Aunt Bai’s eyes bulged in an instant, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream, “Ahhh—”
Watching her roll her eyes back and faint, Ning Yuan said calmly, “I did it.”
When her aunt had struck at her, she had intended to cripple her, so Ning Yuan saw no need to be polite.
She turned to Li Yan and asked, “My aunt is angry that I didn’t listen to her arrangements for a relationship. Comrade Li Yan, this is just a small conflict between relatives. Does the Production Brigade need to get involved?”
Hearing Ning Yuan take all the blame, a strangely deep light flickered in Rong Zhaonan’s lowered eyes.
Hearing her words, Li Yan’s face turned pale. He finally sighed and said, “You two can go. I’ll find a vehicle to take Aunt Bai back to her village to see a doctor.”
Whether Rong Zhaonan had done it or not, Ning Yuan had shouldered the responsibility. All he could do now was de-escalate the situation and treat it as a minor incident—a fight between relatives.
…
After leaving the village production brigade office, Rong Zhaonan noticed that Ning Yuan wasn’t heading straight home.
He frowned. “Where are you going?”
Ning Yuan glanced at the sky. “To get something to eat. Are you coming?”
She had injured her aunt today, so her monthly living allowance of two yuan and fifty cents was gone.
If her aunt told her current mom what happened, she probably wouldn’t get any living allowance next month or the month after, either.
She had to find a way to fill her stomach.
Rong Zhaonan looked at her and nodded slightly. “Alright.”
Then, he watched as Ning Yuan walked over to a deserted haystack, reached inside, and rummaged around for a while.
She pulled out an old earthen basin, a broken bowl, a small shovel, and a rusty tin box.
After that came a straw hat—the kind used for farm work.
Ning Yuan casually handed the old earthen basin and broken bowl to him, gesturing for him to follow her to the small stream behind the cowshed.
When she reached the stream, she took the shovel and started digging for earthworms in the damp soil. It wasn’t long before she had dug up quite a few.
Rong Zhaonan watched as Ning Yuan, unfazed by the squirming, disgusting earthworms, tossed them one by one into the broken bowl. Then, she took a slender branch she had picked up in the woods and broke off the twigs.
Next, she opened the small box she had brought, taking out a fishing hook made from a bent sewing needle, some thin hemp string, and a float. She attached the hook to a bamboo pole, creating a fishing rod.
She looked at the simple fishing rod in her hand with satisfaction and began to thread a plump earthworm onto the bent sewing needle.
There were plenty of fish in the stream. She had fished here for a treat back when she first arrived in the countryside.
Later, when spots to return to the city became available, she worried that people would accuse her of “skimming from the collective” by catching fish in the collective’s stream, which might cost her the chance to go back. So, she never dared to fish again.
She had hidden her tools away.
But now… who cared? It was time to eat something good!
Ning Yuan sat by the stream and fished.
Rong Zhaonan: “…Can you actually catch anything?”
Ning Yuan’s large eyes curved into crescents. “Just watch.”
Rong Zhaonan leaned against a tree, his cool gaze fixed on Ning Yuan’s back.
Under the autumn dusk, the girl in the straw hat with two long braids, sitting by the green stream and lazily propping up her chin while waiting for a fish to bite, looked like a painting.
Rong Zhaonan silently gazed at this picture.
By the time the sun had completely set behind the mountains, an hour had passed, and Ning Yuan’s broken basin was already filled with four fish.
Two grass carp, two perch, and she had even managed to scoop up some small river shrimp.
The plump fish and small river shrimp were crowded together in the earthen basin.
Rong Zhaonan spoke up abruptly, “You have some skill in fishing, but aren’t you afraid of being caught and accused of ‘cutting the tail of capitalism,’ then being forced to attend a study session to reflect on your actions?”
The fish in the streams and rivers also belonged to the collective. It wasn’t that no villagers secretly tried to catch fish; usually, the village team would turn a blind eye for their own people.
But he was a Reform Through Labor Element sent here, and she was his soon-to-be “wife.”
The matter of catching fish in the stream would most likely be labeled as skimming from the collective, leading to punishment and criticism.
Ning Yuan’s large eyes narrowed, and she let out a small, lazy yawn. “Right now, isn’t it just heaven, earth, you, and I who know? What, is Doctor Rong going to report me?”
It was already late autumn of ’78. In December, the national policy of Reform and Opening Up would be officially established. The environment was already much more relaxed.
However, Rong Zhaonan hadn’t been reinstated in his job and was still trapped here, so his worries were justified.
Rong Zhaonan looked at her and suddenly asked in a low voice, “Since you’re so clever, why did you take the blame for me back then? Your family won’t forgive you.”
She had also refused her aunt’s demand to frame him.
Ning Yuan looked at the fish in the basin. “If they don’t forgive me, then so be it. As for why I helped you, it’s because I like to see things through. If I were going to back out, I wouldn’t have agreed to get the certificate with you in the first place.”
Rong Zhaonan’s sharp gaze was fixed on her, as if trying to see through her thoughts. “Judging by your ability to swindle money from Educated Youth Tang, you don’t seem like a person of high moral character.”
Ning Yuan’s hands paused. She hadn’t expected her little tricks to escape the notice of someone like Rong Zhaonan.
