The air froze for a few seconds. Shen Yan, who had been equally startled, was the first to snap back to his senses. “Is this your cat?”
Shen Wuqiu remained somewhat dazed, all her senses seemingly concentrated right on her cheek. The sensation wasn’t like being licked by a warm, wet tongue; rather, it felt like some tiny, sharp thorns scraping across her skin. It didn’t really hurt, but it was itchy and rather unpleasant.
Perhaps it was all too bizarre, so she even forgot to be repulsed, and inappropriately thought: So a cat’s tongue is actually this petite and cute.
A moment later, as if reacting with a delay, she shook her head at Shen Yan. “No.”
“No?”
Shen Yan was stunned. He reached out, intending to pluck the white cat, which still wore a haughty expression, right off her shoulder. But before his hand could even reach her, the white cat sensed his movement and swiped a paw in his direction.
The scratch it had just inflicted still throbbed faintly, so Shen Yan had to awkwardly retract his hand. “I haven’t seen this cat around the village before. I have no idea where it strayed from.”
“Meow!”
Before Shen Wuqiu could reply, the white cat perched on her shoulder started cursing again. Its voice sounded even fiercer than before, the drawn-out tone seeming to resonate right from its chest. In short, at a single listen, anyone could tell the cat was furious and not to be messed with.
Shen Wuqiu found it quite amusing. She looked at Shen Yan, then turned her head to look at the white cat on her shoulder. “How come I get the feeling it holds a lot of hostility toward you?”
Terrified of being licked by this little perverted cat again, she deliberately tilted her head toward her right shoulder as she turned, purposely putting some distance between them.
“Meow!” The white cat clearly noticed her little movement and sounded even more resentful when it cried out at her.
This scene forced Shen Yan to voice his doubts. “Are you sure this isn’t your cat?”
Shen Wuqiu shook her head. “Really not.”
“Well, that’s strange. Does this cat pick and choose who it likes?”
Seeing the look of confusion on his face, Shen Wuqiu deliberately teased, “Maybe cats prefer thin people.”
“You really know how to twist the knife.” Knowing she was just joking, Shen Yan didn’t take it to heart and bantered back. “Well, isn’t spring here? It’s the mating season for all these cats and dogs. I bet this cat is a total little pervert and has set its sights on you.”
“Get lost.” Shen Wuqiu had an almost allergic aversion to such suggestive jokes. After scolding him, she relaxed again. “What are you thinking? This is a female cat.”
“How do you know it’s a female?”
Right as the words reached her lips, Shen Wuqiu decided to play coy. “I guessed. Care to make a bet?”
“Bet on what?”
“Haven’t thought of the stakes yet, but are you betting or not?”
“I’m betting.”
Seeing him nod, Shen Wuqiu raised her hand, wanting to stealthily pick the cat down.
Naturally, the white cat didn’t give her any face. The moment Shen Wuqiu’s hand touched it, the white cat leaped right off her shoulder, landed five meters away, and stared at her. “Meow!”
Whether it was her imagination or not, Shen Wuqiu always felt that the white cat’s blue eyes were brimming with fury.
“Meow.” Shen Wuqiu crouched down, still trying to coax it over.
The result was entirely predictable: the white cat ran off in a huff.
Shen Wuqiu looked in the direction where the white cat had vanished. After quite a while, she stood back up and said to Shen Yan, “That really is a female cat.”
Shen Yan smiled. “Now that it’s run off, there’s no way to verify whether it’s male or female, is there?”
“I’ve already verified it. It really is a female cat.”
Shen Yan wore a suggestive expression. “How did you verify that?”
Shen Wuqiu told the truth. “She meowed outside my room last night, so I let her in. She slept in my room last night.”
Shen Yan looked her up and down. “So that’s how it is. No wonder you were so dead set on making that bet.”
Shen Wuqiu was self-righteous. “A bet is a bet; a loser must acknowledge defeat.”
“A gentleman’s word is as good as a team of galloping horses.” Not wanting to spoil her fun, Shen Yan raised his wrist to check the time and smoothly changed the subject. “Haven’t seen you in ages. Let’s grab lunch together at noon?”
“There’s no need to be so polite.” The countryside wasn’t like the city, where places to eat, drink, and be merry were everywhere. If she went to his house for a meal, as an older unmarried woman, it would inevitably invite gossip from the neighbors. Thinking of this, Shen Wuqiu blurted out, “By the way, are you married?”
“Nope. Look at me now; who would have the eye for me?” Shen Yan joked about himself, his eyes, however, locking straight onto her. “What about you? Didn’t bring a boyfriend back?”
“Nope,” Shen Wuqiu lowered her gaze and said vaguely. Having shared so many years of history, she more or less understood what Shen Yan was getting at, but apart from friendship, she truly had no other feelings for Shen Yan. Since Shen Yan didn’t pierce the veil, she had no room to refuse either, and could only play dumb.
Shen Yan likely sensed her awkwardness too, and stopped lingering on the topic. “Old Grandpa Le already filled the village in about your family matters, so you don’t need to worry too much.”
Old Grandpa Le was Shen Wuqiu’s father. Shen Wuqiu’s branch of the family belonged to the highest generation in Jingrong Village. By generational ranking, the vast majority of people her age in the village had to call Shen Wuqiu’s father Grandpa or Great-Grandpa.
