"Foolish, utterly clueless! You can barely take care of yourselves, how can you support outsiders? You're just adding to the burden. Zhao Xiaolian must be out of her mind to tolerate your nonsense." Lin Shanfu was exasperated and wanted to wash his hands of it, but his conscience wouldn't allow it.
“You should hand this child over to the police. I have a job to recommend to your mother. One of my high school classmates is a station manager at a gas station in the county. There’s only one opening, and your aunt wants to go.”
Lin Shanfu graduated from high school but failed the college entrance examination. However, he was popular and had many connections, which made his family's life more and more prosperous in his previous life.
“If it weren’t so far away, I wouldn’t have given up this spot,” Zhao Yinxiu said in a muffled voice.
Actually, there was another reason: she was a bit older, over thirty, while Zhao Xiaolian would only be thirty in two years. If it weren't for the fact that they were old classmates, Lin Shanfu's classmate wouldn't have taken Zhao Xiaolian in.
"Uncle, thank you for always worrying about our family, but it's no need. We have our own ways. My mother doesn't plan to look for a job." Lin Xiazhu realized that she couldn't hide the fact that she was selling ginseng anymore.
Lin Shanfu used to not care about their family affairs. If her father hadn't passed away, he wouldn't have bothered with the mother and her daughters. He was a fairly upright person and not a greedy one.
Therefore, Lin Xiazhu was not worried that he would be jealous. Even if Zhao Yinxiu and Old Lady Lin were jealous, he could keep them in check.
“Uncle, last time I went into the mountains to hunt wild boar, I also dug up a wild ginseng and sold it.”
Lin Xiazhu's words were like a thunderclap, leaving Lin Shanfu and the others dizzy. It had long been said that there was ginseng in the deep mountains of Linjia Village, but no one had ever seen it, let alone dug it up. How did Xiaozhu find it?
"Really? You really dug up ginseng? Let me see it." Lin Shanfu could barely speak, wanting to see it for himself before he dared to believe it.
"Sold, all the money is in hand." Lin Xiazhu only said that she dug up one plant, not that she dug up three, or that there were three more on the mountain. She also gave Lin Chacha a look, asking her to keep it a secret as well.
Lin Chacha stared at her with wide eyes, silently thinking, "I can't say anything, or others will be envious. Those three ginseng plants on the mountain still belong to their family. Their family makes a good living by selling ginseng."
"Sold! How much did it sell for?" Old Mrs. Lin asked in a shrill voice.
"Not much, maybe a few tens of thousands of yuan," Lin Xiazhu said casually.
"Tens of thousands of yuan isn't much?" Zhao Yinxiu's heart skipped a beat. Her family only had 20,000 yuan in savings, so, "How many tens of thousands of yuan exactly?"
"Fifty thousand." Lin Xiazhu spread her five fingers to indicate the price, still looking calm. Only she knew the real price; revealing it would scare them to death.
"So many, that makes sense. That's ginseng, it must be a hundred years old." Zhao Yinxiu was heartbroken with jealousy, but she didn't dare to show it too obviously.
After they had processed the news, Lin Xiazhu said with a smile, "So from now on we'll live in town and won't go back to Linjia Village."
"...That won't do. You're a widow and her children with a lot of money, and you have no one to help you. You're easily bullied. Besides, no matter how much money you have, you still have to be careful with it. The cost of living in town is so high. Everything costs money. It's better to go back to Linjia Village."
Grandma Lin earnestly advised, "With the money, you can go back to the village and build a new house. Or your uncle's house can be sold to you. Your uncle will buy land in the town next year to build a house. You should go back to Linjia Village."
"We don't want to go back to Linjia Village, we'll stay in town." Lin Xiaoxue hated Old Lady Lin's unauthorized decision. Her uncle's family could move to town, so why couldn't their family?
My sister said that if they sell the ginseng, their family will have money, and they will go to school in town.
"Don't you dare interrupt, you little brat! What do you know?" Old Mrs. Lin scolded sharply.
But the final decision rested with Lin Xiazhu. She smiled calmly, “Grandma, Uncle, we won’t move back to Linjia Village. We’ll only go back occasionally. We’ll be starting primary school in town in the second half of the year and will be living there permanently. You don’t need to try to persuade us anymore.”
“You’re just a kid, you don’t understand anything. I’ll go talk to Zhao Xiaolian.” Old Mrs. Lin said, and was about to knock on Zhao Xiaolian’s door.
Yan Xin, who had been eavesdropping while lying on the door, loudly declared her determination before Old Lady Lin knocked on the door, "I will not go back to Linjia Village, not even if it kills me. I want to live in the town."
Old Mrs. Lin's face stiffened. She had forgotten that this guy was the one who wanted to leave Lin Family Village the most, and that she was not quite right in the head and could not communicate normally at all.
Hearing that the second wife received twice as much money as the first wife, they lost interest in persuading the second wife not to raise the child. They were in a bad mood, wondering how they could have been outdone by the second wife, whom they had always looked down upon.
At noon, the three of them, including Grandma Lin, stayed for lunch. Lin Xiazhu prepared four dishes: stir-fried vegetables with meat, stir-fried beef with bean sprouts, stir-fried pickled mustard greens with eggs, and a vegetable and egg soup. It was considered a very lavish meal for that era.
"Even if you have some money, you can't eat and drink like this today. Be more frugal. Your mother doesn't work, and you all have to go to school. You also have a child to support. If you just sit around and eat away at your savings, the mountain will eventually be empty." Old Mrs. Lin said with great distress, quickly picking up food as she scolded.
In her excitement, rice grains flew out of her mouth. Lin Xiazhu calmly covered her bowl with her hand, while Yan Xin stared in horror at the two grains of rice on the plate of beef and bean sprouts in front of her.
I immediately lost my appetite. Let's kill her!
When she had almost finished eating the meat and was feeling a bit full, Grandma Lin slowed down her eating and picked up some pickled vegetables with her chopsticks.
"What's so good about this kind of vegetable? It costs money. I see the yard outside is quite big. I'll have your mother grow some vegetables in the future, and I'll teach her how to make dried vegetables and pickled vegetables later." Old Mrs. Lin was always speaking to Lin Xiazhu.
She probably didn't even realize that, subconsciously, she had already regarded Lin Xiazhu as the head of the second wife's family.
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