Chapter 9

“Erbao, come here, look, a wild pheasant! Catch it, tonight we can have chicken!” she whispered to Erbao. Immediately, Erbao darted over, moving swiftly, and pounced on it. Seeing this, Su Qianqian rushed over too, and together, mother and son caught the wild pheasant on their first try.

“We got it! Amazing! Brother and Mom are awesome!” Sanya clapped her hands happily, jumping with excitement.

Daya hesitated and looked a bit torn. After a moment, she reached up and untied the small braids from her hair. “Mom, tie its wings and legs with rope so it can’t fly away.”

“Daya is so smart!”

Su Qianqian, who had plenty of experience working with animals and plants at the Agricultural Institute in her past life, quickly tied up the pheasant and handed it to Erbao to hold. She and her two daughters walked down the mountain with dry branches in hand.

The thought of having chicken for dinner made their mouths water.

Back at home, Su Qianqian first re-did Daya’s hair, tying it back with red strings, then hurriedly slaughtered the pheasant and plucked its feathers. She divided the chicken into two halves, planning to make chicken soup with one half and stir-fry the other.

The three little ones took the pig feed to the pigs and cleaned the chicken coop, staying busy.

When Zhu Tianfang and her sister-in-law Wu Yuexiang returned, they found the three children resting after their tasks. They barely recognized Daya and Sanya at first, thinking, where did these pretty little girls come from?

“Grandma, Aunt!” The two sisters called out sweetly.

“Wow, you’re so pretty, so beautiful!” Zhu Tianfang was not someone who favored sons over daughters. She always treated Daya and Sanya well, but due to the family’s limited resources, she couldn’t always give them the attention they deserved.

“Mom did it,” Daya said proudly. “We caught a wild pheasant, and Mom is cooking it. Grandma, Aunt, go see.”

Wild pheasant?!!

Both of them immediately brightened and rushed to the kitchen. Sure enough, they found the pheasant, all cleaned and ready.

“Mom, Sister-in-law, you’re back! We caught a wild pheasant. I plan to make one half into soup and stir-fry the other half. I’ll cook dinner today.”

Zhu Tianfang and Wu Yuexiang exchanged glances, both feeling conflicted. They didn’t want Su Qianqian to waste the pheasant, but since it was something they had caught themselves, they had no reason to stop her. They could only let her do her thing.

The fragrance of the chicken soup and the stir-fried chicken was so strong that it spread to the neighbors. In these poor times, it wasn’t common to smell meat for months, so who could resist the delicious aroma?

“Whose house is that? It smells so good!”

“I thought it was your house, but no, this scent… It must be from Dasong’s house.”

“Ah? Didn’t Dasong’s family get all their food ruined by Su Qianqian? How could they still afford to eat meat?”

Everyone sniffed the air, and sure enough, the smell was coming from Cheng Song’s house.

At this moment, it was just about time for Chuan Chuan to get off school. He and his friends all smelled the delicious aroma and hurried home, only to realize it was their own house. “It smells so good! Everyone’s asking whose house it is, and it turns out it’s ours! What’s cooking?”

“Cousin, we caught a wild pheasant! My mom is stir-frying chicken!” Erbao said proudly.

“Wow, that’s awesome!” Chuan Chuan almost drooled, having not had meat in a long time.

Cheng Youmin and Cheng Song also smelled the food as they returned from work. By the time they got home, the meal was almost ready.

“Let’s drink some chicken soup to warm up first, then we’ll have the stir-fried chicken,” Su Qianqian brought it out, the fragrance so irresistible that no one could resist.

Cheng Youmin’s eyes widened. “Has our family struck it rich? We’re eating chicken now?”

“They’re lucky. They caught the wild pheasant from the mountain. They’ll eat it for this meal, but no more after that,” Zhu Tianfang said with a hint of pity. It was such a waste to use the whole chicken for one meal; she wished they had saved some for later. “This spendthrift woman!”

She couldn’t say anything more, so they ate.

