Chapter 004

Chu Xia and Gu Yuzhu argued for a long time, but Chen Sisi and Li Qiao didn't say anything.

The two of them lay facing each other under the quilt, exchanging glances and listening to the fun.

The mirror issue had nothing to do with them, so they naturally didn't get involved.

As for Chu Xia's unwillingness to partner with everyone, they were somewhat dissatisfied. After all, what Chu Xia did was very hurtful to them. But Li Qiao had already talked about Chu Xia during the meeting just now, so naturally they would not waste any more words on her now.

Su Yun was still sitting on the edge of Chu Xia's bed.

She saw that Chuxia was as hard as a piece of iron, with thorns all over his body, and she didn't know what had stimulated him. Seeing that she couldn't get the specific reason, she decided not to continue to persuade him and make things difficult for herself.

Seeing that Chu Xia and Gu Yuzhu had stopped arguing, she took a deep breath and said, "Go to bed early."

After saying that, he stood up, blew out the oil lamp, groped his way up to the middle bunk, pulled up the quilt and lay down.

The room fell into darkness and Chuxia no longer looked in the mirror.

She put the mirror next to the pillow, pulled the quilt over her and lay down with her back to Gu Yuzhu.

In the past, before blowing out the lights and going to bed at night, Su Yun, Gu Yuzhu, Li Qiao and Chen Sisi would chat for a while, either complaining or talking about insignificant gossip.

But tonight, after the lights went out, none of the four spoke a word.

Chuxia never said anything, so naturally she didn't care whether they said anything or not, she just slept.

Of course, what happened today was indeed very strange.

Before falling asleep, Chuxia closed her eyes and went over everything carefully in her mind and digested it again.

After digesting most of it, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

After falling asleep, she began to dream again. In the dream, she was holding her own mirror in front of her.

Her face was reflected in the mirror, blurry at first as if in the fog, then slowly becoming clearer.

When Chuxia saw her face in the mirror becoming clearer, she couldn't help but feel nervous.

She held her breath and stared at herself in the mirror, not daring to blink. In the end, her entire face was completely clear in the mirror. Her eyebrows, nose, lips, and even the strands of hair on her forehead surprised her greatly.

It was an exceptionally delicate and beautiful face.

Her eyebrows are curved like leaves, her eyes are bright, her cheeks are white with a hint of pink, and her lips are red, curved even when she's not smiling.

She couldn't find any adjectives, she just felt that she loved it very much.

Suppressing the nervousness and surprise in her heart, Chuxia raised her hand to her face.

She wanted to touch and pinch the face in the mirror, but just as her fingers were about to touch her cheek, the dream suddenly disappeared and she woke up from the bed.

The scene in the dream was still clear, and Chuxia quickly picked up the mirror beside the pillow.

There was very faint morning light in the room. With this weak light, Chuxia saw her face in the mirror, but it still looked like it was covered in fog. She closed her eyes and put the mirror down again.

It really was a sweet dream.

She lay there with her eyes closed for a while, not thinking about it anymore.

Before anyone else woke up, she got up quietly, put on her clothes, tied her hair, folded her bedding, put the mirror under her pillow, and went out to the yard to wash up.

When Chuxia came out of the dormitory carrying the basin, Lin Xiaohan had just finished washing up.

Lin Xiaohan is usually arrogant and cocky. He looks down on Han Ting and other people. Naturally, he looks down on Chu Xia who just follows Han Ting around mindlessly all day long. His disdain for her is often reflected on his face.

He saw early summer and most of the time he didn't even lift his eyelids.

It was the same now. He just pretended not to see Chu Xia and went straight back to the dormitory with the washbasin.

Lin Xiaohan's personality was such that he was arrogant, cold and mean to others in his daily life, and he offended everyone at the educated youth site. Others didn't like him, and Chu Xia naturally didn't like him either.

Chuxia pretended not to see him, and after he left, she went to the well to draw water for washing.

