The mother and her two children rolled noisily to the feet of Ruoruo, who had just entered the village and was about to head up the slope.
“Aunt?”
“Ruoruo, is that you?”
“What’s going on? Here, hurry, get up.”
Ruoruo set down her things and helped Ning Hongying up, while Ninth Aunt pulled Ru Jianping to his feet.
“You’re asking? Hmph! If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have been shoved. You’re a jinx—just one day of you staying at our house…”
“Jianping, shut your mouth.”
Ninth Aunt raised her hand, unable to resist hitting the child, but Ruoruo stopped her.
“Aunt, let’s go back first.”
“Ruoruo, did you get that divorce or not?”
“We’ll talk back home.”
This wasn’t something that could be explained in a sentence or two.
Ruoruo carried the big and small bags, and Ning Hongying helped take two of them.
“Another power outage today?”
“Electricity’s expensive, so I didn’t let them turn on the lights.”
Rural areas in southern Guangdong had gotten electricity earlier—Ping’an Village had been wired for over a year now—but the power went out several times a day, and the voltage was unstable.
This time, there was no choice but to turn on the electric light. Ninth Aunt pulled the cord to switch it on and checked whether Hongying and Jianping were hurt.
Upon looking, Jianping’s forehead had a shiny, swollen bump, and Hongying’s elbow was scraped raw over a large area, with blood seeping out.
“Come, put some purple medicine on it.”
Ninth Aunt took out a bottle of purple liquid medicine, usually used for disinfection—well, not exactly disinfection. Let’s put it this way: in this era, it was a cure-all in the countryside. Any external injury, as long as the bone wasn’t showing, could be painted purple, applied daily, and then it would heal.
Whether it was this purple medicine being so miraculous or people of this era having super-strong self-healing abilities, every household kept it on hand as a universal remedy.
“Aunt, we won’t just keep taking abuse lying down. Just like that day for me—after falling into the well, I figured it out. Whoever bullies us, we bully them back.”
“Mm, your aunt never loses a fight with words, don’t worry.”
“Hongying, Jianping, if anyone ever bullies you, remember to tell me, and I’ll beat them up. Oh, right, I brought something tasty.”
Ruoruo pulled out a big bag of char siu buns, which she’d carried back with two ice packs inside—otherwise, after half a day on the bus, they’d have gone sour by now.
“Ruoruo-jie! If you’d brought out the buns earlier, the bump on my head would’ve healed by now!”
The little calf had been glaring at Ruoruo at the village entrance just moments ago, but now with char siu buns, she was Ruoruo-jie. He grabbed one in each hand, took a bite from the left, a bite from the right—no one was going to fight him over this way of eating.
“Slow down, careful you don’t choke.” Ninth Aunt gave her son a smack.
Hongying was adorable and refined, eating daintily with a happy grin on her face.
“Aunt, you eat too. These can’t be kept—in this heat, they’ll spoil by tomorrow.”
“Alright, everyone eat, everyone eat.”
Ninth Aunt wasn’t the type to be politely reserved; she was fiery-tempered but also very straightforward.
Ruoruo liked dealing with people like that.
“Wow! There’s even peanut candy! Wow! And new clothes! Wow, and new shoes!”
After finishing two buns, Ru Jianping wiped his hands on his clothes, opened all the big bags, and looked through everything. Then, with a clawful of bun grease, he went to hug Ruoruo’s arm.
“Ruoruo-dajie, from now on you’re my real sister. I’m sticking with you.”
Without a doubt, Ru Jianping got another smack from his mother—this time delivered with a laugh.
Ninth Aunt sent Hongying and Jianping off to the kitchen to heat water for bathing, then asked Ruoruo again whether the divorce had gone through.
“Aunt, it can’t be done—they won’t agree.”
“Then what do we do? Did you see the man? What a disaster. That dead bitch Ru Xingxing really did you in.”
“I did see him. It’s the man’s grandfather who won’t allow the divorce. He said he’d slowly convince the old man, so we’ll have to wait a while.”
“I suppose that’s all we can do.”
Ninth Aunt sat among a pile of ready-made clothes and fabrics, looking at this piece and touching that one. In her whole life, she’d never once seen so much material and clothing at once.
