Chapter 3
Yunmian was awakened by the aroma of rice porridge. The house was very small and her mother was cooking in the small room next door. She could easily hear the steam rising from the porridge and the bubbling in the pot.
Rubbing his eyes drowsily, Yunmian climbed up to the edge of the bed and stood firmly on the ground, then casually stepped on his shoes and ran to the small house next door.
Yun Jin was sitting on a short wooden stake and making a fire. The jumping orange flames made her facial features look warm and bright in the darkness.
Even in those tired eyes, there seemed to be many more bright and jumping lights.
Looking at her mother like this, Yun Mian was stunned for several seconds before she stepped over the threshold and walked in.
As soon as he entered the house, he ran straight to his mother, then lay on her knees, tilted his head and looked at the flames burning in the stove, and asked obediently: "Mom, is the meal not ready yet?"
Yun Jin rubbed her daughter's messy hair. She felt that the little girl was a little more clingy today, but she undoubtedly enjoyed this closeness, so her tone was more smiling than usual: "It's ready a long time ago. I saw you were still sleeping, so I added some firewood and cooked the rice a little more mushy, so it will taste better."
Having said that, he stood up and asked Yunmian to sit down on the small wooden stake, while he went to get the bowl and chopsticks to scoop up the rice.
When her mother was doing something, Yunmian would tilt her head back, open her eyes wide and watch obediently, her eyes never leaving her mother.
In fact, the mother in this world has a different personality from the mother Yunmian is familiar with, but no matter what her mother looks like or what her personality becomes, she can recognize it at the first time.
This is her most beloved mother, so even if one day her mother is not called Yunjin, and does not gently call her Mianmian, Yunmian will still be able to recognize her from a lot of people at once.
"What are you daydreaming about? Get up and eat." Yun Jin glanced at the silly girl who was in a daze.
Yun Mian came back to her senses, responded, and ran over to take her own small bowl of rice porridge.
The place where the mother and daughter ate was a shabby little low table set up in the yard, with three bowls on the table.
There was porridge in two bowls, and one small bowl contained some pickled vegetables that had just been taken out of the jar and cut into small pieces by Yunjin with a knife. The mother and daughter could eat this small bowl with rice for several meals.
After sitting on the stool, Yunmian held the spoon and carefully compared the rice in her bowl and her mother's bowl, and then concluded that "the rice in her bowl is thicker than that in her mother's bowl."
She bit the spoon, tilted her head and asked in confusion: "Mom, is there any porridge in the pot?"
"Eat quickly. I'll scoop more for you from the pot when you're done." Yun Jin picked up the bowl and took a big sip of the rice porridge.
Yunmian understood that there was still some in the pot, but it was what my mother left for me.
After the little girl figured it out, she put the bowl on the table with a wrinkled face and pushed it towards Yun Jin: "Mom, you eat this bowl!"
Yun Jin: "...Just eat well, why are you doing this?"
Yunmian put her hands on her hips unconvinced and said, "Mianmian is not making trouble, it's mom who doesn't eat well! You can't even eat enough!!"
Maybe the Yun Mianmian in the past wouldn’t have paid attention, but now Yun Mianmian knows that her mother is not full.
My family was poor, so we had to cook the porridge for a longer time and make the rice mushy so that it would look substantial and thick.
The family was poor, so the rice was all in Yunmian's bowl, and mom's bowl was mostly filled with rice soup, which was not enough to fill her up.
Yun Mianmian used to be a picky eater. She knew what it felt like to be hungry with only rice soup, so she didn’t want her mother to go hungry.
"Mianmian is still a child, she can eat very little." She held the small bowl and said to her mother: "Mom is an adult now, she has to wash clothes for Mianmian, cook for her, and work to earn money, so Mom has to eat more so that her stomach won't make gurgling sounds."
Finally, I concluded: "Mom needs to eat well so that she can have the strength to take care of Mianmian. Otherwise, I will be very distressed!"
The little girl tilted her fair and clean face up, and Yun Jin's stunned look was reflected in her black and white pupils. She looked very serious as she lectured with a stern face.
Perhaps Yunmian's attitude was too tough, so tough that if Yunjin didn't eat more, she would open her mouth and be ready to cry. So in the end, Yunjin accepted her daughter's teachings with mixed and strange feelings.
Yunmian took the small bowl and shared most of the thick rice porridge in her bowl with her mother. Then she sat back with squinting eyes and contentedly licked the porridge on the edge of the bowl, scooped some chopped pickles with a small spoon, and ate it with the porridge in big mouthfuls.
Although it was bland and not tasty at all, and there was no fragrant preserved egg, lean meat, or tea egg, steamed dumplings, but as long as her mother was with her, Yunmian would find everything delicious.
After finishing the meal, Yunjin took out the clothes from the backpack and mended them while it was still daylight. Yunmian was not very familiar with Zhaojiagou, so for a while she could only squat in the corner and watch the ants moving, bored.
The system flew over and urged Yunmian to complete the mission, tripping up the protagonist and causing more distress, and then pushing the plot line of this world back on track sooner.
