Lu Zheng’s face went stiff, and he instinctively wanted to shake her off, only to be held on to more tightly instead.
“What, can’t you be touched?” Shen Jiaqi tilted her head to look at him.
His lips moved slightly, and meeting those eyes with their clear black and white, he took two steps back.
He clearly said nothing at all, yet it was better than a thousand words.
Shen Jiaqi caught on at once, quickly let go and straightened up.
This was the seventies, local customs were rather simple, and hanging onto a man the way she had could well get her labeled, called a female hooligan.
Realizing she had just given offense, Shen Jiaqi gritted her teeth in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, Comrade Lu, I didn’t mean it just now, I wasn’t trying to take advantage of you…”
Shen Jiaqi’s self-defense was pale and feeble, saying she really had only done it out of habit.
Lu Zheng stared blankly at his arm hanging in the air. This was the first time a girl had taken his arm.
He still hadn’t entirely recovered from it.
Ordinarily, apart from his sisters at home and Ye Zhaozhao, no other woman even had the chance to get near him.
But just now, faced with this dainty woman, he had no resistance at all.
Seeing her bitten by a snake, he’d laid her across his legs without a second thought.
In the stream, he had reached out of his own accord to steady her.
Having her take his arm didn’t disgust him in the least, instead he worried it would ruin her reputation.
Lu Zheng rubbed the aching spot between his brows, his expression somewhat puzzled and displeased.
Shen Jiaqi explained for quite a while, but Lu Zheng’s face stayed cold and he never made a sound.
In fact, you couldn’t blame Lu Zheng for avoiding suspicion.
At this point Lu Zheng’s engagement hadn’t been broken off yet, he was Ye Zhaozhao’s acknowledged fiancé.
And she, Shen Jiaqi, had long been notorious, and cared nothing at all about her reputation.
But Lu Zheng was different, he had to leave Ye Zhaozhao with a good impression.
“Um… you carry the back basket for me, and I’ll find a stick to lean on.”
Shen Jiaqi lowered her head and was about to look for a dead branch when Lu Zheng’s low voice came by her ear.
“All right…”
He’d actually agreed!
So she’d guessed right, Lu Zheng found her thoroughly distasteful.
Leaning on a length of vine, Shen Jiaqi followed Lu Zheng down the mountain with one step deep and one step shallow.
The whole way, Lu Zheng deliberately slowed his pace, keeping the corner of his eye on her the entire time.
The two of them stayed neither far nor near from each other all the way to the Shen family’s gate.
Lu Zheng silently set down her back basket, glimpsed her red, swollen ankle, and as if remembering something, a flicker of vexation passed through his eyes.
He felt at his pockets and pulled out a small brown medicine bottle.
“This medicine is good for swelling and can treat external injuries too. Give it a try.”
Shen Jiaqi hesitated a moment, but seeing that the bottle had no packaging and no name written on it, so it shouldn’t be recognizable by anyone, she gladly accepted.
“Thank you…” She held the warm little medicine bottle like a treasure.
If he carried it on his person into the mountains, this medicine must work very well.
Courtesy demanding a return, Shen Jiaqi also fished an orange-flavored fruit candy out of her pocket and handed it to him.
“Comrade Lu, please help keep tonight’s business secret! Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone…”
That was exactly Lu Zheng’s intention as well.
He didn’t want complications over his secret hunting in the mountains and digging up mountain delicacies and wild greens.
In famine years, nobody wanted to make people envious and stir up unnecessary trouble.
The two of them exchanged a tacit glance and came to an understanding.
Looking at her smiling face, he, who didn’t care for candy, opened his big palm and took it, and clenched the candy tight in his hand…
Shen Jiaqi watched Lu Zheng go, and when she saw no one was around, waved her palm lightly over the back basket, putting it all into the space.
“Ding. The system has detected favorability +5.”
The mechanical female voice announced it in her mind.
Shen Jiaqi shivered all over. This favorability was… was it Lu Zheng’s?
She’d thought Lu Zheng absolutely detested her, she didn’t expect to gain 5 favorability points.
It seemed he wasn’t as cold and heartless as he acted.
Shen Jiaqi was delighted. Tonight’s haul was considerable: not only had she dug up lots of wild ginger and wild greens, she’d caught plump, tender grass carp and gained favorability points.
It was just this wound on her backside… that still had to be dealt with.
Shen Jiaqi hid away in her room, took off her trousers and put medicine on the wound.
