……
“Right, don’t move. I accidentally knocked you down just now, so I’m hanging you back up. Just cooperate with me.”
As soon as Zhang Wei finished speaking, he actually grabbed Li Hui by the hair, preparing to hang her back up on the roof beam.
Li Hui instinctively began to struggle…
After trying a few times with no success, Zhang Wei finally gave up.
Whatever, forget it!
The moment he made contact with the coarse pottery rice jar, the Space Mall activated.
Organic rice had a Space Mall buyback price of five yuan per catty, while the ordinary rice in the Space Mall only cost two yuan five per catty.
Going back and forth like this, wasn’t that doubling his money?
Without a second thought, Zhang Wei chose to sell it.
A whole jar of organic rice—over sixty catties—exchanged for three hundred twenty yuan and eighty cents.
Just as he was about to buy sixty catties of ordinary rice to fill the jar back up, Zhang Wei had a flash of inspiration.
It seemed the Space Mall also sold broken rice for only one yuan five per catty.
Since Li Hui didn’t want to be hung back on the beam, he could just buy the broken rice to feed the mute Li Hui.
Being a mute, did she even deserve to eat rice that cost two yuan five a catty?
He spent ninety yuan on sixty catties of broken rice, and the rice jar was full once again.
Zhang Wei grabbed a handful of fine, broken rice grains and chuckled smugly at his own cleverness.
Not to mention, the appearance of the broken rice was almost identical to the organic brown rice Zhang Wei had just sold, except it was slightly whiter.
“Haha! Awesome, I still have over two hundred thirty yuan left. What should I eat?”
For some reason, the first food that popped into Zhang Wei’s mind was instant noodles—seemingly a bodily instinct born from long-term malnutrition.
“Alright, let’s get a bucket of Kang Shuai Fu instant noodles. A Shuanghui ham sausage, and two Yongjiu marinated eggs. Haha, and a pack of spicy tendon latiao to freshen up the flavor.”
A bucket of instant noodles was four yuan, a ham sausage two yuan, two marinated eggs four yuan, and the latiao one yuan—eleven yuan in total.
The moment he got his hands on the goods, Zhang Wei’s mouth started watering.
Under Li Hui’s shocked gaze, Zhang Wei tossed the instant noodles onto the table.
“Go on, bring me the thermos of boiling water.”
As for the modern packaging of the instant noodles, Zhang Wei wasn’t worried at all about Li Hui telling anyone.
She was a mute—who was she going to tell?
Looked at that way, marrying a mute wasn’t without its perks.
……
With a splash of boiling water, the chemical additives and artificial flavors inside the instant noodles were instantly activated, smelling so good it made Zhang Wei a little dizzy.
Li Hui had it even worse, continuously swallowing her saliva and twitching her nose.
Even the fear of being hung back up just moments ago faded considerably.
Such a fragrant wheat-based dish was simply unheard of.
The few minutes of waiting time felt exceptionally long.
With nothing better to do, Zhang Wei felt it was necessary to teach Li Hui a thing or two about traditional female virtues (The Three Obediences and Four Virtues).
“What are you staring at? Go eat your sweet potato! I told you to drink the rice soup, are you deaf? Is my word worthless to you?”
Li Hui swallowed hard as she looked at the rice porridge. This bowl of porridge was specially cooked for Zhang Wei.
You had to know that in her family, they usually ate a bit of coarse grain at most just to pad their stomachs; they could never bear to use actual rice to cook porridge.
In this day and age, grain was strictly rationed, and every household lived counting pennies.
Li Hui picked up the slightly burnt, thick porridge and looked at Zhang Wei, wanting confirmation once more.
“Drink it!”
With Zhang Wei’s impatient command, Li Hui finally let go of the burden in her heart.
He was the one who told her to drink it; it wasn’t like she, Li Hui, was being gluttonous.
As a mouthful of rice porridge slid down her throat, the unique crisp fragrance and lingering sweetness of the rice made it impossible for Li Hui to stop.
“Haha! Not bad, not bad, you’ve got a pretty good appetite. If you can eat, you can earn work points. Later on, I’ll lead you out to the fields…”
While lecturing his wife, Zhang Wei tore open the latiao packaging and popped a piece of spicy snack into his mouth.
Savory, fragrant, numb, spicy, and sweet—all sorts of flavors exploded in his mouth.
“Ooh~”
“This flavor is amazing!”
He lifted the lid of the instant noodles and took a deep, heavy sniff.
“Ah~”
“So good!”
Swish, swish sounds echoed as Zhang Wei slurped down the noodles.
Every now and then, he would smack his lips twice, bite into a piece of ham sausage, or take a bite of a marinated egg.
Every single bite was sheer satisfaction.
With a loud “Hah!”, Zhang Wei put down the instant noodle bucket.
