Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Dividing the Land
But seeing Lin Chuntao's confident look, he nodded.
"Okay, I'll draw up the homestead for you after I measure the land this afternoon."
Lin Chuntao thanked him with a smile.
After the matter was settled, Lin Chuntao borrowed a hoe and a sickle from Sun and prepared to clean up the old house and settle down.
Everyone was calm about living in this old house, including Pei Ying.
Lin Chuntao smiled, as if such hardship was not worth mentioning at all.
Chun He was even puzzled when she saw her laughing, "Sister, what are you laughing at?"
"I'm happy."
Pei Ying was cutting weeds and raised his eyebrows when he heard this.
Lin Chunhe then asked, "What are you happy about?"
"I'm glad you didn't get scared or cry in the face of this situation."
Lin Duoer ran over with a smile and said, "Sister, I was so scared when you said you would take us to find a cave."
"It's good now. I don't have to live in a cave anymore, hehe."
Lin Chuntao curled the corners of her lips. What she said about living in a cave was just an excuse.
It's not that she wants to take advantage, but this country is a society where favors are valued. In the city, you can rent a house and the debt is settled as long as you pay the money, but it's not like that in the village.
When she came back in the morning, she saw several such old houses. She thought that if no one told her, she would go and ask. If she paid a few cents according to the rent, people might rent it to them. But they would definitely have to build a new house and move to a new one in the future. When they moved out, they would have no income and might be unhappy.
Now that Sun offered to give this place to them to live in, Lin Chuntao would definitely accept her favor. After a few days, when the matter was settled, she would buy some things for them and go to their house to express her gratitude. They would gain a good reputation and get things, and the place would look nice to the people in the village. When they moved out in the future, the relationships and favors would still be there, so it wouldn't be a big deal.
But she did not tell her three younger sisters about her twists and turns, but just gently touched the youngest sister's head.
"I'm sorry for scaring my sister."
Lin Duoer shook her head, "Sister has never let us down."
Lin Chuntao smiled and patted her, "Okay, sister got it, let's get to work."
After working for more than an hour, they finally cleared all the weeds inside and outside the house and took down the rotten windows. The house suddenly became much brighter.
This old house is a thatched house with three rooms. The walls of two rooms are intact, but the wall of the one on the left is cracked. Lin Chuntao and her friends are planning to take it out and use it to store firewood.
There is an open space in front of the house. After the weeds are cleared, it looks very wide. When it is free, you can build a bamboo fence to enclose it.
After cleaning, Lin Chuntao called Pei Ying to help move a few stones into the house, build a fire, and take the pot to get water.
They didn't even have a bucket to carry water, they really had... nothing.
I'm glad to have this pot and this half sack of brown rice.
But it is said to be half a sack, and if you weigh it, it may be less than 30 kilograms. It cannot feed four or five people for a few days, so they have to make money quickly.
Lin Chuntao had just finished cooking when she heard the system's voice.
"Sign-in points have been received, host, please check."
Lin Chuntao quickly opened the system control panel.
A points mall panel appeared before her eyes, and she checked the points balance, which was 143.
Looking at the redemption mall, it is actually divided into living area, seed area, recipe area, etc., but each area is gray.
“This can’t be exchanged?”
"Host, please continue to sign in. After signing in seven times, you can choose to open a new zone."
Lin Chuntao was silent for a moment and asked, "Aside from the mushroom nest, are there other places to sign in?"
"Yes, they are divided into sections. They will be opened once the host has enough points."
That's fine. Now is the season for picking mushrooms, so I can pick more and sell them for money.
While cooking, Pei Ying took a sickle to the mountainside to cut bamboo. She thought he was going to cut it to make doors and windows, but she didn't expect that the man had first split a few bamboo tubes and cut a few pairs of chopsticks.
Looking at the bamboo chopsticks and bamboo bowl, Lin Duoer's eyes widened.
"Brother-in-law, you are amazing. You can even make bamboo bowls."
Pei Ying seemed to have little experience with children. He just nodded lightly and said nothing more.
Duo'er looked at Lin Chuntao and playfully stuck out her tongue.
If the fire is too high when cooking in an iron pot, the rice will burn. If the fire is too low, it will be slow. If the rice is burnt, it will not taste good. Rice is precious, so it is better to cook slowly than to let it burn.
Seeing that many people in the village had finished lunch and returned to the yard for a walk, Lin Chuntao and the others had not started eating yet.
No one in the old Lin family went to the fields this morning, so Zhang thought about finishing lunch early and going to work in the fields.
I went to the old lady to get the key to cut some bacon to fry, but she didn't give me the key, and the boiled eggs I promised to her grandchildren last night were gone too.
She now dislikes all of her daughters-in-law and her son.
Tian didn't give her the key to the cabinet, and Zhang couldn't find anything to cook, so she steamed buckwheat buns, boiled some vegetables in water, and made some potato and vegetable pancakes, which should be called dry-fried ones because there wasn't a drop of oil.
When the meal was served, everyone in the room fell silent, but the old lady ate by herself, as if to say, "It's up to you to eat it or not."
Thinking of Lin Chuntao and the others who were kicked out, everyone started eating tactfully.
After lunch, Lin Changhe was curious about where Lin Chuntao and the others had gone, so he asked the two boys from the fourth room to find out.
