By the time the children were in bed, it was already nine o'clock at night. Chen Hong carefully checked the front and back yards again, closed and locked the gate.

Back in her room, she laid out a soft mat. It was time for her 30-minute yoga session every night. Chen Hong focused her mind, cleared her thoughts, and diligently performed each yoga pose.

Feeling some soreness in her waist, shoulders, and elbows, Chen Hong realized that her first fishing trip today had been too strenuous, causing her muscles to become overly fatigued. She stretched her body as much as possible, enduring the soreness, and finally completed the full 30 minutes before ending the session.

Letting out a long breath, Chen Hong, her pajamas soaked with sweat, took a shower and washed both her and her child's clothes, hanging them to dry in the bathroom first, planning to put them in the yard to sunbathe tomorrow.

Leaning against the headboard, Chen Hong held a green jade pendant in her hand. If she hadn't just found it in her pocket while doing laundry, she would have completely forgotten about it.

This afternoon I was busy making pickled vegetables and working in the fields, and I was lucky I didn't damage the jade pendant. Under the gentle light, the jade pendant, which looked somewhat inferior at noon, seems to have become smoother and more lustrous.

The workmanship looks like modern craftsmanship, but the style is a bit strange. It looks like a snake, but it's not exactly a snake. Even if people were to carve a zodiac animal nowadays, they wouldn't carve an animal like this. What is this?

It's definitely not a dragon, so is it a jiao? It's not that snakes evolve into jiao, and jiao evolve into dragons.

Bored, Chen Hong took a picture of the pattern with her phone and searched it online. It really was a dragon, but not the modern style. It should be a style from before the Song Dynasty.

Chen Hong touched the jade piece. She had never been in contact with real good jade in her past and present lives. Was this an antique or a modern craft?

Honestly, Chen Hong didn't know anything about jade. The jade looked so-so, there was no need to have it appraised.

Suddenly, an unbelievable thought popped into Chen Hong's mind: Could it be that God gave me a space or a system because I was reborn without any warning? Isn't this a classic plot in Tomato's novels?

Chen Hong was in high spirits and hurriedly got up and went to the main room. She took out her sewing kit from the drawer and found a lighter.

Using a lighter, I carefully heated the sewing needle, raised my left hand, held the needle in my right, and resolutely plunged it into my middle finger. I squeezed my middle finger hard, and a drop of blood gathered larger and larger.

Five or six drops of blood had already been smeared on the jade, almost completely covering it, but there was no change. Didn't the novels say that some sentient beings suck blood?

It seems I've fooled myself again. Having gone through a rebirth, I'm somewhat obsessed with myself now.

After tidying up the sewing kit and lighter, Chen Hong took the jade pendant into the bathroom to begin the cleanup. She filled the sink with water, put the jade pendant in, washed it carefully, and prepared to lather it with soap and scrub it thoroughly.

Just then, a miraculous scene unfolded. The middle finger, which had just healed, started to bleed again after being rubbed. The red beads strung on the purple thread, stained with Chen Hong's blood, clung tightly to the wound on Chen Hong's middle finger, and the fresh blood was sucked into the beads.

Chen Hong was startled. She felt the blood draining away and her left arm felt a little cold. Chen Hong was a little scared. Where did all that blood go from such a small bead?

Chen Hong forcefully pried at the beads, "Alright, that's enough, isn't it? Don't suck me dry, you little thing, you need to know how to sustain yourself, can't you wait until I'm rested before sucking me again!"

Chen Hong exclaimed in surprise and muttered to herself, unsure whether the bead truly possessed a spirit and understood her words, or had already absorbed its fullness, before finally separating from Chen Hong's fingers.

Chen Hong was overjoyed. Before she could react, the red bead embedded itself in the central hole of the jade pendant, spinning rapidly inside. A dazzling light flashed and headed straight for Chen Hong's chest.

Chen Hong stared blankly at the purple hanging rope left in her hand. She quickly lifted her pajamas to check her body and found a red mole between her breasts.

Chen Hong gently touched her hand, noticing a black mole there, about the size of a grain of sorghum, which she had been born with. When she was little, a fortune teller came to the village and said that she had always been independent and had a sharp mind. This little mole was her sharp mind, which had tricked her mother out of two cents.

Chen Hong scoffed at this. As a girl born in the countryside, her parents arranged everything for her—her food, clothing, schooling, and work—and she did exactly as they told her to. Some girls were even engaged at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and it was still up to their parents.

Having your own opinions is a lie. In this era where parents generally have the final say, if you don't listen to your parents and insist on your own opinions, you'll get a beating and your legs will be broken.

Even boys who disobey their families' arrangements and go out to make their own way in the world are considered rebellious, let alone girls?

In most families, it was considered good if parents could support their children until they graduated from junior high school. In the 1980s and 1990s, rural families had no source of income other than the grain they grew on their land.

Although the production team was disbanded and the land was distributed to the farmers, every household still relied on their small plot of land for food, clothing, and other necessities. With social obligations, weddings, funerals, and children's education, no household had any money left over.

Back then, the annual income consisted of the produce from the land, enough to feed the whole family and livestock. There were also taxes to pay to the government and levies. If the harvest was poor, the family would not only have no money left but would also be in debt.

Back then, rural people couldn't afford chemical fertilizers and didn't know how to fertilize scientifically. Every family relied on the manure from their chickens, ducks, and pigsties to cultivate their land, resulting in very low crop yields.

In impoverished and backward rural areas, irrigation systems were inadequate. I remember that back then, the yield per mu of irrigated land was only five or six hundred jin of corn and wheat. In areas where irrigation was not available, the yield was only about 200 jin. Sometimes, during droughts, we couldn't even recoup the cost of the seeds.

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