Chapter 438: Day 3 into the Farming Story

Chapter 438: Day Three of Being Thrown into a Farming Story

The original owner of this body had a reputation in the village that was already thoroughly ruined.

Petty theft, idling and shiftless, gambling and racking up debts—when the villagers saw him, it was like spotting a walking plague. They couldn't avoid him fast enough, scared he'd swipe something from their place.

An Yi walked slowly, his eyes drifting over the low earthen walls by the roadside, the fences with vegetables laid out to dry, and the yellow dog napping by a front door.

The crowd by the distant river had already dispersed. Jiang Chiliu had probably been helped back home by now.

Next in the story, he was supposed to confront his in-laws, and then start his comeback arc.

An Yi continued along the dirt road, cutting through a few scattered vegetable plots.

The afternoon sun slanted down, casting a long, thin shadow behind him.

He turned the corner at the gnarled old locust tree by the village entrance.

After another ten minutes or so, the dirt path got narrower, with weeds closing in on both sides, until he finally spotted the lone mud-brick house.

That was where the original owner had lived.

The house was low and squat, with peeling, patchy walls, revealing the yellow mud-brick mixed with straw beneath in uneven shades.

An Yi stopped at the doorway, his eyes calmly sweeping the place.

He pushed open the broken wooden door and stepped inside.

The door hinges let out a harsh screech, startling a few unknown little bugs from the grass, which fluttered off in a panic.

Inside was even worse than the outside suggested.

All told, it was just one and a half rooms—the outer room barely passed as both living room and kitchen, cramped and claustrophobic.

The inner room was where he slept, with only a grimy cloth curtain of indeterminate color as a divider.

Pushing the curtain aside, a stronger wave of mildew mixed with a faint sour, stale smell hit him.

Tiny dust motes hung in the air, drifting lazily in the shafts of light coming through the broken window.

An Yi walked a slow circle around the room.

He walked softly, his cloth shoes barely making a sound on the dusty dirt floor.

He let out a soft sigh.

This place really wasn't fit to live in.

It wasn't that he couldn't rough it—it just wasn't worth it.

Given the current situation, staying in the village, stuck with the original owner's ruined reputation and being treated like a pariah, would just be a pointless drain on his energy.

Nope, time to bounce.

An Yi walked over to the room's only small window.

The view from the window was pretty open, with the rolling ridges of distant fields visible.

Time to head to the county seat.

He focused his mind and sank his awareness into the space.

An Yi looked at this space, and the corner of his mouth curled up without him meaning to.

Yeah, he was loaded. In every sense of the word.

The original owner of this body was flat broke, without even a meal lined up for tomorrow—but for An Yi, money had never been an issue.

Alright then. Time to go.

Before he left, there were a few things he needed to take care of.

An Yi turned and walked out of the inner room, through the outer room, and headed straight out the door.

He was going to find the village head.

The village head of Lijia Village lived in the center of the village. From An Yi's rundown shack, it meant crossing most of the village to get there.

On his way to the village head's place, An Yi would pass by the area where Jiang Chiliu's in-laws lived.

He hadn't planned to stop—just walk right past.

But before he even got there, he heard sharp, piercing shouting from a distance, mixed with a woman's yelling and the low buzz of a crowd watching. What a racket.

He paused mid-step and looked up.

The source of the noise was the Li family's courtyard.

By now, the not-so-spacious earthen wall outside the Li family's yard was packed with people several rows deep.

A few older women and young wives clustered together, pointing and gesturing at the center of the yard and whispering to each other, faces alight with barely concealed excitement and nosy curiosity.

A few men stood a bit further back with their arms crossed, standing on tiptoe to see, expressions varying—some shaking their heads, some curling their lips.

Children wove through the gaps between people's legs, trying to get a look at what was happening inside, only to be shooed away impatiently by the adults.

In the center of the yard stood several people.

Jiang Chiliu was still wearing the same coarse hemp clothes from when he jumped into the river—soaked through and now half-dried, clinging wrinkled to his thin frame, making him look even more pitiful.

His hair was still damp and loose, some strands sticking messily to his pale cheeks and neck, a few clinging near the striking red mole between his brows.

His cheeks and lips were tinged blue from the cold, and his body seemed to tremble slightly.

Across from him stood a short, thin woman in a dark blue coarse cloth skirt, her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

She was around fifty, with prominent cheekbones. Right now she had her hands on her hips, spittle flying as she cursed, her finger nearly jabbing Jiang Chiliu right in the nose.

That was the Li family matriarch, Wang.

"You dare come back! You jinx! You curse-bringer!" Wang's voice was shrill and piercing, like a cracked gong: "Not satisfied with killing my son, now you have to jump in the river to bring more bad luck on our Li family! Why didn't you just die out there! Drowning would've been a clean end, and saved us the trouble of having our ground dirtied by you!"

Beside Wang squatted a skinny, dark-faced old man, holding a long tobacco pipe, puffing away with "bada bada" sounds. Smoke curled around him, making him squint as he smoked in silence, like a bystander to this fierce argument. This was Li's father.

Half a step behind Wang stood a younger woman, cowering somewhat, with a timid yet subtly odd expression on her face. Her eyes darted around—glancing at Wang, then sneaking a peek at Jiang Chiliu standing across from her.

This was the Li family's second daughter-in-law.

What a show.

Jiang Chiliu stood quietly, waiting for Wang to pause for breath after her face flushed red and her chest heaved from shouting, before speaking: "Mother, I jumped into the river today because you haven't given me a single meal in three days, and in the days before that, you only gave me half a bowl of sour rice porridge."

He paused, lifting his eyes to look at Wang, his tone carrying just the right amount of grievance and forbearance: "I was so hungry I couldn't take it anymore. My vision went dark, my body felt weak, and in a moment of hopelessness, I did something desperate."

"Bullshit!" Wang sprang up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, her voice even shriller: "Who said I didn't feed you? You're too lazy to work, always slacking off, and you still have the nerve to expect food? Our Li family has already been more than generous keeping you—a useless, husband-killing boy! You want three full meals a day? In your dreams!"

Jiang Chiliu seemed to take a quiet breath, then slowly raised his hand.

On the back of his hand and across his knuckles were numerous wounds and thick calluses, some of the wounds still red and swollen, looking like fresh injuries layered over old ones.

"I'm up before dawn every day, hauling water to fill the vat to the top, making breakfast for the whole family, washing the clothes left over from yesterday, and then heading to the back garden to feed the chickens and ducks and tend the vegetable patch."

Jiang Chiliu spoke each word clearly: "As for the field work—transplanting rice seedlings, weeding, watering—did I ever skip a single task you told me to do? These wounds, these calluses, are all from working. If Mother insists on calling me lazy, any of the aunties or grandmas in the village can vouch for me—when has Jiang Chiliu ever shirked work or stolen a moment of leisure?"

The murmuring in the crowd grew louder.