When it came to this extra guest at home, Shen Dad and the others were much more enthusiastic than Shen Wuqiu. Even Su Yunzhi, who usually kept her distance, offered bright smiles to the guest who had slept straight through until noon. During lunch, she kept urging her to eat:
“In this impoverished backwoods of ours, it is rare for someone like you to visit. Since you are here this time, you should stay with us for a good while.”
Gu Lingyu, who had no intention of leaving in the first place, replied without a shred of politeness, “Mm, Big Sister is here, so I was not planning on leaving anyway.”
Su Yunzhi had not expected her polite pleasantry to fall so flat, and the smile froze on her face. However, she quickly seized on the crucial detail: “Big Sister? You are younger than our Wuqiu?”
“If we are counting by your age here, I am certainly a few years younger than Big Sister.”
Hearing this, Su Yunzhi glanced at her daughter, her enthusiasm instantly rekindled. “A few years younger? Then how old are you?”
“Eighteen, I suppose.”
“Eighteen?” Su Yunzhi looked her up and down, her expression turning slightly subtle. “Our Wuqiu had just started college at eighteen. I thought you were a friend from her workplace.”
Shen Wuqiu quickly chimed in, “She is my friend’s younger sister.”
“So that is how it is,” Su Yunzhi smiled. Noticing that Gu Lingyu’s chopsticks kept hovering toward the plate of pan-fried sturgeon, she specifically spun the table’s Lazy Susan in the girl’s direction. “Our family does not have much in the way of fine hospitality, but ordinary chicken, duck, fish, and pork are always in steady supply. By the way, at your age, you should still be in school. Haven’t your classes started yet?”
Although Gu Lingyu was not particularly fond of her, given that the fish tasted quite good, she was willing to exchange a few more words. “Generally, only clan members whose brains are not very sharp fail to finish their education before adulthood. Can I eat fish every day?”
Another polite remark falling completely flat.
“Of course you can,” Shen Dad chimed in cheerfully. “Our family cannot guarantee much else, but we have fish at every single meal.”
Having received this guarantee, Gu Lingyu was thoroughly satisfied. “I am not a picky eater. As long as it is fish, I will eat it. Of course, braised sea bass is my favorite, and I like dried little fish too.”
Shen Wuqiu’s mouth twitched.
Shen Dad, on the other hand, quite liked the young girl’s unpretentious liveliness. “Alright then, this year I will have Qiuqiu release a few more fish fry into the reservoir. Once the rapeseed is harvested and we plant the paddy rice, we will raise some rice-field fish as well. Dried rice-field fish taste the best.”
With that, Shen Dad looked over at Shen Wuqiu. “At the end of the year before last, we released several thousand catties of fish fry into the reservoir up by the dam, and we haven’t harvested them since. When you have some spare time, we can catch a batch and buy some more fry to put in. Now we won’t have to worry about nobody eating the fish, and that cat you are raising loves fish anyway. By the way, didn’t you say yesterday evening that the cat came back? How come I haven’t seen it all morning?”
“It probably ran off again.” Shen Wuqiu was not too worried. As for the reservoir, she had her own plans. “I went to check on it last time. I heard the reservoir up by the dam is a backup drinking water reservoir, and its surface area is much larger than the Linjiawan Reservoir, with a pretty good environment. I am planning to use it to raise a batch of rarer fish species.”
She always had her own ideas about whatever she did, which only made Shen Dad feel even more gratified. “Alright, just arrange it however you like. I was just mentioning it offhand.”
Gu Lingyu, who had lowered her head to focus on eating the moment cats were mentioned, suddenly became active at these words. “Big Sister, let’s raise sea bass in all of them.”
Shen Wuqiu treated her words as wind past her ear, setting down her bowl and chopsticks. “I am done eating. Take your time.”
Seeing that she was about to leave, Gu Lingyu quickly crammed the last piece of fish into her mouth. “I am done too.”
Shen Wuqiu shot her a sidelong glance. “Since you are done, perfect. It is not raining this afternoon, so I am heading up to West Mountain to help plant citrus trees. You are coming along to help.”
Shen Dad objected, “It is rare for her to visit. You won’t even take her out for a stroll around the place, how can you make her go help do physical labor?”
Shen Wuqiu replied, “If we don’t get the trees planted before the weather warms up, their survival rate will drop.”
“During the busy farming season, it really is not a time to dawdle,” Su Yunzhi said, looking over at Shen Wujun. “Why don’t you let Junjun take her out for a spin? He is stuck at home doing nothing all day anyway.”
Shen Wuqiu refused without a second thought, “No.”
Since she couldn’t send the girl away, she would just have to make her face enough hardship to retreat and leave on her own accord.