While she was washing up, Lin Xiaohan came out of the dormitory and went into the kitchen.

Chuxia didn't care what he did.

She washed up quickly, went back to the dormitory, put away her toiletries, and went to the kitchen.

When I entered the kitchen, Lin Xiaohan had already started a fire behind the stove.

Chuxia still ignored him and went straight to her grain bag to grab a handful of sorghum rice and a few dried sweet potatoes. She scooped water to wash them clean and put them in the pot, intending to cook sweet potato and sorghum rice porridge.

The stove in the kitchen is a large stove that can accommodate two pots.

Lin Xiaohan used the big pot outside, and Chuxia naturally used the small pot inside.

She put sorghum rice, dried sweet potatoes, water and the pot, covered the pot and went to the stove to light a fire.

But Lin Xiaohan was sitting in front of the stove outside, blocking her way.

His back was less than ten centimeters away from the wall behind him.

It is obviously impossible to squeeze in through this gap.

So Chu Xia said, "Please let me go."

Lin Xiaohan didn't respond or look at her, but just moved the small stool forward.

Chuxia politely said "thank you" to him and went in from behind him.

He sat down inside and rolled up a handful of straw and stuffed it into the stove.

There is a small grid between the two stove openings of the earthen stove, in which matches for lighting the fire are placed.

Chuxia reached in and took the matchbox, opened it and prepared to light it, but found that the box was empty.

She was stunned and remembered that there was only one stick left after she made noodles with soybean paste last night.

The new matches were kept by Han Ting.

Chuxia put the empty matchbox back into the small compartment and took a look into Lin Xiaohan's stove.

It would have been a simple matter to borrow fire from the stove next door, but she couldn't ask.

The person sitting next to him was Lin Xiaohan.

Everyone at the educated youth point knew that he was a cold-hearted and stingy person.

Li Qiao often talked about him behind his back, saying that he was a mean-spirited and petty-minded person, and that his tall and handsome appearance was wasted.

Knowing that she would most likely be rejected if she spoke up, Chuxia didn't say anything to embarrass herself.

She withdrew her gaze and waited for a moment, silently rolled up a handful of straw in her hand, and then when Lin Xiaohan stood up to look at the sorghum rice porridge boiling in his pot, she immediately put the straw into his stove.

The straw caught fire immediately, and she immediately took out the straw and stuffed it into her stove.

She performed this series of movements extremely quickly, as fast as her heartbeat.

But she pretended to be very calm and composed, and did not look at Lin Xiaohan the whole time. After lighting the fire in her stove, she continued to add grass into it and concentrated on burning the fire.

Lin Xiaohan: “…”

He stirred the porridge and sat back, turned to look at Chuxia for a while, then sneered silently.

Chuxia shamelessly pretended not to hear anything.

Fortunately, Lin Xiaohan didn't say anything, so the two of them ignored each other again.

Lin Xiaohan entered the kitchen early, so the porridge was naturally cooked earlier than in early summer.

He ate the porridge and washed the pots and bowls. Chuxia just sat down at the table and ate the porridge.

After washing the pots and dishes, Lin Xiaohan did not leave immediately, but went in and out and was busy for a while.

Chuxia ate porridge while watching him busying around. He washed the sorghum, corn and dried sweet potatoes, put them in baskets separately, and then found a place in the yard to put them down to dry.

Watching Lin Xiaohan finish his work and leave the yard.

Chuxia thought to herself - he is quite good at living.

It is naturally not a good idea to use these coarse grains to cook porridge every day. Not only are they unpalatable, but they are also not cost-effective.

Usually they are washed, dried, ground into powder on a stone mill, and steamed into buns for eating.

So after washing the pots and bowls after breakfast in early summer, I also washed some sorghum, corn and dried sweet potatoes.

Since the basket was used by Lin Xiaohan, she used a winnowing basket and also put it in the yard to dry.

