When the final dish—a steaming plate of stir-fried eggs with green peppers—was set upon the mottled wooden table, Yang Huaiqing's buttocks had barely grazed the bench's edge. He pushed his chipped coarse-ceramic bowl forward, the bottom grating against the table's cracks with a faint sound.
Then, leaning closer to Zhao Shuzhuo at the head of the table, he lowered his voice, which carried the scent of firewood drifting from the stove: "Brother Zhao, when we were marking boundaries on the mud at the brick factory this afternoon, why did you stop us from mentioning that plot of land? Could you be hiding some unseen treasure there?"
Zhao Shuzhuo's chopsticks, holding a piece of pickled cucumber, paused mid-air. His rough cloth sleeve brushed past the chipped rim of his bowl, revealing a winding scar on the back of his hand—left behind last year when blasting the mountain for stone. He raised his eyes to look at Hé Yǔshuǐ diagonally across from him, seeing her use a blue-flowered handkerchief to wipe vegetable broth from Yang Xiaohua's sleeve. The patch on the edge of the handkerchief fluttered slightly in the lamplight of the kerosene lamp.
Chapter 754