Besides, for the time being, he had no energy left to scheme against Ning An.
That day, he had fled in a panic, desperately pushing his way out. Even though the crowd was so dense that others could barely bend down, he inexplicably fell and got trampled a few times by the surging crowd.
After finally managing to get up, he fell again on the way back. This time, he clearly heard the sound of bones cracking. Fortunately, it was New Year’s, and the road was full of people coming and going. He called out for help, and the crowd came to his aid. Someone went to the nearest production team to borrow a cart and hauled him to the commune clinic. After an examination, it turned out his lower leg was broken.
The commune clinic couldn’t handle it, so he was sent to the county hospital.
Li Changwei spent the New Year in the county hospital. The twenty yuan he had planned to cover his daily expenses for an entire year was completely used up after just a few days in the hospital.
When Xiao Juza told Ning An about this, she smiled until her eyes narrowed. He had tried to scheme against her—he deserved to suffer Master Juza’s retribution.
She was probably the luckiest employee in Small Worlds. The System matched to her seemed tailor-made for her. Not only did it cooperate with her seamlessly, it paid no attention to task progress at all, focusing solely on protecting her safety, ensuring she never suffered the slightest loss in the Small Worlds.
Of course, this might also be a major reason why she had always failed in the Female Supporting Role Department back then. The book clearly stated that “the female supporting role has some talent,” but Xiao Juza always told her “the female supporting role is extremely talented,” which caused her to overperform time and again. And every time she asked Xiao Juza about the task progress, it would always say, “It’s going great, An’an, everything is going smoothly.”
Every time she watched the female lead desperately chasing after her from behind and felt so bad that she wanted to go easy on her, Xiao Juza would always say: “You can’t do that. If you go easy on her, it won’t highlight the female lead’s indomitable spirit. Let’s cheer her on together!”
Then, the human and the System would run ahead, occasionally turning back to encourage the female lead, urging her to keep striving and climb to the peak.
Ning An felt that some kind of “protective instinct” might have been implanted in Xiao Juza’s Core Code. It simply refused to let Ning An be surpassed by the female lead, refused to let Ning An feel dejected and sad because of it—even if it was just an act, it wouldn’t allow it.
Watching the male lead’s desolation and misery, Ning An had a happy New Year.
Although there was officially no holiday, the Gongxiaoshe closed on New Year’s Eve afternoon and New Year’s Day, so all employees could still rest for a day and a half.
As soon as Ning An got home, she went to help her mother. She and Zhao Fengxia made dumplings together, while Jiang Xuegong was in charge of putting up the Spring Festival couplets and welcoming the ancestors. As for the other New Year goods and offerings, Zhao Fengxia had prepared everything long ago—there wouldn’t have been time to do it on New Year’s Eve afternoon.
At this time, although many traditional activities had been halted, that was only on the surface. Privately, people would still quietly welcome the ancestors, and would still worship the Kitchen God and the Door Gods, and make offerings to Heaven and Earth.
They would still pray that mysterious forces would bless their families with smooth sailing and good fortune in the new year.
The worship activities in Ning An’s family were all handled by her parents. She was still treated as a child and didn’t need to participate in these matters.
New Year’s Day was the time for paying New Year visits within the family and the village. This custom still persisted.
The only elder that Jiang Xuegong was close to was an old aunt; all the others were gone.
After breakfast, the whole family went first to pay a New Year visit to this elder. The words for the New Year greetings were also fixed.
“Auntie, here to wish you a Happy New Year. Did you have a good holiday?”
“Very good, very good. And you all—doing well too?”
“Doing well.”
During the New Year, everyone said the pleasant things, exchanging greetings and compliments, chatting a bit and then moving on.
After that, Jiang Xuegong and Zhao Fengxia went to pay New Year calls to the other elders in the village who were a bit more distant—only those within five degrees of kinship; beyond that, they didn’t bother. Once they finished, they hurried home to wait for the younger generation to come pay their respects to them.
Ning An went along with the cousins of her own generation to make the rounds. The same-generation kids all walked together, and in any case they had to call on everyone of the elders’ generation, so as they went along they eventually ended up back at their own homes too.
In their village, marriage was the dividing line between adults and children. Married meant grown-up; unmarried meant still a kid. Ning An had turned nineteen in the twelfth lunar month—twenty-one by traditional reckoning—but because she wasn’t married, she still counted as a child, going around with a group of youngsters even younger than her.
They were all unmarried, so they didn’t talk or act too boldly yet; when the topic of matchmaking or courtship came up, they would still blush with shyness. Ning An got along well with them. She also learned that after the New Year, some of the younger girls would be getting married, and some of the younger boys would be taking wives.
They asked her hesitantly, stammering: “Sister An’an, if the Gongxiaoshe gets any red cloth in, could you save some for us? Don’t worry, my mom’s been saving up cloth coupons for me.”
Ning An smiled. “No problem. If red cloth comes in, I’ll tell you right away. I can hold it for you for a day or two, but not much longer than that.”
“You tell us, and we’ll come buy it right away—we won’t put you in a difficult spot.”
No one asked Ning An when she was going to get married. The younger cousins were too embarrassed to bring it up, and the adults wouldn’t spoil the festive mood during the New Year. Besides, even if they wanted to ask, they would ask Jiang Xuegong and Zhao Fengxia privately—no one would ask Ning An directly.
Jiang Xuegong had no brothers of his own; his closest relatives were his cousins. While the elders were still alive, they had all been a bit snobbish, flattering the successful and looking down on the rest, so relations among everyone had been mediocre. It was only after the elders passed away that the cousins actually got along quite well.
Sometimes Jiang Xuegong would remark with feeling that it was a good thing his cousins hadn’t inherited the flaws of the previous generation—they were all decent people.
Zhao Fengxia said to Ning An, “Decent, all right! Our family is the one they’re all fawning over now. Who’d go out of their way to offend your father for no reason?”
Ning An nodded along as she listened. Her mother really was the wiser one.
The world flatters the high and tramples the low—so you just have to work hard to become one of the “high” who gets flattered. Among her father’s cousins, apart from her father, who had done the best for himself and thus needed a bit of fawning over, the rest were all roughly equal, so there was no need to “trample the low,” and everyone got along very peacefully.
Every winter, her father would deliver half a sack of coal briquette fragments to each of his three cousins’ households. What’s more, he could help them buy a bit of extra coal.
Buying coal these days required coal coupons, and ordinary families had nowhere to buy it at all. Jiang Xuegong’s cousins benefited from his connections, able to burn coal stoves in winter—a bit of a source of pride in the whole production brigade.
On the seventy-ninth day after winter solstice the rivers thaw; on the eighty-ninth the wild geese return.
When the ice melted and the little stream began to babble along, when green grass began to sprout tender buds, displaying that wonderful beauty of “grass so faint it vanishes up close though green from afar,” and the swallows that had flown south returned one after another to build nests under the eaves, darting high and low over the fields, the whole village began to bustle with life.
Spring plowing had begun.
Besides the winter wheat that was already lush and green, the commune members also had to start planting vegetables and all sorts of miscellaneous crops. Every household had picked up new piglets and chicks, and the oinking of little pigs and the chirping of baby chicks could be heard everywhere.
Zhao Fengxia followed the trend and got two piglets and six chicks.
Perhaps the quick money she’d made raising rabbits had finally stimulated her business instincts—she decided to raise a few chicks whenever she had the time, and once they were grown, have Old Jiang take them to sell. As long as the number of livestock at home wasn’t too outrageous, there wouldn’t be any trouble.