Chapter 32: Lin Shu, the taciturn girl, snorted softly, as if she was telling...
After the family had eaten and drunk their fill, He Guixiang cleared the dishes. Lin Dashan lazily leaned on the bench for a while before leisurely carrying the hoe and going to the fields.
Zhou Ye was about to go back to work at the vegetable patch behind the house, but Lin Shu stopped him. "Brother Ye, my cousin Yu Shu will be here soon. I'm going to teach him the Three Character Classic. Do you want to stay and listen?"
Seeing his surprised expression, Lin Shu thought that she had indeed forgotten to tell him, so she told him in detail how she taught Lin Yushu for an hour every day.
After hearing this, Zhou Ye's expression became a little more solemn than usual, but his tone remained as calm and composed as ever. "That's great! If my cousin can achieve something remarkable, it'll be a boon for everyone. As for me, I'm not interested in this kind of flowery stuff, so I won't join in the fun."
After saying that, he picked up the shovel in the yard and left.
Lin Shu was a little confused. She turned to ask Lin Xiaopu, "Is he unhappy?"
Lin Xiaopu exclaimed, "Huh?" with a bewildered look on her face. "Brother Aye always has this expression on his face. How did I know he wasn't happy?"
Lin Shu: ...
Xiao Pu, haven't you always been smart and sharp? Has your sharpness run away from home?
Even she noticed that Zhou Ye's mood wasn't as good as before. It was impossible for this taciturn man to speak on his own initiative, but she didn't bother to guess.
Of course, her own mood is the most important. If others are unhappy because of what she said, it is definitely not her fault. After all, she is such a caring little white flower, it is impossible for her to say anything inappropriate.
This time, Lin Yushu came with his third aunt Zhang Qiaohua.
Zhang Qiaohua brought over some dried hemp from home and wore a smile whenever she met anyone. Her mood had improved noticeably over the past two days. When she saw Lin Shu, her smile was especially bright.
"Ah Shu, your mother and I have an appointment to weave hemp together today. You and Yu Shu can focus on yourselves and don't bother with us."
Lin Shu responded, "Aunt San, I don't need to. Mother is bored alone, it would be great if you could come and keep her company."
Zhang Qiaohua thought to herself: The eldest daughter is indeed a learned person, and any words she says can make people feel comfortable.
When Lin Yushu followed her into the main hall, Zhang Qiaohua couldn't help but prick up her ears and listen. She found that what the eldest daughter of Lin Laoer's family said was like a heavenly book, so she stopped listening, and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes became more obvious.
The two sisters-in-law sat like this, spinning hemp and chatting in low voices, and soon an hour passed.
Although the teaching lasted only one hour, Lin Shu covered a lot of content and talked about many historical allusions, which was equivalent to what an ordinary teacher would teach in two or three days.
Lin Yushu was still not satisfied after listening to it, but he also felt that these things were enough for him to digest for a whole day.
Zhang Qiaohua didn't know all this and wished Lin Shu could teach her for another hour, but she also knew that one shouldn't push things too far.
"Son, if there's anything you don't understand, come to your second uncle's house more often and ask your sister Shu. Don't be embarrassed."
Lin Yushu said embarrassedly, "Mother, I've written down everything I don't understand and will ask Sister Shu the next day."
Zhang Qiaohua glared at him: You are so stupid, why do you need to wait until the next day? If you had asked at another time, these things wouldn’t have taken up the next day!
It’s not easy to say this to her son’s face, so she will definitely have a good talk with him when she gets home.
Lin Shu was unaware of her aunt's thoughts. She sat in the main room for an hour until her butt was numb. She called Lin Xiaopu to go to the fields to catch loaches, so that they could have an additional dish for dinner.
After knowing that loaches would be less fishy after being processed by his sister, Lin Xiaopu became particularly enthusiastic in catching loaches. The two of them worked for half an hour and caught seven or eight loaches!
Unfortunately, loaches and eels like this love to burrow in the soil, so they cannot be kept in her fish pond. Otherwise, if the loaches and eels were also placed in the fish pond and raised with mountain spring water for a while, the meat of these loaches and eels would surely be raised to be fresh and tender, and most of the earthy smell would be removed.
"Sister, Brother A Ye is here!" Lin Xiaopu suddenly called out, pointing to the distance.
Lin Shu looked into the distance and saw Zhou Ye coming towards her.
Lin Shu and Lin Xiaopu both took off their straw sandals and rolled up their trouser legs and sleeves. Because they were catching loaches, their legs and arms were covered with mud. Lin Xiaopu was fine, but Lin Shu had fair skin, so the mud spots were particularly obvious, making her look even whiter than snow.
Zhou Ye walked closer and saw the two of them like this, his eyes only fixed on their faces.
"Brother Aye, why are you here? Aren't you helping my sister dig a fish pond?" Lin Xiaopu asked quickly.
Zhou Ye looked at Lin Shu and said, "Now that we've dug it, how do you lay out the gravel and pebbles you mentioned?"
Lin Shu was delighted when she heard this. "Done already? Brother Ye, you're so quick! Wait for me, I'll pack up and go back with you!"
"No need, just go about your business and talk to me."
Lin Shule said happily: "I am indeed busy, but I am busy catching loaches to add to everyone's dishes."
Zhou Ye had been to the mountains before and had never tasted the loach made by Lin Shu. Hearing this, he reminded her, "Loach has a strong earthy smell and is difficult to swallow. You need soy sauce and rice wine to remove the fishy smell, and the amount should be sufficient. We don't have these at home."
