Chapter 25: Collecting Clams, and a Possible Male Lead Appears?

At seven o’clock that evening, Zeng Yan posted the video of her encounter with Liu Xiu. She had re-planned her content; from now on, her videos would focus on her daily life, while live streams would be dedicated to cooking.

Because of the live stream earlier that day, her fans felt a closer connection to her, and now watching the video, they felt as if they were right there, participating in her time-travel experience. Seeing that the Zeng family still wasn’t backing down, everyone was eager to leave comments, offering her all sorts of advice.

Zeng Yan read a few of them. There were some truly skilled people among the netizens; only someone with over a decade of experience with “palace intrigue novels” could come up with so many devious ideas. She would take the good suggestions and ignore the more extreme ones. This was her life, and she would live it at her own pace.

When it was time for bed, Zeng Yan couldn’t bring herself to sleep in the house and opted for her space again. The ocean was great, but the mosquitoes by the shore were bloodthirsty. Sleeping with the windows closed was too hot, and without a mosquito net, she couldn’t sleep. The platform didn’t seem to sell old-fashioned mosquito nets, and even if they did, they were so thick that sleeping under one in the summer would be like being in a sauna. She was already tired enough from her work during the day, so she needed to rest well at night. She wasn’t going to shortchange herself, so she decided to sleep in her space until the mosquitoes disappeared.

She also made an emergency order for a few blackout curtains. Since there were no curtains, she would use the blackout blinds to cover the windows completely. In the total darkness, if anyone came to visit in the middle of the night, they wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

As usual, most of her purchases arrived the next morning. Since she had a daily income, she chose the most expensive camera, which had a built-in battery and storage, and featured body recognition and an alarm function. She bought four in total. Two were placed under the eaves at the back of the house, one was set up to face the main road from the village, and the last one was placed in front of the house.

With the cameras in place, she ate a 21st-century breakfast of a boiled egg, milk, three-delicacy wontons, cherry tomatoes, and bananas before heading out to endure the hardships of the 1960s.

Today, besides cutting grass, Zeng Yan didn’t forget her promise to the netizens about affordable seafood. After delivering two baskets of grass, she borrowed a small rake from Grandpa Zhao and, with the basket from Liu Xiuhong, headed to the beach to collect clams and razor clams.

“Oysters from cold water, clams from hot water.” Wild oysters weren’t good in the summer, but clams were at their plumpest. Small clams had a fresh taste and didn’t need much cooking; you could just boil them and eat them. In an era where oil and meat were scarce, they were a favorite food of the Xiangyang Brigade in the summer.

To collect clams, she had to walk south from the reef below her stone house to the mudflats in front of the villagers’ homes. After the tide went out, the sand was covered with clams. With a small rake, she could scoop up a large handful at a time and fill a basket in no time.

They were plentiful and cheap. Wild clams were only two fen per jin (about half a kilo). A single yuan could buy a large bucketful. Zeng Yan’s wicker basket seemed like a bottomless pit; it never seemed to get full. Most of the clams were transferred to her storage space.

Clams were easy to find, but razor clams were a bit more difficult. They were buried deeper and required her to dig with a small shovel. Zeng Yan cheated again, holding a bag of salt. She sprinkled salt into the holes she dug, and the razor clams would pop out of the sand. It was a surefire way to find them. Summer razor clams weren’t as good as the ones in the spring, so Zeng Yan didn’t dig for too many and focused on the clams.

With the help of her space, she was very efficient. In less than an hour, she had collected almost 400 jin. She was just getting into it when she had to stop because a large group of children came running toward her. After finishing their field work, the kids were shooed out of the fields by the adults who found them to be in the way. Kids who grew up by the sea always spent their summers in the water. After swimming for a while, they spotted Zeng Yan and rushed over, surrounding her. They didn’t say anything but stared at her with wide, curious eyes.

Zeng Yan felt a little weirded out. Why are these kids staring at me?

