Chapter 20 A Greedy Man My wife is too virtuous...

Qin Xiangxiang opened her eyes. It was bright outside the window. She rolled over and rubbed herself, opened her eyes again, yawned, and realized it was already past eight o'clock. Her parents hadn't woken her up; today was her day off.

After working three consecutive early shifts, I'll have one day off, and tomorrow I'll start the night shift... It's so painful.

Feeling languid, Qin Xiangxiang felt her legs go weak when she sat up. She looked incredulously at the corner of the bed, where an old quilt was neatly folded into a perfect square.

What happened last night felt like a dream. In the end, she was so tired that she fell asleep, and the man even wiped her body with hot water...

My lower back hurts a bit.

As Qin Xiangxiang yawned, tears welled up in her eyes. It felt as if a pair of large hands were still pinching her waist, and a sore and weak feeling kept drilling into her abdomen, as if that thing was going to push her belly up.

How did things develop like this yesterday?

Anyway, I don't want to think about it anymore—eating is the most important thing.

For Qin Xiangxiang, nothing is more important than eating every day. In the phrase "love to eat and be lazy to work," "love to eat" comes first. First comes love to eat, then comes laziness.

The cream cake we bought yesterday wasn't finished. Qin Xiangxiang ate a quarter of it before getting tired of it, the child ate a piece, and Qin Wutong and his wife ate a small half piece. In the end, about a third to a quarter of the cake was left.

Qin Xiangxiang frowned. She didn't want to eat anything sweet in the morning; she found it too cloying. She wanted to eat noodles instead.

After changing her clothes, she pushed open the door, intending to brush her teeth and wash her face at the kitchen tap first, but unexpectedly found that the door to her son Li Qingfeng's room was open, and she could hear the voices of a man and a child coming from inside.

Qin Xiangxiang carried the washbasin over.

In her dream, her frigid husband was completely absorbed in his work and didn't care about the children at home at all. When Qin Xiangxiang went to the island with the army, her husband called his widowed sister to come and take care of her, and her sister-in-law helped take care of the children... The children were also incredibly naughty.

Qin Xiangxiang could hardly remember the memories from her dream at this moment. Just imagining the three Li Qingfengs made her shudder.

This time, her husband came home early to visit his family. Is he willing to take care of the children now?

What is three plus five?

The chubby boy looked down at his plump fingers, quietly counting one, two, three, four, five, then his eyes lit up, "It equals seven!"

Li Jianzhi was speechless: "..."

Could his son be mentally challenged? No, no, no, that's unlikely. Even if he were, he'd still need to start early and work harder.

Li Jianzhi recalled the short videos he had seen while browsing Xiaodigua (a Chinese online learning platform), showing parents tutoring their children and being more frustrated than anyone else, even those from Tsinghua and Peking Universities.

He was thirty-six years old before he transmigrated. Most of his peers were married with children, some of whom were teenagers. Although Li Jianzhi was unmarried, he was fortunate that the internet was so developed that he had browsed many parenting and child-rearing videos.

The most important things in raising children are calmness, patience, and not getting angry... Captain Li happens to possess all these excellent qualities.

"You answered incorrectly. Three plus five equals eight."

“Wrong answer, I’ll take a bite of this.” Li Jianzhi picked up the fried dough sticks his father-in-law had bought, which were a type of fried dough filled with shredded radish and mustard greens, and topped with an orange-red shrimp.

Qin Wutong felt sorry for her little grandson and specially bought it to cheer him up.

Li Jianzhi believed that these fried snacks were junk food and not suitable for children to eat in large quantities, so he asked the chubby boy to answer arithmetic questions, and if he answered correctly, he would let him have a bite.

Since he answered incorrectly, then this old father can eat it.

Former Captain Li was very health-conscious and didn't eat fried food often throughout the year. He would occasionally have a little bit, after all, he was a soldier. He didn't eat fried food, but young soldiers in their twenties would often have it, and there would also be spicy crayfish and the like... If they happened to be there, they would eat it. He usually paid great attention to health and wellness.

If you were living in the 1970s, food was precious, and you couldn't just buy junk food and throw it away, so you had to eat it.

The question is, "If I don't go to hell, who will?" No matter how unhealthy fried food is, for the sake of his child's health, this father has to eat some for him.

In front of the chubby boy, Li Jianzhi picked up a fried dough stick and took a big bite, making the little guy's eyes widen in amazement.

So big!

This mouth is much bigger than his mother Qin Xiangxiang's!

In the end, only a dough ball the size of a finger joint remained, and Li Jianzhi ate all the shrimp on it.

"...I want to eat." The chubby boy cried twice. He wanted to cry because his grandfather always saved the best food for him.

"Let's continue. First, let's review. Three plus five equals eight. Now, Dad will give you another question, an easy one: What is five plus six? I'll give you time to count on your fingers."

"Here are some matches; you can count them too."

The chubby boy shouted loudly, "I want to eat! I'm starving! I want to eat! Waaaaaah!"

Li Jianzhi lowered his head and ate the rest of the fried dough sticks. He said calmly, "If you don't answer the question, I'll eat all of these."

Qin Wutong bought a lot of breakfast items, such as flatbread, soy milk, fried dough sticks, and fried dough fritters, but even all of these combined couldn't fill the stomach of Li Jianzhi, a robust 29-year-old man.

After finishing the fried dough balls, he gulped down a large cup of sweet soy milk, then frowned, thinking, "What a sweet, greasy, and unhealthy breakfast!"

The chubby boy was almost dumbfounded by his own gaze.

His dad actually ate it!

Li Jianzhi picked up a sweet pancake and said, "Hurry up and count, or I'll eat it. I'll give you two chances this time. If you get it wrong, you get one more chance."

