Ye Qisheng wanted to say something else, but seeing the full mockery on the other’s face, making it obvious that it was completely intentional, she knew that asking further would only lead to a brick wall. So, she sensibly shut her mouth.
The other party was deliberately making things difficult, and Ye Qisheng wasn’t without anger in her heart. However, she also understood that given her current predicament, she had no other choice besides swallowing her pride.
In the end, she went to fetch a basin of cold water for herself, gave her body a rough wipe, and reluctantly changed into that set of old cloth garments.
After all this tossing and turning, Ye Qisheng was utterly exhausted. The various discomforts of having just transmigrated, combined with her anxiety about the future, left her physically and mentally drained, making her desperately yearn to fall asleep the moment she touched a bed.
Yet, no sooner had she climbed onto the bed than Liu Yuexia kicked her right down. “You didn’t bathe, don’t get on my bed! Go sleep on the floor!”
While speaking, Liu Yuexia rolled both quilts onto herself and sprawled completely flat across the middle of the bed, making it clear as day that she refused to share a bed with her.
Ye Qisheng glared at her depressedly for a long while, but chose not to argue. Seeing a tattered straw mat leaning against the corner of the wall, she picked it up, spread it out on the floor, closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep in a daze.
When she woke up again, the sun was already high in the sky.
After the heavy downpour last night, today’s weather was exceptionally fine. Soft, thin clouds lazily drifted across the horizon, and the sky was as clean as if it had just been rinsed with water.
Ye Qisheng sat on the straw mat in a daze for a while, rubbed her sore and tired lower back, and climbed up to step out of the room, curiously looking around to survey her surroundings.
It had been too dark when she arrived last night for her to inspect this home, but now she could finally take a clear and thorough look.
This was a most ordinary quadrangle courtyard with a single entrance. The main central hall was the largest room, visually measuring around seventy to eighty square meters. There were two wing rooms on each side, which were also quite large, roughly fifty square meters each.
Below that were the kitchen and the utility room, all built with uniform blue bricks and grey tiles, and the ground was paved with flat stone slabs so that one wouldn’t step in mud even when it rained.
Ye Qisheng strolled around the courtyard for a circle and couldn’t help but inwardly marvel. As expected of the village head’s home, compared to Doctor Xu’s small, thatched courtyard, this could definitely be considered a wealthy estate.
Just as she was touring her new environment, a cold, stern voice suddenly rang out from behind her. “You’re darting back and forth like a monkey, what are you looking for?”
Ye Qisheng looked in the direction of the voice and saw an elderly woman with white hair holding a basket of needles and thread standing in front of the main hall’s doorway. The woman was glaring at her with chilly eyes, her wrinkle-filled, aged face plastered with impatience and disgust.
There was no one else in this family, so this person must be Liu Shiting’s mother, Aunt Fan. Ye Qisheng hurriedly stepped forward and greeted her politely, “Hello, Aunt Fan. I am Ye Qisheng. Big Brother Liu should have mentioned my situation to you, right? I’m sorry to be intruding upon you these next few days.”
Aunt Fan narrowed her eyes, her sharp gaze scanning her up and down for a moment before she let out an almost imperceptible snort.
She hadn’t been happy about her son bringing someone back to share their food rations in the first place, and having just seen Ye Qisheng wandering aimlessly around like it was her own home, she felt even more displeased. With a poker face, she reprimanded, “Although my son took you in, it doesn’t mean you can treat this place like your own home! Besides, as a young lady, sleeping until the sun is high in the sky—I have no idea how your parents taught you!”
Greeted by her parents right off the bat, Ye Qisheng didn’t say anything out loud, but inwardly she made a silent retort: her parents had only ever taught her to do whatever made her happy, as long as it wasn’t illegal or criminal; sleeping in was just a trivial matter not worth mentioning.
The old lady put on a stern face and lectured a few more times before impatiently waving her hand. “Don’t wander around aimlessly when there’s nothing to do, lest something goes missing one day and we have to come looking for it from you!”
Ye Qisheng secretly stuck out her tongue, lowered her head, and obediently admitted her mistake. “I’m sorry, I’ll pay attention next time.”
This aunt was so fierce! The tone and expression when she spoke were cut from the exact same cloth as Liu Yuexia; they truly looked like mother and daughter.
Although Ye Qisheng apologized sincerely, Aunt Fan still felt a knot of uncomfortableness in her chest. However, considering that Doctor Xu had once helped cure her chronic rheumatism-stricken legs for many years, she managed to forcibly restrain her temper and said coldly, “We’ll let it go for today. Breakfast has been left for you in the kitchen, go eat it.”
There was food!
Ye Qisheng’s eyes lit up. After politely expressing her gratitude, she eagerly rushed toward the kitchen.
From sinking into the sea last night until now, not a single morsel had entered her stomach. She had long been so hungry that her stomach was staging an empty-city strategy; right now, she could swallow an entire cow if one were given to her.
Upon entering the kitchen, a plate and a bowl were indeed placed on the old table. Ye Qisheng ran over to take a look and instantly dumbfounded herself.
A plate of black pickled cucumbers and a bowl of noodle soup clear enough to use as a mirror.
Such meager fare—if it were back in modern times, even if you offered it to a stray dog, it wouldn’t even deign to sniff it.
