Transmigration: I Have Storage Space in the Apocalypse-Chapter 114 - 112: Why the Anxiety?

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Knowing the reason behind Dad’s anxious behavior, Zhang Shan Ni became even more vigilant in not allowing the old lady to wander off at will.

In the village, idle gossip was curbed somewhat because Xie Tiesheng specifically had his nephew, the village head, inform everyone about the situation. Although some still muttered criticisms under their breath, nobody was spreading stories about the incidents involving the elder brother-in-law from the Xie Family anymore.

With the support of her spiritual power, Zhang Shan Ni was particularly attentive to her father-in-law and understood his attitude right away. Of course, she would cooperate with his decision.

But in her heart, she disagreed with Dad’s approach! Keeping it from the mother-in-law was just a foolish, short-term fix!

After giving it more thought, she reckoned that once the rough patch was over and she had helped her mother-in-law recuperate, even if the latter did get wind of the idle chatter and become agitated, it wouldn’t be as frightening as the previous times.

So, whenever she went out to work in the fields and passed by the village committee, she purposefully projected her spiritual power onto the old ladies sitting under the big banyan tree in their dragon gate array and immediately became privy to numerous gossipy details!

It’s worth specifically noting that the primary reason Dad was preventing the mother-in-law from going out was exactly because of elder brother-in-law’s brainless behavior.

No wonder when he went to his second daughter’s house, the old master actually didn’t bring Xiao Wu along and had Xiao Yi and Xiao’er take Xiao Wu to the elder brother-in-law’s place instead!

It turned out the elder brother-in-law and his wife had made a fool of themselves!

Listening to the sarcastic mockery of these old mothers, Zhang Shan Ni pondered while listening:

"Just look at Tie Dan with his sharp-witted appearance, who would’ve thought his wife would get the better of him, daring to hold a heavy filial piety ritual at his mother-in-law’s place, tsk tsk, and I heard that even the kids wore mourning clothes..."

"Ugh, really, if I had such offspring, I’d rather hang myself!" one elder lady bluntly responded, her tone thick with disgust and clear schadenfreude.

"Go on, what are you saying! Even if Tie Dan mishandled this matter, that doesn’t mean you should implicate Sister Xiu Hua. She’s still being kept in the dark, so don’t you slip up in front of her! I heard that a few days ago, she visited Da Niu and was so infuriated by Da Niu’s mother-in-law that she nearly ended up in the hospital. If you make careless remarks and something three-five-six happens to her, you’ll just wait for Old Xie Family’s retaliation! Hmph, don’t say I didn’t warn you..."

"Scary? Sister Xiu is ill? No wonder I haven’t seen Iron Birth Mother arranging the dragon gate array these past days, turns out she’s sick!!" A relatively younger housewife said dimwittedly.

Zhou Xiu Hua hadn’t left home for quite some days, and some well-informed people had already understood the eight to z situation through the information deliberately revealed by Xie Tiesheng.

Thus, at this moment, six or seven women gathered around, chastened by the scolding of the older woman, each biting their lower lip, too afraid to gossip any further.

Seeing everyone suddenly silent as if dumb after eating bitter herbs, the young housewife glanced around with her pale, small eyes. Her gaze shifted, and she changed the subject, sighing enviously:

"Speaking of Brother Tiesheng’s house, she really is lucky. A casual rescue by Shitou, their big nephew, and they found a Phoenix Egg... Do you know how many nice things that station manager brought to Brother Tiesheng’s house that day?"

"Hey hey, I heard there was a bicycle!"

"Right right, I saw this on the truck, there was also a Phoenix brand sewing machine!"

"I heard there were a lot of valuable items, even two big bags of fine grains! XX also said they saw fine fabric!"

"My God, the Xie Family really is lucky. In our village, which family ever gets dowry gifts sent over and over like this for a bride!"

"Eh, what do you mean over and over again with the dowry gifts, is there some inside story?"

"He yo, you didn’t know? Heard that the night before the wedding, Shitou’s wife’s Uncle carried two big trunks of dowry over!"

"Wow, really? How did you know that?"

"Don’t even say, it’s because I have this relative who married into the Xie Family’s same room..."

Zhang Shan Ni walked further away, and the voices under the big banyan tree grew fainter. Hearing about herself, she didn’t feel the least bit curious, preferring instead to hurry to the fields so she could finish the work and get home sooner.

Only those who have truly experienced it can understand how hard the life of a farmer before the eighties was.

They had to get up before dawn whether to tidy up household chores, wash clothes, or to cut pig fodder and gather firewood, or to go down to the fields to tend to the rice paddies.

Even during the slack season, there was no rest – women either took on tasks assigned by the production brigade while the able-bodied men dug ditches or repaired roads. In short, all kinds of farm work and manual labor were available, and the most exhausting was going up and down the mountains and ditches.

There were even labor-intensive jobs that claimed lives! Take Xu Xiaofen’s simple-minded elder brother, for example, who lost his balance while digging a ditch, fell into a pit of mud, and was buried by the sliding earth and suffocated to death.

Going up the mountains meant chiseling stones to pave roads, while going down into the ditches meant working in the water digging ditches. Due to geographic conditions, every task was strenuous.

Therefore, in later generations when elderly people complain about bodily pain or rheumatism, it is deeply respected as an endurance from their youth, something Zhang Shan Ni had witnessed herself.

Staying at home to tend to the fields could be said to be the lightest work.

Better-off families had oxen to plow the fields, while only the very poor had to resort to human power to pull harrows to plow.

Women had it slightly better; they harvested rice during the busy farming season and planted peanuts and sweet potatoes, which were common supplemental crops for every household during the slack season. Without these, relying solely on rice and wheat was simply not enough.

The yield per acre in this era couldn’t compare to later times. Conversely, because there was virtually no use of fertilizers, most of the crops were natural. Even if some fertilizers were used, the quantity wasn’t large.

Farmers earned far less money compared to workers in the county town, and couldn’t afford many expenses. Most of them relied on their own efforts to tend to the crops.

However, even if they devoted two hundred percent of their effort to the fields, the yield per acre wouldn’t exceed five hundred kilograms. If the weather turned foul, such as a storm, it might result in a total crop failure, which shows that farming was also a high-risk occupation.

Weather changes were extremely important to every farmer. Being able to predict weather conditions was something farmers desired but could hardly ever achieve.

Sadly, they would have to wait another ten years for the ’weather forecast’.

On this day, after the seventh day of mourning for his deceased Mother-in-law, elder brother-in-law brought his wife home only to discover that the entire family was cold to them, including their three children who showed no enthusiasm towards them.

Instead, the children were all clinging affectionately to Zhang Shan Ni, even Dad and Mom ignored their presence.

But the tasks delegated by the village immediately kept him so busy that there was no time to focus on the children’s thoughts. After all, in his mind, no matter what, these were his biological children and they wouldn’t fail to recognize their parents.

He was also his parents’ eldest son and daughter-in-law. Even if the elderly were angry, they wouldn’t truly neglect them.

There’s a term to describe it – ’assertive without fear’. It was because Xie Jingwei believed he was the eldest son and grandson, and that in the end, the parents would live with them, he gradually took for granted the efforts made for his parents.

Such old thinking caused him to miss the best opportunity to retain the affection of his parents and children, leading to Xie Tiesheng’s disappointment in his eldest son, but that’s a story for another time, not to be mentioned now.