Chapter 9 Spiritual Spring
There are many people who like to eat strawberries, from young to old, regardless of gender, age or status. Learning how to grow strawberries starts with planting strawberries, which is quite exciting.
Xia Wu is full of confidence. Autumn is a good time to plant strawberries. Online shopping is also convenient now. You can just buy seedlings online, plant them, and wait for them to bloom and bear fruit.
"Mr. Pu, I will need to borrow some bees from you for pollination when the time comes." Xia Wu was full of confidence.
"Hey, little girl, you know you need bees for pollination?"
Did these people think she was a silly girl who had never been to school? Xia Wu was speechless.
After enjoying the delicious Yebazi steamed chicken on the mountain, the group said goodbye and prepared to go down the mountain. Before leaving, Grandpa Pu packed two cans of Yebazi honey and gave them to Xia Wu.
"Drink it with warm water in the morning. It's good for your health. Come back to Mr. Park for more after you finish it!"
"Thank you, Mr. Pu, you are so kind!" Xia Wu wanted to give Mr. Pu a big hug.
Her surprised look made Master Park laugh out loud, "When your strawberries are planted, don't forget to send some to Master Park up the mountain."
He has lived in the mountains for a long time and not many people come to interact with him on weekdays, so he sometimes feels quite lonely.
"That's for sure!"
After saying goodbye, Xia Wu followed his grandfather and brother down the mountain, but Ji Yunzhou had no intention of going down the mountain.
He said that he would rest for a few days at Mr. Park's place every month.
Xia Wu walked a distance away and turned back to wave: "Mr. Pu, Ji Yunzhou, see you later!"
"See you later!"
Ji Yunzhou also waved at her.
As the three figures gradually disappeared along the mountain road, Grandpa Pu sighed sadly, "Old Yang is so lucky. One granddaughter ran away, and now another such a wonderful granddaughter has arrived."
Ji Yunzhou raised his eyebrows, turned his wheelchair and walked towards the pavilion.
"Aren't you curious about what's going on?" Mr. Park followed up and asked.
Ji Yunzhou smiled gently, poured a cup of tea for himself and Mr. Pu, and rubbed the cup, shaking his head slowly.
"You are living like Tan Sishui, even worse than an old man like me," said Mr. Pu angrily. He sat down opposite him and told himself what he had heard.
Ji Yunzhou looked up at the clouds floating in the sky, not knowing whether he was listening carefully.
When we got back to the Yang family, Yang Guojun had already returned from town. He had just bought a new SIM card and asked Xia Wu to install it. "Someone recommended a package for me. It has a lot of data per month, and I can even install broadband at home. The technician said he'll come to install it tomorrow, so you won't have to worry about running out of data then."
"Thank you, Dad!" Xia Wu inserted the new SIM card, and after a while, the signal connection appeared in the upper right corner of the phone.
The messages that popped up one after another were all sent by mobile phone operators. Xia Wu sighed slightly in his heart, and then started to tinker with it.
First download the commonly used shopping apps, then WeChat...
Bind your bank card.
She sat on a small chair in the aisle, her fingers flying. Yang Hongwen also moved a stool and sat next to her, watching curiously.
In the yard, Old Man Yang talked about Xia Wu fainting in the mountains. After resting for a while at Mr. Pu's house, Xia Wu was fine again, but he still needed to take good care of his body.
"She was fooled by Lao Pu and told to lease a mountain to farm," Old Man Yang was a little amused, looking at the brother and sister who were playing with their mobile phones together with a distant and gentle look in his eyes.
Yang Guojun was very surprised. "Xiao Wu wants to rent a mountain to farm? How is that possible?"
Old Master Yang had never seen Xia Wu's previous appearance, but Yang Guojun and Liu Guizhen had both seen her. She used to be so delicate, just like the rich ladies on TV. She probably had never even played in the mud, let alone holding a hoe.
It is really difficult to ask Yang Guojun to believe that Xia Wu can farm.
Old Master Yang glared at his son. "Didn't you see that Ah Wu was planning to start by growing strawberries? At any age, as long as someone is willing to learn, that's worth encouraging! Don't discourage her, or I'll beat you!"
The old man is still using an old-fashioned pipe. He is not used to smoking cigarettes, so he likes to smoke cigarettes made from tobacco leaves he grows and dries, which are strong and stimulating.
He has had that pipe for many years and it has been a great help to Yang Guojun.
Yang Guojun didn't dare to say anything. He walked two steps away silently and sighed, "It's okay. I'll take care of the mountain. I can still do it. I'm sorry for the child. I'll do whatever she wants to plant!"
That's about right.
There are so many varieties of strawberries online, such as Hongyan, Chiyu, Yuexiu, white, red and pink, which are dazzling. Moreover, every store is very good at bragging, guaranteeing that the strawberries will survive and bear fruit, and one plant can produce more than a hundred fruits.
