In her previous life, on the very day the original owner was arrested, Ding Chunli had suffered a miscarriage and severe hemorrhaging from the shock, resulting in the deaths of both mother and child.
Back then, the autumn harvest had just ended, and Ding Chunli, exhausted and with her pregnancy already delicate, suffered a miscarriage from the fright, losing both her own life and her baby's.
"The easy chores are all done by the village elders and little kids. I'm strong and healthy, how could I go and snatch light work from the old folks and children?" Ding Chunli said.
She didn't want her father-in-law to give the village head a hard time, nor did she want people in the village gossiping. After all, there were several other pregnant women in the village; if the village head assigned her light work, what about the others? People don't mind scarcity as much as they mind unfairness, and if that happened, there would surely be a fuss.
"Yuanchun, take the porridge into the main room, I'll go get the cornmeal buns from the kitchen," Ding Chunli said, turning around and heading into the kitchen.
Holding the wild vegetable porridge, Yuanchun walked into the main room.
Staring at the steaming bowl of wild vegetable porridge, Yuanchun shamelessly swallowed hard.
How long had it been since she last tasted grain?
By the third year of the apocalypse, all grain had gone extinct.
Plants had also mutated and were entirely poisonous.
The only things edible were the meat of mutated beasts.
She had chewed on meat for seven years—and not even good meat, either; it was rock-hard, like gnawing on tree bark, scraping a layer of skin off her throat every time she swallowed.
Goodness knows how long it had been since she last ate actual grain.
Yet, no matter how much her mouth watered, Yuanchun managed to hold back.
"Sister-in-law, where has everyone gone?" Yuanchun left the main room with great reluctance and ducked into the kitchen.
Ding Chunli was picking the cornmeal buns out of the pot and placing them into a wicker tray.
Looking at the steaming cornmeal buns, Yuanchun's saliva flowed even more wildly, threatening to overflow.
"They've all gone to water the private plot. Grandma said that before the autumn harvest, we need to give the potatoes, radishes, and Chinese cabbages in the plot another round of nightsoil water to give them a boost and help them grow a bit bigger so we can have more to eat."
"The kids went to the fields to pull weeds, too."
Ding Chunli grabbed a piece of gauze, shook it open, and covered the cornmeal buns. "Yuanchun, take the buns to the main room. I'll boil some more hot water so that when Grandma and the others get back, they can wash up." Yuanchun swallowed hard while quickly carrying the buns into the main room, then bolted out the front door in a flash. "Sister-in-law, I'm going to the private plot to help!"
She couldn't stay there any longer.
It was sheer torture.
Being able to look at food but not eat it was simply the most agonizing thing in the world.
The Feng family was running out of food, and the cornmeal buns were made in strict quantities. If any were missing, people would know she had sneaked a bite.
No matter how much she craved them, she couldn't steal food—how embarrassing that would be.
Would a big shot like her lose face by stealing food? Not a chance.
...
The Feng family's private plot wasn't far from the village, and Yuanchun reached it in five or six minutes.
The family had borrowed the production brigade's manure buckets, and everyone was busy carrying nightsoil, watering, and weeding in full swing. Yuanchun walked over, took the water buckets off her biological mother Liu Qingqiu's shoulders, and said, "Mom, I'll carry the water, you go rest your feet for a bit."
The original owner's mother was among the first batch of educated youth to come down to the countryside from the south; she was well-read, cultured, delicate-looking, and petite. In her second year in the countryside, she fell into the water and was rescued by Feng the Second.
As a result, the two of them got married.
After marriage, the honest and dependable Feng the Second cherished his wife dearly, and Grandma Feng was a reasonable mother-in-law. Although Liu Qingqiu's life in the Feng family was a bit hard, she had never suffered any mistreatment.
"Everyone is working, how can I go rest? I'll go pull weeds," Liu Qingqiu rubbed her aching shoulders and went over to weed beside her mother-in-law.
Grandma Feng looked up, saw that her eldest granddaughter had arrived, and scolded, "Yuanchun, you little wretch, where were you running off to play just now? Everyone else came out to work, and not a trace of you was to be seen."