Chapter 666: Motherhood System for the 50s (23)

That may be what they say, but everyone in their hearts feels that Qiu Caohua's grandson likely has a physical problem.

A four-month-old baby, no matter how soft their body is, shouldn't be soft enough to turn into a puddle of mud.

"If there's nothing wrong with that child, would Mingcheng's city-dwelling wife be willing to dump her precious son, whom she carried for ten months, in the countryside for the parents-in-law to raise?"

"It's not just me saying this, but city wives don't look kindly upon their rural parents-in-law. Take my cousin's son, for instance; the wife he married is only from a worker's family in the County, and she never let the child come to the countryside alone. They basically just bring the child back to stay for a few days during the New Year, and take them away as soon as the holiday is over."

"Exactly, and Mingcheng's wife comes from a Cadre family in Beijing. If the child were healthy and sound, would she be willing to send him to the countryside?"

At this moment, everyone had figured out the truth.

It was just that Qiu Caohua and her husband cared about face; they didn't say anything, so everyone else didn't ask too many questions to their faces.

But in reality, everyone in Shili Village who needed to know, already knew.

Especially as the child grew day by day, approaching the end of the year, it stood to reason that a nine- or ten-month-old child, even if they couldn't walk independently yet, should be able to sit in a bamboo cart and scoot around the courtyard happily.

But this child, let alone moving around in a bamboo cart, couldn't even sit steadily on their own. The whole person seemed as if they had no bones; without being held or supported, they would go limp like a puddle of mud.

Now, who didn't know?

It was just that people pitied the child and sympathized with the Old Zhuang Family, so they kept their mouths shut and didn't go around talking about it.

Pity? Sympathy?

After hearing this, Xie Yang smiled noncommittally.

According to the memories left behind by the original body from her previous life, that child was cold-hearted.

The original body had dragged a child with congenital cerebral palsy from four or five months old, when they didn't even know how to use the toilet, all the way to eighteen, spending who knows how much heart and blood to rehabilitate them until they looked no different from a normal person.

Yet this child, in their heart and eyes, only ever acknowledged their parents in the city.

Even though Zhuang Mingcheng and his wife didn't care about him, sending back nothing more than three or five yuan a month. But that little bit of money, let alone carefully raising a child with cerebral palsy, wouldn't even leave much of a surplus if they were raising a healthy child.

Besides those few yuan, they would occasionally mail back some toys that the younger siblings in the city had used and no longer liked.

The two elders of the Zhuang family worried that their eldest grandson would truly acknowledge the original body as his mother, so after he turned ten, they secretly brainwashed the child behind the original body's back, saying that his biological parents in Beijing didn't abandon him, but had no choice, because Xie Yang was the Zhuang family's Child Bride, and the Zhuang family owed her, so they had to leave her an heir.

The child believed this to be true, genuinely thinking that his parents in the city loved him and only sacrificed him, their eldest son, by leaving him in the countryside to keep the original body company because they had no other choice.

Therefore, not only did he lack any sense of gratitude, but he actually harbored a grudge against the original body. It was only because he truly needed the original body to take care of his daily life that he didn't show it.

It wasn't until after the original body died that he felt finally relieved and free; he held a perfunctory funeral and couldn't wait to return to Beijing to reunite with his biological parents' family.

After the original body died, her soul did not dissipate immediately; watching the adopted son she had painstakingly raised for eighteen years couldn't wait to sever ties with her and go to Beijing to rely on his parents, her soul felt as cold as if it had fallen into an Ice Lake.

That was why, upon discovering she had been reborn and was bound to a Motherhood System that forced her to walk the same old path, she had closed her eyes and preferred to die rather than continue living.

Therefore, regarding this child, Xie Yang didn't feel there was anything to sympathize with.

Even without what happened in the previous life, it wasn't her place as an outsider to sympathize.

That kid wasn't without parents; on the contrary, his parents were alive and well, and they were even people in Beijing who ate commodity grain.

In his previous life, didn't he firmly believe that his parents loved him and only sacrificed him by leaving him in his hometown because they had no choice? Well then, in this life, without the original body as the big fool, let's see if he still holds onto his previous life's ideas.

As for the affairs of the Zhuang family, Xie Yang treated them as gossip; if she was interested, she would listen, and if she wasn't, she would close her ears.

After the autumn harvest, the fields weren't as busy, except for sowing some rapeseed and planting some cabbage and radishes in the Dry Land.

Planting them now meant harvesting before the new year; after clearing them, she would deep-plow the land to let it freeze, then continue with a new round of sowing in the spring.

After the Paddy Field finished the late rice and the rapeseed was harvested, the next step was usually to plant potatoes. Potatoes didn't deplete the soil's fertility and wouldn't affect the yield of the rice in the coming year.

Xie Yang, however, planned to plant a round of Chinese milk vetch.

The half-mu of Paddy Field allocated to her by the village lacked fertility, and the yields of this year's early and late rice hadn't been very good.

Although she wasn't short of grain, she still wanted to improve the soil's fertility.

Of course, she could replace the ordinary rice seeds with high-yield rice seeds soaked in Spirit Spring, or use Plant Nutrient Solution to increase the yield per mu, but wouldn't others be suspicious if inferior Paddy Field produced yields comparable to or even higher than good fields?

Thus, she thought of Chinese milk vetch.

Chinese milk vetch, also known as "field-fertilizing grass" or "grass seed flower," was a highly efficient nitrogen-fixing green manure crop; its fertility was long-lasting and stable, and it could also improve soil structure.

Planting a round of Chinese milk vetch after the autumn harvest might turn the inferior Paddy Field into good land by next year or the year after.

So, Xie Yang first used a pen name to write a manuscript about Chinese milk vetch fertilizing the fields and mailed it to the *Farmer Masses* Newspaper Office, then every morning she would go up the mountain, returning at noon, carrying back baskets of Chinese milk vetch with soil, and spreading them in the fallow rice fields.

Seeing her plant the worthless grass seed flowers from the mountain into the rice fields, everyone laughed and teased:

"She's still young, after all; one person eats and the whole family is full, no pressure to support a family."

"Young girls are just different; they'd rather plant some flowers and grass than plant some potatoes."

Since they didn't tease her to her face, Xie Yang pretended not to know.

But the Zhishu Xifu, worried that she was young and inexperienced, specifically came to her door to persuade her: "Why are you planting that stuff? It's not edible or drinkable, plant some potatoes! Don't look at how the weather has been favorable this year and the rice yield is okay; what if next year... ah, pui pui pui! Can't say unlucky things! In short, you live alone, you can't eat as much as you have, you have to learn to hoard grain..."

The Zhishu Xifu lectured her like she was her own daughter, and at the end asked: "Did you not save any seeds? I have a few left over after planting, I'll go get them for you. If it's not enough, I'll help you ask around, ask a few more families, there's always some extra. You don't even have to pay, just return them a few potatoes when they mature."

Xie Yang said with a wry smile: "Auntie, I'm not planting grass seed flowers because I didn't save potato seeds; it's because this can fertilize the fields."

"What? Planting this can fertilize the fields? How does it fertilize? Just planting it in the ground can fertilize the fields?"

"Yes, it has a formal name called Chinese milk vetch, also known as field-fertilizing grass; if you plant it, the rice yield will increase next year."

"Ho! Really? How do you know?"

"I saw it in the newspaper."

Xie Yang then said that during the few days she stayed at the township guesthouse, she was bored, so she borrowed the guesthouse's newspaper to read and saw an article written about Chinese milk vetch fertilizing fields.