At the time, the incident caused a huge commotion.

People from Lu Jia Village, the Lin family, and nearby villages all helped search, but they couldn’t find the missing Lu Pan.

In the end, with no other options, the usually self-reliant grandfather sent a telegram to Lu Shaotang’s unit, asking the leaders to arrange for professionals to help find the child.

A comrade of Lu Shaotang, who had a close relationship with him, came with a team to investigate.

After several months, they finally found the missing Lu Pan.

Although Lu Pan was found, he had endured inhumane torture during his time missing.

When he was taken, he was already four years old, clever and observant, and had a strong memory of his family and surroundings.

To make him forget, the kidnappers terrified and beat him severely.

They would rather he become mentally impaired than remain smart.

Eventually, Lu Pan pretended to be dazed and forgetful, which made the kidnappers relax their guard.

This gave him a chance to escape from the cellar and be found by soldiers.

After returning, Pan Pan was no longer the lively and cute child he used to be; he became gloomy and lost his sunny disposition.

However, he was very intelligent and managed to hide his darkness, showing a positive demeanor instead.

He also helped his frightened sister recover and become normal again.

Less than two years after his return, the grandfather, who had always been gentle and patient with the children, fell off a cliff while collecting chestnuts in the mountains and was severely paralyzed.

He was bedridden for half a year before passing away.

With the grandfather gone, Lu Nai’s health also deteriorated.

She still had to work in the fields every day and couldn’t manage the children well.

Later, the house was robbed, and all the money Lu Nai had saved was stolen. Life became difficult.

Despite the hardships, Lu Nai insisted on not troubling the government or using her son’s martyr status for anything.

At a young age, Lu Pan began skipping school to go to the city to make money by trading.

He was handsome and young, and in ragged clothes, he easily attracted pity and made more money than adults.

Eventually, Lu Nai caught him and gave him a severe beating.

That was the first time she hit him, crying as she did, telling him not to disgrace his parents and to be a respectable person.

Within a year, Lu Nai also passed away.

As the Lu family quarrelled, Lin Shu’s grandfather took in the siblings, but the aunt was adamant about not taking them in.

In the end, their childless second aunt took them in.

The second aunt supported them through middle school but died of breast cancer.

The younger aunt, fearing that her grandfather would meddle again, insulted them fiercely, blaming them for bringing bad luck and causing the death of their parents, grandparents, and second aunt.

This caused their grandfather to fall ill from stress.

To avoid burdening anyone, Lu Pan refused all help and dropped out of school to earn money to support his sister through high school and college.

He was very good at making money and became a well-known young boss in the region by his teens.

Hope was pinned on the elder sister, Lu Tian.

After her brother was abducted, she was so traumatized that she became mute.

It wasn’t until her brother was found that she gradually recovered, but she remained overly quiet and showed no interest in anything except studying.

Lu Tian excelled effortlessly in her studies, consistently ranking first by a wide margin, even surpassing the scores of students from the city.

She aspired to attend medical school and become a doctor, hoping to treat people like her grandparents and aunt.

In the college entrance exams, she easily achieved the top score in the city.

Her teachers believed she would likely be the top scorer in the entire province if ranked.

Entering university and encountering a broader world, Lu Tian quickly became a campus sensation, with many describing her as extraordinarily talented.

In her sophomore year, she was selected as an exchange student to study abroad.

Immersed in the sea of knowledge, Lu Tian studied tirelessly, learning diligently from her mentor and interning at the university’s affiliated hospital.

Her brilliance amazed her mentors!

Three years later, she was supposed to return to China but instead made the same decision as some other overseas students—to get a job abroad, marry a foreigner, and obtain a foreign citizen!

This decision stirred up a storm, and Lu Tian became a disgrace among overseas students, subjected to various insults and accusations in the media.

This incident dealt a heavy blow to Lu Pan.

