Chapter 107

I spent all of yesterday by Xue Bing's side. First, I took her to eat a bowl of scallion noodles with chili oil like I did, then I took her to my room, took off my outer clothes and pants myself, and lay in the quilt in my underwear to warm it for a long time. Only when the quilt radiated a warm breath did I call Xue Bing to crawl in. She nestled in my arms like a little cat, hugged my back, breathed happily and softly, and slept quietly for the whole afternoon.

Pan Xiaoqin also returned in the evening. She was a person with abundant energy, shouting under my window, saying we should go to her place for dinner in the evening.

I poked half my body out of the quilt to respond to her. Xue Bing in my arms woke up, lazily stretched her limbs, inadvertently stuck her feet out of the cold quilt, and was so startled that she curled up her small body. I increased the strength of my embrace a little to let her feel more warmth. She beamed, and her hand reached into my underwear, slowly roaming over my chest, gently stroking it, making me feel restless.

This action of Xue Bing's was hinting at me. We had been husband and wife for half a year, and we were completely familiar with each other's needs and hints.

I kissed her flushed face and said, "Wife, you're so good."

She shyly buried her head in my chest and licked it with her tongue, which immediately excited me. My hand restlessly wanted to go in to capture her soft, firm little white rabbits. After groping for a while, I withdrew my hand and said, "Xiaoqin is calling us to eat."

Xue Bing gave a soft "mm" and stretched out a leg, resting it on me.

I whispered in her ear, "Tonight, okay?"

She twisted her body reluctantly, lay in my arms for a long time without moving, and after a long while, said faintly, "Feng, I feel like you don't belong to me alone."

I kissed her lips and said, "Don't let your imagination run wild. I belong only to you, and you must belong only to me."

The passion that had just ignited faded a lot at her words. Sex in winter hurts the body and the liver. A high school classmate of mine who studied Traditional Chinese Medicine once warned me, saying, "Men, you must know how to nourish your body. For example, in sex, you should nourish your essence in autumn and regulate it in winter. Moderation in sexual intercourse benefits both others and yourself."

At the time, I despised his warning very much. Sex is such a wonderful thing, does it really have to be divided by solar terms? From then on, I called that classmate "Taoist," a profession that knows how to nourish life, has desire, and can enjoy it in a justified way.

Taoists and monks, one emphasizes reincarnation and the other emphasizes spiritual perfection; both are people in the mundane world, yet they have vastly different attitudes toward life.

Those who are Taoists can marry and enjoy the ultimate pleasures of life, while monks, once they enter their empty gates, can only face ancient Buddhas and green lamps, treating the thousand charms before their eyes as nothing but a stinking skin bag.

When a person reaches the level of a monk, it's either because they have seen through the mundane world or they have realized the essence. To be a person without desire or demand, one's spirit is either split or perverted.

I don't care about the prohibitions of solar terms, and I don't believe in the "Taoist's" way of nourishing life. Sex between men and women is actually a form of nourishing life!

I reached out to help her comb her somewhat messy hair and kissed her white, jade-like neck, saying, "Baby wife, it's dark, let's get up and eat something."

Xue Bing gave a reluctant "mm," got dressed and got out of bed without a word, standing barefoot in the cold air, letting the cold air wrap around her delicate ankles and erode her ice-like skin. My heart ached. I jumped out of bed, took her into my arms, put socks on her, and said, "You'll catch a cold."

She pouted and said, "I'm willing."

I was confused by her sudden attitude and asked guiltily, "What's wrong?"

She looked at me and said softly, "Let's just eat at home, okay?"

I smiled and said, "We don't even have a stove, what are we going to cook?"

Xue Bing said stubbornly, "Anyway, I don't want to go to Pan Xiaoqin's shop to eat."

I gave a grin and said, "Wife, you're overthinking it, aren't you? She's just a child, inviting us to dinner, of course, she still has to look at our faces."

Xue Bing looked at me in confusion, and I continued, "I have shares in her Pan Xiaoqin's supermarket. Going to her place to eat is actually eating at home. Eating our own food, we must be in a good mood."

Xue Bing looked at me in disbelief and said, "Really? When did you get shares in her supermarket?"

