After Xiao Cheng finished carrying the water, he was dragged off to work again. Today, the whole brigade was going to clean the pond.

The brigade has several ponds. In the spring, they plant lotus roots and raise fish. In the winter, they need to dredge the silt. The dredged pond mud is rich in humus and can be converted into high-quality fertilizer through composting for use in spring plowing.

Cleaning the pond requires stepping in icy water, which is hard and harmful to the body, but there's no other way; everything needs to be done manually these days.

In this era, machines are more important than people, not to mention that there is currently no suitable machine for this purpose.

When Xiao Cheng arrived, the pond had already been drained. Now, most of the members of the brigade had gone into the water to catch fish. Some used fishing nets, some used winnowing baskets or sieves. Whatever the tool, as long as they could catch the fish, it was good.

The fish caught will be distributed according to work points, which is why everyone is so excited. After a year of hard work, they can finally taste meat.

Many teenagers would also go down into the muddy water to catch fish and shrimp, and search for river clams, loaches, and eels, getting themselves covered in mud while laughing and chatting.

Beside them, the captain also ordered people to bring over a large pot filled with steaming ginger tea. Everyone who went into the water was given a bowl of ginger soup when they came up, and adults and children alike had to finish it.

Otherwise, if the pond is cleaned up in a few days, but most of the people have collapsed, then the team leader has failed in his duty.

While catching fish, Xiao Cheng didn't go down; he stood above and helped clean the fish. Even so, the clothes he had just changed out of got wet again.

He was speechless. It felt like he was destined to be in contact with water all day, from morning till night.

In the afternoon, most of the fish in the pond had been caught, and it was the men's turn to go.

They went barefoot to the cold pond bottom, working in pairs. One person shoveled the black, ugly silt into a winnowing basket, while the other carried the basket to a designated spot where people would spread the silt out to dry.

Xiao Cheng, having no experience whatsoever, was assigned to the drying group. He secretly breathed a sigh of relief: thank goodness, if he had to dig up the silt, he felt he would have frozen to death in the pond.

Even spreading out this silt was not an easy task. The silt was sticky and required a lot of effort to spread. Every time he pushed, a lot of silt would stick to the rake, and he had to knock it off with force. A lot of silt fell on him, making him smelly, heavy, and cold.

After using the rake for a long time, my palms got chapped again.

"I'm speechless!" Xiao Cheng stopped what he was doing, looking at the few glistening blisters on his palms. Countless questions filled his mind: Why was there so much farm work in winter? Didn't the newspapers report that many educated youth spent the winters on heated brick beds? Why couldn't I be assigned to those places?

Educated youth: You really want to come to a place where even going to the toilet is freezing cold? We can find another place!

In the afternoon, Xiao Cheng returned home with everyone after work.

As soon as I got back, I heard Grandma Zhan yelling and cursing in the house: "You damned bastard, may your head be chopped off and you deserve to be cut into a thousand pieces! Your mother specifically called you back to take care of me, but as soon as you got back, you ran around everywhere and didn't even come to my old woman's bedside for a moment. You have no conscience at all!"

"If it weren't for me, you wouldn't be this old! I've raised you for nothing all these years!"

"God, open your eyes and look! I raised such a big granddaughter, and now the mother-in-law who saved her life, how can she be so heartless and cruel?"

Zhan Chunlan was so angry she almost laughed. She hadn't slept all night and hadn't had a chance to catch up on sleep today. She had walked two hours to and from the commune and was now being morally blackmailed on her way back.

"How dare you say that! You think I don't know? You were the one who was going to throw me into the urinal to drown me, and it was the neighbor next door who saw it and pulled me out! Now you're saying it's your doing? How can you be so shameless? You've changed your memory because you keep saying it!"

"You're still asking me to take care of you? Have I ever eaten a single grain of rice from you in all my life? I spent the whole day yesterday taking care of you. You had to knock on my door every time I took a step. I didn't even have time to reply to Aunt Zhang next door when she wanted to say hello. How much more do you want me to serve you?"

“I won’t even mention the daytime, but I don’t know where you get the energy. You make a fuss every hour at night, either needing to pee or poop, or needing water. If I give you cold water, you want hot water; if I give you hot water, you want me to let it cool down. Or you complain about something being uncomfortable and want me to massage you, or something being itchy and want me to scratch it. Just put your hand on your heart and tell me, have I ever taken a break?”

The old lady was a little dizzy from her string of words, but she felt no remorse at all: "Then you disappeared when I woke up this morning, and I couldn't find you even when I wanted to go to the toilet."

Zhan Chunlan was not afraid at all. Despite being hit like that, she didn't feel guilty at all and just blurted out, "I just saw that you were in too much pain, so I thought I would go up the mountain to find some herbs to relieve your pain."

"Did you find it?" The old lady looked at her with some hope. Although she was indeed making a fuss on purpose, she was also genuinely feeling unwell.

Zhan Chunlan never expected that she would actually believe it. From childhood to adulthood, she had never even been exposed to traditional Chinese medicine, so how would she know anything about herbs? "No, this mountain is so barren, there isn't a single blade of grass, let alone any herbs."

"Then you're saying you didn't go out to slack off?" With her hopes dashed, the old lady was also unhappy.

People around her chimed in, saying they had indeed seen Zhan Chunlan running up the mountain for a long time: "Don't even mention it, we all saw it. She went straight up the mountain as soon as she left, and searched all over the place. She only came back because she couldn't find her."

“We’ve all seen it, including you. Look at your granddaughter’s pale face. She hasn’t slept all night and ran so far this morning. Let her rest properly today. Otherwise, how can her body take it? I saw her flinch. Don’t take your youth for granted and neglect your health.”

Zhan Chunlan was puzzled. When did she see it? She didn't go up the mountain today. Could it be that she was seen going up the mountain yesterday?

Watching this scene from outside, Xiao Cheng felt that the Zhan family was too terrifying. What would Shan Shan do if she encountered such an old woman in the countryside? She was so weak and couldn't speak. If she was bullied, she would only hide and cry.

At this moment, in a certain brigade, Xiao Cheng's frail and helpless Shan Shan was carrying a hoe and digging radishes one by one. She dug quickly and well, unlike other educated youths who would dig into the radishes and break them in half. Among the new educated youths, she did the best because she wanted to earn enough work points to support herself and send her rations to the city. Her younger siblings were waiting for her.

Except when she first arrived and caught a cold because she hadn't brought enough warm clothes, requiring her to take a few days off, after recovering, Luo Shan worked incredibly hard to make up for the time she had missed.

Fortunately, she was used to doing housework at home and picked it up quickly. The local residents thought highly of her because they saw how efficiently she worked, and several families even considered having her as their daughter-in-law.

After a long day, dinner was still sweet potato steamed rice and a plate of stir-fried cabbage.

Xiao Cheng: He has PTSD from sweet potatoes; he feels nauseous just looking at them.

The thought that this was what Shanshan ate after she went to the countryside made his heart ache even more. He just wanted time to pass quickly so he could go find Shanshan as soon as possible.