Due to his sister’s downfall, Lu Pan became even more twisted and cynical, further intensifying his admiration for the female protagonist, Xu Xiaoyou.

Xu Xiaoyou had risen from the mire of suffering untainted, strong and self-respecting, working and studying simultaneously, ultimately achieving both academic and career success.

Initially, Lu Pan intended to use Xu Xiaoyou against the male protagonist, but he later felt that the male protagonist was unworthy of her, and he became determined to compete for her.

His schemes eventually led to his own downfall.

Meanwhile, Xu Xiaoyou’s career flourished. Later, while traveling abroad for business with the male protagonist, she attempted to contact Lu Tian, who had married and had children abroad, but found it impossible to approach her husband’s mansion.

By chance, Xu Xiaoyou rescued Lu Tian and learned about a shocking conspiracy from her.

It turned out that Lu Tian had never betrayed want to stay in foreign land.

Due to her exceptional talents, she had attracted attention from various people who tried to persuade her to join a foreign secret organization and send back classified information after returning to China.

They believed that with her outstanding abilities, she would become a pillar of the nation.

Lu Tian refused and tried to report the matter to her home country.

However, she was betrayed by a classmate and ultimately killed by the foreign secret organization.

After her murder, they had someone impersonate her, taking her position in a prestigious medical school and marrying a wealthy, handsome foreign man.

In the grand scheme of things, this story illustrates the complex web of emotions and conflicts faced by the characters, as well as the perseverance and resilience needed to overcome adversity.

Under the main character’s covert operations, the Foreign Affairs Department got involved and finally cleared Lu Tian’s name.

….

After reviewing the story, Lin Shu looked at the two little ones in front of her, happily devouring their food.

The younger brother had egg custard all over his face, while his sister was disdainfully pushing him away.

These two little ones, one a financial prodigy and the other a natural academic genius?

Did she hit the jackpot with these kids?

Could they possibly make her life easier and help her win effortlessly?

Tian Tian, with her pretty little face, teased her brother: “It’s a good thing Hong Hong, Juan Juan, and Hua Hua all praised you for being clean and pretty. Let’s see if they still want to be your wife after seeing you like this.”

She then turned to Lin Shu and said, “Mom, Pan Pan isn’t being good. He wants to find three wives all at once.”

Lin Shu: “???”

This kid is a bit of a troublemaker.

---

She wondered if this clumsy little one, with egg custard smeared all over his face, was the charmingly cunning antagonist from the book?

And if this small girl with a curious face was the brilliant academic sister from the story?

Recalling that the book didn’t specify exactly when the children were involved, but considering the original owner’s funeral would have taken at least four or five days, she decided to be extra cautious to keep the kids away from the west side.

She wouldn’t let them face the same tragic end as in the original story.

She was determined to educate them well, give them lots of love, and ensure they had a bright future.

She began to tell them, warning them about the bad people in the west and instructing them not to go there.

Tian Tian said, “Mom, the west is where Grandpa’s house is.”

Pan Pan added, “Yes, Grandpa said Dad is going west too.”

Lin Shu replied, “Whether you’re going to Grandpa’s house or looking for Dad, you need an adult to go with you. You mustn’t wander off by yourselves. Just play in the village, okay?”

Tian Tian nodded obediently, “We won’t run off.”

Pan Pan smiled, “We’re not like Tiger and his friends who run around everywhere.”

Lin Shu cherished the two kids.

After they finished eating, she washed their hands and faces, cleaned their little feet, and put them down for a nap.

Pan Pan, full of energy, wanted to play instead of napping.

Tian Tian pressed her chubby foot on his stomach, commanding, “Sleep!”

Pan Pan wriggled and complained, “It’s hot, the bed is hot!”

Lin Shu pushed them toward the end of the bed, “It’s your grandma who made the fire so hot.”

She used a big fan to cool them down, speaking gently as she did so.

Lin Shu hummed a lullaby, a trick her grandmother used to use when she was little.

