Li Lanzhen held a bowl of cornmeal porridge, which was still mostly water with little grain, but her children and grandchildren were carefully slurping it up in small sips, afraid that if they used too much force, they would slurp it all up and it would be gone.
The eldest grandson took a sip, then looked up, squinted his eyes, smacked his lips, and looked like he was enjoying himself.
Alas, without food, it's hard to survive even in our hometown; fleeing famine is a dead end.
Out of sight, out of mind. Li Lanzhen poured some of the porridge from her bowl for her granddaughter and little girl, and divided the rest equally among her three grandsons.
She thought that if she got hungry, she could go to the store to redeem food for these lovely, pitiful children!
My granddaughter, Han Miaomiao, is three years old this year. She is thin and dark-skinned, with a pair of bright, big eyes on her face.
At this moment, seeing Li Lanzhen pour cornmeal porridge into his bowl, his big eyes widened even more, and he timidly whispered, "Thank you, Grandma."
The eldest daughter-in-law, Zhang Yueniang, hurriedly tried to pour the porridge from her daughter's bowl back to Li Lanzhen: "Mother, you're not going to eat the porridge? How can that be? How can a little girl like her eat so much?"
"Alright. Let Miaomiao eat. Stop talking so much! You all eat quickly. After you finish eating, the eldest son goes to his father-in-law's house, and Xue Ni goes back to her parents' house. Be back quickly before dark. We'll set off early tomorrow morning."
The second son tends to the cart at home; there are many children in the family, so they need a cart. The eldest son's wife is also pregnant and needs to ride in the cart when she can't walk.
Before everyone could recover from the shock of their mother (grandmother) sharing the porridge from her bowl with the children, especially the two girls, they heard the words about letting the children's wives ride in the car.
The shock was beyond words; it completely overturned their image of Li Lanzhen, who had always sat at the top of the family.
But it's so good that their mother and grandmother came back from the hillside bleeding from their wounds; I love how they are now.
Unable to bear their surprised and grateful looks, Li Lanzhen put down her bowl, stood up, and fled into the east room.
Seeing her enter the house, the eldest grandson picked up the bowl she had placed on the table, stuck out his little tongue and licked it. After licking half of it, he looked at his second cousin sitting next to him, who was staring at him longingly and swallowing his saliva. Reluctantly, he handed the bowl to him.
Finally, Li Lanzhen's bowl of porridge was spotless and clean, even smoother than if it had been washed with water.
As soon as I stepped over the high threshold, I heard a system announcement.
"Ding, there is a box made of raw chicken wing wood available for exchange. Please select the exchange item."
Chicken wing wood box. Image from the internet, please contact us for removal if it infringes on your rights.
"Ding, a peach wood hairpin is available for exchange. Please select the item to exchange."
"Ding, there is a black pottery jar available for exchange. Please select the item to exchange."
Black pottery jar. Image from the internet, please contact us for removal if it infringes on your rights.
Li Lanzhen asked the system in confusion, "Huh, System, how does the store know what resources I have that they need?"
"I am the detector. As long as I find supplies, I will release information if there is a need for them."
"Oh, this feature is great. Let me see what resources I can exchange for. Since I can't exchange for silver, I'll see what I can exchange for. Right now, what I need most is food, but I can't exchange for white rice, white flour, or cornmeal. Sigh, what a hassle."
Li Lanzhen found the item the system mentioned, and then looked at the variety and quantity of redeemable goods on the screen.
He muttered to himself, "Heh, a peach wood hairpin can actually be exchanged for 5 catties of soybeans."
However, perhaps this peach wood hairpin cannot be exchanged, because it was the hairpin that her husband put in her hair on the first night she married into the family. Oh well, let's keep it.
In the blink of an eye, they saw something incredible: "Ah!! A black pottery jar can actually sell for 100 taels of silver?! This...this..."
Before Li Lanzhen could recover from her shock, the amount of silver exchanged for the black pottery jar on the screen disappeared, replaced by: The black pottery jar can be exchanged for: 10 jin of white rice, 10 jin of white flour, 20 jin of cornmeal, 30 jin of black beans, 25 jin of sweet potatoes, 100 jin of rye bran, and 20 eggs.
Upon seeing so much grain, Li Lanzhen became excited and forgot about the 100 taels of silver that had just been displayed.
“That’s a good idea. If you mix rye bran with wheat flour and cornmeal, you can’t really tell what color it is.”
She decisively clicked to redeem the items and put them into her space. Then she saw the chicken wing wood box. Li Lanzhen knew that this little box was made for her by the original owner's husband. The original owner treasured it very much. You could tell how much she cherished it just by looking at how smooth and shiny the little box was.
Although the chicken-wing wood box could be exchanged for three large water bags, which should be necessities for those fleeing famine, Li Lanzhen did not exchange it. She would wait and see. If she reached a dead end during her escape, she would have to exchange it for the peach wood hairpin and the chicken-wing wood box.
After the procedure, Li Lanzhen felt weak all over, so she lay down on the bed to rest for a while. It was then that she remembered that she still had a wound on her head. No, she had to apply anti-inflammatory medicine to the wound, otherwise she would have to flee the famine tomorrow. Since she wanted to live well, she couldn't ruin her body.
Thinking about this, I suddenly remembered that the black pottery jar could be exchanged for 100 taels of silver on the mall's operation panel earlier.
Li Lanzhen sat up, crossed her legs, and communicated with the system telepathically: "System, come out here, I won't hit you. Tell me properly, what's the deal with the black pottery jar being able to be exchanged for 100 taels of silver?"
"Sizzle, mistake... pure mistake... sizzle..."
"Stop it. Since the system belongs to me and came with me from this world, shouldn't I be able to operate the shop panel myself and check what resources I can exchange for? You can clearly exchange for silver, so why are you saying I can't? Explain yourself."
"Right now, I need anti-inflammatory medicine to treat my wound. You need to return the right to use the mall to me immediately, otherwise, we might as well die together."
"Other people who transmigrate end up as empresses dowager, empresses, or matriarchs of royal palaces. Look at me, I transmigrated into a terrible mother-in-law! That's bad enough, but I'm starving and freezing, and I even have to flee famine. I seriously suspect you made me reincarnate into the wrong body?"
"Zzzzz, host, I just contacted our system headquarters and strongly requested that you be given the right to operate the mall. From now on, you can use the system mall freely, but you really cannot exchange the resources here for silver."
"No, really not?"
"It's really impossible."
"All right."
Li Lanzhen was also testing the system; in fact, given their current living conditions, food was far more important than silver.
I just know I come from the future, and money is the foundation of my life, so I'm always worried about the lack of money in my family.
She opened the shop panel, and lo and behold, there were quite a few items waiting to be exchanged, all sorts of different kinds, with each item labeled with what she needed to exchange for.
"There's so much food—water bags, steamed buns, flatbread—but I have nothing to exchange for it. What am I going to do?"
"Antiques? This house is bare, we're lucky if we can even get enough to eat, where would we find any antiques?"
Li Lanzhen glanced at them privately and suddenly remembered that the system had asked for the black pottery jar and the small box made of chicken wing wood earlier; these were things that someone should like.
She suppressed her excitement and went out to walk around each room to see what she could redeem in the store.
"System, keep your eyes wide open! If anything is useful, call me!"
System: I, a StarCraft system, have actually been reduced to a lowly errand boy searching for "useful" things.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com