Chen Zui’s fingers lightly rubbed the bamboo tube hidden inside her sleeve, the one filled with spiritual spring water. A plan had already taken shape in her mind.
If you wanted to get rich, you first had to build roads.
And if you wanted to live comfortably, this drafty shack had to be turned into a fortress before anything else.
At the first hint of dawn, Chen Laosan was already up.
He deliberately put on an old patch-covered jacket that Second Sister had altered overnight. His back was bent even lower than usual, making him look like a man crushed beneath the weight of life.
But his hands never stopped working.
In the yard sat piles of yellow clay dug from the riverbank the day before, along with several bundles of newly purchased straw.
“Hiss…”
The moment Chen Laosan bent over to mix the mud, pain shot through the wound in his leg. He clenched his teeth, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, but he never loosened his grip on the hoe.
“Father, have some water.”
Chen Zui trotted over on her short little legs, holding the familiar bamboo tube.
Without thinking much of it, Chen Laosan took it and drank deeply.
The water didn’t feel cool as it usually did.
Instead, it was like a stream of fire, burning down his throat and into his stomach. Then the heat seemed to develop a mind of its own, racing straight toward his injured leg.
Gulp.
Chen Laosan lowered the tube and smacked his lips.
Strange.
His knee, which had been aching faintly all morning, suddenly felt as if it had been submerged in scalding hot water. The soreness and stabbing pain vanished in an instant.
In their place came a surge of strength rising from deep within his bones.
He cautiously kicked his leg.
It didn’t hurt.
Then he tried lifting a bucket containing dozens of pounds of wet clay with one hand.
It felt weightless.
“Could meat really be this nourishing?” Chen Laosan stared at his palm in disbelief.
The only explanation he could come up with was yesterday’s feast of fatty pork and white-flour buns.
“Father, I want to go up on the roof and take a look.”
Chen Zui pointed toward the huge hole overhead.
“Go ahead, but be careful.”
At the moment, Chen Laosan felt strong enough to wrestle an ox. In an excellent mood, he lifted Chen Zui onto the ladder.
“I’ll pass the straw bundles up from below.”
Like a nimble little cat, Chen Zui climbed onto the shaky roof beams.
The beams had long since rotted. Even the mortise-and-tenon joints had loosened. Smearing mud over them wouldn’t help much—a single heavy snowfall could collapse the whole structure.
While Chen Laosan lowered his head to continue mixing mud, Chen Zui slipped her hand into the gap between two support beams.
With a thought—
A black industrial-grade silent nail gun appeared in her hand.
Pfft! Pfft!
Two barely audible muffled sounds.
Two long steel nails shot through the rotten wood, pinning the loose beams firmly together.
Moving swiftly, Chen Zui stored the nail gun away and pulled out a tube of high-strength construction adhesive. She squeezed it into the cracked joints.
“Father! More mud!”
Chen Zui called down.
Chen Laosan passed up another batch of straw-mixed clay.
Scooping it up, Chen Zui plastered it over the reinforced areas, completely hiding all traces of steel nails and adhesive.
Father and daughter worked together—
one secretly cheating,
the other laboring honestly.
In less than two hours, the roof that had once looked ready to collapse became solid and stable. Even when someone stepped on it, it no longer creaked.
After repairing the roof, they turned their attention to the smoky stove.
Li Shi was worried.
“The firebox is too shallow. All the smoke comes back into the house. Every time I cook, the whole place fills with smoke.”
“Mother, move that brick.”
Squatting beside the stove, Chen Zui pointed to a spot near the base of the chimney.
“We need to leave a slope here.”
“A slope?”
Li Shi didn’t understand, but she did as instructed.
Guiding her father, Chen Zui used modern principles of airflow and thermodynamics to redesign the stove’s air intake and smoke channel.
She even secretly took a thin sheet of metal from her storage space, rolled it into a cylinder, and inserted it into the chimney as a liner to improve the draft.
“Let’s test it.”
Wiping sweat from his forehead, Chen Laosan stuffed dry grass into the firebox and struck a fire starter.
Whoosh!
The flames seemed to be sucked upward by an invisible force.
They instantly roared to life inside the stove, licking eagerly at the bottom of the cooking pot.
The flames even burned a clean blue.
The thick smoke that should have flooded the room instead rushed smoothly through the modified chimney and poured outside.
The interior remained perfectly clear.
Only the crackling of burning wood and waves of pleasant heat filled the room.
“Amazing!”
Li Shi clapped her hands excitedly.
“This stove burns even better than the one at the old family house! Cooking will be so much faster now!”
Looking around at their transformed home, Chen Laosan grinned foolishly.
What he didn’t know was that although the thatched cottage still looked dilapidated from the outside, inside it had already been reinforced with steel nails, industrial adhesive, and scientific engineering.
Its appearance remained shabby.
Its bones, however, had become a fortress.
Night fell.
The north wind arrived right on schedule, howling wildly outside and battering the walls.
Normally, that wind would have already found its way into their bedding.
But tonight, the house was quiet.
The newly patched window paper didn’t flutter at all.
The rebuilt stove radiated lingering warmth, filling the main room with cozy heat.
The family sat together atop their newly purchased thick quilt.
Cross-legged, Chen Laosan reached down and touched his knee.
Whenever the weather changed, that leg usually hurt as though insects were gnawing at the bone.
But today it felt warm and powerful.
“Dear wife.”
Chen Laosan clenched his fist, his eyes shining.
“I think my body’s finally healed completely. Tomorrow… let’s render that pork fat. Have Eldest Girl show off her cooking skills.”
Li Shi was sewing the lining of Chen Zui’s new clothes by the firelight.
Hearing his words, she looked up at her husband’s healthy complexion, her eyes growing moist.
“Alright. We’ll live well and show them all.”
Chen Zui leaned against her second sister’s arms, listening to the frustrated wind outside while idly rolling a small pebble between her fingers.
The environment was secure now.
Everyone’s health was improving.
The next step was turning their supplies into money—
and then turning that money into even more money.
Her gaze settled on the stove blazing with vigorous fire.
That was Eldest Sister’s battlefield.
And it was also the first piece of the Chen family’s future business empire.
“Eldest Sister,” Chen Zui said, looking up at Chen Yinuo, who was tidying the stove. “For tomorrow’s fried lard-crackle pancakes, can you add extra scallions?”
“The kind whose aroma can be smelled from two miles away.”
Chen Yinuo froze for a moment.
Then she saw the calculating gleam in her little sister’s eyes and smiled.
“Of course.”
“Eldest Sister will make the most fragrant pancakes in all of Anping County.”