Chapter 2: The Situation of the Wen Family

During special periods, the mourning hall is only kept for one day. The main reason is the recent hot weather and an infectious disease outbreak in the next county, making it impossible for the brigade to agree to keep so many bodies for six or seven days. In recent years, cremation has been vigorously promoted, so early the next morning, the commune drove a tractor to take the bodies directly to the county seat for cremation.

Many old people in the village expressed envy, saying, “I don’t know if we will have the blessing to be transported away by tractor when we die.”

Wen Jiajia: ……

She cried and mourned, not daring to say anything. As the Wen family moved away, the mourning band beating gongs and drums immediately quieted down. Wen Jiajia took the two nieces of the original owner, sat on the donkey cart, followed the tractor, and went to the crematorium after arriving at the county seat, where they were cremated. The two children cried outside.

And Wen Jiajia? She cried silently. One reason was that the original owner had left home since childhood, so the feelings weren’t very deep. Even if it were the original owner, it would be difficult to cry as if the sky were falling. The second reason was that Wen Jiajia believed that several members of the Wen family had followed her fate and had gone to live in another world along the river of time and space.

The crying gradually decreased, and Comrade Fang Liuyu, the women’s director of the team, hugged the two nieces who were kneeling on the ground, fearing that their knees would hurt. Wen Jiajia, naturally, still had to kneel. It wasn’t until the sun set in the west, hanging in the sky like a salted egg yolk, that she stood up with trembling legs. She took her two nieces on a donkey cart, holding a few clay pots in her arms, and staggered towards the Fuyang Brigade in the setting sun.

The captain secretly said that several members of the Wen family had died suddenly, so these jars had to be put at home first, and they had to quietly find a good day before they could be buried.

Night

Wen Jiajia, who had been busy since she crossed over, was finally able to take a breath and take care of her kneeling legs and broken waist.

“Iniquity—”

She sat on a bench at the door of the hall, her back to the door frame, her face full of lovelessness. Wen Jiajia was indignant in her heart. She had tried many times and found that she didn’t have either space or a system, which was the standard configuration for all crossings!

What’s the difference between this and a suspended death sentence?

Not to mention working on the ground, she could hardly do housework.

But after all, Wen Jiajia was still very happy to come back from the dead. She had taken advantage of the death sentence for a suspended death. She was a person who could toss and turn, and when she learned that she had no plug-ins to rely on, she immediately brainstormed and came up with one, two, or three ways to survive.

However, upon careful consideration, the restrictions of the time made it impossible for her to implement a way to survive.

For example, making money. As a rural team member, there was only one way to make money at the end of the year. As for the black market that often appears in chronological texts,? Don’t be stupid. They open in the early hours of the morning, and the local black market only opens in the early hours of the morning anyway.

Wen Jiajia also knew from the memories of the original owner that people who have no way still don’t know where it opens. Because ordinary people don’t dare get involved in the black market, her adoptive parents had never been there.

It seems that she really had to count on the old money saved by the Wen family.

She stood up, looked at the dark doorway, stepped forward, and locked the door, then went back to her room.

Because the Wen family were outsiders, their geographical location on the team was not good. It was located at the entrance of the village and also at the mountain pass. Usually, the slightest movement at home couldn’t be hidden, and they always had to beware of wild boars and wolves from the back mountains. However, the continuous winter hunting for more than ten years had gradually eliminated the danger of wild boars and wolves, and the Wen family had settled here with peace of mind.

Three years ago, several mud houses hastily built after fleeing famine were demolished, and this fairly decent house was built. The house was surrounded by a wall made of yellow mud, which wasn’t high, and the gentleman was not afraid of the villain, and Wen Jiajia felt a little frightened.

Recently, presumably, no one would come to provoke their family. But a few months later, a year or two later, her family might become a soft target. If they wanted to live here for a long time, they still had to find a way to raise the wall.

The Fuyang Brigade was subordinate to the Progressive Commune, which in turn was subordinate to Gaoyang County, Qingcheng City. Qingcheng City was located in the south of the motherland, a mountain city with abundant mountains and rivers. Gaoyang County was no exception.

As a result, most of the houses in the area were made of wood, with firewalls, patios, courtyards, and attics, which had no drawbacks other than the need to prevent fires.

However, there were no neighbors in her neighborhood. Everyone looked down on this place, so she didn’t even have to build a firewall when constructing the house. The Wen family had a patio with two large water tanks on either side to catch rainwater.

Speaking of this, Wen Jiajia had to complain. The Wen family had no running water, and they had to go to the team to fetch well water every day or go to the river to fetch river water. Since the Wen family was located downstream of the river, and the laundry kiosk in the village was built upstream, the Wen family generally fetched well water.

After passing through the small passage next to the patio, you would come to the hall.

In the middle of the hall, there is a picture hanging on the wall, with four doors on each side, two on each side.

The two doors near the patio were room doors: the original owner’s parents’ room on the left and the original owner’s eldest sister and brother-in-law’s room on the right.

The Wen family’s parents gave birth to three daughters. The eldest daughter was married off to a family, and the son-in-law was an orphan from the next county.

The second daughter had thick eyebrows and big eyes, exuding her own heroic spirit, and was recognized as a beautiful girl in the team. Wen’s parents originally wanted to marry her to someone in the commune, but they never expected her to fall in love with an educated youth.

Second Sister Wen had a stubborn personality, and the old couple of the Wen family couldn’t resist her. They eventually agreed to let her be with the educated youth and live at home too. Otherwise, It would be easy for her to suffer if she didn’t understand the law.