The chill of the early autumn morning was completely gone, leaving his whole body feeling indescribably comfortable.
Stuffing the remaining half-eaten marinated egg into his pocket, Zhang Wei nudged the leftover instant noodle broth toward Li Hui.
“Eat it!”
Li Hui was stunned once more.
Such a fragrant bowl of noodle soup, she… she was just going to get to eat this?
No matter what, she would never believe Zhang Wei couldn’t finish it and was simply throwing it to her.
With soup this rich in oil, if she used it to soak some wild vegetable buns or something later, wouldn’t it be pure bliss?
“Screw it, I’ll eat it first. What if he changes his mind?”
Hardening her heart, Li Hui picked up the noodle broth and took a massive, blissful gulp.
Just a single sip of the warm broth made Li Hui’s pupils dilate in shock; she couldn’t even find the words to describe its deliciousness.
“Oh god! What kind of heavenly flavor is this?”
The addictive taste made it impossible for Li Hui to stop.
In less than two full minutes, Li Hui finished off the remaining three sweet potatoes, washing them down with the noodle broth.
“Hiccup~“
Li Hui let out a heavy burp, and a profound sense of happiness made her feel almost as if she were in another lifetime.
“Is… is this what it feels like to be full? When was the last time I was full?”
“Maybe… maybe I didn’t marry the wrong man…”
Zhang Wei didn’t have such a rich inner monologue, nor did he know that a leftover bucket of instant noodle broth had just scored him a massive wave of brownie points.
Throwing the plastic wrappers of the ham sausage and marinated egg into the empty noodle bucket, he patted the table to interrupt Li Hui’s train of thought.
“Throw this into the stove and burn it. Hurry up, it’s time to go to work.”
This time, Li Hui responded eagerly, nodding repeatedly as she grabbed the noodle bucket and headed into the back kitchen.
“Haha! Sure enough, obedience starts with a bit of tough love.”
Zhang Wei suddenly gained a profound and unique insight into the art of managing a wife.
……
At the production team’s threshing floor, the villagers gathered listlessly into three large groups: one of men, one of women, and another of half-grown children.
After about twenty noisy minutes, under the guidance of the brigade leader, the production team leader and cadres finally finished assigning work to the villagers.
Only then did the villagers trickle off, lining up to collect their tools from the warehouse keeper.
Zhang Wei was the warehouse keeper for the Red Star Production Brigade and also concurrently the warehouse keeper for the Red Star Production Team, responsible for guarding grain, farm tools, seeds, and a series of production equipment.
In other words, Zhang Wei alone drew two sets of work points—the traditional virtues of the capable doing more and reaping more were vividly embodied right in him.
As the organization managing ten production teams, the Red Star Brigade headquarters happened to be located right inside the Red Star Production Team.
Unfortunately, the brigade leader was someone who loved meddling, which directly reduced the Red Star Production Team leader to a transparent figure.
So much so that people only knew of the Red Star Brigade, completely unaware of what the Red Star Production Team even was.
Team members who received their tools left one after another, until only a dozen stragglers remained—mostly the elderly, weak, orphaned, or disabled who needed special care, alongside a few well-connected favorites.
“You guys head over to the vegetable patch as usual, and the three of you go twist hemp ropes.”
After assigning work to the last few people, Zhang Wei handed a bamboo sifter to Li Hui.
“Li Hui, come with me to pick seeds.”
Since everyone here had connections, the easiest jobs naturally couldn’t be handed over to outsiders.
Although this wife of his wasn’t bad-looking, someone who labored in the fields long-term inevitably suffered from wind and sun, turning her into a bit of a sun-kissed country girl.
An easy job like seed-selection could be done right inside the warehouse, and whether the work was done well or poorly was entirely up to him, the warehouse keeper.
The huge surprise almost made Li Hui let out a shout; if she wasn’t a mute, she probably would have yelled out loud.
She never dreamed that she, too, would one day become one of the “connected favorites.”
In that instant, Li Hui’s heart was sent into complete turmoil.
“He treats me so well, yet last night I gave him a whack on the head with a club. But if I hadn’t hit him, he would have beaten my parents to death…”
The villagers, who hadn’t fully dispersed yet, saw Zhang Wei hand the seed-selection job to Li Hui and instantly perked up, eager for a good show.
All eyes instantly converged on a single woman.
Compared to the villagers, the woman looked exceptionally fair and clean, showing no signs of being weathered by wind or sun whatsoever. The main reason Zhang Wei had assigned Li Hui to handle the seed selection was precisely because he had caught sight of this woman.
Seeing that Zhang Wei was about to step into the brigade warehouse without even sparing her a single glance, a towering rage instantly flared up within her.
“Zhang Wei, you’re making this damn mute go pick the seeds?
What about me?!”