It was already daylight.

The sun was rising in the east, and it looked like it would be a sunny day.

Chuxia prayed in her heart that the weather would not change again today, and then she went out.

It is early March and the morning air is crisp and cool.

Because it rained last night, it felt even colder when I went out.

In early summer, wrap yourself in a coat and pick a place to stay.

But the dirt was soaked by the rain, and no matter how hard we tried, there was a muddy pit with every step.

***

It wasn't long after early summer walked out of the fence gate.

Suddenly, a sharp and piercing bell rang in the yard: "Ring, ring, ring..."

The other people who were still sleeping in the two dormitories opened their eyes reluctantly at the ringing of the bell.

After the ringing stopped, everyone stayed in bed for a while before getting up slowly, yawning.

Get up, make your bedding, and then wash up lazily.

After washing up and waking up, someone suddenly asked, "By the way, how do you want to have breakfast?"

After this question was asked, all those who were originally a little confused suddenly woke up.

Before they were allocated food and started cooking independently, they would wake up at the alarm clock, wash up in a hurry and run to their fellow villagers' homes for meals. Now their fellow villagers would not prepare meals for them.

Besides, by this time, if the fellow villagers didn’t wait for them, they would have basically already eaten.

"Is there no one cooking?" someone else asked.

Everyone looked at each other, but no one answered.

Then someone else ran into the kitchen, picked up the two pot lids on the stove, and saw two large iron pots that were so clean that there was not a grain of rice in them.

Soon everyone gathered in the kitchen, surrounded the stove, and saw two large clean iron pots.

There was no need for anyone to answer this question. It was obvious that no one got up to make breakfast.

Li Qiao swallowed and looked at Han Ting, "What should I do?"

Han Ting is not a god. After a moment of silence, he said, "What else can I do? Just starve."

Chen Sisi felt like crying. "Ah? I still have to go to work. I'm going to starve to death, right?"

Gu Yuzhu also said: "You guys have a lot of strength, but how can we girls bear it?"

The male educated youth named Hu Yang suddenly said, "If you can't stand it, why don't you get up and cook?"

Gu Yuzhu turned to look at him, "You didn't tell us to get up and cook yesterday."

Hu Yang laughed, "Is there any need to say this? Isn't cooking something you women do?"

Gu Yuzhu was unhappy, "Who said it's just our business?"

Hu Yang: "No, have you ever seen a man cook?"

Seeing that the two were about to quarrel, Han Ting hurriedly said, "Stop yelling."

Gu Yuzhu and Hu Yang shut up, and Han Ting said, "It's my fault for not arranging things clearly last night. Now that it's like this, stop talking nonsense. Either go to work on an empty stomach, or you don't have to pay half a day's work points. Now it's time to cook and eat. It's your choice."

Everyone looked at each other and there was silence.

Then Chen Sisi said first: "I want to eat, not work."

Another male educated youth, Wang Xiangqian, added, "Who wants to work? If you don't work, you won't get any work points. If you don't have work points, you won't get any food, let alone anything to eat. Think carefully about this."

Chen Sisi whispered again: "It should be okay to miss a day or two, right?"

No one spoke.

Li Qiao looked at Han Ting again and said, "Han Ting, you make the decision. We will listen to you."

Han Ting did not make this decision, and just said: "Everyone, let's vote by raising your hands."

He glanced at everyone and said, "Raise your hand if you want to go to work on an empty stomach."

I counted and found that only four people raised their hands.

Han Ting then said the result: "Okay, then stay and cook, and go back to work in the afternoon."

After the decision was made, a simple division of labor arrangement was made.

For now, we are divided into one group of boys and one group of girls, and they will take turns cooking on a daily basis.

The girls will cook first today.

The girls also went to the kitchen to get busy.

