Chapter 652: Five-Zero Motherly Dao System (9)

Since she wanted to overlay the vegetable garden from the Farm Game onto the backyard of her new home, Xie Yang figured she needed to build a courtyard wall.

Since the backyard was being enclosed, she might as well enclose the front yard too.

The reason was ready-made: she lived alone, so it would be safer with a courtyard wall.

Cao Zhuren was very supportive when he heard her say this: "Indeed! A young girl like you living alone is truly unsettling; it's good to build a wall! I'll find people to mold more adobe bricks right now; since we're building it, we might as well build it high. Later, I'll ask a relative who works at the glass factory to get you a crate of broken glass. Once the wall is built, we'll stick a row of glass shards on top to keep those who love to pilfer from eyeing your home."

"Thank you, Cao Zhuren."

"What's there to thank? It's the slack season now, and everyone is idle anyway. Helping your family mold some adobe bricks can even earn them a few cents; they'll be fighting to do it!"

Xie Yang didn't stand on ceremony then.

There would be plenty of time in the future to repay the favor.

Thanks to the slack season, when everyone heard the Xie Family was building a house, they came to help, with two meals provided per day.

Meat dishes and fine grains were only available on the days they dug the foundation and raised the ridgepole; the other days were basically coarse-grain steamed buns paired with cracked-corn porridge and small pickles, but it was all-you-can-eat, so there was no shortage of people scrambling to help.

With many hands, the work was light; in less than a week, not only was the house built and the courtyard wall erected, but even the ground in the front yard had been packed down firmly, and the vegetable plot in the backyard had been prepared for her, with seeds already sown.

The village carpenter's family worked continuously for several days, prioritizing the doors, windows, and furniture for her. By now, the doors and windows were installed and the furniture had been delivered, so Xie Yang carried a tattered bundle containing her few clothes and moved into her new home.

The ridge-raising feast was very sumptuous.

Xie Yang took the money left over from the two hundred yuan and spent it all on meat and vegetables: pork belly, pig trotters, and large grass carp.

The large grass carp was braised in soy sauce, the pork belly was stewed with fried tofu, and the trotters were stewed with soybeans; the staple food was no longer sorghum buns or cornmeal buns, but steamed buns made of a mixture of white flour and cornmeal.

The Cadres from the township and the villagers who helped her build the house ate quite contentedly.

When Qiu Caohua heard about it, she initially curled her lip and said to her husband: "I just knew Xie Yun must have left something behind for his daughter. That dead girl pretended to be stupid and foolish when she was at our house, stubbornly lying to us that she had no money. If she had no money, how could she treat those people to such a good meal? An ungrateful white-eyed wolf!"

It wasn't until one day when she heard her son had wired six hundred yuan back, and under the witness of the township Cadre, it had all been given to Xie Yang, that she was so angry she nearly fainted.

"That silly boy Mingcheng! Why did he have to give her money! And giving so much at once! That dead girl ate our food and lived in our house, and we haven't even settled the bill with her yet! The two gold bars were exchanged by the old man at the black market back then, and they only fetched a little over a hundred in total; if he was going to pay it back, he should have paid back a hundred! Why give her three hundred!"

The more Qiu Caohua thought about it, the more unwilling she felt, and she stormed over to Xie Yang's house to demand the money:

"Open the door, you little slut! Did Mingcheng give you six hundred? You have the nerve to take it, you slut? I'll let you keep a hundred at most, and the remaining five hundred must be returned to our family!"

The more Qiu Caohua pounded on the door, the angrier she got.

Thinking about how the meat and vegetables this dead girl had brought out to treat guests for the ridge-raising a few days ago were actually bought with her family's Mingcheng's money, it pained her as if that meat had been sliced off her own body.

"Did you hear me, dead girl? Open the door! Return the money! Give back the extra money Mingcheng gave you to our family!"

Xie Yang, of course, heard her.

