Chapter 16

“That’s right, sister-in-law.”

“If I recognize you as Brother Yu’s girl, doesn’t that make you Sister-in-law Yu?”

Unfortunately, Liu Yiliang had no sense of tact and completely missed the awkward look in Ye Qingshui’s eyes.

Liu Yiliang really wanted to eat Ye Qingshui’s cooking, so he tried extra hard to flatter her. He remembered how Ye Qingshui used to visit the educated youth camp to see Brother Yu—clearly, she had her eyes on him. So Liu Yiliang figured sweet-talking her couldn’t go wrong.

Under Xie Tingyu’s intense gaze, Liu Yiliang even called out again—

“Sister-in-law’s cooking is amazing. I’m not exaggerating. These past few days, nothing’s tasted good to me. Shen Weimin even came over secretly without telling me. I finally had a chance to come today—Sister-in-law, aren’t you going to let me stay for a meal?”

Liu Yiliang was still single, hadn’t found a wife yet, but he’d met Ye Qingshui before. After having one of her meals, he came to understand—Brother Yu really had good taste, able to recognize how special she was.

Brother Yu was so picky and hard to please with food, yet he managed to find a wife who could surely feed him into a chubby, happy man.

Ye Qingshui’s face turned red.

She and Xie Tingyu had already agreed to get a divorce, but divorce was still a shameful thing—Ye Qingshui hadn’t told anyone, and probably neither had Xie Tingyu.

She quickly tried to stop Liu Yiliang, wishing she could sew his mouth shut.

“Alright, alright! Just stop calling me that. It feels weird—just call me Shuiya!”

Trying to clear her name, she whispered to Xie Tingyu, “Let me make it clear—I didn’t tell him to call me that. I’m not anyone’s Sister-in-law Yu, or Sister-in-law Jin or Yin or whatever. You should talk to him—if he keeps calling me that, how am I supposed to get married in the future?”

That expression, patting her chest and trying so hard to disassociate herself—it gave Xie Tingyu a strange feeling.

Even though he wasn’t particularly fond of the title either…

Xie Tingyu gave a barely noticeable nod, then turned to Liu Yiliang and earnestly said, “Yiliang, please come by when you have time to teach Shuiya how to raise pigs. She has no experience.”

And just like that, the whole topic of titles was deliberately brushed aside.

But Liu Yiliang thought otherwise. That moment where Ye Qingshui whispered to Xie Tingyu—he noticed it, and chuckled to himself.

“What’s all this about free time or not? I live at the educated youth camp. Sister-in-law, come find me anytime.”

Ye Qingshui was honestly scared of Liu Yiliang. She dropped a sentence and made a quick getaway.

“I’ll go cook. You two keep chatting.”

Liu Yiliang silently watched Ye Qingshui head off to the woodshed. As the first wisp of smoke rose, the smell of food started wafting from inside. In his mind, he couldn’t help but picture her lighting the fire, cutting the meat, washing the rice, cooking…

At that moment, he truly envied Xie Tingyu. How on earth did he land such a good wife? Not only was she kind and pretty, she could cook like a dream.

Liu Yiliang also wanted a wife with such skills. After living through so many hard years of hunger and shortages, even just a delicious bite could be unforgettable. He wasn’t as well-off as Brother Yu—who had come from the capital with excellent family conditions and could have meat every now and then.

Liu Yiliang worked a tough job involving manual labor. Each month, he’d get a few food and meat ration tickets from the livestock station to help with his nutrition. He brought all his meat tickets with him today, hoping to eat a hearty meal.

He coughed deliberately. “Since I’m here, is there any water to fetch or firewood to chop? I’ll help out.”

He swallowed hard.

Then Liu Yiliang went to look for the woodpile. Poor kids like him were always practical—eating at someone else’s house meant you had to pitch in. And if the meal was made by Ye Qingshui, he’d probably be willing to chop firewood for several days just for it.

Ye Qingshui finally let out a sigh of relief after slipping into the woodshed. One after another—they were all like bloodhounds, showing up just in time to eat her cooking.

Yesterday, she’d been busy memorizing texts and didn’t have time to cook. So she had hurriedly prepared a braising sauce and soaked some pig trotters in an old pickled vegetable jar from winter. It was a secret recipe—made with thirteen spices—also known as “Thirteen-Spice Braise.” The resulting flavor was rich and tempting, unforgettable once tasted.

