Chapter 6

Xu Di slept soundly, feeling her stomach rumble, she woke up.

“Enter!”

With a whoosh, she was standing on the black soil again.

“It wasn’t a dream, there really is a space.” Xu Di patted her head, silently chanting “Exit,” and she was back on her bed.

After that experience, she was completely awake.

She got out of bed, opened the latch on the door, and pushed it open.

Everyone in the family was at work, and Xu Jun was nowhere to be seen, she hadn’t seen him since she came back.

“Tick…tock…tick…”

The sudden sound startled Xu Di. It was the old-fashioned clock on the cabinet chiming the hour.

It was already eleven o’clock, no wonder she was hungry.

Xu Di followed her memory and went into the kitchen. There was something covered with a piece of floral cloth on the table.

Xu Di lifted it up, it was a small bowl of white rice porridge, four steamed buns, a dish of pickles, and two boiled eggs.

In her memory, the Xu family’s food was pretty good.

After all, her mother was a chef, although not for wedding banquets, but she made good home-cooked meals.

Occasionally, if there were extra ingredients at the canteen, her mother and the others could buy some at an internal price.

In the 1970s, with limited resources, the job at the canteen was envied by many.

The Xu family had four children, and they were all well-nourished, at least they were healthy and didn’t have any problems.

“Sister, I’m starving, is there anything to eat?”

Xu Jun ran in, and the first thing he wanted was food.

“Mom left some food this morning, I haven’t reheated it yet, I just woke up.”

“Sister, are you still feeling unwell? You sit down, I’ll reheat the food.”

Xu Jun remembered that his sister had just been discharged from the hospital and hadn’t fully recovered yet.

Children of this era were very independent.

Their parents were busy with work, sometimes even working shifts. The children at home would hang their keys around their necks, go home from school by themselves, reheat food, these were all small things.

Xu Jun skillfully lit the kerosene stove, put water in the pot, then placed the steamer on top, put the buns and eggs on the steamer, covered the pot, and that was it.

The ten-year-old boy, his movements were skilled, he did it all in one go.

Xu Di just happened to learn how to use a kerosene stove, she had never used one before.

“Sister, when are we going to Grandma’s house, I want to eat roasted sparrows.”

Xu Jun liked going to his grandmother’s house in the countryside, the production team was so much fun.

“We can’t go for a while, school is starting soon.”

Xu Di remembered seeing the lunar calendar on the wall when she first arrived, it was August 30, 1970.

“Oh, I forgot about school starting.”

Xu Jun slapped his own forehead, looking quite comical.

Ten-year-old Xu Jun was going to start third grade. His grades were okay, not bad, not good.

“You really went crazy this whole summer, get your mind back in the game.”

Xu Di patted him, got up, took the buns and eggs out of the pot, and poured the porridge from the bowl into the pot to warm it up. She didn’t like to eat cold food.

In the 1970s, there was a general lack of oil and water, people didn’t have much oil in their stomachs, they got hungry quickly and ate a lot.

The two of them ate four buns, two eggs, half a bowl of porridge, and a dish of pickles, cleaning their plates.

Xu Di couldn’t believe it was her eating.

During those years of chemotherapy, not only did her hair fall out, but her appetite also disappeared. Everything tasted bland, and if she ate too much, she would vomit uncontrollably.

But just now, two buns, eggs, and porridge, with pickles, she ate it with gusto.

“It’s good, it’s good to be alive, it’s even better to be healthy!”

Xu Di silently vowed in her heart, in this life, she would live well, not harbor resentment, and live a healthy and happy life until she was old.

After finishing their meal, Xu Jun didn’t take a nap, he ran out to play again, saying he wanted to have fun while school wasn’t in session.

Actually, even when school was in session, there wasn’t much homework.

The college entrance exam was canceled, many children didn’t study much anymore, they went to school just to get a diploma.

Only a small number of people studied seriously, hoping to get into a technical secondary school, because graduates were guaranteed job assignments.

However, many teachers in the school were denounced and criticized, and the remaining teachers were of uneven quality.

The profession of teacher, in the crazy 1970s, was synonymous with the “stinking ninth category.”

Xu Di ignored Xu Jun and took the clothes and towels she had brought back from the hospital to the bathroom to wash.

Her mother had cleaned the house thoroughly, so she didn’t have anything to do. She wanted to study her space, but she didn’t have any seeds, so she could only look at it.

Speaking of seeds, Xu Di remembered that the original Xu Di had a small stash of money.

Xu Di had lived with her grandmother in the countryside until she was eight years old, she could climb mountains and swim rivers, she was more capable than most boys. Her grandmother’s house was in the suburbs of Beijing, surrounded by mountains and streams.

When she was little, Xu Di ran all over the mountains and fields. When she got a little older, she went up the mountains to collect herbs and down the river to catch fish with the village children, and then sold them to the purchasing station in town.

After returning to the city, Xu Di basically went back to her grandmother’s house during the summer and winter vacations, and she continued to climb mountains and swim rivers.

So, over the years, Xu Di had saved a considerable amount of money.

Xu Di had memories of this, she knew where the original owner kept her money.

She found a tin biscuit box, it was quite heavy. She opened it, and it was full of money, all sorts of denominations.

The largest denomination was ten yuan, the “Great Unity.” There were also five yuan, one yuan, fifty cents, twenty cents, ten cents, five cents… and quite a few coins.

Xu Di found a leather strap, sorted the bills into categories, and tied them up with the strap.

She counted them twice, a total of one hundred and thirty yuan, eight dimes, and five cents. This was the original owner’s savings from seventeen years, even her father and mother didn’t know she had so much money.

At this time, the purchasing power of one cent was almost equivalent to one yuan decades later.

In the past, the song taught in music class was, “I found a penny on the side of the road, I handed it to the police officer…”

Decades later, if someone found a dime or fifty cents on the ground, many people wouldn’t even bother to bend down to pick it up, let alone handing it to the police officer, the police officer might think you were crazy.

This one hundred and thirty yuan was Xu Di’s entire fortune, and it was also her starting capital for developing her space.

Xu Di had thought it over, she had to use the land in the space, not expecting to get rich from it, but she couldn’t waste it.

The standard area of a football field is usually described as 7140 square meters, which is about ten mu (Chinese acre).

Her space wasn’t that big, it was a smaller version, about five times smaller, maybe two mu of land.

She couldn’t activate the space for now, and seeds weren’t easily available at this time.

Xu Di put the one hundred and thirty yuan back in the biscuit box, casually put it in the space, feeling reassured. She put the remaining change back in its original place.

After taking care of her assets, Xu Di found her textbooks, she wanted to familiarize herself with the original owner’s notes and practice a bit.

In her previous life, Xu Di graduated from high school but didn’t go to college. In this life, it would be six or seven years before the college entrance exam was restored, if the course of history didn’t change.

By then, she would be twenty-four or twenty-five years old, she could try, what if she got in?

College students after the restoration of the college entrance exam were still very valuable, they were true iron rice bowls. If she could live to be seventy or eighty years old, her retirement benefits would be quite substantial.

Xu Di stopped her daydreaming and started flipping through the textbooks of this era.

The original owner’s grades were good, Xu Di had graduated from high school in her previous life, so her basic knowledge was still good, and she had also learned a lot from accompanying her son with his studies.

Combining the two, she could actually understand it!

Xu Di was so engrossed in her textbooks that she didn’t realize she had been reading for an afternoon until her mother came home from work.

Xu Di felt that she might have awakened her latent academic genius, haha…