Chapter 74: Whose guidance did he receive?

Song Chunxue looked at the eldest brother, Jiang Yeming, who grinned, revealing his big white teeth, and smiled foolishly.

"You came empty-handed?" Song Chunxue looked at the bowl in his hand, the one that had just served him meat.

"Bring me your bowls, this one is mine."

"Okay, I'll go right away."

Soon, the eldest brother returned with two bowls and placed them on the stove, waiting to serve the noodles.

Looking at his grinning face, Song Chunxue felt increasingly puzzled.

"What's up? You've been pulling wheat really hard these past few days. How long can you keep it up?"

"Five days," Jiang Yeming answered truthfully.

He was no longer prickly, arrogant, and distant from Song Chunxue in every way.

His eyes were much more sincere, and he seemed much more intimate with Song Chunxue.

"After that, I went to make mud bricks. I've almost finished digging up the land below Lijia Dachang. In a few days, I'll be able to ram the earth and build the walls. I'll move into my new home before the New Year, and by then the baby should be born."

"Well, as long as you have your own ideas." Song Chunxue scooped noodles from his two bowls and poured chicken broth sauce over them. "Here you go."

Jiang Yeming carried two bowls of noodles out, asking, "What if it's not enough?"

"Enough for today."

"Okay, sure," Jiang Yeming replied loudly, then walked away with a silly grin.

Song Chunxue shook her head slightly. Could it be that Chen Feng has become smarter and knows how to use a smile to curry favor?

It's better to smile than to have a sullen face and try to get food and drinks from her.

She's still my child after all. As long as I don't touch her savings, isn't it every mother's fault for freeloading off her?

If he continues to act like a scoundrel, Song Chunxue will not hesitate to retaliate.

However, she still couldn't figure it out. How could her boss, who had never been beaten before, become so obedient after she beat him up?

He wouldn't be planning to wait until she's old before getting his revenge, would he?

She shook her head. "Let's wait and see." She knew the boss's temper; he wouldn't be able to keep up the act for long before he was exposed.

The chicken blood and minced meat noodles were especially delicious. If it weren't for the chicken, Song Chunxue could have eaten three and a half bowls in one go.

So she only ate two bowls today. In her memory, she hadn't eaten such delicious chicken blood noodles in ten years.

As you get older, your tongue becomes numb and tastes bitter. It's so much better when you're young; you can eat anything and enjoy it.

Xi Ma Xiang.

"Sanwa, how many bowls did you eat?"

Song Chunxue smiled and asked him, "You'll be seventeen after today. You finally have the opportunity to study. Once the wheat harvest isn't so tight in a few days, you can stay home and focus on your studies."

"There's still half a month before you go to school. It's not too late to start studying then. There's a lot of work to do in the fields, and you can't manage it all by yourself." Sanwa finished the chicken soup in his bowl, put the bowl on the table, and patted his belly contentedly.

"I'm going for a walk outside, I'm too full." He stacked the bowls and carried them to the kitchen, a smile always on his face, no longer as self-conscious and timid as before.

Jiang Hongying, who was lying on the kang with Xiujuan, whispered, "Mother, Sanwa has really changed. It's true that children who study become more handsome, especially Sanwa, who is the most handsome among them."

“Yes, seeing him become like this, with his back straight and speaking so confidently, I feel very proud.” Song Chunxue rubbed her eyes and smiled. “My biggest wish in this life is to enable him to study. No matter how well he does, I will have no regrets.”

After eating and drinking to their hearts' content, Jiang Hongying took a nap. The summer sun was particularly dazzling. She was trying to put her child to sleep, but as she did so, she also dozed off.

"Hmm, Mother, you've really surprised me. I used to be quite afraid of you, how come you've become so well-mannered in the blink of an eye... That's strange."

After saying that, she tilted her head to the side, rested her head on the buckwheat pillow, and fell into a deep sleep, even starting to snore softly.

Song Chunxue was both amused and exasperated. "Well-educated and reasonable?"

Do you know how to use vocabulary?

*

The next day at noon, Li Tang brought a bowl to milk the goats.

It took Song Chunxue and Lao Si a lot of effort to trap the sheep against the wall and hold it down so they could squeeze out a bowl of milk.

"I don't know how Sanwa did it. I saw him grab it so easily, but we couldn't hold it down no matter how hard we tried."

As he spoke, the fourth brother handed the goat milk to Li Tang, saying, "If your child has a stomachache from drinking goat milk, boil it, let it cool, and then give it to your child. After all, humans and goats are different."

"Okay, I understand." Li Tang took out two steamed buns from the cloth bag under his arm. "We don't have anything good at home. Take these two buns. We can't let your lambs go hungry."

The steamed bun in his hand was still made of white flour.

Song Chunxue laughed and said, "Then you shouldn't have taken the steamed buns. Tomorrow, bring some hay for my ewe. After all, the lambs drink the ewe's milk, so the sheep should be fed properly."

"Would wheat bran work?" Li Tang stared at the thick white goat milk in the bowl, his former arrogance completely gone. "My family has never raised sheep. If you think it's okay, I'll bring some back tomorrow."

“Of course,” Song Chunxue instructed. “Don’t take too much. Any extra wheat bran or small potatoes that aren’t spoiled will do. If you don’t have much to begin with, then forget it. You can give them to us later when you have more. The most important thing is to feed the children first.”

"Okay, I'll go back and take a look."

Li Tang left with the bowl in his hand; his slender, lonely figure appeared exceptionally small in the sweltering summer heat.

People cannot be brought back to life, but children are their hope.

Hopefully, Li Tang can learn from this lesson and...

Oh well, people always forget the pain once the wound heals.

More than a decade later, he and Li Mengchun's wife were still working together, hoeing the fields together. People who didn't know them would think they were a couple.

In the afternoon, the fourth brother borrowed a pair of scissors and took a short nap of about half an hour, while Song Chunxue and her two children sheared sheep in the sheepfold.

Once the sun isn't so strong, you can go to the fields and harvest wheat for more than an hour.

"well."

Not long after the haircut, the fourth brother broke the silence.

"If only I had known this would happen, I wouldn't be sitting here shearing sheep now if I had studied properly. My neck is so sore, and you two are all silent, it's suffocating me."

Sanwa smiled faintly and didn't say anything. Shearing sheep was his forte, because he had been doing it for ten years.

The sun is scorching during the dog days of summer, the hottest time of the year. Sheep feel much better after shearing their wool; if they wash in the river, they'll be covered in white, and when they graze on the mountain, they'll look like clouds.

The third child planned to finish shearing as soon as possible so that he could go to the river with the fourth child to wash the sheep before going to school. The sheep were so hot and filthy in the summer that their noses were running.

"Everyone says you don't know how lucky you are. I spoiled you too much before. Other schools gave you a break from harvesting wheat, but I made you stay indoors and let Sanwa suffer alone. No wonder you've become like rich young masters. I really treated Sanwa like a servant."

Song Chunxue said bluntly, "If you weren't so obedient, I would have beaten you until you were like the eldest brother, lying on the kang (heated brick bed) unable to get up. Anyway, you like lying down, so I'll let you lie down to your heart's content."

"I'm herding sheep now, but your tactic of making an example of someone to scare others works very well on me. I only realized how ruthless Mother could be when I saw you beat my older brother that day."

The fourth son stopped what he was doing. "Mother, I'm very curious. Why have you suddenly changed? It's not just your attitude towards us, but also how you do things. You're not afraid of being laughed at anymore."

He asked, half-jokingly but seriously, "Did Mother receive guidance from some master?"