In Dahe Village, the village head, Zhao, was also surnamed Zhao.

He was fifty-five years old and had served as the village head for over twenty years, earning great respect among the villagers.

Zhao was the first to offer a pound of grain to the Wang family.

Others wanted to contribute as well, but there were too few villagers with surplus food.

Everyone was barely surviving on hunger, and no one had much to spare.

In the end, the villagers managed to gather a total of three pounds of grain.

Three pounds of grain, even if rationed carefully, would only last a family four or five days, eating just enough to stave off starvation.

Aunt Wang clutched the grain and cried uncontrollably before eventually fainting in the arms of her eldest daughter.

Among the crowd was the Old Madam Zhao.

She had lent half a pound of millet but hesitated before advising her eldest daughter-in-law to stay alert at night.

Then, she remembered that her daughter-in-law had likely spent all the copper coins from the Cheng family on meat, leaving no extra grain at home.

Shaking her head, she returned to the Zhao household but did not go back to sleep.

Instead, she woke her family to hide their food supplies.

The Zhao family, aside from the eldest son’s branch, all lived together—twelve people in total, including the children.

Having lived through hardships before, the elderly Zhao knew the importance of storing food.

She had been saving bit by bit, and over time, they had accumulated forty to fifty pounds of millet, thirty pounds of buckwheat flour, and more than thirty pounds of mixed grain flour.

She instructed her two sons to hide ten pounds in each room.

That way, even if a thief broke in, they would lose only a small portion, unlike the Wang family, who had been left with nothing.

That night, no one in Dahe Village slept well.

The thief had not been caught, and the Wang family was left with just three pounds of grain—nowhere near enough to last until the autumn harvest.

Worse still, there was no guarantee there would even be an autumn harvest this year.

At dawn, a commotion arose in the Wang household.

“Father, please, don’t sell me! I beg you!”

Wang Damei, the eldest daughter of the Wang family, knelt on the ground, crying her heart out.

Her younger brother, Wang Niuqiu, clung to her and sobbed desperately. “Father, sell me instead! I’m a boy, I can fetch a higher price!”

Aunt Wang’s tears flowed uncontrollably. “Husband, must we really do this?”

“We have no food,” Wang Yongcheng sighed. “If we don’t sell her, how will we survive? The buyer is a wealthy family; even in a famine, they will have food. Damei will have a better life there, so what’s there to cry about? They’ll give us half a string of coins—enough to buy over a hundred pounds of grain. This is a good thing!”

Though he said this, his face was filled with sorrow.

No one would consider selling their child unless they had no other choice.

Cheng Wanwan, upon waking up, overheard the argument next door.

She took half of the chestnuts she had gathered the previous day and walked over to the Wang family’s house.

Leaning against the mud wall, she sneered, “The village head really favors your family, huh? He gave you three pounds of grain without hesitation, while my family didn’t get a single grain! There’s a grocer in town who has no son; he offered two taels of silver to buy my son, Sidaan, for a funeral ritual.”

“I have four boys, all waiting to be fed. If I sold Sidaan, those two taels of silver could feed us until the New Year. But no matter how shameless I am, I’m still their mother—I could never sell my child. If worst comes to worst, we’ll all starve together.”

She tossed the chestnuts onto the ground. “I can’t afford to buy Damei, but in exchange for this food, she can work for us for a day!”

She waved Damei over. “What are you waiting for? Come wash my family’s clothes!”

Wang Damei knew that Aunt Zhao was not a kind person, but she was willing to do anything to avoid being sold.

She scrambled up, wiped away her tears, and quickly followed Cheng Wanwan.

Aunt Wang, unwilling to part with her daughter, deliberately stood at the courtyard gate to block her husband, afraid that he would go after Damei.

Wang Yongcheng sat on a pile of firewood, smoking his pipe in silence.

Aunt Wang picked up the cloth bag on the ground—inside was four or five pounds of chestnuts.

Chestnuts weren’t particularly valuable, as the mountains had plenty of them.

But all the trees near the village had long been stripped bare, and finding a good haul like yesterday’s was rare.

Thinking about the chestnuts she had gathered the previous day, her heart ached.

“If that shameless Zhao woman can survive, why can’t we?” Aunt Wang gritted her teeth. “Even if we have to eat wild vegetables, tree bark, or even dirt, I won’t agree to sell our child!”

Wang Yongcheng sighed. “Then let’s wait until the rice in the fields is harvested.”

If there was a harvest, there would be no need to sell their child.

But if the fields yielded nothing, there would be no food for the next six months.

Then, selling a child might be the only way to survive.

And by that time, they wouldn’t be the only ones selling their children.

Cheng Wanwan led Wang Damei into her courtyard.

The family’s laundry had already been washed and hung up by Wu Huiniang earlier that morning.

She sat Damei down. “If your father truly wanted to sell you, nothing I said would have stopped him.”

Damei wiped away her tears and remained silent.

Cheng Wanwan sighed.

Aunt Wang loved her children, but in this era, sons were always favored over daughters.

The Wang family had three daughters and only one son—Damei, as the eldest daughter, bore the heaviest burden.

“Eat something first, then get to work.” Cheng Wanwan stood up and walked to the kitchen. “Make buckwheat porridge with wild vegetables,” she told her eldest daughter-in-law.

Because there was an outsider present, she didn’t use the white flour. Instead, she used the darker buckwheat flour mixed with wild greens.

This was how every family in the village ate, but her family’s porridge was at least thicker and more filling—each person got a large bowl.

As Wu Huiniang prepared breakfast, little Zhao Sidaan tugged on Cheng Wanwan’s sleeve, blinking his big eyes. “Mom, is it true that someone offered two taels of silver to buy me?”

This wasn’t something she had made up.

Last year, after his father, Dashan, passed away, a childless couple from the neighboring village did indeed offer half a tael to buy Sidaan as an adopted son to care for them in old age.

The original owner of Cheng Wanwan’s body had been tempted, but the elderly Zhao had angrily driven them away.

However, if the famine worsened, she feared the original owner might have actually sold him.

Cheng Wanwan pinched the little boy’s cheek. “That’s why, when you grow up, you can’t abandon your mother once you have a wife.”

Zhao Si Dan nodded firmly. “I will always take care of you, Mom! I’ll make sure you always have rice and meat to eat!”

Cheng Wanwan couldn’t help but laugh.

Soon, the kitchen was filled with the fragrant aroma of food, and the whole family gathered around the table.

Wang Damei was also seated and given a bowl of wild vegetable porridge.

“Aunt Zhao, I can’t accept this…”

Wang Damei shook her head repeatedly.

Aunt Zhao had just given her family a bag of food, and she had yet to do any work.

How could she accept a free meal?

Back when their family still had food, even she wasn’t allowed to eat such thick porridge…