CH 22

Mrs. Liang coldly harrumphed, “The only person who tries to maintain good relationships within this village is the governing official. They all said that I was unfilial to split families with your grandma, to my face and behind my back. The woman who lives right next to us particularly enjoyed saying that to my face!” [1]

Mo Yan could see that they didn’t get along. Mrs. Ho wasn’t exactly the nicest person to be around, and Mrs. Liang had a short temper.

They gave her both the required amount of food and money, and Mo Ling even helped her fetch water every day. They did all they could already, so why were they still afraid of others waggling their tongues behind their backs?

“Mum, then we should thrive to shut them up!”

“Everyone wants to thrive, but how?”

Mo Yan cocked her head and smiled at Mrs. Liang, “By earning money! We can anger them to death by earning lots and lots of money!”

“Right, we can earn more money by digging for medicinal herbs!”

Mo Ling stopped and said, “Mum, I want to make food to sell, and only dig for medicinal herbs when we’re free. If we do this, we’ll become rich very quickly. After all, Feng’er has to think about marriage roughly a year from now.”

Mo Ling was intelligent. She knew her mum cared most about her son, so she drew out the wrap that would let Mo Feng live a good life.

When she said this, Mrs. Liang was actually moved and reluctantly agreed to let them try selling wraps for money. After all, she was confident in her cooking ability as she was the best cook in the entirety of Chenzhong Village.

After Mrs. Liang unexpectedly agreed, Mo Yan and Mo Ling shared a smile and discussed selling the wraps with their mum. Mo Feng was unable to participate in the discussion and went out of the kitchen.

Mrs. Liang said happily as she worked on the medicinal herbs, “For the wraps, you can put smoked meat in them, which would take a lot of skill. Adding fried bean sprouts would be hard too, but it’d be delicious. Finally, you could add vegetables that can be eaten raw such as cucumbers and carrots.”

Mo Feng’s ears were exceptionally sharp when it came to food, and he asked as he laid on the kang, “Why haven’t we eaten any of this before?”

“Where would we get that much food? This was what my grandma used to make for me when I was a young girl!”

Mrs. Liang came from a rich family. Although her mum passed away early, her grandma loved her dearly and didn’t let her ever go hungry, so she had a happy childhood.

The silver ornaments Mo Yan had seen in her room were part of her dowry. It was all that was left after they sold most of it. When she married Mo Zhenian, her grandma had given her a large dowry, and just the hair accessories alone could fill an entire chest. When she split families with Mrs. Ho, she hardened her heart and sold most of it to keep the house. [2]

“I’m going to go sell the wraps with you. Otherwise, how will you two girls ever sell anything?”

If she followed them, they wouldn’t be able to take any money for themselves, but there was no way for them to prevent her from following. However, Mrs. Liang was a great chef and they could learn something from her.

Mo Ling felt happy and even Mo Feng looked less despicable. “Feng’er, we’ll let you be the first to try the wraps we make. What do you say about that?”

“Yeah!”

“But you have to tell us what you think about it afterwards!”

“Ok, ok. You won’t go wrong if you follow my advice on food!”

Mo Yan was already so tired she couldn’t open her eyes anymore, and she didn’t even want to go back to her room to sleep. Mo Ling had to drag her to the kang.

After a sleepless night, she was woken up by Mo Ling the next day once again, “Do you not want to run anymore?”

“Who said that? Of course I do!”

Mo Yan quickly got dressed and was still finangling with her hair as she ran to the pond. When she ran past the Lu family’s courtyard, she saw Sir Lu doing tai chi but pretended to not see him.

Sir Lu whistled in the direction of his house and Lu Junming came out. This whistle was one used in the army to call your allies, and he taught his grandson it a long time ago.

Lu Junming looked towards the courtyard and saw that Mo Yan had already ran far away. He went to the kitchen, then ran out, following the path by the pond.

Mo Yan ran a lap, and as she passed a tree on her second lap, Lu Junming came out from behind it. She was completely unprepared and almost jumped out of her own skin, but when she realised it was Lu Junming, she was so mad she sent a fist flying towards him.

Lu Junming easily dodged and shoved something into Mo Yan’s mouth. It was too sudden and she almost choked. She was about to spit it out reflexively, but stopped when she tasted the smoky flavour of meat.

She calmed down and swallowed the smoked meat in her mouth before saying, “Lu Junming, are you trying to kill me? I almost choked to death!”

He replied happily, “You should’ve just ate the meat! If you eat more meat and exercise, your body will get stronger in no time!”

“Begging for food is shameless!”

“You’re not begging for food, I’m forcing you to eat it. Seeing you eat makes me happy. How about I give you a wage as well, just to let me see you eat meat?”

“No way!”

Mo Yan continued running forward, and Lu Junming hurriedly tried to catch up. The two slowly jogged around the pool for three laps before Mo Yan finally returned home.

When she arrived back home, she saw Mrs. Liang working in the courtyard. She found a metal bucket from who knows where and was covering it with clay.

“Mum, what are you doing?”

“How can you sell food without an oven? It costs money to buy one, so I’m making a temporary one for now.”

She was really motivated for this, which was a sign things might be taking a turn for the better. Mrs. Liang might mellow out when they finally start making it big.

After breakfast, the two sisters still had to dig medicinal herbs. This time, Mo Ling brought a shovel to cover the small stream so the wheelbarrow could get across.

When they went back to the place where they were digging up medicinal herbs yesterday, Mo Ling uprooted an entire chinese foxglove.

“Yan’er, I’ll dig the medicinal herbs up and you just need to pick them up. It’s more efficient that way.”

Like that, they filled the entire wheelbarrow in half a day. The two sisters went back home elatedly.

They were going to go to the market tomorrow, so they had to prepare. They finely cut the salted vegetables and onions, as well as put Mrs. Liang’s sauce in a container.

The wraps couldn’t keep long, so they had to wake up early tomorrow. Cold fried eggs also didn’t taste good, so they had to be fried there as well. They’d buy some smoked and cured meat when they arrived at the market and cut them up before putting them in the wraps.

However, the salted eggs could be steamed tonight.

Everything was ready, and all they had to do now was wait for tomorrow!

Post-edit notes: Getting more backstory on Mrs. Liang is pretty cool, it makes her a bit more fleshed out.

[1] Splitting families is when you cut off all familial ties with your relatives.

[2] So why did she marry Mo Zhenian, who seems like he’s much poorer?