A gap-toothed boy was the first to speak. “My mom says a hero has three helpers, but since you don’t have a mother’s family to support you, you won’t be able to find a partner in the future.”

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Zeng Yan: “…” Thank you, Mom, for your busybody nature.

A little girl with wet pigtails and a bare chest, just like the boys, nodded furiously. “My grandma says the brigade leader is confused and that he’s hurting you, not helping you. A young girl living alone won’t have a good reputation, even if nothing happens. You’ll only be able to marry an old bachelor or be a second wife.”

Zeng Yan silently recited the mantra, Children’s words are innocent. She couldn’t get angry at these annoying kids who were just parroting what they heard.

If even the kids had heard about it, the villagers must have been gossiping about her a lot while they were working. After their initial sympathy wore off, their conservative views took over. It was likely that a large portion of them disapproved of her rebellious decision to live alone without being married.

Let them gossip. It’s not like it’s going to hurt me.

Zeng Yan winked at the children. “Go home and tell your mom and grandma that I, Zeng Yan, will definitely get married someday,” she said, pointing to the sky. “My hero will be a great one, and one day he will come to marry me, wearing a golden armor and riding on a colorful cloud.”

A burst of laughter came from behind her.

She was just having fun with the kids, but now she was caught in the act. Zeng Yan turned around and saw that the brigade leader’s face was as green as the military uniforms worn by the two young men next to him. One of the soldiers looked stoic, while the other was elegant, both with good looks. Even the more serious-looking one was smiling slightly, clearly amused by her line from “A Chinese Odyssey.”

It’s all because the sand absorbs sound so well. Zeng Yan felt a little embarrassed.

“Why are you still collecting clams at this hour? Did you finish cutting the grass for today?” Zeng Fuhao said, trying to get rid of her. This little girl, what a character. It was one thing to make things up, but now the members of the work team had heard her.

Zeng Yan stuck her tongue out and ran back, carrying her clams. After walking a dozen steps, she turned back to look at the two young men in their summer military uniforms. The green twill jacket and blue pants, unlike the all-green uniform of the army, identified them as Air Force personnel.

The male lead of this novel happened to be from the Air Force. Could it be that she had just run into him early? Zeng Yan shook her head. Whether it was him or not, it didn’t matter. She needed to wash her clams.

Fu Weijun and Lu Yu had come to the Xiangyang Brigade today under the guise of an inspection, but it was actually a scouting mission. They had other things to do that afternoon, so they declined the brigade leader’s invitation to stay for a meal and drove back to the county in their Jeep.

“Old Liu from the Red Flag Commune didn’t lie. Old Zeng is a decent person. Unlike other production teams, the Xiangyang Brigade is not a mess. There are fewer troublemakers. The work is tough, but what rural village isn’t? Ban Xia is not afraid of hard work,” Lu Yu said, satisfied with their findings.

Lu Yu was worried sick about his childhood sweetheart, Xiao Ban Xia. Few of the urban youth from Beijing and Tianjin were assigned to suburban areas; most were sent to the Loess Plateau, where the conditions were much worse than in Jiaodong. His family was in the military-industrial complex and didn’t have much pull with the youth office. The reason he had brought Fu Weijun along today was to ask for his help. The Fu family’s status in the capital was extraordinary, something the Lu family couldn’t compare to.

Fu Weijun agreed. “No problem. I’ll make a call to Beijing when I get back.”

Between good comrades, there was no need for thanks; everything was understood. Usually, Lu Yu did most of the talking, while Fu Weijun was a man of few words. Thinking about the transfer, Lu Yu also fell silent, and the Jeep was quiet. The military control of the area was only temporary; after the transfer was complete, they would return to their division headquarters. Cleaning up this mess was more tiring than flight training, and everyone was eager to leave as soon as possible.

“It’s been a few years of this. When will it finally end?” Lu Yu sighed.

Fu Weijun looked out the window at the calm ocean, his eyes deep in thought. “It’s going to be a while.”