Chapter 9

By the time Wu Xiaoxiao was heading back, it was already past eight o’clock. Only the elderly, some young children, and a few women were washing clothes or chatting outside their homes. Most of the others had already gone to work, making the village look quite empty.

Wu Xiaoxiao thought to herself that the knowledge she had now felt too simple. There was no need to read books anymore. Zhang Fang had always been protective of her, never letting the original owner go to work. The original owner would only deliver meals to Zhang Fang and take care of the house, leaving the rest of the time for studying.

But now, things couldn’t be the same. Zhang Fang was struggling to earn enough for two people’s food. Wu Xiaoxiao should contribute by going to work and earning her share of labor points.

Although she still wasn’t sure of the exact situation, she remembered from the original owner’s memories that people earned labor points through work and could exchange those points for food.

It was a bit similar to her experience in the post-apocalyptic world, where she killed zombies and used points and crystal cores to exchange for supplies… And when distributing resources, there were always some tricks involved.

Officially, the allocation of labor points was managed by the brigade office. But with over a thousand people in each brigade, it was impossible to monitor everyone. So, the distribution was delegated to the village chiefs.

Wu Laosan was the village chief, so the distribution of labor points in her family was unlikely to be fair.

To solve this problem, she would need to come up with a plan. She couldn’t just let Wu Laosan cut their family’s labor points. As she thought about this, she walked back and looked up, surprised to find someone standing at her door.

“Eh, Dr. Chen! What brings you here? Sorry to keep you waiting, come in.” When she saw it was Dr. Chen, she quickly stepped forward, opened the door, and invited him inside.

Dr. Chen smiled. “I said I’d come back to check on your condition. How are you feeling today?”

“I feel much better, there’s nothing wrong now,” Wu Xiaoxiao replied as she entered and immediately started to pour him some water.

“Don’t bother, sit down first. I’ll check you over again,” Dr. Chen said, but before he finished speaking, Wu Xiaoxiao had already quickly poured the water.

He smiled, “You’re so quick, it seems like you’re really fine, but I still need to check.”

Wu Xiaoxiao smiled and finally sat down, letting Dr. Chen do his check-up.

After a quick examination, Dr. Chen said, “Everything’s fine. But you still need to rest for the next couple of days. If you feel any discomfort, make sure to tell me.”

Wu Xiaoxiao nodded. “Thanks, Dr. Chen. I feel completely recovered. I was thinking of applying to go to work tomorrow. That should be fine, right?”

Dr. Chen froze for a moment. “You want to go to work?”

Wu Xiaoxiao nodded. “It’s too hard for my mom to earn enough food for both of us by herself.”

Dr. Chen nodded as well. He was familiar with the village and the families since he worked as a doctor there.

Although Wu Xiaoxiao’s father and the village chief were brothers, just looking at the location of their house, it was clear that the two families were not close. Moreover, with the incident yesterday, there was probably more animosity now.

Most of the people who worked in the fields were strong men, while women usually went to work but had to come back in the middle of the day to cook and look after children. Even then, people would talk about it.

It was even rarer for young women, like Wu Xiaoxiao, or newly married women, to go to the fields to earn labor points. Although it was the busy farming season, the work in the fields was exhausting, and with the harsh sun, women’s labor points were calculated lower, so not many women went to earn them.

The labor points and food in the village were all distributed through the village chief, which made it even harder for Wu Xiaoxiao to earn labor points.

But seeing the determined look on Wu Xiaoxiao’s face, Dr. Chen said, “There’s a lot of work in the fields now, and men…”

—-

The men primarily did work like fertilizing, pest control, and leveling the fields, and soon they would have to prepare to rush to harvest the summer crops. The women’s work mostly consisted of weeding, cutting grass, or tidying up the melon vines. In a while, they would start transplanting seedlings, which was a bit easier work. So, a male laborer earned ten work points a day, while a female laborer generally earned six. If someone was late or left early, it counted as half a day’s work, which would only earn three points.

Wu Xiaoxiao wasn’t afraid of tasks like fertilizing and pest control. She could confidently say that the male laborers couldn’t outwork her. However, the issue was who would calculate the work points.

Wu Xiaoxiao asked, “Are there any other tasks that count towards work points?”

Chen thought for a moment. “These days, they’re talking about clearing the silt from several nearby rivers for rice planting. They’re pulling people from different villages for this job because it’s heavy labor. It counts as twelve work points a day, and they even provide meals. But you can’t do this job, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to go.”

“Then what if I don’t do river work? Do they need someone to do the paperwork or cooking?” Wu Xiaoxiao asked.

Chen smiled. “Those are good jobs. They wouldn’t delegate them. Those have already been arranged.”

Wu Xiaoxiao thought about it. Cooking, including shopping, had its perks, but how could it possibly be her turn?

If not, she could do weeding. After all, it wasn’t hard, and with her abilities, it would take no time. She didn’t believe that even if she worked several times harder than others, she would still only get six work points.

Chen thought for a while, then said, “Actually, there is another task, but most people probably can’t do it.”

“What task?”

“I heard that Beixian County received a batch of agricultural machinery, but some of the equipment is incomplete and needs repair. They want to recruit people from the villages who know how to repair machinery. Not only will you earn work points, but there are also special grain coupons as a bonus. But that’s just what I heard; it’s not certain yet.”

When Wu Xiaoxiao heard this, her eyes lit up. This was a good opportunity.

During the apocalypse, who didn’t have to learn some machine repair skills? She had repaired a lot of cars, tower cranes, heavy machines, and various military equipment. Agricultural machinery here couldn’t be that difficult to deal with.

“But this requires specialized knowledge. I guess every village will have trouble finding people for it,” Chen continued, explaining that he had heard about it from an old man who was with his grandfather at the cow shed.

—-

The elderly man, surnamed Liang, was once a professor at the mechanical engineering school. Recently, several groups of people had come to seek his advice. These people had previously claimed that studying was useless, but now they realized its value. They brought over mechanical drawings and manuals, but hardly anyone could understand them.

Unfortunately, Professor Liang was old and hadn’t been taking care of himself in recent years, so his health wasn’t great. When those people saw how frail the elderly man was, they didn’t ask him to go to the site.