At lunchtime, she took two out, steamed them with rice, and it was incredibly satisfying. Xie Tingyu even had a second bowl for the first time ever.

Pig trotters were cheap and usually didn’t catch Xie Tingyu’s eye. He hadn’t even looked at them yesterday and didn’t seem interested in dinner at all—he just kept pushing her to study. But after having it for lunch today and finding it delicious, he even took a bath early to wait for dinner all clean and fresh.

Ye Qingshui wasn’t wrong—Xie Tingyu was indeed looking forward to that pig trotter rice. Because she put real effort into cooking, it came out especially good. That made Liu Yiliang, who had specifically come to freeload, seem less cute in his eyes.

Ye Qingshui had her mother go pick some bamboo leaves from the grove. She laid the freshly washed leaves in the steamer basket—it made the rice extra fragrant when steamed.

Ye Qingshui was happy to make these kinds of practical little additions. Bamboo leaves cost nothing, and using them to cook rice for Liu Yiliang as a thank-you was very cost-effective. While cooking, she quickly ate a bowl herself before rushing off to work.

She chopped and crushed the dried herbs, boiled them into a paste, let it cool, then spread it evenly on gauze. She finally placed the gauze over her face, leaving it on for thirty minutes.

Afterward, her face felt cool and moisturized—like it had soaked up water. Looking into the mirror, she saw collagen-filled cheeks. Skin’s regenerative power peaks during adolescence.

After finishing her daily skincare routine, Ye Qingshui contentedly put on a face mask and pulled out her weakest subject, classical Chinese, to study.

On the other side—

During the meal, when Xie Tingyu took a bite of the rice steamed with Daohuaxiang (fragrant rice) and bamboo leaves, he was slightly stunned.

He couldn’t help but ask, “Why… did you steam the rice with bamboo leaves?”

This type of bamboo leaf steamed rice was something only more particular restaurants would bother to make. To eat bamboo leaf steamed rice in the countryside—Xie Tingyu felt an odd sense of familiarity and comfort.

Ye Qingshui wasn’t present, so she couldn’t answer.

Receiving no reply for a long time, Xie Tingyu simply bowed his head and kept eating.

Granny pursed her lips and said after swallowing a mouthful of rice, “During the ‘Great Leap Forward’ years, all the iron in the house was taken to contribute to the cause—didn’t even have a pot left. When people didn’t get enough to eat at the communal kitchen, Shuiya’s mom would chop bamboo to cook rice. Sure, it burned through firewood fast, but at least we could eat our fill.”

Mother chimed in, “That’s right, Shui’er probably remembers it well. Tastes good, doesn’t it? Rice steamed with bamboo leaves is so fragrant. If you like it, eat more…”

As she spoke, she also lowered her head and resumed eating.

Liu Yiliang also found the steamed rice incredibly delicious—fragrant, smooth, and tender. Compared to this, the sweet potato rice from the commune mess hall didn’t stand a chance. He had never eaten pork trotters this flavorful before. The tendons were steamed to soft, glutinous perfection, while the skin still had a chewy bite. The marinade was so rich it seeped into the bones, getting tastier with every bite.

Worried, he clutched his pockets tightly. Suddenly, he felt the ration tickets he brought might not be enough to cover this meal.

After eating his fill, Liu Yiliang left behind five liang of grain tickets and three liang of meat tickets. Although pork trotters didn’t technically require meat tickets, Liu Yiliang felt it was worth it. These trotters were better than fatty meat—rich and oily without being greasy. The bones and tendons crunched pleasantly, and he truly relished every bite.

He sucked his thumb with satisfaction and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Brother Yu, today I really could’ve eaten a whole jin of rice. But I didn’t bring enough tickets—didn’t dare eat that much…”

Xie Tingyu said nothing—because he hadn’t eaten his fill.

…

By the time the meal was over, it was already dark. Ye Qingshui was reluctant to light the lamp to study at night—it used too much kerosene and strained the eyes. So, she always ate as fast as possible. When Xie Tingyu returned to the room after eating, Ye Qingshui had already been studying for quite a while.

Xie Tingyu said, “Why don’t you light the lamp? Go ahead. Compared to knowledge, a bit of kerosene is nothing.”

