When I woke up, it was almost noon.
Zhen Wanwan stretched and lazily stepped out of the house. She immediately saw Old Lady Li and Wang Cuihua in the yard, each holding a baby and sunbathing.
In the corridor next door, Hu Zi was playing happily with his younger siblings, their laughter filling the small courtyard.
"My little sister must be exhausted; she'll be sleeping until lunchtime!"
Wang Cuihua was teasing Tianbao when she looked up and saw Zhen Wanwan looking lazy, so she smiled and teased her a few times.
Grandma Li couldn't help but mutter a few words: "You're always so sleepy, it's making our little darling so hungry he keeps whimpering!"
"Isn't that right, my sweet baby? Look at your mother, she's so irresponsible."
The little boy said that sucking his fingers was fun, but he knew nothing about his grandma saying that his mom was lazy.
Zhen Wanwan walked into the yard with a smile, rubbing her rumbling stomach: "Mom, is there any food left? My stomach is growling."
To everyone's surprise, Old Lady Li snorted coldly, "Serves you right! I called you every morning but you wouldn't wake up. Anyway, it's almost lunchtime, so just bear with it a little longer!"
Zhen Wanwan smiled bitterly, preparing to go inside to eat alone, but to her surprise, Old Lady Li directly stuffed the child into her arms.
"I'm here with the kids."
Alright, let her be hungry for a little longer.
Grandma Li hurriedly left the courtyard, not knowing how her mother had become so familiar with other people's houses so quickly.
Judging by how familiar she is with the place, you'd think she'd been here for years.
Wang Cuihua explained to Zhen Wanwan in a soft voice, "Mother has a sharp tongue but a soft heart. She killed a chicken early this morning and is probably going to make chicken soup for you now."
Zhen Wanwan asked in surprise, "Sister-in-law, did we bring our luggage back?"
"That's nothing, otherwise how could we sit still..."
Wang Cuihua looked around and deliberately lowered her voice, saying, "You don't know that this morning, the official summoned our father, eldest son, and younger brother to the front hall."
They said someone brought our luggage over, and the person who stole our things even gave us a few silver ingots as an apology.
"Oh? Why would you pay us out of your own pocket?"
Wang Cuihua shook her head in confusion, "I'm not too sure about that. You can ask Dad yourself later."
Zhen Wanwan gave a faint "hmm" and didn't dwell on the issue, since the sky wasn't going to fall down anytime soon.
At lunchtime, the Zhen family all returned to the courtyard, and Old Lady Li also carried a pot of chicken soup into the house.
"Wow, (╯▽╰) It smells so good~~ Ah~"
Dog Egg lay sprawled on the dining table, craning his neck to sniff the aroma: "Let me smell...it smells so good!"
When Zhenfu saw her son's useless behavior, she was so angry that she spanked Gou Dan twice on the buttocks.
"Look at you, so pathetic. Get down here right now, you look like a starving ghost reincarnated."
Despite this, Gou Dan showed no sign of being disliked by his father, his eyes never straying from the chicken soup.
The remaining children were also very hungry, but they didn't dare to make any small movements under their grandmother's watchful eye. Each of them sat quietly in their chairs, waiting for Grandma Li to distribute the food.
Grandma Li first served rice to everyone, then scooped half a spoonful of chicken soup from the jar and poured it over the rice.
Before long, everyone at the table, except for Zhen Wanwan, received their share.
Zhen Wanwan stared in shock at the two lonely pieces of chicken floating in Grandpa Zhen's bowl, and those two pieces were the parts with the most bones.
The others didn't even get a single shredded chicken.
She stared blankly at the bowl that Old Lady Li had just handed her.
So all the chicken ended up in her bowl?
Seeing the chicken piled high in the bowl, Zhen Wanwan asked Grandma Li uncertainly, "Mom, are you sure you're not mistaken? Why is all the chicken in my bowl?"
Grandma Li glanced indifferently at everyone at the table, tapped her bowl with her chopsticks, and said, "Don't say I'm biased. This chicken was originally a thank-you gift for your little sister. None of you can covet it!"
"Mother, we would never dare to covet our little sister's things," the two Zhen brothers replied in unison.
"Hmph! That's for the best! Eldest sister, what do you think?"
Old Mrs. Li then turned her attention to Wang Cuihua, who had her head down, startling her so much that she dropped one of her chopsticks without bothering to bend down and pick it up.
She then swore an oath, saying, "Mother, even if I had the guts of a bear and the gall of a leopard, I would never dare to covet my little sister's things!"
Only Grandpa Zhen silently put the chicken pieces from his bowl into Grandma Li's bowl: "Eat up, everyone!"
When the adults present heard Grandpa Zhen speak, they quickly picked up their bowls and chopsticks and started eating. Fortunately, there was chicken soup rice, which tasted quite good.
Despite several warning glances from Grandma Li, Zhen Wanwan didn't dare share the chicken with anyone else. She tried to ignore the stares of Gou Dan and the other children and silently ate the original flavor of the chicken.
Perhaps because the chicken was wild, many of the chicken pieces were bones, but Zhen Wanwan didn't mind getting them stuck in her teeth and nibbled away at the tough bits of meat between the bones.
After finishing their meal, Gou Dan and the others licked their bowls clean. Only when they couldn't taste anything did they put down their chopsticks and then stare longingly at Zhen Wanwan's... bowl.
"Come here." Zhen Wanwan couldn't stand their stares, so she tried to share the remaining pieces of chicken with them.
As soon as she finished speaking, Old Lady Li's voice rang out again: "Ahem... Tiger, take your younger siblings out to play!"
"Okay, milk!"
Although Tiger was also tempted, he knew that this was for his aunt to nourish her body.
My aunt just gave birth to two younger siblings, but she didn't have enough breast milk to feed them, so she had to eat flour every day.
Therefore, Zhen Xiaohu absolutely refused to let her younger siblings take the food from the youngest sibling.
Under Grandma Li's supervision, Zhen Wanwan "shamefully" finished the whole bowl of chicken.
Why does it feel so awkward to eat alone in front of others?
Zhen Wanwan was considering whether she should find an opportunity to take out the frozen chicken, duck, and pork from her space to give everyone an extra meal.
Seeing that it was getting late, Zhen Wanwan found Old Lady Li and told her that she wanted to go out to buy a horse-drawn carriage.
“Mother, Leling Prefecture is much richer than our small county town. I’ll go out and take a look later. If it’s suitable, I’ll buy it! We won’t have to walk anymore, and we won’t have to suffer from the cold in winter.”
"Can you bear to watch our precious baby and sweetheart travel in the snow? It must be so cold! What if they catch a cold?"
Seeing the disapproving look on Old Lady Li's face, she quickly took drastic measures before Old Lady Li could refuse. These two children were her mother's precious treasures, and she didn't want them to suffer even the slightest hardship.
Zhen Wanwan was certain that as long as she said that, Old Lady Li would definitely agree without hesitation.
Sure enough, just as Grandma Li was about to refuse, she heard that the two children might suffer again.
Finally, she relented: "But our family doesn't have that much money to buy a carriage..."
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