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Join the ServerThe next day, Lin Qingyu went to chop wood as usual. The pile of laundry in the courtyard was left for Lin Qinghuan, while Lin Yanhong and her sister stayed inside practicing embroidery, not even bothering to come out and take a look.
Lin Qinghuan pretended not to see them. She slung a basket on her back and headed for the back mountain. Since she was new here, she wanted to scout the village. She dropped a single sentence and left.
“Where did that wretched girl go?” Old Madam Lin returned from the morning market to find the basin of dirty clothes untouched. She demanded Lin Qinghuan’s whereabouts.
Lin Yanhong, afraid the chore would fall on her, quickly explained. “She said she went up the mountain to pick wild vegetables.”
Old Madam Lin’s face flushed red with anger. She was supposed to send the girl to Master Liu’s estate today, and here she was picking wild vegetables. It was pure defiance.
“Yanhong, go find your father in the fields. Tell him to go find Lin Qingyu and say…”
Yes, Old Madam Lin couldn’t tolerate either sibling. Lin Qinghuan would marry Master Liu, and Lin Qingyu would be sold as a laborer for a wealthy house, bringing in another sum of money.
Lin Qinghuan’s resistance had only hastened these plans.
Meanwhile, Lin Qinghuan walked alone on the back mountain. The place was nice, surrounded by mountains and water. Wild vegetables grew in abundance, seemingly endless.
Occasionally, she passed fellow villagers. Some nodded in greeting, others ignored her completely and walked by.
Lin Qinghuan didn’t mind. She spotted a patch of fresh mushrooms sprouting from the ground and put down her basket to pick them.
[Ding. Detected a wild mushroom. Sale price: ten coppers. Do you wish to sell?]
[Ding. Detected a termite mushroom. Sale price: twenty coppers. Do you wish to sell?]
Every time her hand touched a mushroom, the prompt sounded in her mind. Suddenly, the mushrooms covering the mountain were no longer just mushrooms, but walking money.
She didn’t sell them immediately. Instead, she picked mushroom after mushroom until her basket was full, still reluctant to stop.
There were so many mushrooms on the mountain. The entire hillside was covered. Just the area she was in had this many. Imagine how many she’d get if she picked the whole mountain.
Some villagers whispered among themselves. Mushrooms could be eaten, but picking a whole basket meant their next three meals would be mushrooms, they thought.
Lin Qinghuan didn’t care about their opinions. After she finished picking, she prepared to go down.
On the way back, she saw several children quarreling near a big tree. More precisely, three or five kids were bullying two others.
“What’s going on here?” Lin Qinghuan walked over. When the children saw an adult approaching, they hurriedly grabbed their things and scattered in all directions. They were clearly seasoned troublemakers.
The two children looked beaten, their clothes covered in dirt.
Lin Qinghuan looked at their empty baskets and understood the situation. “Are you okay? Did they take your things?”
The younger one nodded. “Niu Dan is the boss of the village. All the kids listen to him. My brother and I found a nest of wild eggs. We wanted to take them home for our father to build up his strength. When Niu Dan found out, he brought his gang and robbed us.”
Lin Qinghuan’s heart ached for the thin, frail children. Their plight was no different from hers and Qingyu’s.
“Where are your parents? Don’t they care?”
“We don’t have a mother. Our father hurt his leg and can’t get out of bed. Niu Dan and his gang aren’t afraid of him. We didn’t want to worry our father.”
Such good children. Lin Qinghuan took out the handkerchief she had prepared to wipe her sweat and cleaned their faces. They looked a bit better now.
The two little ones clasped their small hands, surprised and grateful for Lin Qinghuan’s kindness. In their world, only their father had ever been this good to them.
The other villagers called them bastards, motherless illegitimate children. They suffered constant bullying and disdain.
“Who is your father? I’ll take you home,” Lin Qinghuan said, glancing around. Who knew if Niu Dan would come back? She should see them home.
“My father is Xiao Hanting.”
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