my brother!"

After Lin finished speaking, Madam Yang was still a little confused. "Which scarred man?"

Lin Jialiang said, "Brother-in-law, that's the one who went out with a knife this morning!"

As soon as the child finished speaking, Lin Changhai and the others went out to look, but they didn't see anyone. Standing at the gate, they asked the child, "Where is he?"

Lin Jiacai took a few breaths before saying, "No, he didn't chase after us."

Madam Yang frowned slightly. "Then why did he kill you?"

"My brother and I saw them eating rice, and then he pulled out a knife and pointed it at us!"

After Lin Jialiang finished speaking, the courtyard fell silent. After a long while, Feng, from the second wife's family, burst out laughing: "Rice? Are you two hallucinating from cravings? Did you not eat enough at noon?"

Zhang, the eldest daughter-in-law, chimed in, "That's right, where would they get rice?"

“Exactly, could it be that they stole it from our house?” After Qian said that, Zhang was speechless: “We don’t have any rice. We had a little bit and we finished it all during the New Year.”

After listening for a while, Lin Changhe finally asked, "Where did you see them?"

Lin Jiacai hurriedly said, "By the way, Third Uncle, they are in Grandpa Village Chief's old house. When my brother and I went there, they had already tidied up and were cooking rice in the house."

"Muramasa's old house?"

"Did the village head provide them with accommodations?"

Qian asked twice, but no one from the Lin family paid her any attention.

Hearing the child's reply to Lin Changhe, Yang finally realized, "Third Brother, did you send Jia Cai and the others to find Chun Tao?"

Lin Changhe naturally denied it, "Sister-in-law, what do you mean by telling them to go look for it? I just asked them to inquire about it."

"What's the point of asking? Trying to pretend you're a good father? Too late!"

Yang made a sarcastic remark, and Lin Changhe snorted coldly: "They're just a few girls, why should I pretend to be a good father? Don't you want to know? Don't you want to know how they are after being kicked out of this house? You probably want to see them homeless, starving, begging to come back so you can laugh at them!"

With a loud crash, Old Man Lin's hoe hit the ground. The adults in the yard looked at each other, then grabbed their farm tools and went out to work in the fields.

Lin Chuntao and the others quickly finished their meal and put away the pot, leaving not a single grain of rice outside.

In the afternoon, she had to go out to measure the land. This house had no doors, windows, or locks, and she was worried about leaving the pot and rice at home. So Lin Chuntao simply carried the pot and rice to the village head's house. The old couple knew that these two things existed.

As for the copper coins, Pei Ying came up with a plan: he placed them on the roof beam, so that even if someone came in to search, they would have to use a ladder to get up there.

There are many people in the village, so bringing a ladder would attract attention and prevent things from being stolen without anyone noticing.

In the afternoon, the land was measured. Of the twelve acres, two plots were close to the river and could be used as paddy fields, two plots were near the village, and four plots were sandy land on the hillside.

Although there are a few mountainous plots, the sandy soil is good for growing corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes. As long as the land is level and easy to manage, she likes it.

These lands were reserved by the government at the beginning of this year for people from outside to migrate to. Lin Chuntao and her family were allocated land first, so they got the best land, which is also very close to their homes.

There are no crops in the field, only some weeds, but they are not weeds. They can be tidied up before planting again.

The families who received land were in good spirits. When they heard that Lin Chuntao wanted a plot of land for building a house, they were all shocked. She quickly explained, "We have nowhere to live. Right now, our great-grandfather and great-grandmother have kindly lent us their old house. We can't live here forever. We have to try our best to get a place to shelter from the wind and rain as soon as possible. We just need to allocate some land for now. We don't even have a bowl right now. Who knows when we'll actually build a house?"