Shen Wuqiu thought with quiet optimism that a pretty, lively young girl was clearly a little princess who had never known the hardships of the human world. Once she suffered a bit of hardship at their house, she would surely cry and run home to her mother.
As for the magical fruits and sacred items the girl kept talking about, though Shen Wuqiu had tried every possible avenue and found nothing matching those descriptions, she still didn’t believe a word of the girl’s narrative. Nine times out of ten, it was just a fabrication the other party had made up purely to sponge off her family.
In any case, she was never going to truly believe it.
Therefore, she was absolutely determined not to let the young girl think that freeloading at their house was a fun experience.
To her surprise, however, the young girl cheerfully volunteered to go up the mountain with her to endure grueling labor. “I don’t want to go play; I want to go help Big Sister.”
The girl certainly hadn’t tasted hardship yet. Today, she was definitely going to teach her a lesson.
Thus, after the meal, Shen Wuqiu had Gu Lingyu change into a set of her own old, discarded clothes and brought her along to West Mountain.
By afternoon, the dark clouds had cleared, and the sky brightened once more.
Right now, it was a race against time with the heavens. Hardworking folks like Uncle Zheng couldn’t just sit around idly; the moment the rain stopped, they had spontaneously come up to the mountain to work.
The citrus tree saplings hadn’t been delivered yet, so Uncle Zheng was leading Su Zhongmin and his wife in fertilizing the planting pits for the citrus trees.
Short-handed, Shen Wuqiu went over to pitch in. Uncle Zheng and the others didn’t stand on ceremony; after giving her a hands-on demonstration of how it was done, they left her to work on her own.
Shen Wuqiu had brought Gu Lingyu specifically to experience the miseries of the human world, so she naturally didn’t let her off easy. Handing her a bucket of fertilizer, she instructed, “Use this cup and sprinkle three cups into each pit.”
Gu Lingyu somewhat disliked how dirty and black the fertilizer looked and was rather reluctant, holding out her pristine, glowing white hands right in front of Shen Wuqiu. “If they get dirty, Big Sister will definitely find it disgusting.”
It was not her own hands getting dirty, so what was there to find disgusting.
Shen Wuqiu looked at those hands, and uncooperative images flashed through her mind, making the other girl’s words sound suddenly ambiguous. Shen Wuqiu lowered her gaze. The moment she remembered that these very hands had once wandered all over her own body, and then looked back at the pitch-black fertilizer in the bucket, her heart softened. Yet, recalling that she couldn’t let the other girl off easy either, she took the cup back instead. “Then you just carry the bucket and follow behind.”
To this, Gu Lingyu had zero objections.
The little divine beast capable of lifting cauldrons carried the less-than-one-hundred-catty bucket of fertilizer as easily as if she were strolling around with a handbag, presenting absolute zero problem.
Consequently, by the end, Shen Wuqiu found herself looking back at the clever young girl who had taken a shortcut: carrying a bucket in each hand, trailing right behind her, and urging her to move faster.
Perhaps she was the one who didn’t understand the hardships of the human world.
On the walk home, Shen Wuqiu, whose lower back ached from half a day of bending over and scattering fertilizer, couldn’t help but feel bewildered as she looked at the girl who was still full of vigor and vitality. “Just how much strength do you have? How did you manage to lift a bucket in each hand like that?”
“Does Big Sister want to try?”
“Try what.”
Before Shen Wuqiu could finish her sentence, she was suddenly scooped up into the air and cradled in someone’s arms. The bright-eyed young girl looked at her with a smile, “Does Big Sister want me to carry you home?”
Recovering her wits, Shen Wuqiu scrambled down in a panic. Glancing left and right, thankfully nobody was around, she feigned composure. “Since you have so much strength, go help carry the tree saplings tomorrow.”
Day one of the plan to make her retreat in difficulty was officially declared a failure.
On the second day, helping to transport the tree saplings, the young girl handled the job entirely by herself, drawing sideways glances and stunned looks from everyone around. Shen Wuqiu, who was working hard as a role model to genuinely experience human hardship, was so exhausted she didn’t even want to move a finger, while the young girl remained full of pep.
Thus, the plan to force her to retreat in difficulty was once again declared a failure.
After more than twenty days of this, Shen Wuqiu felt like crying and calling for her mother, while the young girl still showed no sign whatsoever of wanting to give up.
That evening, as the two of them were heading back to their respective rooms, Shen Wuqiu stopped Gu Lingyu. “Let’s talk.”
Gu Lingyu was just fretting over having no excuse to linger a bit longer. Hearing this, she briskly skipped over to Shen Wuqiu. “What does Big Sister want to talk to me about?”