People say that firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea are the necessities of life, but Tianshui Village is poor and it is good enough to have enough food to eat. Basically, only coarse salt is put in the food, and even less oil is used, let alone seasonings such as sauce and vinegar. Ginger is not bought, and wild onions and garlic are picked in the mountains to enhance the flavor.
These days, no farmer would waste soy sauce and rice wine just to eat a loach. That's putting the cart before the horse, and poor families can't afford it. But if you add just a little salt, the earthy smell will be so overwhelming that poor people would probably rather eat bran than the loach. Otherwise, with so many loaches in the fields, why didn't anyone catch them except a few mischievous kids in the village? We're not stupid.
Unexpectedly, as soon as these words came out, Lin Xiaopu suddenly grinned, "Hehe, Brother Aye went to the mountains two days ago, so he didn't get to eat the loach made by my sister. My sister has a secret recipe to remove the fishy smell. It doesn't wake me up at all. It's delicious!"
Lin Shu smiled and said, "It's not that exaggerated. It still tastes fishy, but not so fishy that it's hard to swallow. After all, it's a meat dish." However, she didn't expect Zhou Ye to be quite knowledgeable about food and knew how to use soy sauce and rice wine to remove the fishy smell.
Zhou Ye hesitated for a moment after hearing this, then rolled up his trouser legs and went down to the ground, "Then catch a few more."
Next, Lin Shu and Lin Xiaopu were both amazed.
Since Zhou Ye came to Lin Dashan's home, he has been working in the fields every day, and occasionally goes to the mountains. This is the first time he has shown such a skill.
Lin Shu thought she was quite experienced at catching loaches, but when she saw Zhou Ye, her experience suddenly seemed insignificant. The slippery loaches seemed completely smooth in Zhou Ye's hands, and he caught them with every catch.
In just a quarter of an hour, eight or nine more loaches appeared in the wooden barrel!
Lin Shu joked, "If you keep catching loaches like this for an hour, you'll catch all the loaches in the field by yourself."
Zhou Ye easily carried the wooden bucket up to the edge of the field and, while cleaning the mud off his legs, explained, "These creatures grow rapidly and are hardy. They can survive droughts, so you can never catch them all. Once we've caught all the ones in our field, new ones will slip in from the ditch, and loaches from other fields will also come here."
Lin Shu had an idea when she heard it, and said with a smile: "I'll make dinner for you. If you like, we can come here to catch fish every day, just enough to fill your gluttonous stomach."
No one eats loaches, which is a good deal for her. Although they have a strong earthy smell, they are rich in nutrients, with more minerals and vitamins than ordinary fish and shrimp. Because loaches not only eat insects but also soil every day, they are especially high in iron. Such high-iron foods are excellent blood-boosting foods, and people like Xiao Pu should eat more of them.
Lin Shu and Lin Xiaopu went to the ditch beside the field to fetch clean water and washed their arms, calves and faces one by one.
Lin Shu glanced at Zhou Ye, who had already packed up and was facing away from them, and smiled slightly. Although it was unbelievable, she did see a kind of gentlemanly demeanor in this rough man, Zhou Ye, who took the initiative to do all the dirty work and never glanced at anything he shouldn't have.
This rough man was quite clean. She didn't know when this had happened this morning, but by the time she'd finished packing and left the house, he'd already washed his hair with the leftover cedar and wormwood shampoo from yesterday. The farmer's hands, though rough from digging in the fields, were not a speck of black mud beneath his fingernails.
Perhaps it was because life in the countryside had been too comfortable these days that Lin Shu still had the leisure to think about these random things, unlike in her previous life, when she only thought about how to fill her stomach every day and didn't even bother to look at men.
Seeing that the two men had packed up, Zhou Ye asked them to walk in front, and he followed a few steps behind carrying the wooden barrel.
Lin Shu was amused. Did she have to avoid suspicion in front of outsiders? If Xiao Pu hadn't sworn that Zhou Ye would blush, and she had secretly observed that he would be the same, she would have really thought that Zhou Ye didn't like her.
Lin Shu slowed down her pace and walked side by side with him. Even though there were a few villagers passing by in the distance, she didn't care. "Brother Aye, do you know where to buy bricks and tiles?"
Zhou Ye wanted to remind her that if she had other plans to get married, she should stay away from him, but seeing her innocent look, he couldn't bring himself to say such words. So he had to shift his attention to the question, "It's only sold in town, why are you asking this?"
"I'm thinking that when my family makes money in the future, I'll build a big house with green bricks and green tiles."
Zhou Ye wanted to say something but stopped himself, and finally just nodded in agreement.
Lin Shu knew what he was trying to say. Bricks and tiles must be very expensive. All the houses in the village were made of mud, yet she was dreaming of such a beautiful thing. So she just wrote the matter of building a brick house in her little notebook and didn't say she would build it right away.
After carrying a large bucket of loaches back to the yard and exchanging it for clean water, Lin Shu followed Zhou Ye to the river.
My home is a little far from the river where I wash clothes. If I want to fill the entire fish pond with sand and gravel, I don’t know how many times I have to go back and forth.
"Lay a layer of coarse sand and gravel like this on the bottom, and then lay these round pebbles on top of the sand and gravel." Lin Shu grabbed a handful of sand and gravel by the river, and picked out a few pebbles for Zhou Ye to see.
After hearing her request, Zhou Ye didn't complain about the trouble. Instead, he gave her a promise, "I'll go to Grandpa Gao's house to borrow two dustpans to shovel sand and gravel. Your fish pond should be almost finished by tomorrow." After a pause, he said, "Go and have fun. I don't need your help."
"Who's kidding? Everything I do has a purpose." Lin Shu snorted softly, as if she was acting coquettishly.
Zhou Ye turned sideways and secretly punched his chest twice.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