The chubby boy, looking aggrieved, started counting matches on the bench.

Qin Xiangxiang was amazed after watching the whole thing. This husband was disciplining the child while also seeking personal gain. His mouth was even worse than hers; he ate everything and left nothing for the child.

Tsk tsk, greedy man.

"If he can't figure it out, you're not really planning to starve him, are you?" Qin Xiangxiang didn't consider herself a good mother, but she never thought about starving her child.

Li Jianzhi turned to look at her and immediately smiled. He said gently, "Xiangxiang, you're up already? So early. Why don't you sleep a little longer? It's only eight o'clock. You're up way too early."

Qin Xiangxiang looked confused: "...Is this considered early? The sun is already high in the sky at eight o'clock."

"It's fine to sleep until ten or eleven o'clock, then we can have lunch right away." Although Li Jianzhi himself gets up early, he knows that many young people like to sleep until noon when they are on vacation, which is normal.

Qin Xiangxiang: "..." She didn't get up until noon? Unless she was catching up on sleep after working all night, she wasn't that weird.

"I'm going to cook noodles. Do you and the kids want some?"

Li Jianzhi nodded: "Cook me a bowl, I want to taste your cooking. The child doesn't need to eat; he can have a bowl with me. If he can't answer the questions, he doesn't have to eat."

Qin Xiangxiang said, "It's not good for him to go hungry either."

The chubby boy looked at his beautiful mother at the door with teary eyes, thinking that this really was his biological mother.

"I won't let him go hungry. If he can't answer this question, I'll steam a boiled egg for him. Boiled eggs are good for children in the morning."

Qin Xiangxiang: "..."

Little Fatty: "..."

Boiled eggs alone are not nutritious enough. Unfortunately, March and April in the 1970s were the lean season when food was scarce, and pumpkins and potatoes were rare. Otherwise, feeding children boiled eggs with steamed pumpkin and steamed corn, along with milk, would have been a very nutritious meal.

We also need to find ways to supplement his diet with more protein and calcium, since resources are scarce now... We'll choose seaweed. Seaweed is a snack made from laver, which is rich in protein, dietary fiber, various vitamins, and antioxidants. It is also rich in iodine, making it a great snack for children.

Seaweed can also be made into seaweed flakes by adding white sesame seeds. It can be mixed with rice in the morning, or eaten with boiled eggs and milk. It is also a healthy food suitable for children's meals.

However, there was no seaweed in those days.

But this didn't stump Li Jianzhi. The raw material for seaweed is laver, and he had seen methods for making seaweed online. Don't ask him why he had seen so many random things; it's because floating on the sea for a long time is boring.

The most important thing about being in the navy is learning how to pass the time on a warship.

Li Jianzhi is very interested in cooking, but even the most skilled cook can't make a meal without ingredients. Having served as a soldier for more than ten years, he doesn't have the opportunity to cook on a daily basis, so he can only watch people cook online.

When X Ziqi became a sensation, he watched many homemade food videos. These kinds of videos are very stress-relieving for today's fast-paced working professionals, such as homemade bread ovens, homemade seashell windows, or videos of feeding pigs, raising chickens and ducks, harvesting bamboo shoots and going to the beach.

For example, Li Jianzhi's former superior officer liked to fish. Of course, fishing on a warship is not allowed in principle, nor is it allowed under certain conditions. Given the speed of a warship, it is impossible to catch fish. However, in the past, naval training subjects included shark fishing... to prevent running out of food at sea.

It's normal for soldiers to fish or catch shrimp occasionally, but for a naval officer to fish in public is likely to be ridiculed. If it were an air force officer, he would be mocked as a "naval aviator" or someone who is said to be an air force soldier on a ship.

However, in reality, during long-range live-fire exercises, once a shot is fired, there's no shortage of fish to catch; just keep catching them as a side dish.

Most people who retire from the navy are unwilling to touch seafood and fish again, but Li Jianzhi has adapted well. After all, eating fish is healthy, the only thing to do is to prevent gout.

If Li Jianzhi had to choose, eating some fresh green vegetables and fruits would be best, and steamed pumpkin and potatoes would also be very good.

"I'll go cook some noodles." Qin Xiangxiang automatically filtered out what she didn't want to hear. Since the man didn't intend to let the child go hungry, she would let him be. Boiled eggs were a good breakfast option for children from ordinary families.

An egg costs four cents, which is the price of a sweet pancake.

"Do your math properly, and tell me when you're done." Li Jianzhi packed up the fried dough sticks, pancakes, and soy milk to take with him, and stood by the kitchen watching the woman cook noodles.

The aroma of steaming noodles wafted out, and the two bowls of noodles were sprinkled with chopped green onions, and contained pickled vegetables, smoked fish, and even poached eggs, making them incredibly tempting.

Li Jian knew that there were two pieces of smoked fish and two poached eggs in that bowl of noodles, which Qin Xiangxiang had prepared for him and his son.

Captain Li thought to himself: My wife is so virtuous.

Qin Xiangxiang held her noodles and stared at her husband's expression, but her deadbeat husband remained expressionless. She wondered if he was inwardly criticizing her for being pretentious and wasteful.

If he dared to say another word, he would fork the smoked fish and fried egg into his own bowl.

Qin Xiangxiang is very particular about her food. When she cooks noodles at home, she doesn't have bone broth, so she uses her own homemade five-spice powder to season the broth, adds a little pickled cabbage to whet her appetite, and poached eggs are a must. As for smoked fish, her husband brought back a lot of seafood, so of course she's going to eat it to her heart's content!

How could she possibly save him money? She wanted to eat well and dress well.