Soon, A-Li also heard the commotion in the front hall and popped two small heads out from the inner room along with Shen Chunming.
When he saw the scene in the front hall—his own parents arguing right in front of Song Xia—A-Li awkwardly walked out from the inner room and stood with his head lowered before Song Xia.
“Sister Song, please don’t be angry. Our family really doesn’t have much money because of my medical treatment, but Sister Song, don’t worry! I definitely won’t default on this money! Sister Song, I will definitely pay you back!” A-Li was extremely embarrassed, his speech fast and urgent. Song Xia could even see a blush of embarrassment on his tanned face.
Hearing A-Li say this, Song Xia felt a pang in her heart, stood up, and pulled him over to her side.
A-Li was simply too sensible and well-behaved!
“It’s fine, don’t dwell on these things. These are adult matters, children don’t need to worry about them.” Song Xia’s heart always softened whenever she saw a sensible child, especially when she saw A-Li looking at her with those dark, glistening eyes. Her heart instantly melted even further.
Consequently, Song Xia felt even less favorable toward Shen Hu and his wife. A-Li had already come out, yet these two adults were still arguing right in front of the child!
A-Li shook his head, his gaze stubborn. “Sister Song, I’m not a child anymore. I’m already 13 this year, a grown-up! My grandfather told me that a person must have a conscience! Don’t worry, I will definitely pay you back.”
Song Xia opened her mouth, unable to say anything more, and simply patted A-Li’s head with affection. She couldn’t crush a child’s sincerity and determination.
Seeing that Song Xia said nothing more, A-Li walked over to his parents.
“Dad, Mom, stop arguing! This winter, I’ll go to the county town with Dad to do odd jobs. I can pay Sister Song back all by myself!”
“What odd jobs are you talking about! How old are you? Don’t come here and cause trouble!” Wang Xiuli pulled A-Li and scolded him again.
“Sister-in-law, what are they talking about?” Shen Chunming also emerged from the inner room, walked to Song Xia’s side, and looked curiously at Shen Hu’s family. “Did their family owe us money?”
Seeing Shen Chunming’s expression—one of someone waiting to watch a good show without realizing the gravity of the situation—Song Xia leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Go back to the room right now! Don’t come out here meddling.”
A-Ming and A-Li were clearly only a few years apart, but no matter how she looked at it, her own A-Ming still looked entirely childish, whereas A-Li already looked like half a grown-up! Looking at Shen Chunming beside her—who looked like he had never suffered a day in his life—Song Xia reached out and pinched his chubby little cheek.
“Stop staring. Brother A-Li is going to be so embarrassed seeing you standing here!”
Just as Shen Chunming wanted to act spoiled and linger outside, Shen Huaijing’s voice drifted out from the inner room.
“A-Ming, come inside. I have something to tell you.”
“Look at that! Your brother is calling you. If you don’t go back, your brother is going to scold you again, and I won’t protect you this time.” Song Xia threatened softly.
“Oh, alright.” Shen Chunming’s tone was somewhat regretful. He cast a few lingering glances at Shen Hu and the others before slowly heading back to the room.
At that moment, hearing Shen Huaijing’s voice, Shen Hu suddenly felt rather ashamed. With an ugly expression, he clamped his mouth shut, stopped arguing with Wang Xiuli, and stood quietly to the side while A-Li remained subdued from his mother’s recent scolding.
Only Wang Xiuli was left with her oval face flushed bright red.
It wasn’t that she was unwilling to return the medicine money to Song Xia; it was just that her family genuinely had no money right now! Ordinary commoners like them—how could they possibly have that much cash? Every single copper coin in the household was earned by her gathering eggs one by one, and by Shen Hu doing odd jobs in the county town during the off-season, squeezed out through strict thrift. The few dozens of copper coins left over at the end—how could that ever be enough to repay Song Xia?! Besides, the family still needed to buy salt and cloth to get by! If they had money, she would have repaid Song Xia without a second word, rather than having to lower herself to beg others like this. She had never fawned over anyone like this in her entire life!
Thinking of this, the corners of Wang Xiuli’s eyes grew somewhat moist. Seeing that Wang Xiuli was about to cry, Shen Hu and A-Li hurriedly scrambled to comfort her in a fluster.
Instantly, the front hall descended into another round of chaos.
“You two don’t need to put yourselves in such a bind.” Song Xia, watching this scene unfold, felt a severe headache coming on and finally spoke up to arbitrate.
