“Mother, there are a lot of clams in the stream behind the mountain. I want to gather some and sell them in town, but I don’t know what price to ask,” Yu Chunmiao said while washing dishes. “Little brother said we should wait until Second Brother comes back to ask around, but I don’t want to wait that long.”
Chen Ruolan helped her put the cleaned bowls into the cupboard. “What does a child know? Clams are good stuff. If you wait too long, someone else will pick them all. You two just gather them tomorrow. I’ll take them to sell.”
For a family without farmland, selling mountain goods was an important source of income. When there was something good, you had to act fast—hesitation meant losing out. Besides, her son’s injured leg needed money for treatment. Making money was the most important thing in the household right now.
As night gradually fell, the question of sleeping arrangements became unavoidable.
Considering Qi Chong’s attitude toward Yu Chunmiao, Chen Ruolan worried that forcing the two to share a room might lead to her daughter-in-law being mistreated. On top of that, her own coughing was terrible at night; anyone sleeping with her would suffer.
“Rong’er, you sleep with your eldest brother tonight. Let your sister-in-law have the room,” she said after much thought.
Yu Chunmiao had a good impression of the Qi family, but she still hadn’t even seen what Qi Chong looked like. As someone who cared about appearances, she couldn’t bring herself to sleep with a stranger just yet. Hearing her kind mother-in-law’s arrangement, she felt instantly relieved.
“Behave yourself when you sleep,” Chen Ruolan reminded her youngest son. “Don’t bump into your brother’s injured leg.”
Qi Rong had no objections at all. When he hugged his small quilt and entered Qi Chong’s room, he was met with his brother’s look of pure disdain.
This little brat slept like a wild animal. Every morning, he woke up in a different position.
No need to think about it—it was all because of that silly girl they’d brought home. Qi Chong felt his life being invaded again. An outright offense.
With three rooms, each had its own troubles that night.
In the first half of the night, Qi Chong’s injured leg was, as expected, tormented by his brother’s flailing hands. His task for the rest of the night was to lock Qi Rong firmly in his arms.
“Big sister-in-law’s cooking… so good… really good…”
“Big sister-in-law! …snails… can’t eat… disgusting…”
They had only known each other for a day, and his brother was already dreaming about that silly woman. Qi Chong had the sudden urge to kick him out of bed.
In the latter half of the night, Chen Ruolan’s coughing started again—violent, relentless, as if she were about to cough up her lungs. The sound carried clearly into both Qi Chong’s and Yu Chunmiao’s rooms.
Worried, Qi Chong wanted to get up and bring her some water. Just as he sat up, he heard the sound of a door opening next door. Soon, a faint glow of firelight slipped through the crack in his door, then vanished as a shadow passed by—heading toward his mother’s room.
The coughing stopped.
Qi Chong lay still, listening carefully. The sound of doors opening and closing. Water being poured. After a long while, footsteps returned to the adjacent room.
It was Yu Chunmiao, taking care of his mother.
Something stirred quietly in Qi Chong’s heart. In his current condition, getting up in the dark to check on his mother would probably only make her worry more.
The coughing turned intermittent, then gradually faded into silence. What Chen Ruolan needed was simple—when she coughed unconsciously at night, someone to bring her a cup of water.
Early the next morning, after breakfast, Yu Chunmiao didn’t rush to wash the dishes. She changed the water for the snails and clams, then headed into the mountains with Qi Rong.
“Rong’er, are there loquat trees in the mountains?” Yu Chunmiao asked. Chen Ruolan’s coughing had troubled her. She knew that in this era, medicine was incredibly expensive. The Qi family couldn’t afford proper treatment. The only folk remedy she could think of was boiling loquat leaves—if it couldn’t cure the illness, it might at least ease it.
Qi Rong was very familiar with the surrounding mountains. Without hesitation, he said, “Yes, but they’re deeper in. Mother doesn’t let us go there. And loquat season is already over—why look for loquat trees now?”
Yu Chunmiao replied, “Boiling loquat leaves in water can help with coughing.”
Hearing that it might help his mother, Qi Rong was happy—then suspicious. How would his sister-in-law know something like that? What if she was just guessing and made things worse?
“How do you know boiling loquat leaves can treat coughs?”
Confidently, Yu Chunmiao said, “When I was little and had a cough, my mother boiled loquat leaf water for me, and it worked. Trust me—it helps.”
What she didn’t say was that she meant her grandmother, not her mother. Her parents had been busy working away from home, and she had spent most of her childhood with her grandmother. With no steady income, her grandmother often took her into the mountains on weekends to gather herbs and wild vegetables to sell at the market.
She recognized quite a few herbs for relieving coughs and phlegm—besides loquat leaves, there were pinellia and fritillaria, though she hadn’t seen those yet.
Qi Rong knew that his new sister-in-law had only become “simple-minded” after her mother died. So anything from before that should be reliable. He agreed to take her there.
Besides carrying baskets, they also brought woven bamboo sieves. Scooping through the water, the water drained away, leaving the clams behind among the sand and stones. This was several times faster than using their hands.
Qi Rong gradually began to enjoy clam-picking. Watching the basket fill up, brother and sister-in-law were both delighted.
Still, they seemed to have brought baskets that were too big. By late morning, one basket was only about two-thirds full.
Yu Chunmiao looked at the sun. It was almost noon. “Let’s go—take me to pick loquat leaves,” she said.
Qi Rong lifted the basket, water dripping everywhere.
She quickly stopped him. “Put it down. We should line it with banana leaves first. Let’s hide the basket and come back for it later.”
They hid the basket in a tall patch of wild sugarcane. Yu Chunmiao pointed at it and asked, “Rong’er, do you know what this is?”
Qi Rong shook his head. “Isn’t it just cattle grass? It grows along the water everywhere. We cut the leaves to feed the cows—they love it.”
Of course they loved it. It was high in sugar and could be used to boil brown sugar—just not yet. The stalks weren’t thick enough this season.
On the way to pick loquat leaves, Yu Chunmiao asked Qi Rong about brown sugar. In this era, she had never encountered it before and had no idea about prices.
She learned that brown sugar was a rare item, boiled from sugarcane, and could sell for two hundred copper coins per jin.
“Does the government control sugar-making?” Yu Chunmiao asked, recalling how salt, iron, tea, and sugar were often monopolized in historical records. It wouldn’t be worth ending up in prison for a bit of money.
Qi Rong shook his head. “I don’t know. Big Brother should know. We’ll ask him when we get back.”
In his eyes, his eldest brother was the best—literate, skilled, and even able to write Spring Festival couplets.
“No rush,” Yu Chunmiao said. “We’ll talk about it when the sugarcane is ready.”
Qi Rong didn’t understand what she meant by “sugarcane.” Yu Chunmiao smiled. “Once we’ve picked the loquat leaves, I’ll show you.”
After walking for half an hour into the mountains, they spotted several loquat trees growing on a slope. They were likely wild—only a few small fruits remained, no bigger than longan, already pecked clean by birds, leaving just patches of yellow clinging to the branches.
Qi Rong scrambled up the slope in a few quick moves.
“Pick the older leaves,” Yu Chunmiao called out. “Ten or so will be enough.”