Although the cry of “Smash the door!” had been shouted loudly, once the slogan was over, the four of them were hungry again.
That hard-as-iron wowotou, which could have been passed down as a family heirloom, was only barely enough to pull back the souls of the four members of the family, who had nearly drifted away.
After all, the family had been lying in the storeroom for several days without so much as a drop of water passing their lips.
“Comrades,” Lin Changsong said weakly, “the situation is as follows: we, a model family of five virtues from the twenty-first century, have now gloriously become part of the ancient era’s impoverished class. Our primary contradiction at present is the contradiction between our ever-growing survival needs and our severely deficient material conditions.”
“Speak like a normal person!” Wang Ya pinched him angrily.
Lin Changsong reluctantly translated what he had just said. In short, it came down to one word—hungry!
“Mom, I’m so hungry I could chew through the doorframe.” Lin Minghao clung limply to his older sister.
Lin Xiaowei rubbed her still-rumbling stomach, but her eyes had already begun surveying the dilapidated storeroom. “Dad, Mom, the fact that Grandpa was able to secretly send us a wowotou proves that the old… Grandmother isn’t home, right? Or that she’s temporarily too busy to keep an eye on us? This is our chance to find something to eat!”
Her words jolted the others awake!
That was right! That biased old harridan wasn’t there!
The four of them immediately crept toward the door like thieves. Lin Changsong gave it a tentative push, and to their surprise, it wasn’t locked!
They had no idea whether Old Man Lin had just gone out and forgotten to lock it, or whether Old Madam Liu thought that after starving them for several days, they no longer had the strength to run away and therefore hadn’t bothered locking the door.
They slipped out of the storeroom. The sky outside was bright and clear, and the courtyard was utterly silent.
The four of them crept toward the kitchen like a band of thieves. It was the temple of hope!
Then the gates of hope were mercilessly shattered by a heavy iron lock.
“Damn it!” Lin Xiaowei couldn’t help swearing. “What is this, anti-theft security?”
Lin Minghao clung to the crack in the door and peered inside, his face crumpling. “Mom, I think I can see the flour crock… and cured meat… Waaaah…”
Seeing meat only made them hungrier.
Lin Changsong rubbed the lock. “We’ll just smash this lock. Let it be the first step toward the Second Branch rising to its feet!”
The four of them exchanged glances, then nodded. That was what they would do!
Lin Xiaowei looked around the courtyard and spotted several stones in a corner. She picked out one that was easy to handle and handed it to her father.
Lin Changsong smashed the lock open in three quick strokes.
The four of them surged inside. Lin Changsong went to inspect the flour crock, only to find a thin layer of black flour at the bottom.
Wang Ya searched everywhere and found a single cabbage beneath the cupboard.
Lin Minghao gazed hungrily at the cured meat hanging from the roof beam. He found a pole and tried to spear it down.
Unfortunately, he was only six years old, with short arms and short legs, and couldn’t reach it at all. In the end, Lin Xiaowei had to stretch as far as she could to get it down.
“We’re short on time. I’ll make a pot of black-flour mush. We’ll fight a quick battle and leave!” When it came to cooking, Wang Ya had absolute authority.
They lit a fire and boiled the food. Although salt was the only seasoning, that pot of steaming cabbage and black-flour mush, paired with the salty, fragrant cured meat, was more lavish than even New Year’s dinner for the Second Branch of the Lin family.
The four of them ate until their bellies were round. After cleaning up the kitchen, they returned to their own room.
Now, the family truly had the feeling of having come back to life. Lin Changsong emphasized to the other three, “From now on, I am Second Son Lin, and your mother is Wang-shi.” Then he pointed at Lin Xiaowei. “You are Lin Erya.”
Finally, he looked at his son, who was rubbing his belly, with an indescribable expression.
“You are Lin Goudan… You two have to address us as ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom.’ Don’t get it wrong.”
Lin Minghao—Lin Goudan—was suddenly too powerless to complain.
Wang-shi: After transmigrating, I’m not even allowed to have a name!
Lin Erya: Come to think of it, there are also Daya, Sanya, Erya, and Wuya in this family…
The four of them sorted through and organized the memories in their minds.
The place where they lived, Kaoshan Village, was originally inhabited mostly by members of the Lin clan, with only a handful of households bearing other surnames.
Two years ago, the county government had resettled more than twenty disaster-refugee households in Kaoshan Village. However, those people were mostly independent households, so the Lin clan still held the power in Kaoshan Village. The village head was Lin Shuanzhu’s cousin, Lin Baozhu, who was also the clan leader of the Lin clan.
