Chapter 20: Wild Hen Hatching Eggs

Places where balsam (fengxian) flowers grow usually don’t have snakes.
Back when she was young, nearly every household had a pot of balsam flowers.
Not only were they pretty, but they were also said to repel snakes—especially venomous ones.
Of course, as a child, she’d just planted them to follow trends and dye her fingernails…

With that thought,
She rolled up her pant legs to her thighs and slowly stepped into the pond.
First, she picked a few lotus pods,
Then reached her hands into the mud to feel for wild ou dai (young lotus roots).
At this time of year, mature lotus roots hadn’t formed yet—only tender, young shoots would be available.

After some groping, she pulled out four or five thin, white lotus shoots.
Climbing back up the bank, she rinsed the mud off her feet.

There were plenty of fish and shrimp in this pond;
She’d felt them bumping against her legs as soon as she stepped in.
But she didn’t plan on catching fish or shrimp today.
The lotus roots wouldn’t mature until around September,
So for now, she’d let the pond be.
Those few freshly pulled ou dai were crisp, snowy white,
Perfect for a quick stir-fry back home—truly a rare delicacy.

She walked to the side, used her sickle to dig up two balsam flower plants,
And laid them on top of the grass in her basket.

As she left the pond, passing a bushy thicket, she heard a sudden clucking noise—
Before she could react, a black shadow darted from the bushes right past her!

Yu Nuan instinctively shrugged off her basket and dove straight into the shrub.

“Cluck cluck cluck—!!”

“Pft—blegh!”
She landed flat in the grass, her mouth full of dry leaves and loose feathers.

“A wild chicken? A hen?”

She raised her body, using one hand to pin the flailing bird buried in the grass.
Peeling back the foliage, she pulled out a wild hen—
Its brown feathers streaked with black patterns.
It had no comb and a short tail—definitely a hen.

The bird flapped its wings wildly, but she firmly twisted and pinned them behind its back.
Her hands were sticky with the smell of eggs.

Following the direction where the hen had tried to flee, she pushed apart the grass—
Well now!
A whole clutch of olive-green and brown-speckled eggs lay quietly nestled in a grass nest.

“Ah… you were just protecting your babies, weren’t you?”
She muttered softly—but her hands didn’t stop moving.

She grabbed some strong wild grass nearby,
Tied the hen’s wings and legs,
And secured her to the side of the basket.

Then she scooped up the entire nest—eggs, bedding and all—carrying it as one whole unit.

Noticing some yellow liquid next to the nest, she sighed:
“Lost one egg already…”

It must’ve broken during the scuffle when she pounced on the hen.

She carefully picked through the eggs and saw a thin red line and a small black dot on the yolk.
A fertilized egg?

Talk about effortless rewards!
No wonder the hen had been startled when she passed by.
No wonder it had been so easy to catch—it was brooding!

Out of respect for life, she wasn’t going to kill it.
She’d let it hatch the chicks—so it could lay more eggs for her later.

Yet another fruitful harvest.
Living near the mountain really was a blessing—there was no way they’d starve!

“Yo, look at you, Yao Niu! Even caught a wild hen!”

A man emerged from Wu Linghong’s house,
Just about to head downhill when he spotted the hen tied to her basket
—along with the clutch of eggs in her hands.

He couldn’t help but feel jealous.

Yu Nuan just offered a polite, reserved smile, then hurried home with the eggs in her arms.

Wu Linghong’s new house foundation was less than ten zhang (about 30 meters) to the left of her home.
At Yu Father’s suggestion, Wu Linghong had built his kitchen close to their spring for easier access to water.
He’d even dug a shallow well about two meters deep.

As a result, both families’ kitchens now sat in a straight line—with the spring right between them.

Her house was backed against a mountain,
And to the right and behind both houses stretched vast woodlands and hills.

She was already planning how to make use of all that space.
On one side: pigs, cattle, livestock.
On the other: vegetable plots full of melons and greens.
And behind the house—fruit trees of every kind.

“I’m back~~!”
She set her basket down and untied the hen.

“Dad, can you find the biggest chicken coop we’ve got?”