In these hard times, no one dared to ask for a piece of meat, so they just had to eat some sweet potatoes to fill their bellies. But the smell of chicken was so enticing, it was almost unbearable.

“This is so delicious! Aunt, how did you suddenly become such a great cook?” Chuan Chuan, being a child, couldn’t help but ask.

“It was because I didn’t do it well before.” She could only say this; otherwise, it would be hard to explain. “Chuan Chuan, could I ask you a favor?”

Everyone’s hearts skipped a beat. Here it comes, she’s going to ask for something!

They instinctively put down their chopsticks, no longer daring to eat, and all looked at Su Qianqian, waiting for her next words.

“It’s just that, after Chuan Chuan finishes school, would you be willing to help me learn to read? Would one dime a week be okay?” Su Qianqian felt a little embarrassed saying one dime, but now one dime could still buy quite a lot.

The Cheng family was stunned.

Su Qianqian wanted to learn to read?

They exchanged glances, each seeing the same thought in the other’s eyes: It’s not the troublesome woman we fear, but the troublesome woman who’s educated!

If the difficult Su Qianqian has become so troublesome already, what will she be like once she knows how to read?

Could it be that all her recent efforts were just to learn to read?

Chuan Chuan didn’t dare to agree on his own and looked to Wu Yuexiang. Wu Yuexiang looked at Cheng Song, Cheng Song looked at Zhu Tianfang, and Zhu Tianfang looked at Cheng Youmin, who froze, having no one else to look to…

“Ahem…” He cleared his throat twice. “Chuan Chuan, you just teach your aunt how to read, only reading will do.”

Just learning to read, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

After all, Chuan Chuan was only a third-grader and wouldn’t be able to teach too much, so there was no need to panic.

That evening, Chuan Chuan brought his textbook to teach Su Qianqian how to read.

The kerosene lamp wasn’t very bright, only lighting up a small area. It was actually hard on the eyes, but there was nothing they could do. They would have to earn some money and buy an electric light to improve their living conditions.

“Aunt, this is the first-grade textbook. Let’s start with the simple characters,” Chuan Chuan said. Since he was in third grade, teaching first-grade material was no problem for him.

“Okay, I’ll listen to you,” Su Qianqian said with a smile. Anyway, she was just looking for an excuse for the future. After all, it would be hard for people to accept that a completely illiterate person suddenly became educated, so she would just attribute all the credit to Chuan Chuan when the time came.

The three little ones stood at a distance, their eyes full of longing but too shy to approach.

“Come, you guys can learn with me.” She called the three little ones over. It could be an opportunity for their early education, like a kindergarten class at home.

“Big, big from Da, Ya, the Ya from the little girl, Daya, this is your name.” Chuan Chuan wrote the characters for Daya on the paper. Not bad, his writing was quite neat.

“Older cousin, write Erbao’s name,” Erbao said, eagerly.

Chuan Chuan wrote Erbao’s name and then wrote Sanya’s. The three children watched with curiosity, amazed that this was how their names were written.

“Older cousin, can you write mom’s name?” Daya asked.

“Sure.”

Then “Su Qianqian” was written on the paper. Although the handwriting was a bit childish, the strokes and structure were clear, showing that he had practiced writing seriously.

“Aunt, you try writing.”

Su Qianqian could only pretend it was her first time writing, deliberately making the characters crooked. Fortunately, Chuan Chuan was a child and easy to fool. If she had encountered someone more clever, she probably wouldn’t have been able to deceive them.

They practiced for about half an hour, and then Su Qianqian decided to end the lesson. It was getting late, and her eyes were starting to feel the strain.

In this era, there were no evening entertainments. Most people just chatted outside and went to bed early.

She thought that after a good night’s sleep, the spiritual spring would increase, but when she woke up, it was still the same as before, with no increase. This puzzled her. What was the condition for the spiritual spring to increase? Had it reached its limit the last time, or did it need some sort of trigger?