She looked at him, neither servile nor overbearing. “Because some people don’t think it’s a despicable thing to ruin my life out of jealousy and for a chance to return to the city. I was just paying her back in kind.”
The college entrance exams had been reinstated in 1977, but many educated youths couldn’t participate due to their family’s political background. Their only way back to the city was through factory recruitment.
Moreover, at that time, the college entrance exam was a true battle of a thousand armies crossing a single-plank bridge. It was considered a great achievement if a few people in an entire county could get into a university.
Most educated youths still relied on recruitment quotas to get a job and return to the city.
Tang Zhenzhen had framed her for this very reason, so of course, she had to pay Tang Zhenzhen back!
Ning Yuan turned and walked toward the cowshed hut, her voice cool and distant. “That was just compensation for my mental distress!”
The money and things she had “paid tribute” to Tang Zhenzhen over the past few years were worth far more than five yuan. And now, Tang Zhenzhen hadn’t hesitated to try and destroy her!
Not to mention Tang Zhenzhen also wanted to steal her Jade Chili Pepper!
Rong Zhaonan frowned upon hearing this. “Mental distress compensation? You can charge a fee for mental distress?”
It was the first time he had ever heard such a term.
Ning Yuan saw the confused look on his face and then recalled the cold, imposing, and powerful visage she had seen on television decades later.
She suddenly couldn’t help but curve her lips into a smile. So, even a great and formidable figure could have such a silly, bewildered expression.
Rong Zhaonan watched as her initially cool expression changed. She was looking at him, her large eyes as bright as black grapes, her eyes and brows curving into a smile, like…
Dai Wangshu’s poem, “Rainy Alley”—she was a girl as fragrant as a lilac.
His heart inexplicably skipped a beat, and his face turned cold. “What are you smiling at!”
Don’t even think of using a honey trap on him, a sugar-coated bullet.
Foreign-sounding terms like ‘mental distress’ weren’t used by ordinary people.
Perhaps she wasn’t a little spy sent by the faction trying to take him and his family down, but a little spy who had infiltrated from across the sea?
A cold, sinister glint reflected off Rong Zhaonan’s glasses as he stared inscrutably at Ning Yuan.
Seeing his face turn cold and grim, sending a chill down one’s spine, Ning Yuan subconsciously suppressed her smile. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I just read about it in a book and thought it was amusing. Alright, let’s go make dinner.”
Rong Dalao’s pride was really something.
She’d better just go cook.
Rong Zhaonan watched her back as she retreated in a bit of a fluster, adjusted the frame of his glasses on his nose, and thought coldly.
The day would come when he would uncover the truth about this little spy.
Ning Yuan didn’t know that although she had tried hard to conceal the anachronistic behaviors and words that slipped out, she couldn’t escape Rong Zhaonan’s sharp intuition, honed by his long years on the front lines. He had already completely pegged her as—
A “little spy” pending investigation.
The sky turned completely dark. In the village, chickens and ducks were cooped up, and cattle and sheep returned to their pens.
After a long day of farm work, the villagers had all gone home to eat.
The cowshed was already located at the foot of the mountain, the least lively place around. At this moment, it was quiet all around… except for the aroma of grilled fish wafting through the air.
Behind the cowshed, Ning Yuan had built a simple small stove with old bricks and stones.
She held the four fish, skewered on branches, over the small stove to grill. The firewood roasted the fish skin until it was crispy and fragrant.
The fish oil dripped onto the firewood, and the fish itself was brushed with soy sauce and salt.
The bellies of the fish were stuffed with ginger, green onions, and wild perilla. The aroma of the spices seeped into the fish meat and diffused into the air.
Rong Zhaonan came out of the hut carrying a small pot of sweet potato congee, and was immediately hit by the “stimulating” aroma, his stomach tightening in response.
Ning Yuan saw him staring at the fish in her hands and held up the largest one, offering it to him. “Here, want to try my cooking?”
She had to get on the big boss’s good side.
Rong Zhaonan accepted it without ceremony, sat down, and started eating.
Ning Yuan watched him. He was quick and efficient at picking out the bones, yet it was clear he had an excellent upbringing, as he made no sound while eating.
“What are you looking at? Aren’t you going to eat?” In no time, half of the grilled fish in Rong Zhaonan’s hand was gone. He stared at the fish Ning Yuan was still grilling.
Ning Yuan smiled and placed the wire-skewered river shrimp on the small stove to grill as well. “I’ll be full after one. You can have the other three.”
Seeing her busy sprinkling salt and turning the grilling fish by herself, Rong Zhaonan reached out and took two of the fish skewers. “Fine, I’ll grill them myself.”
Ning Yuan smiled, carefully turning the skewers of nearly-cooked small river shrimp on the stove, then ladled some sweet potato congee into a mess tin.
She put two skewers of small river shrimp into Rong Zhaonan’s mess tin and began to eat her grilled fish and shrimp with the congee.
Rong Zhaonan watched her eat gracefully, lost in thought—
The little spy’s cooking skills were not bad. Letting her move in did have some extra benefits.
Afterward, a silence fell between them as they both ate their food.
Ning Yuan found the awkward silence a bit unbearable. She cleared her throat lightly and tried to start a conversation. “Why… why were you drugged with that kind of spring… spring…that kind of medicine?”
Rong Zhaonan didn’t seem like the kind of person who could be easily tricked and drugged.
She had always felt that this matter was highly illogical.