I said, "Think about it, she only worked as a sales clerk in Hengyue City for a year or so, where would she have the capital to open a supermarket?"

She thought about it thoughtfully and said, "That's true. Hers is the first supermarket opened in Suxi Township, and since it opened, business has been booming. I'm not jealous, but a little girl, doing such a big thing at such a young age, can I not worry?"

I asked with a smile, "What are you worried about?"

She gave another shy smile and said, "I'm worried about you." She reached out her finger and tapped my forehead lightly, saying, "However, if you dare to mess around, I'll make you wish you were dead."

Her words gave me goosebumps on my back. They say women are poisonous; the most poisonous thing is a woman's heart. Although Xue Bing's expression was clearly joking, I couldn't help but worry about the terror behind her joke.

After getting dressed, we went to the supermarket together. Pan Shurong brought his wife and children to greet me with a simple smile. After his wife came to help at the supermarket's small restaurant, her skin quickly returned to the smoothness and elasticity of a young woman, and her waist, which used to be like a water bucket, turned into a charming water-snake waist. As long as a mountain woman is well-nourished, her beauty is naturally carved.

The children were still very reserved, staring with their eyes wide open, stuffing snacks into their mouths, not saying a word, just looking at me and Xue Bing and laughing foolishly.

It's New Year's, and children need to be given red envelopes. My family attaches particular importance to this habit. No matter how tight the family's finances were, there would always be a small red envelope by my pillow on New Year's Eve, perhaps with fifty cents or twenty cents inside. Even now, at nearly thirty years old, my parents still give me red envelopes. I've tried to refuse several times, but they say they won't give me red envelopes until I have children and can give them out myself.

The Little New Year had just passed, and there were still five or six days until the New Year, but I decided to spend the New Year in Hengyue City. I wouldn't have time to give the children red envelopes on New Year's Eve, so I wanted to give them now.

I asked Pan Xiaoqin for a few red envelopes and gave everyone ten yuan. Pan Shurong's wife was so excited she almost shed tears.

Pan Xiaoqin's blind mother was huddled by the stove, a clean, thick cloth covering her thin legs, her hair combed neatly without a single strand out of place, as if it were as smooth as if she had used hair wax. A faint, kind smile always hovered on her face. Hearing my voice, she groped for me to sit down.

After chatting for a few sentences, Pan Shurong prepared the dining table. In the middle of the table was a Yaojia hot pot, bubbling with fragrance inside. Tea tree mushroom stewed with an old hen is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Before we started eating, Jin Ling and her husband came in with their child. They brushed off the snowflakes on their bodies, stomped their feet, and said with a smile, "It's starting to snow again."

I looked outside the door. The pitch-black night was like a bowl of ink poured from the sky. The light in the room was like a sharp sword, piercing the firmament. The pale yellow light printed on the snow gave people a faint warmth. The light in the room slowly spread over us, carrying a wet melancholy, like the delicate limbs of an infant, touching the fragility in the bottom of my heart at every moment. A feeling of homesickness suddenly rose in my heart, and my eyes inexplicably moistened, and in the end, I couldn't help but shed a pool of clear tears.

Seeing me cry, everyone stopped talking and looked at each other cautiously.

Xue Bing patted my back and said, "What's wrong with you?"

I shook my head and forced a smile, saying, "It's nothing, it's New Year's. I miss home."

Pan Xiaoqin curled her lip and said, "Isn't this your home?"

Xue Bing ignored Pan Xiaoqin and comforted me, saying, "We'll go home when it's light."

Jin Ling hurriedly opened the wine bottle and enthusiastically greeted everyone to sit down. Pan Shurong's wife twisted her waist and said exaggeratedly, "Xiaoqin, you have to go home for the New Year. I heard from the ancients that whether you have money or not, you go home for the New Year. Little Chen is young, it's certain he misses home."

I adjusted my mood and said with a smile, "I'm sorry. I saw such heavy snow outside; I haven't seen it for many years."

Everyone echoed, saying that it had indeed been several years since they had seen such heavy snow, and it was falling continuously; it looked like this snow would last until the New Year. They also said snow is good, it freezes the pests in the soil to death, and it looks like there will be a good harvest next year.