The four people who raised their hands and wanted to go to work naturally did not go. After all, they were now ten people living together as a partnership, and there was only a group without individuals. The work points they earned were shared collectively, and the food they ate was also shared collectively.

If we work without food and go hungry to earn work points, will the work points we earn be shared among everyone?

Who is stupid?

No one wants to be the scapegoat.

With this arrangement, everyone can relax.

The girls were thinking about cooking in the kitchen and first looked at all the food they had been allocated.

There is very little wheat and rice, and the wheat is whole grains while the rice has husks, so they cannot be used for cooking.

The most leftover items were sorghum rice, corn and dried sweet potatoes. The whole corn kernels could not be put into the pot directly. They had eaten sorghum rice porridge at their fellow villagers' homes before, which had some dried sweet potatoes added to it. So after some discussion, they decided to cook it that way.

It’s just that the porridge cooked by my fellow villagers is very thin, while they cook it very thick.

After discussing it, the four girls started to cook porridge and chatted at the same time.

After talking for a while, Li Qiao suddenly thought of Chu Xia and asked, "Did Chu Xia leave after breakfast?"

Gu Yuzhu continued, "Of course you are. Can you go away hungry without eating?"

Chen Sisi sighed, "Why didn't she call us when she got up?"

Gu Yuzhu: "I don't know what medicine she took wrongly. She spoke so harshly last night. Do you still count on her?"

Chen Sisi sighed again, "I really wanted to count on her. She cooks delicious food and is very capable. I thought I could eat the food she cooked, but she refused to cooperate with us."

These words actually touched the hearts of the other three people as well.

They all knew that Chuxia was a good cook and they had all been craving the food she cooked.

Chen Sisi continued to talk without stopping, "She was fine before, but suddenly became like this yesterday. Do you think she has become close to Lin Xiaohan and was instigated by Lin Xiaohan?"

Li Qiao answered promptly: "Impossible."

Chen Sisi looked at her, "Why is it impossible?"

Li Qiao said, "Oh, you really don't know how to judge people. For someone like Lin Xiaohan, it's impossible for him to get along with anyone. And don't you see that among the dozen of us, the one Lin Xiaohan dislikes the most is Chu Xia. He almost has the word dislike engraved on his forehead."

Chen Sisi thought about it and said, "It seems so."

Then he lowered his voice and asked, "What happened to her? She's so weird."

Who knows what happened to her.

Su Yun, who had been silent the whole time, said, "Don't think too much about her. She was probably just a little bit irritated for a while, trying to make herself feel important, and she regretted it when she suffered."

Gu Yuzhu added: "I'm still waiting for her to cry."

Chen Sisi: "I hope she can regret it sooner..."

***

In the boundless fields, the wheat seedlings turn green in the wind.

Now is the time to harvest green fertilizer, and figures of different heights are busy in the fields.

Chuxia covered half of her face with a thin scarf, covering her mouth and nose. She held a long-handled dung shovel in her hand and fertilized the wheat with the villagers in the fields.

I've been doing farm work in the countryside for more than half a month, and now I'm pretty good at it.

I can understand most of the country dialect and can chat with the villagers.

Aunt Wu, who was not far away, praised her for her increasingly good work style.

Chuxia smiled and said thank you.

Just as he finished speaking and turned his gaze back to continue watering the fertilizer, team leader Liang Youtian came over again.

He walked up to Chu Xia and asked directly, "The sun is shining on your butt, where are Han Ting and the others?"

Chu Xia turned around and looked around when she heard that, but saw no one.

She retracted her gaze and replied to Liang Youtian: "I don't know."

She came to work immediately after breakfast without paying attention to anything else.

Liang Youtian raised his hand and pinched his waist, gritting his teeth and hissing in anger.

There are a total of twelve educated youths in the educated youth group. Today, only Lin Xiaohan and Chu Xia came to work on time. The others all did not come, and did not explain the reason.

What else could the reason be? It's just that they are a bunch of lazy people.