What a pity it was—and after the pity came the nagging. “Ruoruo, be more frugal. Don’t let your fingers spread so wide. There’ll be plenty of places to spend money later. Ah, well, it’s true—having a father is like having none for you, and no one taught you these things growing up. Don’t go back to that broken-down house of yours. Just stay here with your aunt, settle in comfortably.”
“I know. Even if you didn’t say it, I’d refuse to leave anyway.”
Ruoruo’s heart softened. On the way back, sitting idle on the bus, she’d thought of countless reasons to leave the village. She could go anywhere and live well. But once she returned, her mood was different.
Ruoruo had always been the type to repay kindness twofold and repay harm twofold as well.
The ready-made clothes and fabrics she’d brought back from Huacheng this time were all for Ninth Aunt, Hongying, and Jianping.
That night, Ninth Aunt was so moved that she hugged the pile of clothes and fabric and secretly wiped away tears several times. Even her dead good-for-nothing husband had never treated her this well—and then he’d gone and died.
Ruoruo’s night was busy. First, she planted all the various seeds, flower seedlings, and saplings she’d brought back from Huacheng into the Spatial Dimension.
Then she studied the pond of water in the Spatial Dimension. Ruoruo scooped out a small cup of the water and, while Jianping was fast asleep, dabbed it onto the big bump on his forehead.
As for the large scraped area on Hongying’s elbow, she carefully applied plenty of the pond water to it as well, just waiting for a miracle to happen.
What a pity! After waiting two hours, the swelling on Jianping’s forehead had subsided a little, but only slightly. Hongying’s elbow was the same—the siblings hadn’t healed instantly like Ruoruo had.
By early morning of the second day, however, the siblings’ injuries had changed significantly. Jianping’s swelling had gone down and he said it no longer hurt, while Hongying’s wound had begun to scab over.
When Ninth Aunt discovered this, she clucked her tongue in endless amazement.
Jianping claimed it was because he’d eaten too many char siu buns last night.
Ruoruo told Ninth Aunt that Jianping and Hongying’s injuries healed quickly because children’s bodies recovered fast.
As long as they were getting better, Ninth Aunt didn’t care how it happened.
With Ning Hongying and Ru Jianping as her two guinea pigs, Ruoruo could basically confirm that the fruits and pond water from the Spatial Dimension—or more likely, everything produced by it—had miraculous effects for her, while others only got half the benefit.
“I’m heading to the fields now. Hongying, you go gather firewood in a bit. Jianping, you play with Ruoruo.” Having given her orders, Ninth Aunt hoisted her hoe and went off to join the collective work.
“Ruoruo, from today on, I’m with you. You point, I’ll strike. So what do we do now?”
Ru Jianping, now well-fed and content, had long since stopped calling Ruoruo an idiot. Now every other word out of his mouth was “sis.”
“Let’s go gather firewood with Hongying.”
“Great, great!”
“Will we get buns for gathering firewood?”
“Yes, after we finish gathering firewood, we’ll go to Leping Town and buy buns.”
“Yay!”
Ning Hongying led the way, knowing the path like the back of her hand, with Ruoruo and Ru Jianping following behind.
Ruoruo had never done manual labor in her life. Besides the fact that the original owner had been simple-minded, there was also the fact that her father was wealthy. For the sake of money, the Xingguo family didn’t dare force a simpleton to work.
On the mountain, Ruoruo didn’t pick up firewood. She focused on the plants instead. With a few plots of Spatial Dimension soil, she wanted to plant anything she found interesting.
“Huh? Hongying, Jianping, do you know what this is called?”
What Ruoruo had found was a vine-like plant. In her past life, she’d come into contact with plenty of high-end fabrics, and she wondered if this plant was related to the fabric she was thinking of.
“You don’t even know that? It’s dioscorea. I used to dig these up for my mom. We’d sell them to the neighboring village—they’re dirt cheap, not worth anything.” Jianping, acting like a little adult, shot a disdainful look at the sister he’d only acknowledged a day ago.
Ruoruo looked at Ning Hongying.
“Yes, I’ve dug those for my mom too.”
That confirmed it.
Dioscorea—the dye used for gambiered Canton gauze.
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