Chapter 4

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Protagonist:

Chai Mi

On the other side, Chai Youqing left the hospital and ran into a man who came over, patted him, and said he wanted to borrow a light...

Afterwards, the only fifty yuan in Chai Youqing's pocket was lifted by someone.

However, it wasn't until Chai Youqing was about to take a vehicle home that he discovered his money was gone... sufficient to show the other party was a habitual thief.

At the station, Chai Youqing's whole state was a bit off. The family wasn't well-off, just that little bit of money, saved up bite by bite, and the result was it got stolen the moment he went out... wife and kids still in the hospital...

Hard.

Chai Youqing smoked until past nine in the evening, when he ran into someone from Sanjiacun, and only then hitched a ride on their inverted donkey and returned home.

Arriving at the village entrance, Chai Youqing thanked the inverted donkey rider profusely, then went home alone.

First he finished tending to the old cow and those few sheep, then randomly went to the vegetable garden, picked two small black eggplants, and ate them with the remaining cornmeal cakes, which counted as dinner.

But at night, Chai Youqing slept restlessly, staying in a state of insomnia; in his heart he was thinking, if only he could really turn that wasteland behind Wuhu Mountain into his own, that would be good.

Working hard, isn't it just so the three daily meals can be eaten a bit better?

As for Chai Youqing's parents' side, Chai Youqing made the unprecedented decision to still go and talk to them.

The next day, just past five o'clock, the sky had just brightened, the temperature still somewhat low, yet Chai Youqing had already fed the cow and sheep early, even ladled a catty of cornmeal for the dog with a broken gourd ladle... afterwards Chai Youqing went to his own front courtyard.

That is the Laozhai.

Every blade of grass and tree in the Laozhai, Chai Youqing knew extraordinarily well. As the eldest son of the family, Chai Youqing suffered the most hardships and ate the most bitterness.

Chai Youqing looked at the stone walls around the courtyard; those were all quarried by him and his wife Su Wan together on the mountain.

(Quarrying stone specifically means using gunpowder to blast large stones into pieces first, then using pry bars, iron pliers, sledgehammers, etc. to smash the stones again.)

And the wood for the new house built at the Laozhai was also cut by Chai Youqing and Su Wan together in the woods, only in the end he never got to live in it.

Chai Youqing was momentarily in a trance, paused a while before sighing, and entered the courtyard.

Reaching the house door, before Chai Youqing could enter, he heard voices speaking inside.

"Day after day no end to it... the eldest daughter-in-law makes trouble, the third daughter-in-law also makes trouble, truly no end. You say, when the old cow was divided, the calf was left and given to the third daughter-in-law, the third daughter-in-law sold the calf to her younger sister, now Che Doubao flips old accounts again, saying that old cow belongs to Youqing, but the calf should be hers, and also saying you promised? Did you promise or not?"

The speaker was precisely Wang Huirong.

"What are you quarreling about so early in the morning?" Then Chai Youqing heard his father Chai Zhongxiao's impatient voice: "Sleep properly."

Chai Youqing stopped at the door, not knowing whether he should go in.

Inside they nagged a few more sentences, Chai Youqing heard clearly; the meaning was no, make his family produce another calf, after all the old cow has birthed four or five calves already, one a year, not short one calf...

Chai Youqing frowned, but in the end still entered the room: "Mom, Dad. I'm here..."

A startled sound came from inside the room: "What are you doing coming so early in the morning? Come to collect a debt? What time is it, and you come over?!"

Chai Youqing: "..."

Waited a while, Chai Zhongxiao and Wang Huirong only then finished dressing, finally said: "Come in, what matter so early in the morning?"