Chapter 16
A basket of corn is still much lighter than a load of corn, and Chen Qing walked much faster than before.
When he could see Li Xin standing at his door from afar, he wondered if he had come to help because he was worried that Li Xin would get tired from helping him.
The joy I felt just now has turned into a little bit of bitterness.
I wonder if they got to know each other well when they went to town that day, and when they will get married? Will the child be a boy or a girl?
"What are you thinking about?" Zhou Yuan suddenly asked, startling Chen Qing.
Then he blurted out, "Is it a boy or a girl?"
Zhou Yuan raised an eyebrow: "I'm fine with anything, what about you?"
"I..." Chen Qingcai realized what he had just said, and his face instantly turned red. He wished he could disappear into the ground. It wasn't that he couldn't answer the question, but it was too strange for this conversation to happen between him and Zhou Yuan.
Zhou Yuan knew when to stop, so he quickened his pace and dumped all the corn into Chen Qing's yard.
His yard isn't very big. The corn needs to be dried for a while before it can be threshed properly. The corn harvested from just one plot of land on the mountain will fill his yard, leaving several other plots of land. There's definitely not enough space in this yard to store all the corn.
There is an open space outside the village ancestral hall. During the autumn harvest, everyone needs to go early to claim a spot, otherwise they won't be able to get a spot. Only at this time do Chen Qing and Aunt Sun realize that it's inconvenient not having a man in the house. They have to move there in the morning and bring it back in the evening.
Many men from other families simply slept on that open space.
"Auntie, is it okay to pour it here?" Zhou Yuan asked.
Grandma Sun quickly agreed, and kept thanking Zhou Yuan, insisting that he stay for dinner, since Li Xin and Niu Niu were also there, so there was no need to avoid any suspicion.
After Chen Qing emptied the corn from his basket, he was in a hurry to cook. In the yard, Aunt Sun, Li Xin, and Zhou Yuan sat peeling corn husks.
Zhou Yuan glanced at Chen Qing in the kitchen. He saw Chen Qing move his shoulder and then look at his own shoulder. Zhou Yuan stopped what he was doing and told Aunt Sun that he had to go home first.
After Zhou Yuan left, Aunt Sun smiled at Li Xin and said, "Zhou Yuan is a really nice guy. He always helps out whenever he can."
Li Xin nodded in agreement: "Yes, Auntie."
"I heard your father is already looking for a husband for you? Zhou Yuan is a good catch, you mustn't miss out. If you really get together, our two families will be neighbors. You and Aqing are such a good couple, won't your future be even better?" Aunt Sun's hands kept moving, and her words were just as numerous.
Li Xin, however, reacted as if facing a formidable enemy, and quickly said, "Auntie! No! That's not how it is."
Aunt Sun thought he was just shy and nodded repeatedly: "Auntie knows, I know, it's not decided yet, it's hard to say, it's hard to say."
Li Xin: ……
Just then, Zhou Yuan returned and called out to Li Xin from outside the fence.
Li Xin quickly went out and saw Zhou Yuan holding a medicine bottle. She handed it to him and whispered, "Could you please apply this medicine for him?"
Li Xin pouted: "How long are you going to use me as a cover? The longer it goes on, the more I'll be unable to clear my name even if I jump into the Yellow River."
"Soon," Zhou Yuan replied. Since his aunt wanted to marry Chen Qing off, there was a good chance the matter would turn around. "You'll sit at the head table then."
Li Xin has always been a very intuitive person. When he returned from his maternal grandparents' house and met Chen Qing, he felt that something was wrong with Chen Qing after talking to Chen Qing about Zhou Yuan. That day, when they went to town together, he found that Zhou Yuan was also acting strangely.
When Chen Qing left, he looked at Zhou Yuan. As Chen Qing's good friend, he naturally had to think about things for Chen Qing.
Unexpectedly, Zhou Yuan was also very frank. After Li Xin asked him, he directly admitted that he did have some feelings for Chen Qing.
However, Chen Qing's personality and his special status indicate that this path will not be easy.
So, without Chen Qing's knowledge, Li Xin was already vetting things for him.
Zhou Yuan didn't know when he started to like Chen Qing. At first, he was just looking at Chen Qing's back, and as he looked, it became a habit.
After speaking, Li Xin put the medicine bottle into her sleeve, then went into the kitchen to find Chen Qing, and pulled Chen Qing into the room without saying a word.
Chen Qing was still chopping chicken. It was the chicken from last time that they hadn't finished eating yet, and it would spoil if they didn't eat it today. His hands were covered in chicken fat, and he hadn't even washed them, so he could only hold his hands up and ask, "What are you doing?"
Li Xin stripped Chen Qing's clothes off, looked at his red and swollen shoulder, took out medicine from her bosom and slowly applied it to him. Chen Qing gasped in pain.
Every autumn harvest season has been like this, and my shoulders have gone through the same thing every year, so there's never been a need to apply medicine.
"Oh, no need to apply medicine." Chen Qing tried to pull his clothes up, but Li Xin held him down and wouldn't let him move.
"Almost done." Li Xin applied the medicine to him very carefully.
“This is how we’ve always done it, and in a couple of days I’ll be using my shoulder again,” Chen Qing said with a smile. “I’ve never seen you care about me like this before.”
Li Xin snorted and then mischievously patted Chen Qing's shoulder: "Don't I care about you enough?"
