“Ding—”
“Study materials have been issued. Host, please check them.”
“Exemplary Figure: Zuo Cao.”
“Host, please study hard and reform yourself actively.”
On the table sat a small, round, red plastic mirror. The base of the mirror featured a pattern that carried a strong sense of a bygone era.
E6 picked up the mirror. It reflected a young girl of about five years old.
She had a small round face and was styled with twin braids—a rather sweet look.
However, her eyes ruined that sweetness.
They were gloomy, weary, and possessed a cold indifference unique to adults.
Aside from her name, the only thing E6 shared with the original owner of this body was a pervasive sense of exhaustion.
It took E6 only five minutes to finish reading the study materials.
The study materials were a novel titled Returning to the Nineties, I am the Trendsetter of the Era.
It was a very long novel, millions of words in length, telling the story of the male lead returning to the 1990s. Using his foresight, he seized a series of opportunities, encountered many beautiful women, slapped the faces of countless villains who looked down on him, and ultimately reached the pinnacle of life.
The reason E6 could finish it in five minutes was because she had simply searched the document for the name “Zuo Cao.”
Compared to the male lead’s complex life, full of twists, turns, and climaxes, Zuo Cao only appeared in the early stages.
As a background character, there wasn’t much information about her.
She was always working. When she was little, she cooked, washed clothes, and cleaned. Once she turned ten, she started going to work in the fields just like the adults.
Because she was a child, the work points she received for the same labor were heavily discounted.
Zuo Cao started school late. When the male lead, Zuo Dongliang, reached school age, the family’s finances became tight. Consequently, Zuo Cao dropped out of school and went south to work in a factory.
By the time Zuo Dongliang returned through rebirth to stir up the world, his first bit of startup capital was the savings Zuo Cao had accumulated from her factory work.
The system said, “Learning is a gradual process. Don’t worry; the first world won’t be very difficult. You have plenty of time. Just follow the novel’s path and do things step-by-step.”
In the novel, the last time Zuo Cao was mentioned was when she turned eighteen.
[She was so capable that her reputation spread throughout the entire village. Those coming to propose marriage wore down the family’s threshold.]
This sentence read like a supreme compliment.
The system also praised her in a strange tone: “This is a simple and honest era. This is a legendary era. Compared to the materialism of later generations, the women of this era still retain the excellent qualities of the previous generation.”
Zuo Cao closed the system interface.
In this era, family planning policies were already being fully implemented.
Dual-income urban families could only have one child, but in the villages, enforcement was slightly more relaxed.
If the first child was a girl, they could have another.
The limit, however, was two.
Zuo Cao already had an older sister.
To ensure they could have a boy, her parents sent Zuo Cao to her aunt’s house in the city.
Even so, Zuo Cao’s mother spent her entire pregnancy hiding and moving about in a miserable state.
Calculating the time, back in Lingyun Village, Zuo Cao’s mother was already eight months pregnant. In another two months, Zuo Cao’s younger brother—the male lead of this book—would be born.
Zuo Cao sat on the bed, looking out the window.
Most of the people living in this area were employees of the tractor factory. It was currently quitting time.
The streets and hallways were becoming lively.
Zuo Caiyun, Zuo Cao’s aunt, returned home.
She was a worker at the tractor factory. Her job had been hard-won, and she cherished it deeply; she had returned to her post as soon as her maternity leave ended.
“Did my baby miss Mommy today? Come, let Mommy hold you.”
Zuo Caiyun played with her child for a while, then asked, “Where’s Xiao Cao?”
Wei Mu had been waiting for this question. “She’s been shut in that room all afternoon. The clothes are piled up at her door, and she hasn’t even thought to wash them.”
In this day and age, families didn’t use disposable diapers; they used cloth ones that had to be washed and changed constantly.
It was exhausting work.
With a child so young, they needed constant supervision.
Zuo Caiyun had only given birth to this one child, something Wei Mu had always grumbled about.
Fortunately, it was a boy.
In this generation of the Wei family, he was the only male offspring. He was truly the apple of their eye—they were afraid he’d break if held too tightly and afraid he’d melt if kept in their mouths.
Wei Mu had held the child all afternoon, hardly letting him go, and she was very tired.
The dishes from lunch were still unwashed, the diapers the child had gone through all day were unwashed, and the kitchen hadn’t been tidied.
These were all Zuo Cao’s jobs.
Wei Mu didn’t yet know that in just half a day, the “core” inside Zuo Cao had been replaced.
Zuo Caiyun said, “My niece came here to visit, she’s not a servant we hired. How can we make her do all the work?”
“Oh, so the servant in this house should be me, then? It’s not enough that I work myself to the bone looking after your kid? At my age, I still have to serve an ancestor like Zuo Cao? A growing kid eats like a horse; my family’s grain didn’t just blow in on the wind.”
Zuo Caiyun looked at the dishes on the table and stood up. “Mom, I’ll clean up. You watch Zhuangzhuang.”
Wei Mu grumbled as she took the child back. “I’ve been watching him all day without a single breath of air.”
Zuo Caiyun had already put the used diapers into the laundry tub, filled it with water to soak, and then went into the kitchen to cook.
During this time, Wei Mu carried the child past Zuo Cao’s door several times and called her name repeatedly. Zuo Cao acted as if she hadn’t heard a thing.
It wasn’t until Wei Changzhi, Zuo Cao’s uncle-in-law, arrived home that they began dinner.
When Zuo Cao came out, Zuo Caiyun glanced at her. “Come, let’s eat.”
Wei Mu rolled her eyes.
On the table was a bowl of stir-fried bottle gourd and a large bowl of stewed pork with potatoes.
With Zuo Caiyun’s salary as a Level 2 Fitter and the fact that they only had one child, they could afford to have meat on the table every day.
In this era, that was considered a very good life.
In the study materials—that novel—the difficulty of obtaining food in this era was often emphasized.
But those were just words; they didn’t carry much real weight.
That was, until Zuo Cao reached out with her chopsticks to pick up a piece of meat, only for Wei Mu to snatch it away first and drop it into Wei Changzhi’s bowl.
Zuo Cao didn’t take it to heart. When her chopsticks moved toward another piece, Wei Mu pulled the bowl away.
There were only two dishes on the table. No matter how Wei Mu moved things, that bowl of meat was always closest to Wei Changzhi.
A faint look of anger appeared on Zuo Caiyun’s face.
Wei Changzhi felt it was a bit embarrassing. “Mom.”
Zuo Cao paused for a moment, thought about it, and decided to finish her meal first.
She was hungry.
After finishing, she set down her chopsticks and left the table even earlier than Wei Changzhi.
The system popped up: “You’re being a bit impolite.”
E6, currently Zuo Cao, replied, “Are you blind?”
Wei Mu’s voice trailed after her: “Picks up the bowl to eat, then leaves the second she’s done. She really thinks she’s a guest.”
“What kind of guest is treated like a beggar? Besides, I’m not nearly as good at ‘picking up’ things as you are,” Zuo Cao said without looking back.
All the meat in that bowl had ended up in Wei Changzhi’s bowl; even Zuo Caiyun hadn’t managed to get more than two pieces.