And Gonggong was the local dialect term for grandfather in Jingrong Village.
“Mm, I’m not worried.”
Regarding family property, Shen Wuqiu had never kept her eyes on it. She had her own ability to make money and had never depended on handouts from her aging father.
“How is your dad holding up?”
“He’s just hanging in there.” The topics of birth, aging, sickness, and death were never happy ones, and Shen Wuqiu didn’t particularly like talking about them with others. “Just heard you say the village. Are you contributing to the village now?”
“Don’t pin those lofty titles on me. What contribution? I’m just scraping by to make a living.” In front of Shen Wuqiu, Shen Yan didn’t feel that the civil servant position he had worked so hard to test into was anything worth bragging about. “What about you? Are you leaving again after coming back this time? Judging by Old Grandpa Le’s intentions, those mountain forests and farmlands he contracted out will most likely be handed over to you. As a young woman, you’re probably planning to sublease them out again, right?”
“I’m not leaving anymore. I’m coming home to farm.”
“Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“You look like it.”
“I really am not joking with you.” Shen Wuqiu looked around. “I came out wandering just to take a look at the empire my dad built for me.”
Shen Yan was amused by her. “Your dad initially only contracted a few thousand mu of land in the village. Later on, as more and more village land lay abandoned, your dad contracted all of it. A rough estimate, including the reservoirs, mountain forests, paddy fields, and dry land, adds up to nearly twenty thousand mu, I’d say.”
As he spoke, Shen Yan led her around to the back of the office building, pointing at the rapeseed planted in the paddy fields all around them. “See? All these fields planted with rapeseed are part of the empire your dad built for you.”
Shen Wuqiu followed his finger. A glance across the landscape revealed almost nothing but rapeseed fields. “If it’s twenty thousand mu, doesn’t that mean all the land in our village has been contracted out?”
“More than just that. The paddy fields and mountain lands of several neighboring villages also fall under your empire.”
“This much?” Shen Wuqiu was quite startled now. She wasn’t sensitive to the number twenty thousand mu, but once Shen Yan broke down the specifics for her, it hit home.
Shen Yan sighed with emotion. “Your dad is still quite capable.”
Shen Wuqiu nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught an unfamiliar middle-aged man looking over in their direction. She looked at Shen Yan. “Looking for you?”
Hearing this, Shen Yan glanced back and immediately walked over to the person to greet him. “Secretary Cao.” After the greeting, he took the initiative to introduce them. “This is Shen Xiangley’s daughter, Shen Wuqiu. Wuqiu, this is our new secretary, Secretary Cao.”
Shen Wuqiu hurried over to greet him. “Secretary Cao.”
Secretary Cao looked her up and down twice and nodded. “You still look a lot like your dad.”
Shen Wuqiu smiled. She wasn’t a talkative person, but she knew that since she was going to farm at home from now on, she would inevitably have to deal with the township and village committee officials, so she had to bite the bullet and make small talk. “Everyone says that.”
After exchanging a couple of sentences, Secretary Cao looked back at Shen Yan, clearly having something to discuss. Being tactful, Shen Wuqiu took the initiative to say, “Secretary Cao, you guys go ahead and get to your business; I’ll walk around a bit more.”
Secretary Cao nodded.
Shen Wuqiu greeted Shen Yan again before continuing along the road.
This road had been built by cutting right through numerous farmlands. Passing the village committee office, both sides of the road were stretches of continuous green. In this late spring of March, it carried a rather unique charm.
Shen Wuqiu walked along the road for less than an hour before her legs started feeling sore. There were no benches to sit on along the country path, but she wasn’t picky about dirt and randomly found a roadside rock to sit on.
There were hardly any figures on the road. Bored out of her mind, she pulled out her phone. Probably because the signal in this mountain pocket was poor and there was no internet, the phone became a mere decoration. After fiddling with it for a while and getting ready to put it away, something occurred to her, and she opened the phone’s camera.
Natural scenery in the countryside, when captured, looked like a fine art photograph even without beauty filters or editing.
After taking a few shots, seeing that there was still nobody around, she opened the front-facing camera. Just as she struck a V-sign pose and prepared to snap a picture, her sharp eyes caught a white blur on a tree behind her. Holding her breath, she silently zoomed the lens in, and sure enough, just as she expected, it was that white cat.
Could this little thing have been following her the whole time?
Shen Wuqiu put her phone away, turned around to face a camphor tree about three meters behind her, and called out to the first fork in the main trunk. “Meow.”
At first, the white cat ignored her.
Shen Wuqiu meowed three times in a row before the white cat reluctantly looked over at her with a “Meow.”
This little thing certainly had quite a temper. The more it acted like this, the more Shen Wuqiu felt like teasing it. “Come down.”
The white cat ignored her.
Shen Wuqiu used soft, coaxing persuasion. “I’ll give you a little dried fish.”
The white cat still ignored her.
Shen Wuqiu had never raised a cat before, so for a moment she had no idea how to coax it. After meowing and coaxing a couple of times, she somehow blurted out, “If you don’t come down right now, I’m not letting you into my room tonight.”
Hearing this, the white cat leaped straight down from the tree with a thud.
So, this cat had turned into a spirit?