Their own family consisted of Grandpa Lin Shuanzhu, and Grandmother, Old Madam Liu, who was extremely biased. The couple had three sons and one daughter.
The First Branch consisted of the thirty-five-year-old “giant baby,” Lin Changdong, and his wife, Xiao Liushi, who was Old Madam Liu’s niece from her maiden family.
Xiao Liushi had given birth to two sons and a daughter: the sixteen-year-old eldest grandson, Lin Minghai; the thirteen-year-old daughter, Lin Daya; and the seven-year-old younger son, Lin Mingjiang.
Lin Changsong emphasized, “Old Madam Liu likes Lin Minghai the most, and Lin Mingjiang second. If they ask for the stars, she won’t even give them the moon—she’ll give them whatever they want.”
Lin Xiaowei nodded. “I understand. They have other names too: Lin Yaozu and Lin Guangzong…”
(⊙o⊙)…
Next was the original Second Branch family: the thirty-two-year-old Lin Changsong, his wife Wang-shi, his twelve-year-old daughter Lin Erya, and his six-year-old son Lin Goudan.
After transmigrating, the entire family had become more than ten years younger.
The original Second Son Lin was famous for being a good-for-nothing idler. If he could lie down, he wouldn’t sit. Old Madam Liu cursed him every day, calling him lazy to the bone.
After marrying and having children, he transferred that exploitation onto his own wife and children. Wang-shi was a complete doormat who, aside from crying, didn’t dare utter a single firm word.
This time, Old Madam Liu wanted to scrape together the examination expenses for First Branch’s Lin Minghai. She planned to sell Second Branch’s Erya so that she could be sent to another household as a bride to bring them good fortune. Second Son Lin had unusually resisted for once.
The result of his resistance was that Old Madam Liu chased him around and beat him. In the end, the four of them were driven into the storeroom and starved for five full days. Only after all four had gone to report to the King of Hell did the transmigration of their family of four take place.
As for the original Second Son Lin—how should he be described?
He loved his children, but not very much.
The third son, Lin Changgen, was the Lin family’s old ox. He had married Shen-shi and had three little oxen: Sanya, Siya, and Wuya, who were twelve, ten, and six years old respectively.
The Lin family had not had any newborns in recent years because of the droughts that had struck several years earlier. Although their commandery had been relatively less affected by the disaster, everyone had still endured a period of extreme hardship, and their bodies had nearly collapsed. How could they possibly have had the strength to bear more children?
The Lin family also had a married-out younger daughter, Lin Xi. Ten years earlier, in order to scrape together tuition money for “Lin Yaozu’s” education, Old Madam Liu had sold her to Carpenter Hu, a lame widower in town, for the “high price” of ten taels of silver.
Every time Lin Xi returned after getting married, she would quarrel with Old Madam Liu. She rarely came back, but whenever she did, it became a grand spectacle.
As for the Lin family’s courtyard, the main building had three rooms. The central room was the main hall, while the rooms on the left and right belonged to Old Man Lin and his wife, and Lin Changdong and his wife, respectively.
The east wing had three rooms: one for Lin Minghai, one for Lin Mingjiang, and one study specially reserved for the family’s “scholars.”
The west wing also had three rooms: one for the Second Branch family, one for the Third Branch family, and one for Daya.
There was also a kitchen and a woodshed built in the courtyard. The rear courtyard contained a storeroom, a dry latrine, and a pigsty.
Old Madam Liu’s favoritism toward the First Branch manifested in every aspect of life. Take their living arrangements, for example: the First Branch occupied five rooms, while the Second and Third Branches each had an entire family crammed into a single room.
As for the household chores, it was supposedly arranged for the three daughters-in-law to take turns, one day each. But Xiao Liushi had back pain one day and sore hands the next. She couldn’t manage even a single day of work over the course of a whole year. The Second and Third Branches took turns doing it all instead.
The family had twenty mu of land, tended by Old Man Lin, Lin Changsong, and Lin Changgen. During the slack farming season, they were also driven to the town and county to do temporary labor.
For someone as lazy as Lin Changsong, if he refused to take temporary work, Old Madam Liu would refuse to give him food.
Meanwhile, the people of the First Branch had clothes to wear, books to read, and no work to do.
Pampered by Old Madam Liu, Lin Changdong believed that it was only right and proper for his father and younger brothers to support him. He had been raised with useless limbs and no knowledge of the five grains.