“Wow—this is a wild hen?”
Yu Father looked up from the firewood pile and stared at the bird she was holding,
Then quickly headed to the thatched shed where they stored odds and ends to find a coop.

Not long after, Yu Father dragged out a chicken coop—a round one, a meter wide and half a meter tall.
Yu Nuan jogged over, asked her father to hold the wild hen for her, then carried the basket to her doorway.
She grabbed a handful of dry hay, tossed in some fresh grass, and placed the chicken nest inside.

Looking at the full nest of eggs, the deep wrinkles on Yu Father’s face stretched into a wide smile.
“Yao Niu, how are you so capable?”
He couldn’t help but praise her. These past few days, she had brought home something useful every single day.

“Dad, these eggs might hatch chicks. Let’s raise them and see.”
She didn’t want to go into the whole “fertilized or not” explanation, so she just said it vaguely.

“Alright! I’ll keep a close eye on them at home. If they hatch, we’ll raise them well.”
Yu Father looked as if he’d made some sort of solemn resolution.

The chicken coop had a round opening at the top.
Once the hen was placed inside, they secured it with a wooden board and a rock.

The wild hen flapped about restlessly for a while.
But after realizing there was no escape, she gloomily returned to her nest, officially beginning her life as the provider of the Yu family’s eggs.

Yu Nuan then divided the grass among the two rabbits.
She checked on the pigpen—its earthen bricks had dried and solidified well after a night of wind and a day of sun.
She quickly released the little pig from its cage into the pen, dumping the rest of the grass in for it too.

The pig and rabbits adapted quickly, snorting and munching away.
Watching them eat so happily, she couldn’t help but sigh in contentment:
“Ah… this is life.”

“Dad, when you’ve got time, could you make proper water troughs for the pig and rabbits?”
The bamboo tubes they were using now were too easy to knock over—kind of useless.

Yu Father had been kept busy these past few days, but he didn’t mind one bit.
He was eating well—often with meat—and now they were even raising livestock.
Life was looking up, and his mood had greatly improved.

“Let me finish tying these branches and then I’ll get to it…”

—

For lunch, she stir-fried some ou dai (young lotus root shoots)
and cooked the shrimp and snails she had caught last night.

Since the Wu family was building a house, she didn’t use much oil—just lightly boiled the ingredients, added a bit of salt near the end.
Each person got a yellow corn flatbread.
To accommodate their older teeth, she made the flatbreads soft and fluffy.

After lunch, she took Dogwang out to wander around the empty plot next door.

She saw that only Wu Linghong was left there now.
Turns out the village head and others had come earlier to inspect the foundation layout, and construction would officially begin tomorrow.

Since it was one of the few blue-brick houses in the village, people had been stopping by all morning to ask about labor costs.

While Yu Nuan was teasing the drooling Dogwang,
she casually tried to probe Wu Linghong about his house-building plans.

“Budget’s about eighty taels,” he replied, glancing at her.
Was this little girl also thinking of building a big house? Wasn’t she planning to get married?

Yu Nuan did a quick calculation in her head.
In this village, laborers going to town for hard labor earned 20–30 wen per day.
That’s roughly one tael a month, ten taels a year.

So in 7–8 years, it was possible to build a modest blue-brick house.

But looking around—this village had 30–40 households, and maybe only three had blue-brick homes.
The better-off ones had stone houses at most.

Then again, farmers only had time for side jobs during winter.
The rest of the year was spent working the fields.
The grain they harvested was just enough to feed themselves—nothing to sell.

So the little they earned often had to go toward necessities.
Naturally, no money was left for homebuilding.

She thought back to her past life—chained by house loans, car loans.
People trapped in invisible circles, spinning forever just to survive.

Society keeps most people poor. Climbing out takes more than effort—it’s incredibly hard.

Small fortunes must be earned, bit by bit.
Even if eighty taels sounded like a far-off dream,
as a modern woman, she had knowledge that outmatched this era in many ways.
She refused to believe she’d live poorly here.

After a short walk and feeding Dogwang, she slung her basket over her back and headed into the mountains again.

Yu Father called after her a few times but eventually let her go:
“Just don’t go too deep!”

“Got it…” she called back.