Chapter Eight

The other woman’s face was lit with schadenfreude, the corners of her mouth barely held down.
“Haha—cough, cough—exactly!”

As the old saying goes, you can’t get two kinds of people from one quilt. No matter how much Bi Laosan (Third Bi) smiles, after living all these years with Cai Juhua, what good man could he still be? Serves him right! Last time her own family got into an argument, it was because Bi Laosan wanted to curry favor with the brigade leader. Fine, lick all you want, but he just had to step on her family’s face, fanning the flames without caring since it wasn’t his problem. In the end, her family had to pay twenty eggs in compensation. Her mother‑in‑law ached over it for half a month. Ha! This time let him bleed a little too! Dog of a man! And the villagers are blind—every time they mention Bi Laosan they say he’s pitiful, stuck with a troublesome wife. Bah! As if he had no say. Marrying off daughters to such families—if Bi Laosan hadn’t agreed, would Cai Juhua have dared? He just keeps pushing his wife forward to take the blame. Ptui!

The first woman shook her head.
“Still, Bi Laosan, apart from being a bit too honest and unable to control his wife, he’s actually a decent man. Look at how many times he’s followed after that shrew Cai Juhua, trying to smooth things over. Tsk… But I don’t think he’ll be able to fix it this time. Cai Juhua’s gotten into a fight with the Wang family. And she even cursed at Wang Laosan’s two grandsons! Those kids are the apple of their grandparents’ eye—how could they tolerate anyone bullying them?”

“Really?! I didn’t know what started the fight between her and the Wang sisters‑in‑law. I just heard someone say Cai Juhua was cursing people, so I came out. Quick, tell me what happened!”

“Tch, well, it really is Cai Juhua’s fault this time…”

Huh? Third Aunt got into a fight?!
Bi Chunliu and Bi Xiahé exchanged a look, and without a word the four siblings broke into a run, trailing the two women.

Following them, they finally pieced together what happened.

The cause was cow dung. Yes—cow dung. A battle sparked by a few piles of manure.

In an era when chemical fertilizers hadn’t yet been widely distributed, fields relied on farmyard manure. And that meant animal dung was a scarce resource. Properly fermented and buried, it was—two words—effective!

Tongxi production team had a single ox, mostly used to travel between the team, the commune, and neighboring brigades. After all, taking an ox cart to the commune cost only ten cents, and it left right from the village—how convenient!

Back to the ox—if dung was that valuable, then tending the ox, herding it, and collecting its dung were important tasks. But not important enough to assign an adult laborer, especially since the work points were too few to feed a grown‑up.

So herding the ox fell to children. The leaders of Tongxi team discussed and considered, and—under a strong hint from the brigade leader—decided unanimously that the brigade leader’s younger brother’s two grandchildren could handle the job.

And so, every day, the two kids strutted proudly through the village. One led the ox, the other carried a little shovel and a basket on his back, picking up the dung. On lucky days, they’d even climb onto the ox’s back for a ride, making the other children green with envy.