Rebirth in Famine: She Thrives by Lucky Space-Chapter 828: Sister-in-law Liu

"Alright, you don’t have to go back anymore. Tomorrow, go see Village Chief Li and get your residency registered here in the village."

"Xiao Jiang, even if I have no way out, I wouldn’t go back. Getting my residency in the village is the best option."

"From now on, I won’t call you Sister-in-law Liu; I’ll call you Sister Du instead.

Don’t worry about staying here, and you’re only in your thirties; you can still remarry if you want."

"Considering my situation, who would I marry? Xiao Jiang, can I stick with you all my life? Don’t worry, when I’m too old to move, I won’t be a burden."

"No problem at all. As long as you’re willing, it’s all good."

Du Fengying felt assured after hearing Jiang Xinyu’s words.

"Xiao Jiang, you have no idea; I was prepared to go down with that beast Liu Laoda, but for some reason, he stopped chasing me."

"Sister Du, people like that aren’t worth it."

The two chatted while boiling water. Earlier today, Du Fengying had a scuffle with Old Mrs. Liu before running all the way back, so a hot bath was just what she needed.

Du Fengying lay on the warm bed, reflecting on the day’s events, feeling incredibly fortunate to have discovered things early. Who knows what more could have been lost? Both materially and emotionally.

Since Xiao Jiang said she could keep working, that seemed like her best way forward.

Although she hadn’t considered remarrying, she was only thirty-five, and if the right person came along, she would be open to the idea. It would be nice to have a child too.

She lay there thinking for a long time, gradually drifting off to sleep. She got up early the next day. Though it was just her and Jiang Xinyu in the house, Du Fengying cooked porridge, making eight-treasure porridge, which was quite extravagant and time-consuming, but they didn’t mind.

After breakfast, the two began tidying up the house.

Just then, Li Yungui and his brother arrived, "Xiao Jiang, today the village is leaving some people at home while everyone else goes up the mountain; let’s start by preparing firewood for your home."

"Village Chief Li, we already have plenty of firewood at home."

"It’s not enough; just leave someone at home."

Jiang Xinyu didn’t insist further. In fact, Wei Kaiyun had prepared enough, and they still had plenty of coal too. When it got colder, they could start using the stove.

The daytime temperatures were only a few degrees now, which meant they needed to harvest the cabbages and radishes soon.

They had nothing much to do at home, so Jiang Xinyu decided to make sour pear preserves.

Wild sour pears were small, so she just had to peel and core them.

However, Jiang Xinyu thought it was better to cook them a little, as they might taste better that way.

Du Fengying was already used to Jiang Xinyu being generous with ingredients. With both sugar and rock sugar, she thought, how could it not taste good?

In total, they made forty bottles of sour pear and hawthorn preserves, leaving aside the rest to make sugar-coated hawthorn sticks once the children returned.

For lunch, they just had eight-treasure porridge, without preparing anything else.

It was past four in the afternoon when someone knocked on the door. Almost every household brought a bundle of firewood, and they couldn’t fit it all in the woodshed, so some had to be left outside.

Jiang Xinyu expressed her gratitude repeatedly.

"Xiao Jiang, I think this village is way better than ours."

"I feel the same. Although it’s not large, and there are still busybodies around, there’s a strong sense of community."

The next day, Li Yunqiang came over in the morning to ask Jiang Xinyu to help with the accounts. They were about to distribute grain and money soon.

Li Xue came along with her fourth uncle. Seeing Jiang Xinyu, she respectfully called her teacher.

The father and daughter looked on enviously as Jiang Xinyu deftly handled the abacus. In the end, it turned out that each work point was worth only four cents.

Although the money wasn’t much, they had a good harvest of grain this year, and there were still tens of thousands of pounds of sorghum left untouched.

At lunch, Jiang Xinyu went home to eat and check on the two children.

In the afternoon, they finished calculating the grain distribution. Each strong laborer would receive 365 pounds of grain, not including the summer wheat harvest, which was a regulation from above. The remaining grain could be sold to the grain storage or kept in the village for future use. Plus, there were peanuts, soybeans, mung beans, sweet potatoes, and squash.

These additional crops together could provide 160 pounds per person, not including the cabbage and radishes still in the ground.

With the numbers calculated, Li Yunqiang couldn’t stop smiling, it had been years since they’d had such a bountiful distribution.

On top of this, there were over 30,000 pounds of sorghum and over 10,000 pounds of corn.

Li Yungui came over, and seeing the figures, he was equally delighted.

"Great, this is amazing! Now we have surplus grain too. Let’s inform everyone that grain from the storage can be sold to them at the purchase price."

Jiang Xinyu believed that many people would buy the grain because previous shortages had scared them, so they would surely want to stock up.

"Teacher Jiang, aren’t you going to buy some grain?"

"We have enough at home." Jiang Xinyu chuckled awkwardly; she had had enough coarse grain as a child, so they didn’t eat much at home.

"I want to buy a thousand pounds of sorghum to brew some liquor. I still have Mr. Lv’s liquor brewing recipe from last time, and after testing it, I think it worked."

"At home, only Master Shang drinks a little, so we don’t need any.

When can we distribute the grain? And the cabbage should be ready to harvest, right?"

"Yes, I’m thinking of harvesting the cabbage in three days. We can start the grain distribution tomorrow. Since our village is small, we should finish the distribution in one day and settle the accounts the following day."

"If we’re settling accounts, we might run short on small change. Most of the money we’ve collected is in larger bills, even one-yuan notes are scarce, so we might need to go to the bank to get more change."

Li Yungui laughed, "I never imagined we’d see a day like this. Teacher Jiang, you don’t know, but in the past, we often used sacks for the tiny amount of money we collected. It seemed a lot, but didn’t amount to much."

"Things will get better in the future. Oh, by the way, can we sell the wheat? I want to buy some." She couldn’t always rely on the white flour from her supplies.

"We have 5,000 pounds of seed wheat, and 5,000 pounds of grain set aside for emergencies."

"Can we sell some?"

"We’ll have to discuss it."

"Alright, please check if I can buy two thousand pounds."

"Teacher Jiang, why do you need so much wheat?"

"With my large family, when winter comes, my nieces and nephews should come to study. They might not have access to refined grains outside, so when they come to me, I want to provide them with something better."

"Alright, we’ll have a meeting this afternoon to discuss it. But Teacher Jiang, I have a favor to ask of you."

"Village Chief Li, why put it like that?"

"It’s about my niece Li Xue. She’s in seventh grade now. You know how the school’s like; she’s not really learning much. So we’d like to ask if you could teach her. She’s already gone through some eighth-grade material on her own and says you’re better than her current teachers."