She was lying on a lounge chair in the backyard. The old carpenter's craftsmanship was truly excellent; the wooden lounge chair he made for her was very ergonomically sound. She had brought out a cashmere blanket, half-covering herself, lying there basking in the sun while playing the Farm Game.

Ever since she moved into the new house and moved the vegetable garden from the deep mountains to her own backyard, covering the vegetable plot there, she would come to the backyard to play the Farm Game for a while whenever she was tired from practicing.

Looking at the real vegetable garden before her, one-click operation was truly satisfying!

One-click weeding—the small weeds sprouting in the garden were instantly cleared away completely.

One-click watering—the dry soil instantly became moist, returning to its most fertile state.

When the task bar indicated there were mature crops, she would just use one-click harvest.

"Swish—"

The mature crops instantly disappeared from the field.

At the same time, in the Farm Warehouse, the numbers in the top right corner of the icons for several crops changed.

In the vegetable garden, a pile of withered stems or old leaves remained.

Selecting one-click hoeing, then selecting one-click planting, a new planting cycle began again...

In short, she was very busy; how could she have time to pay attention to irrelevant people.

But she couldn't just be scolded for nothing.

If Qiu Caohua hadn't come to cause trouble, she would still be enjoying the pleasures of her new home for a while and wouldn't have time to deal with her.

Now, however...

While Qiu Caohua was pounding on her courtyard gate in the front, Xie Yang went around from the backyard to the Old Zhuang Family.

Zhuang Laotou was sleeping in the room. Xie Yang held her breath and sprinkled some "Finger Drunk" that could instantly put someone into a deep sleep. Before long, Zhuang Laotou's snoring was thunderous.

She found the hole in the wall where Qiu Caohua hid her money, pulled out an oil-paper parcel, untied the leather cord, and inside was exactly the one hundred yuan Zhuang Mingcheng had sent with his family letter. Xie Yang took it without hesitation.

After thinking about it, she put a piece of sweet honey cake into the oil-paper parcel, wrapped it back up, tied the leather cord, sprinkled some fragrant cake crumbs on the outside of the paper, and stuffed it back into the hole in the wall.

Afterward, she went to the small cellar where Qiu Caohua hid her grain and collected all the fine grain from the innermost bags into the Aircraft Cargo Hold. She left behind a few empty sacks, smearing butter and honey on the inside and outside of the sacks.

Afterward, she specifically detoured to the village road and greeted the passing villagers.

"Going up the mountain, Yangyang?"

"Yes! There isn't much firewood left at home, so I'm going to pick up some firewood."

"The weather is getting colder; you really should stock up on more firewood."

Not until she was far from the village and saw no one around did Xie Yang take out a cucumber she had just harvested before leaving. It had no pesticide residue and no dust pollution; it was cleaner than an ordinary washed cucumber, so she picked it up and ate it directly.

It was crisp and refreshing—delicious!

In Shili Village in early winter, the fields of every household were basically planted with overwintering vegetables like cabbage and radishes; where could one see such fresh and tender cucumbers?

Even the autumn cucumbers were so old they could only be fed to pigs.

Xie Yang glanced at her current farm level; she had just leveled up from Level 11 to Level 12 last night, and the number of unlocked crop seeds had increased from the initial three to thirty-six, though they were all very common varieties.

Most of them were vegetables; besides the Level 1 Potato, the only things that could serve as staple food were Wheat and sweet potatoes. According to Ace, rice would not be unlocked until Level 21.

But Wheat was not bad either.

She had already stocked up on quite a lot of fresh vegetables, so Xie Yang planned to plant several more rounds of Wheat next.

For example, the lettuce, garland chrysanthemum, and chives unlocked when she leveled from 11 to 12 this time could all be harvested in 6 hours.

Planting one plot of each, she couldn't even finish eating them by herself, so she planted Wheat in the remaining six plots.

It was a pity that the unlocking of the Processing Workshop was still a long way off; she was thinking about making a small stone mill herself and installing it in the backyard to grind some flour when the weather was nice.

Since I was already out, I might as well head up the mountain to scout for a stone suitable for a millstone.