The Lucky Farmgirl
Chapter 293 - 282: Take the Road He Hates

Chapter 293: Chapter 282: Take the Road He Hates

Old Zhou headed to the fields to check on the wheat and noticed it wasn’t quite yellow enough. After estimating the time, he said, "In another three or four days, we can start reaping."

Upon hearing this, Zhou SiLang couldn’t care less about lying in bed to recuperate. Once the summer harvest began, he expected to be busy for two straight months.

Although he had gone to Dali Village to stir up some trouble, the Jia Family wouldn’t suffer any substantial harm for the time being.

His injuries couldn’t have been for nothing.

Pettily, Zhou SiLang propped himself up by his waist and was ready to head back to Dali Village to join in the commotion. Manbao couldn’t hold back and said, "Silang, aren’t you afraid of getting beaten up if you go there again? That’s their turf."

Zhou SiLang snorted, "What do I have to fear, my sister-in-law’s family is there too."

"But the Jia brothers are many, and sister-in-law only has one brother," Manbao, who had six brothers and thus was never bullied, knew the tricks well and said, "If you get beaten up, we can’t save you from that far away."

Zhou SiLang hesitated.

Manbao just chuckled, "Silang, the truly famous can be flexible. There’s also a saying in the books, ’A gentleman’s revenge is not too late even after ten years.’ Why must you be in such a hurry to get revenge today?"

Zhou SiLang’s eyes widened in shock, "You can’t be serious; wait ten years? I won’t even remember this grudge in ten years. How can I take revenge then?"

Manbao thought about it and agreed that ten years seemed too long, "But you can’t just show up on their doorstep asking to be hit, can you? Isn’t that just asking for a beating?"

"He is asking for it," Ms. Fang couldn’t help but interject, "Just because he’s idle. Mom and dad feel sorry for him and don’t make him work, and just after lying down for less than half a day, he’s complaining about being bored. When he’s supposed to be busy, he tries to slack off. Now that he has time to rest, he looks to stir up trouble. Isn’t that asking for a beating?"

Zhou SiLang hummed and lay quiet without speaking.

The reason why his backside and back seemed to be growing sorer by the minute was precisely because he had to lie at home and rest; he found the situation increasingly hard to swallow.

Manbao, however, didn’t want her brother to get into conflicts with outsiders again. Causing a stir was one thing, but fighting was not good.

She hadn’t seen them fight with people from other villages, but after seeing their last fight with those three troublemakers, she figured it must be somewhat similar.

Last time, the eldest brother was seriously injured, and the second and third brothers, as well as Silang, were also beaten up quite badly, so it was better to avoid fights if possible.

They were painful, costly, and a waste of precious work time.

Manbao thought revenge could take other, milder forms—doing precisely that which the other party didn’t want them to do.

Which brought the question back to the beginning: why did they chase Zhou SiLang and the others away?

It was because they could make money from the forests.

Manbao’s eyes spun round as she said, "Silang, let’s go to the mountains and search for wild fungi. Let’s find all the mushrooms from their mountain."

"It didn’t rain yesterday or today. Where would there be any mushrooms? Even if there are some, they wouldn’t taste good anymore."

"Then let’s go look for China root."

Zhou SiLang’s spirit perked up, "Are you sure the China root grows on Siberian dwarf pine stumps? Five and I have looked over all the stumps in the mountains and didn’t see a single one."

"I’m not sure."

Zhou SiLang: "..."

"But most of it grows under the roots of pine trees," Although the encyclopedia hadn’t produced an entry yet, Manbao had checked the books in the Bai Family library and consulted Mr. Zhuang, making sure they considered China root the essence of pine trees.

If it was the essence of pine trees, it implied that what they collected was harvested underneath pine trees, so Manbao decided they wouldn’t search in the stumps this time but in the pine forests instead.

And she had Keke to help her.

Keke had a special talent for scanning plants, especially since it had already recorded information on China root. With the data, a quick scan meant they could find it within a hundred meters—cough cough, although it was a far cry from a hundred li, wasn’t it still better than their eyesight?

In the woods, they could only see what was directly in front of them.

Just back from school, Manbao took a look outside and said, "Silang, let’s go now, and we’ll have the sister-in-law save our dinner for when we come back later."

Zhou SiLang had no objections, but, "Did you finish your homework?"

This was a serious matter. If their parents found out he’d taken Manbao out to play without finishing her homework, they would definitely beat him.

Manbao said, "The teacher was particularly nice today and didn’t assign any written homework, only asked us to memorize."

Manbao confidently said, "I can memorize when I come back tonight."

"Mom won’t let you read under the oil lamp at night; it’s bad for your eyes, and dad is so stingy, he definitely won’t want to light the oil lamp."

Manbao said, "It doesn’t matter, I already know how to memorize it, it’s just not very fluent; I don’t need to look at the book."

If it came to that, she could just stuff the book inside Keke and read it in there.

Zhou SiLang was persuaded.

So he no longer lay there, but got up and walked out with Manbao.

Everyone at home had gone out, some to drain water from the rice fields, readying to harvest the rice in about twenty days.

Others were tending the vegetables at Little Bay, and some were turning the compost pile.

Now that their compost was all set up, they just needed to wait for it to ferment and decompose. Afraid of excess heat, they had to turn it now and then.

Zhou Wulang, the youngest, took a group with him to catch bugs in the fields to feed the chickens.

Due to the previous flood, there were plenty of insects in the fields. With so many chickens at home and enough helping hands, Ms. Qian decided to save all the insects they caught.

Whatever the chickens could eat, they ate immediately; what couldn’t be eaten right away was boiled and then dried for storage. Throughout this period, they would fetch it occasionally, mix it with vegetable leaves, and feed it to the chickens.

The results were quite good—most of the hens maintained the pace of laying an egg per day.

But even with so many bugs and so many chickens, a ten-day feast would deplete the supply, so the daily activity of catching insects resumed at home.

Catching bugs in the fields under the sun was hardly a pleasant experience. At least Zhou SiLang really didn’t want to go, so the moment his father allowed him to rest at home, he played dead, preferring to risk going to the neighboring Dali Village to cause trouble rather than do such unappealing work.

But now he was lively once more.

The siblings didn’t call for anyone else. One with a basket on his back and the other carrying a hoe, they headed towards the village entrance.

Manbao, on the other hand, took her cloth bag and brought along a bamboo tube of water—of course, the water was carried in Zhou SiLang’s basket.

Zhou SiLang put the hoe on his left shoulder and gripped Manbao’s hand tightly with his right, repeatedly instructing her, "You have to stay with me, don’t run off, understand? Like last time..."

"Last time it was you guys who ran off and left me behind."

"...Alright then, but no matter what happens, don’t you dare run. If we get separated, you squat and wait for me, got it?"

"What if a wolf comes?"

"Nonsense about a wolf," Zhou SiLang couldn’t help but say, "Are there even wolves in the hills?"