Song Xia sighed internally. For people who scratched a living out of the earth all their lives, making money was truly harder than ascending to the heavens. Even she herself—was she not struggling to find a good way to make money?
Song Xia stepped forward to pull Wang Xiuli, who was secretly wiping away tears, speaking in a gentle tone. “Sister Wang, don’t cry either. I never said you had to pay me back right now, did I?”
“Then, then what do you want…” Wang Xiuli asked with a choked-up voice.
Song Xia glanced at Shen Hu and his son standing foolishly to the side, thought for a moment, and said, “Sister Wang, how about this? A-Ming and I only have the theoretical foundation, but we lack brute strength. If Elder Brother Shen can help me out a bit more with the farming, then next year after the wheat is harvested, besides the portion written in our contract, give me an extra two hu of wheat. How does that sound?”
“Deal! Why wouldn’t that work?! He’s got strength to spare! As for the wheat, our family will just eat a couple fewer mouthfuls and save it up!” Hearing Song Xia say this, Wang Xiuli immediately broke into tears of relief and smiled. Strength was something Shen Hu had plenty of! As for the wheat, they could scrape it together by tightening their belts!
Tears still hung on Wang Xiuli’s reddened eye rims, but her face bloomed with a smile full of pleasant surprise. This time, her gratitude toward Song Xia was entirely genuine.
“Young Mistress Song, this…” Shen Hu felt his family was taking unfair advantage, but the moment he opened his mouth, Song Xia cut him off.
“Elder Brother Shen, since I’ve put it this way, I certainly believe I’m not taking a loss. You don’t need to carry any psychological burden.” Although Song Xia didn’t particularly like Wang Xiuli, she had to admit that Wang Xiuli was right. Moreover, she had never intended for them to repay her with anything in the first place. Trading medicine for labor worked out perfectly; she had been worrying about how to manage things anyway. Making this agreement with Wang Xiuli meant the two families wouldn’t generate awkward gossip, and she would have someone to help farm—she wasn’t losing out at all.
“Why aren’t you thanking Young Mistress Song right now!” Fearing that Song Xia might go back on her word, Wang Xiuli hurriedly pressed A-Li’s head down to bow toward Song Xia.
Flustered by his mother’s sudden move, A-Li didn’t dare to speak up, but silently made up his mind in his heart: when winter arrived and things slowed down, he would go to the county town to do odd jobs, earn money, and then pay Sister Song back!
Song Xia looked at the three people before her, each harboring their own thoughts, and could only sigh.
Farm life was truly difficult.
Once Shen Hu agreed to help Song Xia farm, he volunteered to help prepare the lime water.
Seeing that Song Xia had no intention of backing out of their agreement, Wang Xiuli offered another round of profuse thanks before pulling A-Li back home, leaving only Shen Hu behind with instructions to assist Song Xia diligently.
Shen Hu and his family had tossed things back and forth here for over an hour, and Song Xia was already feeling rather pressed for time. Since Shen Hu stayed behind to help, Song Xia didn’t stand on ceremony and put him right to work.
And truth be told, Shen Hu was far better at doing physical labor than she was!
Shen Hu worked briskly and efficiently. With a long reach of his arm, he dumped the quicklime right in, instantly pulling his arm back and running off to wait for the clear water to boil and release heat. Once the lime water cooled down slightly, he scooped the clarified solution on top into buckets in a few swift motions. After filling the buckets to the brim, Shen Hu used the strength of both arms to carry two fully loaded buckets of lime water in one hand each, placing them in a shaded spot to settle while waiting for Song Xia’s next instructions.
Song Xia looked with a hint of envy at Shen Hu’s sturdy arms, the bulging veins, and tight muscles. Ah! It really looks so aesthetic!
Just as Song Xia was tilting her head to admire Shen Hu at work, a crisp, pleasant male voice suddenly rang out beside her ears.
“Is it good to look at?” Shen Huaijing had appeared beside Song Xia at some point, his gaze also drifting toward Shen Hu as he asked in a flat tone.
“Mm, it looks good.” Song Xia chuckled stupidly, looking up at Shen Huaijing.
“What’s good about it?! The flesh on those arms is all lumped up in chunks—so ugly!” Shen Chunming also stood beside Song Xia, following her line of sight and commenting with a look of distaste.
“Such a sense of power! Sigh, when will I ever grow to be this sturdy?” Song Xia continued with a sigh of envy.