Think about it, their Tanxi Brigade was unlucky to have to deal with such a group of educated youth.

This group of educated youth have been in Tanxi Brigade for more than half a month. Except for Lin Xiaohan and Chu Xia, who never gave them any trouble and worked diligently and had something to do, the rest of them had to do something every now and then.

Steal the chicken today and touch the dog tomorrow.

I've fought with thugs and gangsters.

When fighting, he is stronger than anyone else and none of his punches are empty.

But when it comes to working, either my legs or stomach hurt, and I find ways to be lazy and slack off.

Especially the leader Han Ting is the worst person.

In just over half a month, I was sent to the commune’s human security group and attended a criticism meeting.

If others would have buried their heads in the ground long ago, he would just treat it as a game and wouldn't care at all.

His face is as thick as a city wall and even missiles cannot penetrate it.

This happened again today.

Liang Youtian stood on the ridge of the field, pinched his waist, gritted his teeth and hissed for a while.

As if he had almost vented his anger, he called Chuxia again, "Don't be busy for now, put down the work in your hands, and come with me to the field. I have something to tell you."

After saying that, he walked along the ridge towards the edge of the field, and shouted again: "Lin Xiaohan, come here."

Lin Xiaohan responded from the field about twenty meters away.

Chuxia did not waste any time. He put down the long-handled dung shovel in his hand, climbed up the ridge and went to the edge of the field.

When she was almost at the end of the field, she raised her hand and pulled the scarf off her face.

Lin Xiaohan jogged a little and arrived at the field at the same time as Chuxia.

The two of them went and stood in front of Liang Youtian.

Lin Xiaohan asked first: "Captain Liang, what do you want to talk to me about?"

Chuxia didn't ask, she thought Liang Youtian wanted to talk to them about the other educated youth who didn't come to work.

Liang Youtian said, "It's like this. Our brigade's revolutionary committee held a meeting yesterday and planned to reopen our brigade's primary school. Our village originally had a primary school, but it was closed during the two or three years of the revolution. Later, we couldn't find teachers to reopen it. Village children have to go to Shazhuang Brigade or the commune to go to school, which is a long way to go. Now that you are here, we are thinking of reopening the school. After more than half a month, you two are the most reassuring, so we want you two to be teachers. What do you think?"

After hearing this, Chu Xia was subconsciously stunned.

Although this was quite surprising, she was not stunned because of the surprise.

Instead, the content of the novel suddenly popped up in her mind again, and she believed in the authenticity of the content of the novel a little more.

Because this incident also happens in the novel.

However, what happened in the novel was that after Han Ting learned about this matter, he found her and asked her to give the opportunity to Su Yun and let Su Yun become a teacher.

After hearing this, Lin Xiaohan immediately expressed his joy and honor.

Seeing Chu Xia was stunned and didn't say anything, Liang Youtian asked her one more question: "Your reaction is, you don't want to be a teacher?"

Hearing this, Chu Xia came back to her senses.

She quickly smiled and said happily, "Captain Liang, I think so, but you suddenly gave me such a good opportunity. I was so happy that I didn't react."

Who wouldn’t want such a good thing?

Being a teacher means you can get a fixed salary every month, and you don’t have to work hard in the fields under the wind and sun every day. It is much better than going to work every day and doing hard labor to earn work points.

Hearing Chuxia say this, Liang Youtian also laughed.

He said in a very cool tone, "Okay, let's go now. I'll show you around the school first."

Chuxia happily prepared to follow. Because she was so happy, she subconsciously turned around to look at Lin Xiaohan before starting.

Because of the opportunities that Lin Xiaohan and she had obtained together, their joy was shared.

But as soon as her eyes fell on Lin Xiaohan's face and met his gaze, Chu Xia instantly remembered the state of their relationship.

So she immediately put on a cold smile, pretended that she had nothing to do, turned around and walked forward.

Lin Xiaohan: “…”