"Which one do you want?" Xia Wu threw the difficult task of choosing to her brother. Yang Hongwen looked at the strawberries on his phone, his mouth slightly open, his saliva almost flowing out, and clicked on one of them.
"White Jade?" Xia Wu muttered, clicking on it to check. White Jade was a domestically grown variety, white with a hint of pink, with a beautiful color, a sweet and crisp taste, and most importantly, good disease resistance.
Although Xia Wu was full of confidence in front of others, he was still a little nervous as it was his first time planting something.
"Then buy white jade!"
"Dad, where should I fill in the address?"
Under the guidance of Yang Guojun, Xia Wu filled in the address, placed an order for fifty strawberry seedlings, and then waited for them to arrive.
She was not idle either, and began to select land for planting strawberries.
The Yang family has a backyard and a front yard. The backyard is piled with firewood, and across the road from the front yard is a pond and two vegetable plots.
Most of the vegetable fields were planted with vegetables. Finally, Yang Guojun decided to set his sights on the field next to the pond.
For the entire afternoon, the Yang family worked together to clear the weeds from the open space beside the pond, and then deep-turned the soil with shovels.
Xia Wu didn't just stand there and watch. She really wanted to farm the land, so she had to learn all these things. If it were her in the past, she would definitely find it dirty and tiring, but for some reason, she now felt a deep love for the land and plants from the bottom of her heart.
She hadn't felt that kind of joy for a long time.
Xia Wu put on work gloves and followed her brother's example, clearing away all the weeds. She even learned how to dig the soil. At first, she wasn't very good at using the shovel, so Yang Guojun taught her how to use her body weight to press the shovel into the soil, then push it back...
As for the principle of leverage, Xia Wu quickly figured out the reason. Then, when she was tidying up the second piece of land, she snatched the shovel from Yang's father's hand and started working on it herself.
After clearing enough space for planting fifty strawberry seedlings, Yang Guojun sprinkled compound fertilizer on the soil, raked it flat to make ridges, and two square strawberry planting bases were ready.
Xia Wu was sweating from exhaustion. He reached out to wipe the sweat off his face, forgetting that he was still wearing work gloves covered in mud, and his face was also covered in mud.
"Sister, you're a dirty cat!" Yang Hongwen reached out to wipe the dirt off her face. Xia Wu giggled and touched his face as well, "Brother, there's some on your face too."
"Really?" Yang Hongwen believed it and touched his face. Now, both of them became dirty cats.
"The meal is ready, come back and eat!" Liu Guizhen shouted to them from the door.
Yang Guojun was at a loss for words and took the two children home. "If your mother sees this, she'll definitely nag you again!"
The red glow in the sky gradually spread, the sun jumped down from the top of the mountain, the birds returning to their nests were like a black line, and curls of smoke rose from the village. The rural scenery was like a painting.
"Yang Guojun, what do you think of this child? His face and body are covered in this..."
Liu Guizhen couldn't bear to scold the child, so she gave Yang Guojun a long nagging, which formed the most ordinary rural evening sonata.
This is really good, Xia Wu smiled secretly in his heart and stretched himself. This is really good.
They had dinner at a wooden table in the courtyard. No one left immediately after the meal. Someone started the conversation, but Yang Guojun started bragging about the interesting things that happened in his childhood.
"Back then, we climbed trees, the willow trees by the river, you know? We'd climb to the top of the willows and jump into the water. Anyone who didn't dare to jump was a coward. If we had trained from a young age, maybe our village could have produced a few diving athletes!"
Liu Guizhen was overjoyed. "Go ahead and brag. I don't even know you. You're not even as good at climbing trees as I am! When we went to the mountains to rob bird nests that year, who was the one who got halfway up and had to be caught by me?"
"Hey, haven't I crawled for years? My hands are rusty, right? Look at you, can't you give me some face in front of the child?"
Xia Wu was laughing so hard that her whole body was shaking. Yang Hongwen looked at his parents, then at his sister, and also smiled foolishly while holding the bowl.
The courtyard was filled with cheerful laughter.
There were not many extra entertainment activities in the countryside. After dinner, Yang Guojun cleaned up the dishes at home, and Xia Wu followed Liu Guizhen out for a walk.
With the construction of village-to-village roads, there are street lights on both sides of the road, but in this mountain village with a large population and few people, the light is still pitifully dim from a distance.
The lights on in the village houses are like lighthouses that can only be seen occasionally on the vast ocean.
There were no cars or people on the road. Xia Wu held his mother's arm and walked slowly along the path.