Inside the house, surrounded by loved ones, Chen Qing's personality became much more lively. After the two finished laughing and joking around inside, they ran out of the room to say they had to cook, otherwise they would be late.
He hurriedly ran out of the room and met Zhou Yuan's gaze on the way. Chen Qing then quickly looked away and returned to the kitchen.
Zhou Yuan looked at him; there were two red marks on his face, probably from being pricked by corn leaves.
Chen Qing returned to the kitchen. The chicken, which had been marinated in salt, was no longer very tasty even after braising. He chopped it up, washed it with clean water, blanched it, and then slowly stewed it in a clay pot on the stove. He also found the chicken offal that had been prepared earlier.
Melt the remaining chicken fat, grab a handful of pickled cabbage leaves from a jar, chop them up and stir-fry until fragrant. Then add the cleaned chicken giblets. The aroma of the oil mixed with the fragrance of the pickled cabbage made Niu Niu outside swallow his saliva.
One chicken soup and one stir-fried chicken giblets were definitely not enough, not to mention there was such a big guy like Zhou Yuan there. He also made a potato and green bean stew. The family hadn't bought meat for a long time, and the lard jar was almost empty. Chen Qing gritted his teeth and used lard to stew potatoes, eggplants and green beans. He also simmered mixed grain rice for a long time.
Chen Qing and Aunt Sun usually eat cornbread made from coarse grains.
Although Luohe Village is nestled against the mountains and beside the water, for some reason they don't grow rice here, so the price of refined rice is very high. Ordinary families usually buy some mixed grain rice, which is mixed with some inferior rice, so they rarely buy it.
Chen Qing didn't know how to cook these dishes at first. His hometown is far from Luohe Village, and his eating habits are very different from those here. His cooking skills were taught to him by Aunt Sun.
By the time the dishes were ready, the chicken soup was also done. Chen Qing added some of the codonopsis pilosula he hadn't finished eating when he was sick last time, making the chicken soup very flavorful.
There aren't usually this many people in their house; there's only a small table, and they don't even have extra chairs.
However, neither Li Xin nor Zhou Yuan minded and simply sat down in the pile of corn.
Niu Niu swallowed hard, and Chen Qing quickly served him a bowl of rice, then added chicken soup, and fed Niu Niu the rice soaked in the soup.
"I knew your cooking was good." Li Xin ate happily, while Chen Qing held his bowl, head down, and smiled with pursed lips.
Zhou Yuan rarely saw Chen Qing smile, and when he suddenly saw him smile, he was a little dazed.
Grandma Sun was watching Niu Niu eat and didn't notice what was going on with them.
Li Xin held the bowl, silently gazing at the sky.
After Niu Niu finished eating, Aunt Sun started eating herself. After finishing, she told Zhou Yuan that she wanted to borrow the oxcart, since the rest of their land was in a spacious area that the oxcart could reach.
Zhou Yuan readily agreed and even offered to help them with the harvest, but Aunt Sun quickly declined, saying, "It's already very kind of you to give us the oxcart."
Li Xin twitched the corners of her mouth: "How about this, Auntie? I think his yard is quite big. Why don't we just dry the corn in his yard? That way you won't have to go to the ancestral hall to reserve a spot, and even then you won't get one. Do you expect Chen Qing to keep watch there all night?"
Both Aunt Sun and Chen Qing looked at Zhou Yuan.
Zhou Yuan nodded: "Okay, Auntie, just bring it to my house then."
"You've gone to so much trouble for me." Aunt Sun picked up a piece of chicken for him.
"It's alright, I also have something to trouble you with, Auntie. I didn't plant anything on the land I was allocated last season, and I should start planting again after this season. I can't just sit around and do nothing."
“Okay, when you need to farm, I’ll bring Aqing to help you.”
Chen Qing was lost in thought, still pondering what Li Xin had just said. Was Li Xin now able to help Zhou Yuan make decisions about his family?
He bit his lip, reflecting on his mindset over the years.
Because of the initial misidentification, he thought Zhou Yuan was Meng Tao, and his mind became completely confused afterwards.
All the avoidance was out of fear that he couldn't help but want to get close. Avoiding suspicion was also a struggle with himself. He believed that as long as he didn't contact her, he hadn't had any other thoughts. The sense of guilt on a moral level was too heavy, so heavy that Chen Qing couldn't straighten his back.
Even his mother said that although he was not talkative, he used to respond when people in the village greeted him and he had met the men in the village before, so why was he so resistant to Zhou Yuan?
Chen Qing didn't dare say that the rejection was because he had something to hide, he only said that he would change after he found out.
But this seems to backfire; the more you suppress something, the more it flourishes, which is wrong.
Li Xin was his good friend, someone he opened his heart to when he first arrived here and had no friends. He wouldn't allow himself to do anything to hurt Li Xin.
Thinking about this, Chen Qing felt a sudden sense of clarity.
The more you try to cover things up, the more petty and despicable you appear; being open and honest is better than anything else.
Li Xin had just finished eating when he turned around and saw Chen Qing smiling. He looked at Chen Qing with some confusion and asked, "What are you laughing at?"
Chen Qing shook his head: "It's nothing, I just figured something out."
Grandma Sun chimed in at the right moment: "Aqing is always spacing out, I don't know what he's thinking about. Such a small guy, but he has a lot on his mind."
Chen Qing scratched his head, then felt an itch on his face and neck, so he scratched them harder, making his face and neck turn red.
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