“Come inside first, then we’ll talk.”
Shen Wuqiu pushed the door open and stepped in. She felt a brief flash of puzzlement upon not seeing the white cat in the room, but she didn’t dwell on it. Ever since that little ancestor had spent an entire day and night away that one time, it had developed this habit, only showing its feline silhouette right before bedtime every day. Plus, she had been truly busy lately; as long as she caught sight of the cat at night, she felt at ease.
Gu Lingyu entered the room and naturally sprawled out across the bed, her legs dangling off the edge, swinging lazily back and forth as she tilted her head toward her.
Whether due to the overhead lighting or something else, Shen Wuqiu felt as though the person before her looked just like a tempting red apple, making it impossible to tear her gaze away.
Until the woman’s red lips parted softly: “Is Big Sister thinking of kissing me?”
Shen Wuqiu hurriedly looked away. Being thrown off balance by the other’s remark, she couldn’t be bothered to beat around the bush anymore and went straight to the point: “Just when are you planning to go back?”
Upon hearing this, Gu Lingyu immediately sat up, wearing a deeply wronged expression. “Is Big Sister trying to chase me away again?”
Meeting that exact same expression and tone yet again, Shen Wuqiu’s heart softened. “It is not that I am chasing you away, it is just, well, you have seen it yourself. I am very busy. Don’t you feel tired following me out to the fields every day?”
“Then I definitely can’t leave. Look how capable I am.”
Shen Wuqiu was left speechless. To tell the truth, the other person hadn’t actually caused any disruptions to her life; on the contrary, she had helped a great deal. However, she had caused quite a bit of emotional turbulence. Right now, for instance, the pretty, bright, and sweet-talking young girl made her heart pound out of control.
Just as the other girl had put it, she did want to kiss her.
This feeling was growing stronger and stronger, so strong that…
Shen Wuqiu took a deep breath. “Will you go home once you have a little one?”
Gu Lingyu nodded. “After the little one is born, we must return to the clan to be baptized in holy water, otherwise it won’t grow up properly.”
What kind of superstition was this?
Shen Wuqiu once again found herself unable to communicate with this young girl, and the more she looked at her, the more irritated she became. In the end, out of sheer self-frustration and agitation, she chased the girl back to her room.
Pushed out the door, Gu Lingyu looked completely baffled, yet she obediently returned to her own room, only to transform her identity and sneak right back a moment later.
After driving her away, Shen Wuqiu began to reflect on herself, feeling vaguely like her temper these past two days had been completely unreasonable. She wondered if her period was about to arrive.
Speaking of her period, a fresh wave of irritation hit her. Her normally clockwork-punctual cycle was now a full week late, perhaps due to doing too much heavy physical labor lately.
It was all Gu Lingyu this little siren’s fault.
The more Shen Wuqiu thought about it, the harder it was to sleep. Catching sight of the white cat returning, she immediately scooped the feline into her arms to complain, “You have been in heat for a whole month now, and you still run outside every day.”
After venting her complaints, she flipped the white cat over onto its back and began rubbing its belly. “Be honest, did you find some wild little cat out there?”
“Meow.”
“You’d better not have.” Shen Wuqiu pondered for a moment, then went to check its little belly buttons and breasts; they looked completely unchanged from before. She let out a slight sigh of relief, though the thought immediately nagged at her: “You aren’t infertile, are you?”
“Meow.”
Seeing the white cat bristle with indignation, Shen Wuqiu was amused despite herself. A brand-new notion popped into her head: Could it be that I really need to find a so-called partner for Gu Lingyu so she can bring a bun back with her?
Perhaps because what you think about by day appears in your dreams by night, Shen Wuqiu had a dream that evening. She forgot most of the specific details, but one particular scene stuck in her mind vividly:
The child who had been circling her a second ago, calling her Mom, suddenly turned into a cat the very next second.
It was entirely too bizarre.
And utterly terrifying.
So much so that when Shen Wuqiu woke up the next morning feeling a sudden wave of nausea, she assumed it was just the terrifying dream causing a bout of gastrointestinal spasms.
However, once she started vomiting, she couldn’t stop.
“Qiuqiu, what’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know, it just started right when I woke up this morning.”
“Is your stomach upset? Do you want to go get checked out?”
“Mn, let me wait a bit longer.”
Facing this sudden onset of queasiness and vomiting, Shen Wuqiu genuinely didn’t suspect a thing. If something really was amiss, she figured it was at most just her stomach acting up during the seasonal change between spring and summer.
She never expected that the young girl, who had been quietly silent all morning, would press a hand against her stomach and deliver a direct, devastating blow:
“Big Sister, you’re expecting.”
“Expecting? Expecting what?”
“A little one.”