After chatting for a while, everyone started drinking and eating. Zhao Jinming held his son in his arms, picked a tea tree mushroom from the bowl, blew on it by his mouth, held it in his mouth to suck away the greasiness and spiciness of the dish, and then fed it into Yu'er's mouth, watching his son eat with full joy.

Xue Bing sat on my left, Xiaoqin on my right, Zhao Jinming next to Xiaoqin, and the blind mother refused to sit at the table, sitting on the side listening to us talk.

The meal lasted for more than an hour. Pan Shurong and his wife got up to tidy up the bowls and chopsticks. When the table was completely cleared, Pan Xiaoqin took out a stack of money and an account book and began to pay wages.

Pan Shurong and his wife held the money with full joy, saying they would take the whole family to the county town when it was light to stroll around and buy some New Year's goods by the way. None of Pan Shurong's children had ever been to the county town. Hearing they would go when it was light, the children were so happy they kept calling him "Dad" while surrounding him. Jin Ling also took her wages and handed them to Zhao Jinming with a flick of her hand. She didn't manage money at home; Zhao Jinming was the director of the foundation and dealt with money every day, so it was reassuring to let him manage it. Pan Xiaoqin packed the wages of the two supermarket girls in an envelope, waiting to pay them when they came to work tomorrow morning.

After receiving their wages, Pan Shurong was in a particularly good mood and wanted to spend his own money to buy a bottle of good wine from the supermarket; he wanted to drink with me and Zhao Jinming again.

Pan Xiaoqin flatly refused, saying that drinking too much wine hurts the body, not to mention that I still had a cold. I went along with the flow and said I would accompany him to drink another day. When their wages were all arranged, Pan Xiaoqin said, "Brother Chen, now let's settle the accounts."

I had no interest in settling the accounts. From the preparation to the opening of her supermarket, I had almost never participated. The only thing was that the startup capital for the supermarket was supported by me. At the beginning, we didn't say whether it was a loan to her or a partnership. Now that she asked me to settle the accounts, it seemed she regarded me as a partner.

When Xue Bing heard about settling the accounts and saw that I hadn't moved for a long time, she thought I was embarrassed, so she took the account book from Pan Xiaoqin and said, "I'll do it."

The two women pressed the calculator for a long time, and Zhao Jinming's family had already said goodbye and left before they had finished calculating. Pan Shurong's children had all gone to sleep, and the blind mother had also been helped to rest by Pan Shurong's wife. I sat in the darkness of the light, watching the two women whispering. Finally, Xue Bing opened her mouth wide and said to me, "I really didn't expect to earn so much."

As she spoke, she handed me the account book to look at. I glanced at it; the supermarket's income was over 30,000, and the income from the small restaurant was even more, almost 100,000. In Suxi Township, this figure was enough to stun a person.

Pan Xiaoqin took the cash out of her bag, divided the money into two piles, and looked at me with a smile, saying, "The big pile is yours; you are the boss. The small pile is mine; I am the manager."

As she spoke, she pushed the money toward me. I smiled and didn't take it, looking at Xue Bing.

Xue Bing hesitated for a moment and said, "Xiaoqin, I have an opinion on your way of dividing it."

Pan Xiaoqin was startled, a brown color appeared on her face, and she immediately took some from her own pile of money and put it into my pile. Her action startled Xue Bing, who asked, "Xiaoqin, what are you doing?"

Xiaoqin gave a bitter smile and said, "I really took too much."

Xue Bing hurriedly stopped her hand and said, "You silly girl, you misunderstood what I meant. Why should Chen Feng take so much? You are the boss of the supermarket; he can at most be considered a partner."

As she spoke, she raked some out of my pile and insisted that Pan Xiaoqin accept it. Watching the two women sincerely decline each other, a sweetness welled up in my heart. Women, only in front of money, can you see their true nature.

In the end, I made the decision. I took 10,000 yuan and said, "First, put all this money away; it will be of great use. You both listen to me. Xiaoqin, you take 10,000 yuan this year too, and save all the rest."

They looked at me blankly, and I said, "You will understand later."