Chapter 672: Five-Zero Motherly Dao System (29)

"Sister Yangyang, my family made dumplings, and my mother told me to bring you a plate. Remember to heat them up to eat during the New Year's Eve vigil!"

On the morning of New Year's Eve, although the weather was very cold, the sun was bright, and Xie Yang was checking the Smart Breeding Farm covering the Chicken Coop.

Waking up this morning, she harvested a batch of water chestnuts that had matured in six hours, planning to peel them and make a sweet and sour water chestnut appetizer for the New Year's Eve dinner. In her ear came Ace's congratulatory voice; the Smart Vegetable Garden had finally reached Level 40, unlocking the Smart Breeding Farm.

The livestock species unlocked by the Level 1 breeding farm was the domestic chicken. It just so happened that her home had a Chicken Coop and five diligent hens that produced five or six eggs a day, so she immediately chose to cover it.

One-click water addition, one-click feeding, one-click cleaning, one-click egg collection...

Now, even when she wasn't home, she didn't have to worry about the chickens not being fed or the Chicken Coop not being cleaned; it was all done with a thought and a single click.

Just as she was looking with satisfaction at the hens happily clucking in the brand-new Chicken Coop, Liuqiang knocked open her courtyard gate.

"Thank you, Liuqiang. Wait for me a moment, I'll get you a plate of pork skin jelly."

Xie Yang took the dumplings Liuqiang had brought into the kitchen, washed and dried the plate, then filled it with a portion of the pork skin jelly she had made herself, and also packed a small separate bowl of dipping sauce for him.

She also gave him a bag of honey nut candy she had made herself while idle the night before.

The fruit trees at home matured a batch every half month, which meant the Honey was also harvested every half month. Each time she harvested a few catties of honey, she usually used it at most for soaking in water to drink, but with the New Year, she thought about making some sweet pastries.

She used Kuihua seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnut kernels, peanut kernels, and sesame seeds, stir-fried them with the Honey until cooked and mixed well, pressed them into brick-like blocks while hot, and after cooling, cut them into strips; it was a very good recreational snack.

Liuqiang liked running errands for Xie Yang the most, and he never came empty-handed; of course, he would also share any good things he had with Xie Yang.

For instance, the grapes his youngest uncle gave him to eat.

There were six in total; he tasted one himself, and gave all five to Xie Yang.

"Sister Yangyang, don't you think it's strange? To have such fresh, big grapes in this season."

Xie Yang took a look and thought, "Huh, aren't these the grapes I used to 'comfort' the martyr's family?"

"Does your uncle's family have a relative who sacrificed on the battlefield?" Xie Yang asked Liuqiang.

"I haven't heard of it." Liuqiang tilted his head and thought for a moment, "It's also possible I don't know. I'll go home and ask my mother, and I'll come tell you later."

After saying this, with the honey nut candy stuffed in his pocket and holding the pork skin jelly and dipping sauce in his hands, he took off and walked quickly home.

He was so fast that Xie Yang didn't even have time to react.

Ten minutes later, Liuqiang ran back, panting, to tell her:

"Sister Yangyang, I asked my mother and got it clear. There is indeed a martyr in Nili Village who sacrificed on the battlefield, but there's no kinship with my grandmother's family. The grapes my youngest uncle gave me were likely used as collateral by the youngest son of that family's eldest branch, who couldn't pay back the cigarette money he owed my youngest uncle."

【Host.】

The Main System suddenly popped up:

【System is just eating this gossip. The soldier who sacrificed in Nili Village was named Liu Jinyuan. He went to the front line shortly after getting married, and now his child is only two and a half years old. His wife, upon hearing he had sacrificed, couldn't take the blow and fainted on the spot; she was already beyond saving when sent to the hospital. His parents have always been biased toward his eldest brother's family and moved all the consolation gifts to his eldest brother's house. But don't worry, Host, System retrieved the consolation gifts as soon as it found out, losing at most a bunch of grapes that had been picked apart. However, it added some other things, like Malt Extract, Canned Food of oranges, peach shortbread, biscuits... these were sent by the village Cadre when they visited to offer condolences. Do you see if they can be used?】

"..."

Should she praise the Main System for "doing a great job"?

At the time, she was worried that if there were troublemakers among the martyr's family, what would happen if the meat, grain, and vegetables she sent out benefited these troublemakers?

The Main System indicated it would supervise.

When encountering the above situation, it would take back the distributed consolation gifts; in any case, it would never let the wicked take advantage.

She didn't expect it to apply what it learned, and even take back the consolation gifts sent by others.

"No one discovered it, right?"

【Rest assured, Host, System took them when they weren't paying attention. But even if they discovered it, it wouldn't matter. Many people think it's a divine manifestation. If a deity can make these appear, they can certainly make them disappear.】

"..."

Xie Yang twitched the corner of her mouth, then thought: "What about Liu Jinyuan's child? Losing his father and mother before he's three, will his grandmother and eldest uncle's family adopt him?"

【How could they! When his grandmother took the eldest uncle's family to move the consolation gifts, not only were they not good to him, they even cursed him as a jinx, a curse to his father and mother, and said that nobody would want him even if given away, leaving him alone at home. Fortunately, his maternal grandmother came to take care of him, but his maternal grandmother has poor mobility and relies on her own son for support, so she likely won't adopt him.】

【Host, why did you stop talking? You aren't thinking of adopting him, are you?】

Xie Yang actually did have such an idea.

She was a young woman living in two rooms, farming two mu of land, and had the compensation money given by Zhuang Mingcheng in her hands. There were quite a few people who wanted to court her, both openly and secretly, and some even had the idea of "eating the heirless household."

She wasn't afraid, but she found it annoying.

Day after day, there was no peace.

With a child, could those women who always kept saying "Your father only had you as a child, you must leave an heir for your father's branch" finally shut their mouths? Could those families who always felt they could "eat the heirless household" finally put those thoughts away?

Moreover, she didn't just plan to adopt Liu Jinyuan's child; she also had the Main System count how many other martyrs' children in the surrounding area had become orphans and had relatives who were as fierce as wolves and tigers.

【Host, are you planning to run an orphanage?】

Xie Yang nodded: "With the unlocking of the breeding farm, the scale of the Orchard is also getting larger and larger, and a Processing Workshop will be unlocked in the future. With just this little bit of land at home, there's no room to expand."

She would try to see if she could apply for an orphanage in her own name. It might not be approved in later generations, but now that materials were scarce, she was willing to sacrifice her own money to adopt a batch of martyrs' children. If the government just approved her a slightly larger plot of homestead land to build a row of dormitories for the children to live in, and she took responsibility for all future living expenses, it should presumably be approved.

Without delay, after the New Year, Xie Yang went to the town and found Cao Zhuren to tell him her thoughts.

"It's good that you have this idea, but the problem is, how will you support the adopted children? Aside from the output of your two mu of land, you have no other source of income. Even if the township allocates you another piece of land, how could you, one person, manage to farm it all?"

Cao Zhuren told her the situation he heard from the meeting in the county before the New Year: "Our Hongqi County has over a thousand soldiers who sacrificed on the front lines, and there are at least dozens of young orphans with no one to raise them. Just in our township, from what I know, there are already five orphans. Are you sure you can manage to raise them?"

?? No time today, one update for now~