Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn-Chapter 4 - 3 Miao family boys

Xiao Xian woke up to a strand of the autumn sun, customary to the season, streaming through a few centimeters gap in the door, illuminating half of the room.

Sniffing the dry cotton smell emanating from the quilt beneath her, Xiao Xian knew that everything that happened last night was not a dream, and she could not go back. If she were still at Yunteng Sect, she would have already been called to chop firewood by now.

She turned over, and next to her pillow was a set of new clothes. Her clothes from last night were burned in several places by the haystack fire, and Zhu Shijun noticed it carefully; this new set of clothes must have been prepared by him early in the morning, as Xiao Xian refused to wear the clothes of the children from the mountain village, young as she was, yet very conscious of her appearance.

When Zhu Shijun was demoted, it happened very suddenly, he hastily took only two boxes and his little granddaughter with him. One box contained the books he had carried with him for decades, and the other box was prepared for Xiao Xian, containing clothes bought by her mother in Jing City before "departing."

"Such beautiful clothes, prettier than the peaches elder sister brings out from the space," Xiao Xian held the pink T-shirt and indigo jeans, comparing them against herself.

At Yunteng Sect, she had worn coarse Daoist robes, common attire there, and ancient weaving and dyeing techniques could not compare to the high-end children's clothes bought from department stores.

"Although the style is a bit odd," she felt and observed that the clothes were brand new, indicating that last night's clothes and pants were not tattered, but that people in this world dressed in such attire.

After barely managing to dress properly, Xiao Xian took a few steps, not noticing that her feet were now equally long, but instead struggled with her body's owner's inertia, limping through the flat's doorway.

Xiao Xian tentatively peeked into the dining hall, the four connected rooms were empty, leaving only a room filled with sunlight.

The faint childhood memory lingering in her told her that her "cheap grandfather" would go for a walk in the mountains every morning. The duration of his walks depended on the old man's mood for the day, long walks took a whole morning, and short ones, at least two hours.

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On the dining table, there was a boiled corn covered with a basin and an egg. "Apart from clothes, the food is quite similar to what's at Yunteng Sect," Xiao Xian recalled at Yunteng Sect, where cultivation emphasized minimal earthly desires, and all her seniors and juniors thrived on spiritual energy from the mountains, growing taller and improving their cultivation, except she never grew in either aspect, which is why her master reluctantly permitted her to eat an egg daily, a routine she followed for ten years. The egg, previously disliked for its fishy taste, now felt warm and comforting in her hand.

Autumn is the corn season, the newly picked white sticky corn tasted soft and sweet in her mouth, perhaps because she hadn't eaten staple food for a long time, Xiao Xian had a big appetite and ate the whole corn as thick as her arm, but she didn't have the heart to eat the egg and put it back in the bowl.

After breakfast, Xiao Xian figured she should wash the dishes, so she dragged her leg to where Zhu Shijun warmed up the food last night.

The newly repaired stove, a few bundles of dried firewood stacked in the kitchen corner, blue-gray bricks, and snow-white wall paint. Seeing the familiar setup somewhat lessened Xiao Xian's fear of this strange world day by day.

She looked around the kitchen, found a tablecloth, and quickly wiped the table, cleaning off the leftover corn bits from the meal, then limped back to the door.

Last night when she entered the house, she noticed a well at the entrance. However, this well was different from the ones Xiao Xian used before; there was no bucket to draw water, just a dark, strange object standing at the well's edge.

"Xiao Xian, have you had dinner?" asked a loud-voiced woman sitting at the doorway, her round face covered with sunspots, dressed in a Ma Huang colored short jacket and shorts. Next to her feet was a huge bowl, and she was picking at corn kernels. She was startled to see Xiao Xian limping around, peeking near the manually operated well.

In a rush, the woman threw away the half-peeled corn cob she was holding and quickly covered the well with a wooden lid.

"Oh my dear, are you thirsty? You, coming from the city with your delicate stomach, can't drink this raw water. Besides, you said last time that you only drink boiled water and wouldn't drink our rural well water for fear of an earthy taste, right?" The loud-voiced woman was Sister-in-law Lian, asked by Zhu Shijun through the village chief to come help with cooking and laundry, and also to keep an eye on Xiao Xian when he was away.

Listening to the woman, Xiao Xian understood she was being prevented from drinking the water, fearing that the well was unclean.

Sister Lian is a cousin of the village chief and had worked in Guangdong a few years ago. After saving some money, she returned to the mountains, built a tiled house, and never went out again. She was considered someone who had been to the city and seen the world.

She also had a kind and patient temperament; Xiao Xian had given her quite a hard time when she first arrived.

Sister-in-law Lian saw Xiao Xian sweating profusely from her nose tip and knew she must be thirsty. Blaming herself for only preparing dry food in the morning, she went inside to boil water, but hot water didn't quench thirst immediately. After a moment's thought, she went behind the four single-story houses and came back with her upper garment lifted up like a makeshift pouch, holding several golden-skinned pears, small but juicy. Just looking at them was refreshing enough, and Xiao Xian couldn't help but lick her lips.

"Two years ago, the village chief casually spat out some pear seeds, and now it has already borne fruit. Before the autumn wind starts, let's find a ladder tomorrow to pick the pears. It's dry in autumn, and it's just right to reduce the inner heat for you and your grandfather," said Sister-in-law Lian, picking a pear, wiping it with her sleeve, and handing it to Xiao Xian.

After handing out the pear, Sister Lian remembered that Xiao Xian usually disliked her being sloppy in handling things and should have washed it with water instead.

With a "crunch," the sweet pear juice eagerly surged into Xiao Xian's cheeks. She squinted her eyes and bit off more than half of the pear, "Delicious, Sister-in-law Lian, you eat too."

After Xiao Xian finished eating, she again bent down towards the back of the house to look at the pear trees bent by the weight of the pears, thinking, this child seems to have adapted to the mountain life. But that old director still hasn't adapted to the mountain environment, frowning all day long. Thinking this, Sister-in-law Lian sighed, sat back on her stool, and continued picking at the corn.

Xiao Xian circled around the pear tree for a while, thinking that although the pears tasted not bad, it was a pity that they were small, and the cores were large. It seemed that the local soil and water were not suitable for growing pears. Originally, the pears grown by the Yunteng Sect were as big as an adult's fist, large with small cores, sweet as honey.

"Lame girl is about to cry. A caterpillar has fallen into Zhu Xiaoxian's clothes," while she was observing, Xiao Xian's neck was suddenly grabbed from behind, and several prickly things penetrated her neckline, followed by a few children. The one holding her clothes was a seven or eight-year-old Miao Village boy wearing a silver lock and dressed in a buttoned short jacket and wide blue pants.