“Old man, I don’t think Third Son’s wife is going to have any milk this time. Tomorrow, go ask Old Wang if he has a ewe that recently gave birth. We can bring back a bowl of goat’s milk every day and pay him two copper coins,” Old Madam Lin whispered to Old Man Lin as she lay on the bed in the eastern room of the main house.
“Alright. If Old Wang doesn’t have one, I’ll go to the shepherd in Qingshi Town and buy a ewe instead,” Old Man Lin replied in a muffled voice.
“That works, but a sheep isn’t cheap. Lao Xi still wants to try the provincial exam again next autumn, and we don’t have much savings left,” Old Madam Lin answered after some thought.
“This will be Lao Xi’s last attempt. If he still fails, he can’t keep taking the exam anymore. Too much money has already been spent on him alone, and the other brothers will start to resent it. Dashan is already grown up now, and Eldest is almost becoming a grandfather. There are more and more children in the family. If we favor Lao Xi too much, the brothers may become enemies,” the old man patiently explained once again.
This time, Old Madam Lin did not argue back. She did favor her youngest son more, but she also understood the family’s situation.
The family only owned twenty-five mu of fertile farmland and fifteen mu of dry fields. Yet there were twenty people in the household. Depending solely on the harvests, they could barely eat their fill even in good years. If Old Man Lin hadn’t known bamboo weaving, if the eldest and second sons hadn’t taken odd jobs in the county during the farming off-season, and if the third son hadn’t worked as a traveling peddler around nearby villages, they never could have supported Lao Xi’s education.
Lao Xi had already failed the county examination twice. Next autumn would be his third try. If he still failed, he would have to return home from the academy. This had been agreed upon by the whole family from the very beginning.
Old Man Lin had always wanted to elevate the family’s status, but the cost of education was beyond what an ordinary farming family could bear. He could not let one person drag down twenty mouths to feed.
Back then, all four sons had attended school for two years. In the end, only Lao Xi, the one with the most talent for studying, was kept in school. Unfortunately, although Lao Xi had passed the child scholar exam at fifteen, he had repeatedly failed afterward.
Meanwhile, in the western room, the eldest son and his wife were also talking. Or rather, it was Eldest Son’s wife, Little Liu—Liu Ju—doing the talking, because Lin Dayong had already started drifting off and snoring.
“Husband, Dashan has gone to school for two years, and the teacher said he has no talent for studying. Father also says he has no talent for bamboo weaving. He can’t just keep following us into the fields every day. Shouldn’t you discuss with Father about letting him learn a trade outside?” Little Liu said as she pushed the already-snoring Lin Dayong.
“Mmm… alright… fine… you decide…” he muttered before turning over and resuming his snores.
Little Liu became so angry she nearly hit him. Losing all interest in talking, she turned over huffily and went to sleep too.
The layout of the Lin family courtyard was simple.
The main house consisted of three blue-brick tiled rooms. The middle room served as the main hall, with one room on each side. Old Man Lin and Old Madam Lin lived in the eastern room, while the eldest couple lived in the western room.
On both the east and west sides were two side rooms each, all made of mud brick with tiled roofs. The eastern side rooms housed the second son and his wife in one room, and the third son and his wife in the other.
One room in the western wing belonged to Lao Xi and his wife, though the couple usually stayed at her parents’ home and only returned during holidays. Another room was shared by Eldest’s twelve-year-old son Lin Dashan, seven-year-old Lin Dahe, and Second Son’s four-year-old son Lin Fuping.
A few years ago, Old Man Lin noticed the granddaughters were growing older and no longer suitable to sleep with their parents, so he built three mud rooms behind the main house. One room housed Eldest’s daughters—ten-year-old Lin Chunxia and nine-year-old Lin Chunyan. Another room housed Second Son’s three daughters: ten-year-old Lin Yuxiang, eight-year-old Lin Yufeng, and five-year-old Lin Yulan. The third mud room was used as a storage room.
Behind the mud rooms was a fairly large vegetable garden. To the left stood a pigsty and latrine; to the right, a cowshed and chicken coop.
The kitchen was built beside the western wing, while Old Man Lin’s bamboo-weaving workshop stood beside the eastern wing.
The entire courtyard was enclosed by a wall built from stones of various sizes, nearly two meters high. Since the Lin family lived at the foot of a mountain, they had spent great effort constructing the wall to keep wild animals out.
Around the Hour of Hai—roughly between nine and eleven at night—Lin Mei woke up.
She listened carefully. There was no sound except Lin Sanyong’s snoring. Reaching out with her tiny hand, she felt around. Mm, her mother was beside her, and there was no movement. Everyone must still be asleep.
You couldn’t blame Lin Mei. At this point, only her left eye could open a tiny slit, and everything was blurry. She could only see darkness and nothing clearly.
Lin Mei didn’t intend to wake her mother by crying. She planned to take out a bottle of milk from her space and drink it herself.
Her consciousness entered the space. She selected a baby bottle and controlled it with her mind.
The moment the bottle left the space, Lin Mei froze.
Inside the space, she could clearly perceive things with her spiritual sense, but in reality she had never actually seen her surroundings clearly before. She could only rely on feeling to maneuver the bottle beside her right cheek.
The helpless part was that Lin Mei tilted her head and opened her mouth, trying hard to find the nipple. But no matter how she stretched, she simply couldn’t reach it.
Still unwilling to give up, Lin Mei strained to turn her head and raised her little hand to push the bottle closer. But when she had stored the milk, she had been too greedy. Wanting to maximize every bottle, she had filled each one completely with 500 milliliters of milk. The bottle was simply too heavy. No matter how hard she pawed at it, she couldn’t move it at all.
Finally, Lin Mei broke down.
“Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!”
Her loud cries instantly filled the room.
She was starving!
She had prepared all that milk just in case, yet she couldn’t drink any of it. She was so angry. Reality truly taught harsh lessons—she had never imagined that a newborn baby would lack the strength to lift a full 500ml milk bottle. If she directly floated the bottle toward her mouth while unable to support its weight with her hands, the bottle might even smash her nose flat.
She cried at her own stupidity.
As soon as Lin Mei started wailing, Tian Guihua immediately woke up.
“Sweet girl, don’t cry, don’t cry. Are you hungry? Mama will feed you.”
Tian Guihua picked Lin Mei up and comforted her gently. Pulling open her clothes, she guided her breast toward Lin Mei’s mouth.
Lin Mei was truly starving and sucked desperately, but no milk came out.
“Waaah! Waaah! Waaah! There’s no milk! I can’t drink anything! I’m going to starve to death!”
“Husband! Husband! The baby is hungry. I still don’t have milk yet. Is there any rice soup left?” Tian Guihua said anxiously while shaking Lin Sanyong hard.
Lin Sanyong truly slept like the dead. Even after several forceful pushes, he still didn’t wake up.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
Tian Guihua slapped his arm with a bit more force.
Only then did Lin Sanyong finally wake up.
“Mmm… wife… what’s wrong? Is it morning already?” he asked groggily.
“Is there any rice soup left? The baby’s hungry,” Tian Guihua urged.
“Yes, yes, there is. I’ll go warm it up. Mother was worried the baby would get hungry tonight, so she left over half a bowl in the clay pot.”
After speaking, Lin Sanyong slipped into his straw sandals and headed toward the kitchen.
After half an hour of fussing around, Lin Mei finally drank some rice soup again and barely managed to fill her stomach with watery gruel.
Even in her previous life, Lin Mei had never felt this miserable in a single day.