Wen Second Sister and the educated youth did not get a marriage certificate after they got married. The year before last, the educated youth found a way back to the city, left, and never came back, leaving the Wen family completely dumbfounded. They couldn’t find him no matter where they looked. If they didn’t look for him, they would be unwilling to accept it.

In the end, this frustration stayed with them, and Second Sister fell seriously ill. After recovering, she focused on earning a living, transforming from a love-struck girl into a career-driven one, ignoring everything else.

Where was the room of Second Sister Wen at home? It was in the attic on the second floor. There was a staircase on the right-hand side, and after going upstairs, there was a terrace where clothes were usually dried. At the moment, there were still various dried vegetables on the terrace, all of which were dried by the Wen family and had not been taken care of for the past two days.

Wen Jiajia wanted to collect them today, but when she looked up at the clear sky, she decided to do it tomorrow. Another day of drying would probably finish the job. Moving them today just to dry them again tomorrow was troublesome, and she was tired at the moment.

There was a door on the left side of the terrace, and when you pushed the door, you would find the attic. The attic was divided into inside and outside. All kinds of dried goods were placed outside, such as dried vegetables, dried fungus, and various herbs. The inner room was the room of Second Sister Wen.

As for the two children, Wen Chun, the daughter of the eldest sister, usually slept with Wen’s parents, and Wen Xuan, the daughter of Second Sister Wen, slept in the attic with the eldest sister.

At this time, Wen Chun and Wen Xuan were in the attic. The two little girls were not familiar with their aunt and were huddled together like two frightened kittens to keep warm. Wen Jiajia didn’t care much. She had indeed been reborn through the body of the original owner, but it didn’t mean she had to become a mother to the two children. She believed that even if the original owner came back, the original owner wouldn’t act like this.

But she couldn’t just ignore them. She now lived in the house and would eat the food earned by the Wen family for a long time in the future. She had no face to disregard these two little girls who were about to be three years old.

There was a “grunt” sound, and her stomach rumbled inopportunely. Wen Jiajia patted her head in annoyance, touched her stomach, and went downstairs to cook while the moonlight was in full bloom. She also carried the habit of her previous life, being used to cooking and eating after six o’clock.

The doors on both sides of the hall led to the kitchen. When she entered the dark kitchen, she lit the kerosene lamp on the stove and started cooking. Lighting a fire was a trivial matter for her, a former rural food blogger, and Wen Jiajia quickly got the fire going.

She glanced at the pine needles and firewood as she lit the fire, then nodded. The pine needles were in a bamboo basket, and it seemed there was no need to worry about starting a fire for half a year. As for the firewood, it was piled up more than a meter high by the stove, neatly arranged, and she didn’t have to move it for the time being.

There was also firewood elsewhere in the house. There were two small utility rooms on the right side of the patio, with a staircase sandwiched between the utility room and the room. The two utility rooms had a lot of firewood and bamboo, enough to last until the beginning of next spring.

After the fire was lit, water was added to the pot. Wen Jiajia took out the key and went to the room of the original owner’s parents to get food. The wooden door creaked as she walked in with a kerosene lamp. The dim light couldn’t illuminate the whole room, so she searched for a while before finding the food in the lower cupboard of the room.

“How long will this last?” she muttered to herself. In the cupboard, there were small half bags of flour, two pieces of rice cake, and more than ten catties of rice. However, this wasn’t all the food in the house. There were also a lot of sweet potatoes and various grains in the room of the original owner’s eldest sister.

Wen Jiajia thought for a moment, took a cut of rice cake, opened the upper door of the cupboard, and took two eggs. There was a bamboo pot full of eggs in the cupboard, about 30 of them.

The eggs were naturally laid by the chickens at home. The family had five chickens, four of which were hens and one rooster, and they could collect one or two eggs a day. However, at this time, eggs were precious and needed to be kept and sold to the acquisition station or kept for important events. They were reluctant to eat them.

Now, as Wen Jiajia, she felt it was time to eat and drink without worrying about debts or these eggs.

The water in the pot was almost boiling. Wen Jiajia scooped the boiling water into the wooden basin and poured oil into the pot after the water at the bottom boiled dry. The wooden house leaked seriously, and the evening breeze blew cool air, causing the kerosene lights to sway.

“Zila—”

The snow-white lard melted in the pot, and the aroma immediately made Wen Jiajia’s mouth water. She wasn’t craving oil; it was the original owner’s body that was hungry.

Wen Jiajia swallowed, quickly beat two eggs into the pot, fried them, and then added cabbage. The cabbage was pulled from the vegetable field in the evening. The young cabbage, only half a month old, was very crisp and tender, even when boiled in water.

After the cabbage was stir-fried, she poured the fan-shaped rice cake slices into the pot and stir-fried them for a minute.

The local area was a rice-producing region, and rice products were commonly eaten. Rice cake was one of those products. At this time, rice cake was mostly made into a 20-centimeter-long cylindrical shape. A section of rice cake was boiled into rice cake soup with eggs and vegetables, enough for the original owner’s adoptive parents and family, not to mention her current one, two small, and three small appetites.

The rice cake was almost done, and the water scooped into the wooden basin could be poured back into the pot. There was another sizzling sound as the oil floated on the slightly white noodle soup, and after a while, it gurgled and bubbled again.

The rice cake slices were easy to cook. Boil the water for two minutes, add salt, and it was ready to be served.

“It’s time to eat!” Wen Jiajia raised her head and shouted.

The wooden house is not soundproofed, and the attic is diagonally above the kitchen, so you can hear any movement.

Just like now, she could hear the sound of two children walking together, very fast. Hey! They might be scared to death, but they were quite enthusiastic about eating.