After dinner, Tiger brought good news, instructing them to enter the city early the next morning.
The new house is located on the other side of the city gate, far from Zhoujia Village. It takes half an hour to get there and an hour to go back and forth. Moreover, it's been hot lately, so to avoid the hottest time of day, the workers have to be there by dawn.
The job was only for three days, and they were provided with three meals a day. Baoyu and Huzi didn't want to spend too much time on the road, so they decided to pack a clean set of clothes and leave as soon as it was light, returning only after the work was finished.
Summer days are long and nights are short. Zhou Chenyu felt like she had just fallen asleep when Baoyu was about to set off.
Zhou Chenyu got up groggily, and Li Xiuju also put on a coat and got up.
Crickets chirped incessantly in the corner, the crescent moon and stars still hung over the western mountains, and occasionally a few barks could be heard from the depths of the village.
"Mom, Sister, Tiger is waiting for me under the banyan tree. You two go back to your rooms and sleep. I'm leaving."
Baoyu, carrying his luggage, gradually disappeared into the night.
After seeing Baoyu off, Zhou Chenyu and Li Xiuju were both wide awake and began to get busy.
Li Xiuju was making breakfast in the kitchen when Zhou Chenyu scooped up a bucket of rice bran and wild vegetables and carried it to the pen next to the house.
"Giggle, giggle."
As soon as she opened the cage, the chickens and ducks, who had been starving all night, flapped their wings and swarmed to peck at the food, scattering food all over the ground.
Before the rice seeds in Zhoujia Village were even sown, the chickens and ducks were fed and then released directly into the vicinity of the paddy fields.
After breakfast, washing and drying the clothes, the task of cutting bamboo up the mountain was handed over to Zhou Chenyu. She took a machete, brought Xiaohuangdou with her, and went into the bamboo forest alone.
Although the bamboo forest is right behind the village, the deserted forest means that even the slightest noise from Little Yellow Bean can spark endless imagination.
Zhou Chenyu quickly cut down all the bamboo, piled it up at the foot of the mountain, then trimmed off the small branches and slowly bundled it up to carry it to his doorstep.
Seeing the fine sweat on her face, Li Xiuju said, "This is enough for me to weave for two days, you don't need to go anymore."
Zhou Chenyu secretly breathed a sigh of relief and sat down under the tree to cool off while weaving a bamboo basket. Compared to winnowing baskets, bamboo baskets were not sold in large quantities, so after weaving for a while, she had nothing more to do.
Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around my ears, their noise irritating me. It was a hot and humid summer day, and these noises had been there before, but compared to Baoyu's endless chatter, the others were nothing.
Zhou Chenyu put the woven bamboo basket aside and muttered boredly, "I used to think Baoyu was noisy, but now that his voice is gone, I feel a little uncomfortable."
Li Xiuju smiled and said, "When he was around, you two siblings were always arguing. Now I can finally have some peace and quiet."
Zhou Chenyu stuck out her tongue and caught sight of Zhou Wanqiu running towards them from afar. "Grandma, look, someone's coming. Your ears are going to be disturbed again."
Li Xiuju looked up at the person who had come and smiled, "Wanqiu, you've come to play with your older sister again?"
Zhou Wanqiu smiled and nodded, then sat down next to Zhou Chenyu and asked softly, "Sister Chenyu, how is your foot injury?"
Seeing the girl's self-reproachful expression, Zhou Chenyu swung her legs, pointed to a pile of bamboo in front of her, and patted the little girl's head. "Do I look like something's wrong? I'm fine now. Besides, that's my grudge with Qian Rushan, it has nothing to do with you, don't take it to heart."
"Uh-huh."
Zhou Wanqiu sat to the side like a well-behaved kitten, letting Zhou Chenyu pet her.
Seeing the two children's growing bond, Li Xiuju couldn't help but smile with satisfaction. She realized she had finished her work and there was nothing more the children could do there; rather than keep her company, they should do something they wanted to do.
She laughed, "Chenyu, Wanqiu, I don't have much work to do here. It's rare for you two sisters to have free time together, why don't you go have some fun?"
Play?
When it comes to having fun, Zhou Chenyu thinks of either going shopping, eating, buying clothes and cosmetics with a few friends, or taking a spontaneous trip, which is impossible here.
She looked at Zhou Wanqiu, whose eyes crinkled into a smile. "Sister Chenyu, how about we go pick some river clams? When I came over, I happened to see a few girls heading towards the stream. They said there were lots of river clams in the water."
Staying here, observing the various free gifts of Mother Nature, has become one of the joys of Zhou Chenyu's life. She clapped her hands and exclaimed, "Let's do it your way!"
Seeing the two people looking very interested, Li Xiuju instructed them, "Remember not to go to places where the water is deep."
"good."
Zhou Wanqiu had lunch here, and when the afternoon sun was a little weaker, the two of them, carrying bamboo baskets and wearing straw hats to shield themselves from the sun, headed straight for the stream where they washed clothes.
When I arrived, there were already several girls of similar age by the stream, bending over and scooping out river clams from the water.
Unlike snails that attach to rock walls, river clams hide in the sand and stones at the bottom of the water. Some are the color of quicksand, while others are the green of moss. They are difficult to see with the naked eye and require a shovel to remove the fine sand before you can see them.
Moreover, river clams resemble clams in appearance, but their sizes vary. A few large river clams can grow to the size of a clam, while the smaller ones only reach the size of a fingernail.
They took off their shoes and placed them on the bank, rolled up their trouser legs to above their knees, and stepped into the stream. The stream water, which had been exposed to the midday sun, was warm and had a slight warmth to it.
Unfortunately, river clams, like snails, prefer cool water, and can only be found in the shady underwater sand and gravel.
Zhou Chenyu and Zhou Wanqiu walked upstream against the current, reaching the upper reaches of the girls. Gradually, the rice paddies on both banks were replaced by dense thickets of weeds and thorns. The further upstream they went, the cooler the water became and the shallower it was. In some shallow places, the water could only flow through the gaps between the pebbles.
"Sister Chenyu, there's a lot of sand over there, let's go take a look."
"good."
Zhou Chenyu and Zhou Wanqiu stepped over the pebbles, and the stones under their feet were replaced by sand and gravel.
Zhou Chenyu scooped up a basket and vigorously shoveled away the sand and stones, revealing one, two, three... countless fan-shaped river clams of varying sizes.
"Sister Chenyu, there are so many river clams here, they're huge!" Zhou Wanqiu picked out a river clam as thick as a thumb, her smile shining even brighter in the sunlight.
Zhou Chenyu also picked one up. "Come on, let's compare whose is bigger."
Zhou Wanqiu rarely revealed her girlish side, saying, "I picked up the big one!"
Zhou Chenyu smiled faintly, snatched the river clams from her, and tossed them into her basket. "Give them to me!"
After frolicking around for a while, the two squatted down and picked up the river clams one by one into the basket. Once they were clean, they moved to another spot to scoop them up. There were so many river clams that they couldn't pick them all up, and they didn't even need to move their feet.
As Zhou Chenyu watched the river clams pile up in the basket, she felt her legs starting to go numb. She thought she would stand up and stretch after finishing this round, but suddenly a stone flew into the water with a splash, and the water sprayed onto her face.
Zhou Chenyu frowned. Who did this?
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