[We villains act as hosts bound to the system. We don't need to do anything. We just need to be good villains and cause enough troubles to the protagonists' growth to temper their character. Then we can find a way to retire at the end.]
The task of the Quick Transmigration Bureau is the simplest, but the host mortality rate in their branch is the highest. The Bureau has investigated countless times but has not come to any relevant conclusion, and the system itself is even more confused.
But someone has to do the mission, and this time the General Administration simply ordered these systems to bind to children, saying that if adults don't work, then try using children. In order to reduce the mortality rate, each young host is specially equipped with an emergency rescue function, so that even if the mission is not completed, they can choose to leave the mission world before the age of eighteen.
However, in this way, these children who died in the original world still cannot escape the fate of death, and can only return to the original world and enter reincarnation.
This result is also a kind of death in the eyes of the system.
Therefore, it hopes that Yunmian can grasp the time and complete the mission as early as possible. Otherwise, once she becomes an adult, she will not even be able to catch up with the reincarnation in the original world after failure.
At its urging, Yunmian raised the stick she was using to poke ants and said, "But my mother can't afford to eat."
The system was silent for a moment, and then answered her: "Sorry, we will not provide any help or cheat codes to the host."
What is Goldfinger?
Yunmian had never heard of this word, nor did she particularly care about it. She threw away the small wooden stick in her hand, looked up at the sky which was not yet completely dark, stood up and walked out leisurely.
"Mianmian, don't run around when you go out, and don't roll in the mud again, okay?" Yun Jin's voice came from behind.
Yunmian jumped a little, replied happily "I know" and ran out.
"Mianmian, what are you going to do?" The system flew beside her curiously.
"Looking for food!" Yun Mian took the time to answer, then lowered her head and ran in one direction. The system didn't know why a five-year-old girl could run like the wind.
It remained puzzled and followed Yunmian, ready to see what she was going to do.
Coincidentally, the protagonist Zhao Xiaoli, who came out to relax and think of a solution, also thought so.
From a distance, she found Yunmian running towards another mountain. Yunmian was wearing not very thick clothes, and the tattered corners of her clothes were lifted by the wind when she was running, making her look cold.
Zhao Xiaoli was stunned for only two seconds, then she started running with her short legs, leaving Yunmian far behind, wanting to see what tricks the village bully was going to play next.
"Mianmian, you cannot take away the protagonist's golden finger and important items." The system reminded her when Yunmian arrived at the foot of the mountain.
It thought Yunmian was coming here to find the precious Chinese medicinal material belonging to the heroine Zhao Xiaoli.
As a result, Yunmian didn't understand what it was saying at all. She just kept walking up the mountain, and got further and further off the track.
It was the 1970s, and these mountains were much more dangerous than the deep mountains and old forests of the 21st century. The system was getting anxious, and Zhao Xiaoli, who had finally caught up from behind, was panting and shouting at Yunmian to stop.
“Are you crazy?!” Four-year-old Zhao Xiaoli opened her eyes wide and glared at Yunmian fiercely: “Did you know that there are tigers and wild boars in the mountains?!”
She had never seen anyone more reckless and desperate than Yunmian!
The system gave a confusing reminder: "Task progress, 3 percent?"
Yun Mian was grabbed by Zhao Xiaoli's clothes and didn't understand why she looked so angry.
"I'm not going in." Yun Mian broke free from her and pointed to a place not far away: "I'm not going there to feed the tiger."
Zhao Xiaoli looked in the direction of Yun Mian's finger, but saw nothing.
The corners of her mouth twitched, and she looked at Yun Mian, who was a head taller than her, with a little envy. She stood on tiptoe and looked harder, and finally saw the low fruit tree hidden in the dense thorn forest not far away.
It is a wild persimmon tree. Its leaves are almost all gone. The bright yellow persimmons hang sparsely on the branches. They may not taste good, but they are definitely edible.
"Is that all you want?!" Zhao Xiaoli let go of her hand in annoyance.
Yun Mian nodded vigorously, and her eyes looking at the persimmons were so bright that they seemed to be glowing.
Zhao Xiaoli: “…”
What a useless village bully! She even suspected that if she just took out a candy, Yun Mian would unconditionally agree to everything she asked for.
Yun Mian didn't notice what Zhao Xiaoli was thinking. It gets dark early in late autumn, and she had already wasted a lot of time running up the mountain. She had to pick persimmons quickly.
So Yun Mian left Zhao Xiaoli, who had a complicated expression on her face, and picked up a dry little stick. She started whipping it left and right in the bushes to scare away snakes and insects that might be hiding, while carefully avoiding prickly thorns and branches, and walked slowly towards that side, taking one deep step and one shallow step.
Zhao Xiaoli originally wanted to leave, but when she saw Yun Mian's thin and young figure almost sinking into the dry grass, and thought about the final outcome of Yun Mian and her daughter in the previous life, she sighed softly and helplessly, picked up a stick and followed with difficulty.
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