Two days before the wedding, it happened to be An Songyu’s day off.
She deliberately took a bus to Jiang Village.
After a full month of effort, the foundational construction of the four homesteads in Jiang Village had already been completed.
Next, she heard that once the main structures began, the pace of construction would be much faster.
Basically, depending on the weather as well as labor and materials, the fastest progress could reach one floor per week.
Even at the slowest, it wouldn’t take more than ten days per floor.
Besides that, An Jianping had already begun looking for suitable renovation workers.
As for renovation materials, they had gone to the neighboring Lin Village to ask around for advice.
After all, in Lin Village, it wasn’t just one or two households planning to go into the rental business.
Although most people, constrained by a lack of funds, would rather build an extra floor than spend money on even basic renovations, there were still some who wanted to do higher-end rental units and were willing to spend some money on simple renovations.
An Jianping didn’t have much money on hand.
Nor did he plan to make things too refined—he just wanted to secure the difference in compensation between unfinished and renovated houses.
In addition, An Jianping had also asked An Jian’an, the fourth brother in the An family, who worked at the Liangdi Moving Company, for help.
Whenever he handled a move and came across furniture that could still be used, he asked him to keep it.
For smaller items, he could help collect them first; as for larger items, An Jianping would find a way to bring them back after work.
By now, the reclaimed old furniture was piled up in a messy assortment beside Grandpa An and Grandma An’s old house.
Everything was carefully covered up.
Once the houses were finished, they would sort through them and see which pieces were suitable to use.
All the workers building the houses for their family were experienced hands.
It was said that in recent years, they had basically worked only in Lin Village and Jiang Village.
After taking a quick look around, An Songyu hurried over to the silkworm houses to help her grandparents.
At present, it was the busiest time for the silkworm houses.
When An Songyu arrived, she saw that not only the two regular workers in the silkworm house, but even Grandpa and Grandma were busy adding mulberry leaves to the silkworm racks.
Basket after basket of freshly picked mulberry leaves was quickly emptied in the hands of the four of them.
Fortunately, the silkworm trays in the house had all been well covered with mulberry leaves.
Shi Youqin straightened up and rubbed her aching waist, and just then noticed An Songyu standing at the entrance of the silkworm house.
She waved and said, “This side has just been fed. You don’t need to worry about it—go check the other silkworm houses in the back.”
An Songyu nodded, hesitated slightly, then reminded her somewhat shyly,
“Grandma, don’t work too hard.”
“You think I want to?” Shi Youqin shot her granddaughter an annoyed glance.
“It’s just that your father hasn’t found suitable people yet.”
An Songyu was instantly left speechless.
Thinking about how the silkworms had just entered their fourth instar stage—needing to be fed mulberry leaves two or three times a day—it was no wonder Grandma was exhausted.
As for hiring people…
Back then, her father really had been overly optimistic.
Out of the more than four hundred mu of mulberry groves, the fish ponds of various sizes accounted for about sixty percent of the area.
Only the remaining forty percent was actual mulberry farmland.
Following advice from the villagers, An Jianping built four large silkworm houses beside four of the larger fish ponds.
Each was a spacious shed twenty meters long, ten meters wide, and three meters high.
The biggest expense wasn’t labor, but materials.
In addition, taking advantage of the terrain, he also built mid-sized silkworm houses of around a hundred square meters and small ones of only a few dozen square meters beside the smaller fish ponds.
Of course, at the beginning, all these silkworm houses could still be managed by just two people.
But later on, that definitely wouldn’t be enough.
Besides that, they also needed to hire temporary workers to pick mulberry leaves.
These workers were paid by the weight of the leaves they harvested.
They were usually women from another direction of Jiang Village, or local women whose family-run agritourism businesses weren’t busy on weekdays and who didn’t like sitting idle.
An Songyu first went to look through the other large silkworm houses.
Although she didn’t see anyone there, the mulberry leaves in every silkworm tray had been properly laid out.
Since she wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about silkworm rearing, she couldn’t examine things too carefully.
So she moved on to the small and mid-sized silkworm houses.
There, she finally saw the people raising silkworms.
They had already seen An Songyu more than once. After exchanging greetings, they continued working together.
“The silkworms have grown a bit bigger lately—are you all managing okay?” An Songyu asked while she worked, casually checking in.
One of the middle-aged women, who had been introduced by the two original workers, smiled a little awkwardly. “It’s all right.”
Seeing that An Songyu didn’t quite understand, she explained more carefully.
“The bigger the silkworms get, the more they eat.”
“But once they’re bigger, feeding them actually becomes easier.”
“When they were small, the mulberry leaves had to be chopped up before feeding.”
“Now that the silkworms are in the fourth instar stage, as long as we’re careful when picking leaves, we can feed them directly.”
“And the smaller the silkworms are, the more times a day they need to be fed.”
“Now that they’re bigger, the number of feedings has actually dropped quite a bit.”
After speaking, the woman seemed even more embarrassed. She moved her lips slightly before finally deciding to say, “All of this… Auntie taught us.”
“She was afraid we wouldn’t understand just by listening, so yesterday she fed them together with us.”
“For every silkworm house, Uncle and Auntie check them all one by one.”
“The diseased silkworms from a few days ago were actually discovered first by Uncle.”
Only after saying all this did she realize that telling the homeowner such things might make her seem incompetent.
But then she thought that the issue of diseased silkworms probably couldn’t be hidden from the owners anyway.
Besides, this family’s daughter was still quite young—she probably didn’t know much about these things.
An Songyu felt even more ashamed, but she really couldn’t spare the time to help her grandparents.
Still, once her three-month internship period was over, things would be different.
This time, An Songyu didn’t plan to participate in the campus recruitment organized by her school.
In her previous life, she had worked at the First Hotel of South City for over twenty years—starting as a small front-desk employee.
She eventually became a lobby manager, and later even a VIP guestroom steward.
If she were to talk about what she had gained, aside from her salary, it was probably just exhaustion.
In the service industry—especially the hotel industry—shift work was the norm.
Others might stay up late only when working overtime, but for her, night shifts during rotations had been unavoidable throughout most of her career.
It wasn’t until the later years, after being promoted, that she no longer had to rotate shifts.
And if her memory was correct, the demolition of Jiang Village happened before the National Day holiday.
As for the exact timing, An Songyu, who had been working in South City back then, wasn’t entirely clear.
She only remembered that when she came back during the National Day holiday, everything—their family and the entire Jiang Village—had changed.
So An Songyu had already made up her mind.
Once her internship ended, she would return to school to complete her graduation procedures.
After getting her diploma, she would first come back to the village.
Before the demolition, she would help manage village matters.
As for everything else, that could wait until after the demolition.
Having another chance at life, An Songyu’s original ambitions weren’t very grand.
But since she could return to a time before the demolition, she felt that maybe… she could hope for a little more.
If she remembered correctly, after the village was demolished, aside from a very small number of families who failed to make good use of their compensation, most households invested it quite wisely.
Two families from the Jiang clan were said to have a relative who had married into a neighboring city, near the seaside.
When Jiang Village was demolished, that seaside area happened to be undergoing development.
So the two families teamed up, pulled in a few others, and went there to buy land and build apartment buildings.
They eventually turned them into serviced apartment hotels.
An Songyu wasn’t greedy for anything else.
She only hoped that, given another chance, the knowledge she had worked so hard to acquire over several years wouldn’t go to waste again.
(End of Chapter)