"The village used to be so lively. Every household would have lights on at night. When it was time to do farm work, we would bring our things to visit neighbors and sit at their doorsteps, chatting while we worked. Sometimes we would talk until midnight and didn't want to go home."
There was a hint of melancholy in Liu Guizhen's tone, mixed with nostalgia for the lively past.
"Look at that stone pillar. In the past, there were no harvesters, so people used stone rollers to grind rice. When your father was young, he was full of energy, like an ox. He could grind half an acre of rice by himself without complaining of being tired."
Xia Wu listened carefully to everything she said, and the lively scenes of the past seemed to emerge in his mind. In spring, people would throw fish fry into the river in the village. In autumn, villagers would row boats in the middle of the river and cast nets to catch fish. Every household could get some.
Yanggou Village is close to the mountains and can provide the children in the village with a variety of snacks, mushrooms, and wild fruits all year round. Every inch of land has been filled with the joy of the children.
But as time passed, the children grew up, left their hometown and became cogs in the big cities.
Older people are getting older and older. When the sun is shining, the walls are filled with old people basking in the sun, like silent trees.
Yang Guojun also worked away from home for a few years, working as a laborer on a construction site for seven or eight years to support Xia Wei's education. Liu Guizhen looked after the two children at home. Although Yang Hongwen was very obedient now, he used to be so naughty that he could be restrained by two or three adults.
For the sake of his child, Yang Guojun quit his job and returned home to do odd jobs, supporting his family while educating his son. It took him several years to educate Yang Hongwen into what he is today.
Although he is still stupid and silly, at least he won't cause trouble to others.
The Yang family is very ordinary, a microcosm of the millions of ordinary workers in this world. The only unusual thing is probably the incident of taking the wrong child away.
The mother and daughter walked around the village and returned home an hour later.
The three men in the family had taken a shower and returned to the house. Xia Wu took her toiletries, washed up, and changed into her teddy bear pajamas, all the hard work and fatigue of the day swept away.
Before going to bed, Liu Guizhen brought a bowl of poached eggs with brown sugar and longan, and told Xia Wu to eat it. "It replenishes your qi and blood. You haven't recovered yet. From now on, mom will cook you a bowl every day."
In the past, Xia Wu would definitely say that she wanted to maintain her figure and refuse such a delicious meal, but now, she picked up the bowl and gulped it down, and even wanted another bowl.
What a joke! How can you lift the hoe tomorrow if you don’t eat enough?
"Thank you, Mom. You should get some rest too."
"Okay, Mom will make you some buffalo milk tomorrow morning."
Xia Wu brushed his teeth again and locked the door. He finally had some private space to study the treasure he had obtained today.
There is no need to close your eyes. As long as Xia Wu thinks about it, he can touch the hidden cave in Shentingxue. The rock wall is still dripping water into the spring pit below. The water in the spring pit is almost about to overflow, but it never overflows.
Xia Wu scooped out a small half cup of water, held it up under the light and looked at it for a long time. The water was the most ordinary transparent color when it was scooped out, and it didn't smell strange or anything special.
"Such a magical thing shouldn't be poisonous, right?" Xia Wu muttered, and took a sip tentatively, but there was no special reaction.
She drank it in small sips, stopping only when there was only one sip left. She pushed open the window, placed the cup and the last sip of water on the windowsill, then closed the window and got into bed, all in one go.
Early the next morning, Xia Wu woke up and the first thing he did was to open the window to look at the cup. There was not a drop of water in it, as if it had evaporated.
Xia Wu took another half cup, changed his clothes and went straight to the vegetable garden. There was a peach tree planted next to the vegetable garden. Although there were no peaches in this season, the tree was still lush and leafy. The vegetables in the vegetable garden blocked by the peach tree did not grow as well as they did elsewhere.
Xia Wu poured some water on the underdeveloped vegetables and some on the roots of the peach tree, wanting to make a comparison.
She had some guesses about the function of the spiritual spring. After all, there was the Internet, so even if she didn't understand, she could still look it up online.
If it is true as what is said on the Internet that the spiritual spring has the miraculous effect of promoting plant growth, she really has to consider buying a mountain!
After two days back at the Yang family, Xia Wu adapted very well. As a fake daughter, she should return to the countryside. Since she doesn't plan to return to the city, she should also think about finding something to do for herself.
She was originally worried about what to do, but Lingquan's appearance was just in time.
but……
It seems she doesn't have enough money.
Xia Wu sighed. All the money she spent belonged to the Xia family. She could use the black card as she pleased. Even though she had disappeared for a few days, the Xia family had not untied or frozen her card. However, Xia Wu decided to cut off contact with the Xia family and never wanted to spend their money again.
She also has her own small treasury, but there are only 20,000 or 30,000 yuan in it.
At this moment, Xia Wu really regretted spending so much money on useless luxury goods in the past.
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