Fortunately the trousers had been in the way and the snake hadn’t bitten deep. After she’d washed and treated it, only two very small red dots were left.
She reckoned one night’s sleep would heal it.
She sniffed and found her nose was even more blocked, and running a little too.
She’d already had cold symptoms, and being blown on by the night wind and then going into the river to catch fish seemed to have made it worse.
She hurried to take a piece of wild ginger out of the space and dragged her bad leg to the kitchen to boil water.
She washed the wild ginger clean, sliced the ginger thin, knocked off a small piece of brown sugar with the back of the knife, put it in the water and stirred it around. As the water heated, a pungent, sweet fragrance gradually spread out.
Once the brown sugar water in the pot came to a boil, she simmered it another five minutes over low heat before ladling it out into bowls.
One bowl was hers, the other she covered with the pot lid, saved for Xiaobao.
When the hot ginger-sugar water went down, that sweet, fiery warmth traveled from her throat down into her stomach.
Very quickly she broke into a hot sweat all over, her icy limbs gradually warmed, and even her complexion turned rosy.
Brown-sugar ginger water was no miracle elixir, but it made her whole body comfortable, and her blocked nose cleared up.
Then she rubbed on the medicated oil Lu Zheng had given her and massaged her foot, and had a lovely sleep…
That night she slept more soundly than she ever had.
The last time she’d slept this soundly seemed to have been in her grandmother’s arms.
Ever since her grandmother died, she’d been especially afraid of the dark, and had to sleep with the light on at night.
Even then she didn’t sleep peacefully, often waking from nightmares in the middle of the night.
Unexpectedly, on her first day in the book, in a pitch-black room, she passed the whole night without a dream.
The next day, early in the morning, she stretched languidly.
Looking at this simple but neat and orderly room, she realized she was in the seventies and didn’t have to get up early to clock in at work.
After drinking ginger soup last night, her stuffy nose and headache were all gone.
After rubbing on Lu Zheng’s medicated oil, her ankle didn’t hurt either, it was basically back to normal.
She turned over comfortably and was about to laze a while longer when a clamor came from the yard.
Qiao Huilan was at full volume. “Eldest son’s wife, I know you feel for Xiaobao, but you can’t go touching the second household’s brown sugar!”
Peng Zhaodi was in tears. “Mom, I didn’t, it wasn’t me…”
“If it wasn’t you, then who was it? Dare to do it but not own it, is that it?”
“Today I’ll teach you properly what the rules of my Shen family are…”
Brown sugar… rules… oh no!
Shen Jiaqi rolled out of bed and yanked the door open, just in time to see her own mother pick up the broom to hit her eldest sister-in-law.
“Mom, stop, it wasn’t sister-in-law, it was me!”
Pushing her arms into her jacket sleeves as she walked out the door, Shen Jiaqi said, “I boiled that brown-sugar ginger water. It has nothing to do with sister-in-law.”
The broom in Qiao Huilan’s hand dropped back to the ground, and she glared at Shen Jiaqi in mock reproach. “So it was you. And here I thought…”
She coughed twice, trying to ease the awkwardness. “Eldest son’s wife, I’m sorry, this old woman misunderstood you.”
Peng Zhaodi felt terribly wronged and began sobbing quietly. “Mom, you just don’t believe me.”
Qiao Huilan made a sound of dismissal. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s that I don’t believe my daughter would go into the kitchen.”
Her precious daughter was eighteen and had never even boiled water, let alone cooked brown-sugar ginger water.
So the first person she’d suspected was the eldest son’s wife.
“Oho. The system has detected favorability decreased by 3 points.”
Shen Jiaqi looked at the minus 915 she’d worked so hard for turning into minus 918, and felt very dejected inside.
Her eldest sister-in-law was sensitive and delicate to begin with, and having been wronged first thing in the morning she’d certainly hold it against her again.
Shen Jiaqi walked over to Peng Zhaodi. “I’m sorry, sister-in-law, I got you wronged.”
“I didn’t know either, this was second sister-in-law’s sugar, and I just used it without thinking.”
“That bowl of brown-sugar ginger water on the stove I saved specially for Xiaobao. Warm it up and give it to him to drink, and his cold will get better faster.”
“Look at me, I drank ginger soup last night and today my cold is gone. My head doesn’t ache and my nose isn’t blocked. It works very well.”
The moment she said it, the look in her eldest sister-in-law’s eyes changed.