“Sister-in-law?! You can’t!” Hearing Song Xia say this, Shen Chunming turned his head to look at her with an expression of sheer horror. If his sister-in-law grew that sturdy too, what would happen to his older brother?! His older brother clearly wasn’t going to grow into a build like that anytime soon!
“Sigh, too bad our physiological structures are different. I reckon I’ll never grow muscles this nice in this lifetime.” Song Xia pinched her own arm with great regret. There was only a very thin layer of muscle, and that was just from the manual labor over the past few days.
In her past life, she had deeply admired women with athletic, toned physiques. She had spent a lot of time running back and forth between experimental fields and the gym before finally succeeding in sculpting her body. Who would have thought that in this lifetime, not only was this body short, but the foundation was also this poor? Coupled with the fact that even eating an egg here was a luxury, protein replenishment was completely a pipe dream. Ah, it seemed she was destined to miss out on her dream physique in this life.
Song Xia was still immersed in sighing over never being able to replicate her 1.75-meter athletic physique from her past life, completely unaware of the change in expression on Shen Huaijing’s face beside her.
“You like that kind?”
“It’s alright, it just looks very secure,” Song Xia said casually. Right at that moment, Shen Hu had finished arranging all the clarified lime water and called out to Song Xia to ask what her next step should be.
Song Xia hurried over to soak the wheat seeds; that was her top priority right now! Muscles and fish meat could all take a back seat!
“Hey! I’m heading over first! If you’re tired, hurry back inside and rest! Come on, A-Ming, come with me and help out!” Song Xia tossed a parting word of concern to Shen Huaijing, grabbed Shen Chunming, ignored his protests, and went over to work alongside Shen Hu.
Shen Huaijing stood at the doorway, watching the three busy figures before him, his gaze gradually growing dark.
With Shen Hu’s help, Song Xia’s progress sped up considerably. Two days later, Song Xia had everything prepared and was ready to sow the wheat.
Not knowing what the exact conditions of this region were like, and wanting a better, more direct way to observe and judge the growth of the wheat, Song Xia decided to set up a comparative experiment just like they did in the school’s experimental plots.
Song Xia evenly divided the plot into four equal parts, sticking four wooden poles marked with white, black, red, and no cloth strips respectively in front of each section to distinguish the four plots. She used a pen to record the different planting methods for each of the four plots in detail.
Song Xia didn’t just want to plant wheat; she wanted to select and breed superior wheat varieties from it, finding the planting method best suited for this locality. Only in this way could she fundamentally increase wheat yields per mu, produce more grain, and form a virtuous cycle.
Without various modern techniques at her disposal, Song Xia could only rely on this most primitive method for seed breeding.
Shen Hu found Song Xia’s approach completely incomprehensible.
“Xiao Song, if you do it this way, you’re going to miss out on planting quite a bit of wheat!” Shen Hu looked with a heartache at the high ridges piled up in the middle, which Song Xia was using as boundary lines.
“Elder Brother Shen, it’s fine. All of this is for better wheat farming in the future.” Song Xia had no way to explain things like control experiments, comparative analysis, research data, and selective breeding to him. He would definitely think something was wrong with her head.
Seeing that Song Xia’s attitude was resolute, Shen Hu swallowed a continuous stream of dissenting thoughts back down into his stomach and stopped trying to persuade her, simply following along behind Song Xia’s pace. He had figured it out: this Young Mistress Song had a very stubborn mind of her own! He was just here to help her out anyway, and she wasn’t messing up her own family’s land. Whatever kind of crop it grew in the end had nothing to do with him. Once this Young Mistress Song suffered a loss, she would learn her lesson.
Song Xia had no idea that Shen Hu had already imagined her harvesting zero crops next year a hundred times over in his head. She was currently busy sowing the wheat according to the different methods!
Song Xia used a different planting method and seed treatment for each plot.
In the first plot, marked with white, Song Xia sowed seeds soaked in plant ash, planted at a shallow depth of 4 centimeters. In the second plot, marked with black, she used seeds soaked in lime water, planted at a shallow depth of 4 centimeters. In the third plot, marked with red, she used seeds sterilized in 50-degree warm water for 15 minutes, planted at a shallow depth of 4 centimeters. The fourth plot used the exact same planting method and depth as Shen Hu and the villagers customarily used, with no changes made to the seeds or depth.
Once everything was planted, Song Xia carefully recorded all the data. Looking at this patch of land that completely belonged to her “experimental field,” a wave of grand ambition surged in her heart.
Perhaps one day, I too can achieve one percent of Academician Yuan’s success and breed a “super wheat” belonging to this era!