"Alas, Honghua has had a hard life. Her parents died when she was young, and she was raised by Old Mrs. Lin alone. Old Mrs. Lin is getting old, and her health is failing," Village Chief Lu said with a heavy heart.
"I was thinking of entrusting Honghua to her aunt, but I didn't expect her aunt to sell her to Yingchunlou, which led to what just happened."
“Father-in-law, don’t let Honghua be taken away by that woman. If Honghua goes to a place like Yingchun Pavilion, her life will be ruined.”
The woman speaking was Lu Dayong's wife, Su Yun. She appeared to be a gentle and mild-mannered woman, but in reality, she had been protecting Honghua with the fierceness of a little chili pepper.
“Village chief, yes, you absolutely must not go to that kind of place,” other villagers chimed in.
“Anyway, we’re all from the same village. If everyone gets a little food, she won’t starve,” another villager said.
Jiang Hua didn't join their conversation. She turned around and went inside to check on Hong Hua's condition. She had applied a fever-reducing patch and had just received acupuncture. It seemed that her condition wasn't as serious as before.
Half an hour later, Lu Dayong brought the medicine he had prepared and fed it to her.
It was getting late, so Jiang Hua led Jiang Jingyi back towards Xujia Village.
"Do you still remember the way?" Jiang Hua asked.
“I remember.” Jiang Jingyi nodded: “Just keep walking along this path, cross a bridge, and it’s another fifteen minutes away.”
When we crossed the bridge, the river was crystal clear, and there were river crabs and many snails crawling on the bottom of the river.
Jiang Hua's eyes lit up; she now had a solution for the snails she needed for her snail rice noodles.
"Stepmother, what are you doing?" Jiang Jingyi quickly caught up with Jiang Hua and stopped her as she was about to take off her shoes.
“Stepmother, you can’t take off your shoes in public. If other people see it, they’ll talk.”
Jiang Hua paused in taking off her shoes, glanced at Jiang Jingyi, and wondered why she hadn't noticed how old-fashioned this man was before.
"It's fine, people can say whatever they want," Jiang Hua said nonchalantly.
Jiang Jing was also taken aback. When he looked again, Jiang Hua had already gone into the river.
Perhaps because no one eats the river snails, Jiang Hua could easily gather a handful, each one plump and juicy. However, it seemed they hadn't brought any tools to collect them.
"Go pick two big leaves for me," Jiang Hua called out to Jiang Jingyi.
Without much effort, I've already collected a huge handful.
"Let's go." After getting ashore, Jiang Hua wrung out her feet, put on her shoes, and said, "We'll come again tomorrow."
"Stepmother, can you eat this? It's all shell, and it's so hard." Jiang Jingyi asked curiously.
“Of course you can eat it, why not?” Jiang Hua replied.
“There are also some in the river in our village, but we don’t catch them to eat. There are also biting insects in the river,” Jiang Jingyi added.
"Biting insects?"
That's a river crab, right? Those things taste good when cooked.
When the two returned home, the sun had already set, and Jiang Jingyi took the initiative to go into the kitchen and start cooking rice.
Jiang Hua found a small wooden basin, poured the snails she had collected into it, washed them several times, and then added a spoonful of salt to let them expel the mud.
I kept the dinner simple: stir-fried pork and loofah and egg drop soup.
After dinner, Jiang Jingyi went to the kitchen to wash the dishes again.
"I'll handle it," Jiang Hua said, stopping him.
"No need, stepmother, you must be tired today." Jiang Jingyi had already taken the bowl to the kitchen to wash it.
There was no need to make chicken feet for the stall tonight, so the two of them took a shower and went to bed early. Jiang Jingyi was leaning against the wall reading a book, and Jiang Hua randomly picked one out of his pile of books to read.
Jiang Hua felt a bit of a headache; she'd rather look at the medical books in her space.
"Stepmother, what's wrong?" Jiang Jingyi looked up and saw Jiang Hua looking at the book in her hands with a troubled expression.
"It's alright, you're just a little tired," Jiang Hua said, closing the book.
So early?
Jiang Jingyi glanced at the moonlight outside. At this time of day, he would usually be in the kitchen preparing food for the stall the next day.
"Okay, stepmother, I'll read for a while longer."
...
If you go to bed early, you'll wake up early, before dawn.
"Why are you up too?" Jiang Hua asked, looking at Jiang Jingyi who had gotten out of bed with her.
“Stepmother, I want to learn martial arts from you,” Jiang Jingyi replied.
"Didn't Jiang Xingzhou teach you?" Jiang Hua was taken aback, as she didn't know any martial arts or internal energy techniques from this era.
"Not yet," Jiang Jingyi replied.
“Then I’ll find you a mentor to teach you,” Jiang Hua asked.
Jiang Jingyi shook his head: "Stepmother, I want to learn from you."
"Okay, go wash up first, and when Jiang Xingzhou comes back, he can teach you."
"good."
At first, Jiang Hua only taught him some simple things, but he understood them very quickly.
"Have you studied this before?" Jiang Hua glanced at him and asked, "It doesn't seem like you've never been exposed to it before."
“Father taught me before, but he stopped teaching me after that.” Jiang Jingyi didn’t dare to meet Jiang Hua’s gaze.
"Let's continue," Jiang Hua said calmly.
Seeing that it was almost time, she turned and walked into the kitchen. Jiang Jingyi saw this and quickly stepped forward to stop her.
"Stepmother, are you angry?" Jiang Jingyi asked cautiously.
“No, go back. Keep that position and squat for another 15 minutes,” Jiang Hua said, glancing at him.
"Huahua, are you home?"
Aunt Liu came over pushing a cart right after breakfast.
"Yes, Auntie!" Jianghu came out from the inner room, and what came into view was the food cart that he had drawn on his blueprints.
"Huahua, the stroller you asked us to make is finished. Come and take a look, is there anything else that needs to be changed?" Aunt Liu waved and said.
"Jiang Hua, what are you using this cart for?" Liu Tianming asked from the side.
"You can use this cart from now on for your small business, like setting up a food stall in town," Jiang Hua said after looking around at the cart.
The iron plate on top was also embedded in the wood, and Aunt Liu also put a stove on the bottom, probably because it was not in use at home.
"Huahua, what do you mean by that?" Aunt Liu asked, completely bewildered.
"This little cart can be used to sell snacks in town, just like how I sell salt-baked chicken feet," Jiang Hua explained.
"After Tianming was fired by Ye Guicheng, he couldn't find any work. Because of me, Ye Guicheng kept putting pressure on him behind the scenes."
“Jiang Hua, it’s not your fault. If you can’t find any work, I’ll just go back to my dad’s old trade,” Liu Tianming quickly said.
"Besides, this dish is simple to make. I'll demonstrate it for you in a bit," Jiang Hua said, before heading back into the kitchen.
I still had some potatoes left from the market, so I took out a few, peeled them, and washed them.
Then he took out the knife he had ordered earlier, cut the potatoes into chunks, and set them aside for later use.
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