Chapter 8

Chen Suihuan did not stay sad for too long. She packed up the remaining items in the house—except for two old broken beds, she put everything else, including the cabinets and tables, into the space.

After locking the door, Chen Suihuan also entered the space.

When she had just crossed over here, she had harvested the crops once and then planted another batch.

Now, after only two or three days, the crops in the field had already sprouted.

Chen Suihuan turned around and arranged the furniture neatly inside the wooden house, then lit a small coal stove and started boiling tea eggs.

Tomorrow, she was going to take the train, and since she would be traveling all the way to the northeast, it would probably take several days. The meals definitely needed to be well prepared.

After the tea eggs were done, Chen Suihuan also made over a hundred dumplings.

Whether in her past life or this one, Chen Suihuan was never good at cooking; the food she made was neither delicious nor really bad.

If you said it was tasty, that definitely wasn’t true. If you said it was terrible, well, it was still edible.

So she only cooked some tea eggs and dumplings, and planned to buy some food from the state-run restaurant tomorrow morning.

After putting out the stove, Chen Suihuan left the space, turned off the lights, and went to sleep.

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At six the next morning, Chen Suihuan woke up. She first went to the neighborhood committee to hand over her house keys to Aunt Ye from the committee.

Only then did Chen Suihuan carry a large canvas bag and head toward the state-run restaurant.

Perhaps because of drinking the spiritual spring water these past few days, both Chen Suihuan and Chen Sui’an had much better health and more strength.

Chen Suihuan had tried yesterday and found she could lift a three-door solid wood cabinet with just one hand without feeling tired at all.

Having this strength, Chen Suihuan breathed a sigh of relief. She was no longer afraid of doing farm work when she went to the countryside.

Chen Suihuan ordered ten steamed buns, over twenty fried dough sticks, and twenty steamed stuffed buns. After leaving this state-run restaurant, she went to a few more shops and still bought steamed buns, stuffed buns, and large pancakes.

Chen Suihuan was not good at cooking stir-fry dishes, but steaming buns and making dough was something she did not know at all, so she had to stock up.

She knew that once in the countryside, she wouldn’t be able to get these kinds of white steamed buns and stuffed buns, so she bought extra to store in the space for cooking small meals later.

Not daring to waste any more time, when the time was about right, Chen Suihuan got on the transport vehicle and headed to the train station.

As soon as she got off the vehicle, Chen Suihuan saw from afar that people from the Educated Youth Office were holding up flags and shouting.

“Educated youth going to the countryside, come collect your train tickets.”

Chen Suihuan walked over and handed her notification letter to the person. After verification, they gave her a train ticket.

After getting the ticket, Chen Suihuan followed the large military unit into the train station, found her carriage, and boarded the train.

This should have been the starting station; there were not many people on the train yet, only a few, all seated far apart, leaving many empty seats.

After finding her seat, Chen Suihuan first placed her bag on the luggage rack above her head, then sat down by the window.

Not long after she sat down, many people started boarding this carriage one after another.

Looking inside and outside the train, many people were saying tearful goodbyes.

Suddenly, Chen Suihuan felt a bit melancholic. She was about to leave this place and didn’t know how things were going for Chen Sui’an, or if there was still a military zone there now.

Soon, Chen Suihuan had no time to feel melancholic. People gradually took the seats beside and opposite her.

“Comrade, hello, my name is Qin Fei. I’m one of the educated youth going to Black Market Pingzhen Shengli Commune. Look, we’re sitting together, are you one too?”

Qin Fei sat next to Chen Suihuan. She smiled brightly, with a round face and a pair of prominent tiger teeth.

Chen Suihuan smiled back and nodded. “Comrade, hello, I’m Chen Suihuan. I’m also an educated youth going to the countryside, from Shengli Brigade.”

“Oh, really? That’s great! Then we’ll have company there. When we come back to visit, we can do it together.” Qin Fei said cheerfully.

Chen Suihuan didn’t say much, only smiled and nodded.

The people around them were listening to their conversation. When they heard they were all going to Shengli Brigade, they immediately introduced themselves, saying they were going there too.

“It seems that those of us going down to the countryside from the same place tend to sit together.” Chen Suihuan said to a man opposite her who looked about twenty years old. His name was Xu Tao.

Xu Tao looked good but was somewhat thin and wore glasses, giving off a scholarly appearance.

Next to Xu Tao sat two others, one named Li Changxu and the other Ren Caiying. The three of them were high school classmates who had signed up together to go down to the countryside after graduation.

On Chen Suihuan’s side, Qin Fei was next to her, and next to Qin Fei was a girl named Gao Yue.

Gao Yue was also quite attractive, wearing a white cotton shirt and a women’s plum blossom wristwatch, clearly from a well-off family. Because of this, Ren Caiying sitting opposite kept glancing at her.

After they finished introducing themselves, the train started moving. Chen Suihuan quietly sat aside. If someone spoke to her, she would respond with a few words.

If no one talked to her, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift into the space, where she gathered eggs—chicken eggs, duck eggs, and goose eggs.

Then she took out some cornmeal and mixed it with sweet potato vines to feed the pigs.

As for the cattle and sheep, feeding them was even easier—she just tossed sweet potato vines and potato vines into their pens and didn’t have to worry further.

The leftover food scraps they couldn’t eat, or the manure they produced, were automatically purified by the space, so Chen Suihuan only needed to feed the animals and didn’t have to handle anything else.

The wheat and rice in the fields still needed about ten more days to mature. Chen Suihuan only glanced at them briefly before turning toward the mountains to check on the medicinal herbs.

The medicinal herbs and other plants were also growing well. Chen Suihuan even watered them with some spiritual spring water.

At that moment, Chen Suihuan suddenly heard a series of sharp coughs coming from the train carriage.

One cough after another, with such force it seemed the person was about to cough up his lungs.

The noise was so loud that many people in the carriage turned to look.

Chen Suihuan pretended to be awakened by the disturbance and looked toward the source about four or five seats ahead.

The one coughing was a young boy, about fourteen or fifteen years old, small and thin with sallow skin. His clothes were patched repeatedly.

Next to him sat a woman around forty years old. The middle-aged woman looked at the boy, who seemed on the verge of coughing his lungs out, her eyes full of worry.

She kept searching for medicine and giving him water. After he swallowed the medicine, she quickly patted his back.

“What illness does he have? Is it contagious?” a person sitting opposite them asked with a concerned expression.

The woman hurriedly explained: “My son has caught a cold and has had a weak constitution since childhood, which is why he’s coughing so badly. It’s not contagious.”

After hearing this, the person opposite still frowned but didn’t say anything further.