Pan Pan complained about the heat, but after just a couple of fan strokes and the soothing sound of Lin Shu’s singing, he fell asleep instantly.

Tian Tian also turned over, snuggling up to Lin Shu with her little hands and feet, falling into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Lin Shu wasn’t sleepy.

She pulled the blanket over the children, covering their bellies, and then got up to prepare food.

Lin Shu had grown up in a small town in 1995.

Her parents were both working professionals, and her grandmother had a pension.

She had never experienced hardship and had never used a traditional farmhouse stove before.

Fortunately, with the original owner’s memories, it wasn’t too difficult.

Besides, due to her health in her previous life, she couldn’t engage in strenuous activities and preferred quiet activities like reading, painting, and cooking.

So, her cooking skills were quite good.

She scooped a large ladle of cornmeal, enough to make a big pot of food.

In the countryside, grains were often ground using a millstone or a grinder, and they weren’t as finely ground as modern machinery.

Cornmeal was coarse and gritty.

Lin Shu decided to mix in some wheat flour to improve the texture.

Wheat flour has better binding properties and would make the cornmeal more palatable.

She also prepared some fine noodles for the children.

The household staples were mainly corn, sweet potatoes, sorghum, and millet, with a small amount of wheat and other grains.

Flour was generally reserved for special occasions or when guests came.

However, Lu Shaotang sent money home monthly and occasionally sent food stamps from across the country.

Fang Dihua would occasionally send their eldest daughter to buy some fine noodles from town.

The old couple felt that since their third son was away, they couldn’t let his wife and children suffer.

They wanted to make sure they had better food, and of course, the other children benefited as well.

In the hot summer, heating a bed was uncomfortable, so they heated Lin Shu’s bed during the day and her in-laws’ bed at night.

Actually, Lu’s older brothers also had stoves. It was just that Lin Shu avoided suspicion and never went alone to her two older brothers’ rooms.

Since Lin Shu had just arrived, she didn’t want to create any trouble.

She preferred to take things slowly to avoid unnecessary problems.

After steaming the cornmeal, she prepared the cicadas for the children, and set aside two eggs in the stove nook to cook later.

She placed a piece of wood in the stove to keep the fire burning slowly and then went outside to check the yard.

Wow, what a spacious yard!

In the southeast corner of the yard was the gatehouse, with a grass shed for firewood to the south.

The southwest corner had the toilet and pigsty, and then a chicken coop. There were also two large haystacks at the corners of the west and east walls.

In other households, these would fill up the yard, but here they only occupied the edges, leaving a vast empty space in the center of the yard.

Although Lin Shu complained that Lu’s house was small and low…

The yard was narrow but considered one of the best in the village.

It had a large courtyard with seven main rooms!

Old Lu had three sons and two daughters, all married.

Now, the eldest son lived in the easternmost two rooms, the second son lived in the westernmost two rooms, each with their own entrance facing the courtyard.

The center housed the main room where the elderly couple lived in the eastern room, and Lin Shu and her two children lived in the western room.

Despite the large number of family members, the spacious house and yard made living comfortable.

At least it wasn’t like some families where space was so limited that married sons had to share a room with their parents, with only a grass curtain separating the beds as a makeshift partition.

Apart from the brigade’s courtyard, this was one of the only two large courtyards in the village, the other being the one next door at Uncle Lu’s place to the east.

However, the eldest sister-in-law once mentioned that the brigade’s imposing blue-brick house originally belonged to the Lu family as well.

When Lin Shu first married into the family, the eldest sister-in-law whispered regretfully to her:

“Third sister-in-law, don’t mind our small house. If you look back twenty years, half the houses in this village belonged to our family.

Ah, our old grandfather was quite the… generous old man.

He gave away a lot of land and houses.

Look, that grand blue-brick house at the brigade was originally ours. If it weren’t given away, you could have lived there.”

At that time, the original Lin Shu was very anxious.

Why were perfectly good houses given away?