After the “painful” lesson of being beaten, Li Xia secretly vowed to properly train this frail infant body. She desperately longed to escape the days of only being able to lie down and drink milk, and she strove to soon be able to sit up, eat on her own, and walk while leaning against the walls.
This obsession drove her to work exceptionally hard. Most of her waking hours each day were spent wrestling with her own tiny arms and legs. By the time she was over two months old, she had forced herself through sheer grit to learn how to roll over on her own. Every time she successfully flipped from lying flat to lying on her stomach—with her chin pressing against the bedsheet and her short little legs kicking wildly—Li Xia would always joke in her head: This is probably the infant version of “the emancipated slave sings a song”! She would lie prone on the hardboard bed covered with coarse sheets, struggling to wiggle her round little body and trying to prop up her upper half. In her own mind, it felt like she was doing mini sit-ups, but in the eyes of her second sister, who had come in to help her use the potty, all that could be seen was a white, tender ball of meat wriggling laboriously on the mattress like a little fish just out of water. This prompted the second sister to reach out and poke her cheek.
In her occasional moments of rest, Li Xia would stare blankly at the dark screen of the lottery system at the head of the bed. This was her only solace after transmigrating as an infant, but it hadn’t made a sound since the day she was born. If it weren’t for the small icon with a “diaper” pattern at the bottom of the screen that remained faintly lit, she would have suspected the system was a hallucination of her own making—a spiritual pillar to help her endure the diaper phase and thin milk.
One evening, Li Xia had just finished a set of “roll-and-lift” training and was slumped on the pillow, gasping for air, when a sudden, crisp “ding” exploded in her mind, startling her into widening her eyes. She saw the lottery system screen suddenly light up, a pale blue glow reflecting on her small face as a line of white text slowly emerged: “Dear customer, your random lottery chance has been activated. Do you choose to draw now? Please select ‘YES’ for yes, and ‘NO’ for no.”
Li Xia was both surprised and delighted, her tiny paws curling in excitement. She peeked toward the outside of the house, confirming that her second sister was in the courtyard helping their mother pick vegetables and that no one was paying attention to her. Only then did she pretend to casually rub her “clean” diaper—hoping her luck would be spectacular—and used her still-unsteady finger to tremblingly poke the “YES” button.
“Congratulations on obtaining one hundred cases of calcium milk biscuits. These calcium milk biscuits contain no added sucrose or preservatives; the ingredient list only includes wheat flour, fresh milk, and eggs. Would you like to store them in the system warehouse immediately?”
At the sight of the words “calcium milk biscuits,” Li Xia felt like she was about to drool. She quickly clicked “YES,” and after seeing the biscuit icon on the screen change to “Stored,” she let out a long sigh of relief and slumped back onto the pillow. Although she couldn’t eat them yet, at least when it came time for complementary foods at eight months, she wouldn’t have to fight her brothers and sisters for food. Better to have them than not, she comforted herself, mentally giving the finally “revived” system a thumbs-up.
However, after the joy passed, Li Xia began to wonder: what would the lottery system draw next time? Would it be grain to fill stomachs or daily necessities to improve life? The more she thought, the more she looked forward to it. She suddenly remembered it was now the height of summer in August, and the room was as hot as a steamer; they even had to rely on cattail fans until the middle of the night to sleep. If only she could draw some cooling equipment, even a small fan would do! But on second thought, she shook her head self-mockingly—what use would it be even if she drew it? The village didn’t even have electric lights yet; every household used kerosene lamps. Even if she had a machine, there was no electricity to drive it, and it would just be a decoration. Besides, could she even take it out to use? The answer: No!
During this time, by listening to the family’s conversations, Li Xia had roughly figured out the current time—1952. Although life was bitter, with every meal being thin porridge paired with wild vegetables and new clothes only being made once a year for the New Year, at least there was no war. There was no need to live in fear, and the whole family could stay together peacefully; this was already much better than the era of war and chaos.
Since entering the hottest period of summer, every household in the village began to “sleep by day and go out by night.” During the day when the sun was fierce, the adults would spread the family’s only straw mat on the floor of the central room, leaving the front and back doors wide open to let the cross-breeze through while they napped. At night, when it was cooler, the children would rush to move the mat to the courtyard, lying on it to count stars and listen to the adults tell old stories until it was late and they were called back inside to sleep.
But Li Xia was different; during the day, she could only stay on the bed in the room. Her mother said the ground was damp and feared she would catch a cold, and even more, she feared that ants or bugs in the yard would crawl on her—after all, the family members had to work during the day, and no one could watch an infant every second, so she could only stay on the bed.
Every evening, when the sun moved west and the heat dissipated slightly, the second sister would come in and carefully carry her to the courtyard, placing her on the straw mat spread out there to enjoy the cool breeze with her brothers and sisters. Every time she was placed on the mat, Li Xia would squint her eyes in comfort, proactively rolling over to turn her back toward the direction of the wind, feeling the evening breeze carrying the fresh scent of leaves brush over her skin. it was much more comfortable than the hot air in the room.
That night, as Li Xia was lying prone on the mat feeling the coolness of the evening breeze, she suddenly felt a bit of an itch on her arm. She lowered her head curiously to find a small black ant crawling up her arm. Li Xia reached out with her pinky and gently pinched it between her fingertips, then turned to look at Number Four sitting nearby playing with stones—her fourth brother, Guyu.
Li Xia stretched out her tiny finger holding the ant toward Guyu, making “ah-ya, ah-ya” sounds and using her eyes to signal him to kill it. Although Guyu was naughty, he was exceptionally patient with this newborn sister. He leaned over to look, carefully pinched the ant from Li Xia’s fingertip, gave it a twist on the straw mat, and threw the dead ant onto the ground before looking up and grinning at Li Xia.
Just then, the scent of cooking smoke mixed with the fresh aroma of eggplant drifted over from the kitchen. Before long, her mother’s voice came from the kitchen doorway: “Time to eat! Eldest, Second, move the table to the courtyard!”
The brothers and sisters lying on the mat instantly perked up at the mention of “eating,” scrambling up in a swarm and running barefoot toward the wooden table in the corner of the yard, fearing they would lose a good spot if they were late. Li Xia was picked up by her mother, who had just wiped her hands, and she sat on a small stool feeding Li Xia while holding a coarse porcelain bowl of her own vegetable rice soup.
The so-called vegetable rice soup was made by chopping fresh green vegetable leaves from the field and boiling them with a small amount of rice into a thin porridge—lots of soup and very little rice. There were only two dishes: a plate of stewed eggplant with pathetically little oil, relying entirely on salt for flavor, and a plate of cold-dressed tomatoes, which looked as though they didn’t even have sugar. This was the dinner for Li Xia’s family of seven, as simple as it could possibly be.
Watching her mother drink the thin vegetable rice soup while still having to breastfeed her, Li Xia couldn’t help but sigh in her heart. No wonder she always felt skinny, with not much meat even on her tiny arms—during the nursing period, her mother relied on this daily for nutrition, so the milk naturally wasn’t thick. The result was her mother getting thinner and thinner, and her, the nursing child, also lacking nutrition.
At this moment, Li Xia even more urgently hoped she could grow up faster and eat the calcium milk biscuits from the system. She no longer disdained this lottery system; she was even a bit grateful for it. If not for this system, she probably wouldn’t even get a decent bite of complementary food and would have to drink this vegetable soup with her brothers and sisters. The evening breeze blew again, carrying the scent of food. Li Xia licked her lips and silently counted down in her heart: Five more months, then I can eat biscuits.