Lin Jiacai and Lin Jialiang from the fourth room were ten and twelve years old respectively, the right age to be able to be used but not smart enough.
Without thinking too much, I just went out to find out.
Not only did he inquire around, he also went straight to the old house of Muramasa's family.
The two saw that the yard had been cleaned, but there was no one there. Curious, they moved closer to the yard little by little, wanting to see what Lin Chuntao and the others were doing.
"Brother, do you smell anything?"
Lin Jialiang sniffed and said, "What a nice smell! It smells like rice!"
The two of them kept sniffing the scent across the yard and came to the door of the house.
Lin Chuntao was staring at the rice in the pot when she suddenly saw two heads poking in. She turned around and saw that they were the two boys from the fourth room.
Her face darkened slightly, "What?"
The two boys didn't listen to Lin Chuntao's question at all. They stared at the rice in the pot and swallowed their saliva.
Pei Ying looked at the two children's eyes and slowly took out the butcher knife from behind.
The two brothers, who were originally overwhelmed by the smell of rice, were so scared that they ran away.
Pei Ying said, "Don't cook it, just eat it like this, or those two brats will go back and call the adults."
Lin Chuntao nodded. She had originally wanted to cook it slowly to let the water dry out a little.
But it’s better to eat it first.
At this time, Lin Jiacai and Lin Jialiang rushed into the yard shouting for help.
Yang from the fourth room thought her son had been beaten and rushed over. "What's wrong? Who's chasing you?"
"That scarface! He was holding a knife and trying to kill me and my brother!"
After Lin Jiacai finished speaking, Yang was still a little confused, "Which scarface?"
Lin Jialiang said: "Brother-in-law, he is the one who went out with a knife this morning!"
After the child finished speaking, Lin Changhai and the others went out to look, but they didn't see anyone. They stood at the gate and asked the child, "Where is the person?"
Lin Jia took a few breaths before saying, "No, he didn't chase us."
Yang frowned slightly, "Then why did he kill you?"
"My brother and I saw them eating rice, and he pulled out a knife and pointed it at us!"
After Lin Jialiang finished speaking, the courtyard fell silent. After a while, Feng from the second house burst into laughter. "Rice? Are you two hallucinating because of your greed? Didn't you eat enough at noon?"
Zhang from the eldest wife's house also echoed: "Exactly, where do they get the rice?"
"That's right, they didn't steal from our house, did they?" After Qian said that, Zhang was speechless: "We don't have any rice at home. The little we had was already eaten during the New Year."
Lin Changhe listened for a long time before asking, "Where did you see them?"
Lin Jiacai hurriedly said, "Oh, Third Uncle, they are in the old house of Grandpa Muramasa's house. When my brother and I went there, they had already cleaned it up and cooked in the house."
"The old house of the Muramasa family?"
"Muramasa gave them a place to stay?"
Qian asked repeatedly, but no one from the Lin family paid any attention to her.
Yang listened to the child's reply to Lin Changhe, and then she realized, "Third brother, was it you who asked Jiacai and the others to go find Chuntao?"
Lin Changhe naturally denied it, "Sister-in-law, what do you mean by asking me to let them go find it? I just wanted to ask them about it."
"Why are you asking? Are you trying to pretend to be a good father? It's too late!"
Yang sneered, and Lin Changhe snorted coldly: "They are just a few girls, why should I pretend to be a good father? Don't you want to know? Don't you want to know what happens to them after being kicked out of this family? I'm afraid you would rather see them begging to come back and make a fool of themselves with no place to live and no food to eat!"
There was a loud clang as Old Man Lin's hoe fell to the ground. The adults in the yard looked at each other, then picked up their farm tools and went out to the fields.
Lin Chuntao and the others quickly finished their meal and cleared the pot, leaving not a single grain of rice outside.
In the afternoon, she had to go out and measure the land. The house had no doors, windows, or locks, and she was worried about leaving the pot and rice at home, so Lin Chuntao simply took the pot and rice to Muramasa's house. The old couple also knew about the existence of these two things.
As for the copper coins, Pei Ying thought of a way and put them on the beam of the house, so even if someone came in to search, they would have to use a ladder to climb up.
There are many people in the village, so if you bring a ladder, it will attract attention and you won’t lose anything without being noticed.
We started measuring the land in the afternoon. Of the twelve acres, two plots were close to the river and could be used as paddy fields. Two plots were close to the village, and four plots were sandy land on the hillside.
Although there are some mountainous lands, sandy land is good for growing corn, sweet potatoes and potatoes. As long as the land is flat and easy to maintain, she likes it.
These lands were set aside by the government at the beginning of this year in order to be divided among the people who moved in from outside. Lin Chuntao and her friends were the first to be allocated land, so they got the best land, which was also close to their home.
There are no crops in the field, and some grass has grown, but it's not weeds. I just need to take care of it before planting again.
The families who received land were all in a good mood. When they heard that Lin Chuntao wanted a residential plot, everyone was shocked. She hurriedly explained, "We have nowhere to live. Now it's thanks to my great-grandfather and great-grandmother that they've kindly lent us that old house. We can't live here forever. We have to work hard to get a place to shelter from the wind and rain as soon as possible. It's just a preliminary allocation. We don't even have a bowl right now. It will take a long time to build a house."
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