Ye Qisheng rubbed her stomach, really lacking the heart to mistreat her precious internal organs. But if she didn’t eat, she could only continue starving, and what’s more, she had no idea when she would get her next meal.
In the end, hunger conquered all. She pulled out a chair, sat down, forced herself to drink a few mouthfuls of the tasteless soup, and managed half a bitter, astringent pickled cucumber before she simply couldn’t swallow another bite.
Although she was neither full nor satiated, Ye Qisheng still perked herself up, clumsily washed the bowls and chopsticks, put them back into the cabinet, and left the Liu household to go outside and familiarize herself with her new environment.
According to the intelligence she had gathered from Liu Shiting last night, this village had around a hundred households—a scale that could be considered a medium-sized village in this era.
It had rained heavily last night, and the muddy paths in the village hadn’t dried yet. Ye Qisheng carefully avoided the puddles, walking while curiously gazing all around.
Most of the houses in the village were rammed-earth structures with roofs built entirely of thick thatch, and very few had enclosing walls; they simply stood there facing the wind.
By comparison, Liu Shiting’s grey-brick and tile house with its bamboo fence courtyard appeared all the more high-end and sophisticated, making it undoubtedly the top property in this Liuye Village.
Passing through several rows of large trees surrounding the village, Ye Qisheng’s field of vision suddenly broadened. Large tracts of cultivated farmland connected together, contrasting against the distant tall mountains and forests, resembling a beautiful painting.
Ye Qisheng couldn’t help being somewhat mesmerized. For someone like her who grew up in steel-and-concrete cities, this scene was simply too breathtaking.
Without industrial pollution, there was only the most rustic pristine landscape of green mountains, clear waters, and old farmland and forests—a natural scenery she had never experienced before.
Unfortunately, due to the heavy rainstorm last night, a large swath of crops in the fields had collapsed. Villagers wearing patched-upon-patched clothes were rushing to salvage these life-saving grains, their movements quick and agile as if they had been hit with an acceleration buff.
Besides able-bodied laborers, the elderly and children had also joined the fray, and even a bare-bottomed three-year-old toddler was using his short little legs to help pass items along the edge of the field.
Looking at that bare-bottomed child, Ye Qisheng couldn’t help sighing softly.
Children in ancient times really had it tough; if this were in modern times, a child of that age should be sitting in kindergarten playing games with other kids.
However, setting aside this hardship, the village was still quite peaceful and stable. Because of its remote location, it had not been touched by the war, and the imperial court couldn’t reach this place either. Lacking heavy arbitrary taxes and military service, even though the village had encountered consecutive years of floods, they could still tighten their belts and scrape by.
Ye Qisheng was an optimist. Thinking this way, she felt she was still quite lucky.
Even though her method of transmigration wasn’t ideal, fortunately, she ran into kind people right off the bat who not only saved her but also solved her temporary lodging issue, or else who knows how miserable she would have been!
No matter what, she had to cherish this borrowed dog’s life and strive to survive in this unfamiliar era!
“Hey, Yuexia, isn’t that the girl Doctor Xu saved last night? What is she standing over there doing?”
Liu Yuexia was digging irrigation ditches in a sweat. Hearing someone beside her ask this, she straightened up, glanced over, and immediately put on a look of contempt, saying dismissively, “Who knows what’s up with her! A young miss from the city is so worldly-ignorant, she’s probably never seen people digging wild vegetables before!”
The land belonging to their family was on higher ground, and the rainwater accumulated last night had overflowed the young rice shoots. They had to dig out irrigation ditches to channel the excess water into lower-lying paddy plots to drain it away. Liu Yuexia was already panting with exhaustion and feeling irritated; seeing Ye Qisheng standing over there idly now, her annoyance was off the charts.
Hearing the conversation over here, Zhou Fenling, who was standing opposite Liu Yuexia, also paused her movements, followed their gaze, blinked lightly, and half-jokingly teased, “Yuexia, the clothes that girl is wearing look awfully familiar. They must be yours, right?”
Liu Yuexia snorted and replied with little politeness, “She said she didn’t have any clothes to wear, what else could I do? I couldn’t just let her run around naked in our house.”
Zhou Fenling covered her mouth and chuckled softly. “Didn’t you say before that you wanted to cut up those clothes to use as cleaning rags? How did you end up giving them to a guest to wear? I was still waiting for your rags to wipe the table.”
Liu Yuexia stopped talking, her face cold as she shot a knife-like glare of intense hatred at Ye Qisheng.
Come to think of it, it was enough to make someone die of anger: that set of grey cloth garments looked like she was wearing a burlap sack when worn by herself, completely devoid of style or temperament. But once switched to the tall and slim Ye Qisheng, it was as if they had been injected with life and immediately transformed!
That woman hadn’t made any alterations either; she just tied a rope around her waist, effortlessly outlining her full breasts, slender waist, and plump hips into an alluring curve. Not only was it not tacky, but it also carried some inexpressible, bewitching charm.
Comparing people truly could make someone die of jealousy. Liu Yuexia gnashed her teeth in anger. Didn’t they say “clothes make the man, saddles make the horse”? Why didn’t that saying apply to that ugly creature at all?!