Ye Qingshui fumbled around, found a match, and lit the kerosene lamp. She had gotten sick of memorizing classical Chinese yesterday, and just the sight of it today made her head spin. So she pulled out a newly bought math book instead.

Math, chemistry, physics—anything with numbers always excited her.

Xie Tingyu briefly explained some formulas and theorems to her, but he wasn’t as patient as usual. Soon he told her to study on her own and handed her a math test.

He said, “After you read through it, do the exercises too.”

Ye Qingshui was really into math. When studying by herself, she became more and more absorbed, as if energized by adrenaline.

When she got to the problem section, she worked on the problems for a while, flipping back and forth through the book to cross-reference concepts. The rustling sound of flipping pages eventually made Xie Tingyu frown, though not out of annoyance. He thought: For someone who’s dropped out for a long time, math probably isn’t easy.

Ye Qingshui stared at a question with deep frustration, then wrote in the blank section:

This problem has no solution.

This problem has no solution.

This problem has no solution.

“Shuiya, focus on the questions. Don’t get distracted,” Xie Tingyu said, waiting for her to ask for help.

But Ye Qingshui just nodded and buried her head again, patiently working on the problems for another half an hour.

Xie Tingyu wanted to use the math exercises as a pretext to bring up the topic of eating pork trotters in the future. So, he hadn’t thoroughly explained the concepts—he’d just sent her off to self-study.

Today’s pork trotters were so good. Even just the sauce mixed with rice was ridiculously tasty.

He picked up a pen to grade her answers, his other hand idly tapping the desk with his thumb. He thought: Girls usually don’t have quick thinking for this kind of thing, so he’d deliberately chosen a harder test paper. This rural girl would surely give up soon.

He asked Ye Qingshui, “Shuiya, do you think math is difficult?”

Ye Qingshui thought about it carefully and replied, “Not really.”

Though she wasn’t very educated, she was always confident in herself… Xie Tingyu noticed that every time she reached a critical moment of validation, her eyes would brighten and glint—just like that time at the commune.

He couldn’t help but curve his lips into a smile.

Looking at her nearly blank test sheet, he cross-checked it with the answer key. Out of twenty questions, she only got five right. It was a bit dismal, but for a beginner like Ye Qingshui, it might not be bad. Still, all he could think about tonight was pork trotters—he wasn’t in the mood for anything else.

“Oh? Not difficult, and yet you got so many wrong?”

Ye Qingshui peered over at the paper, studying it carefully, and finally said cautiously, “I don’t think I was wrong. I should be right.”

Xie Tingyu paused, tapping his thumb on the blank space of the test paper. “Then why leave them blank? I wanted to mark them correct, but—”

Ye Qingshui shrugged and propped her chin on both hands. “Not writing was the right answer. Don’t believe me? Take another careful look.”

He put down the answer key and began checking each question closely. As he read through them, his expression shifted from relaxed to serious. Slap in the face —that was what it felt like.

Because the questions she had left blank really didn’t have any solution. In other words, her answer—“no solution”—was correct.

It took him a while before he finally said, “Mm, Shuiya, you did very well. You didn’t blindly believe the textbook.”

“The editor of this book was not rigorous in their thinking.”

With that, Xie Tingyu casually tossed the book into the trash.

As for pork trotters… those were off the table.

For the first time, Xie Tingyu seriously examined the girl in front of him. In that moment, it felt as though he’d never truly known Ye Qingshui before.

Even if the thought was a little absurd.

While Xie Tingyu had thrown the book away, Ye Qingshui rushed to fish it back out of the trash can. Being naturally frugal, she said, “Why throw it away? It’s okay—I can still spot its mistakes. I’ll just finish reading it quickly…”

“After all, I spent book coupons to buy it. It wasn’t cheap! And being able to spot whether it’s right or wrong—well, that’s part of the learning process too, right?”

With two consecutive “right?”s, her voice was filled with genuine regret. Poor people tend to be particularly sentimental about anything that costs money.

Xie Tingyu said flatly, “No. You can always buy another book. But a misleading one shouldn’t be read again.”

Holding the textbook, Ye Qingshui suddenly thought of Zhou Ke’s grandfather. He had said something similar that day, in a tone of utter disdain. She had assumed the old man was just eccentric. But now, she finally understood.

Zhou Ke’s grandfather was a truly learned man. Only someone with real knowledge could instantly see the quality of a book.

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