Zhou Yu and Lu Cheng quickly finished lunch together. The plate of stir-fried green peppers with shredded pork was cleaned out completely, though there was still some vegetable egg-drop soup left, enough to reheat and eat again in the evening.
Zhou Yu had originally planned to spend the afternoon making a new quilt for Lu Cheng.
However, when she took out the cotton, fabric, needle, and thread, she found herself at a complete loss as to where to begin.
Fortunately, the system once again volunteered its services, offering to play instructional videos in Zhou Yu’s mind on how quilts were made in the 1980s.
That was a tremendous help. Zhou Yu found herself appreciating the system more and more. Whatever else could be said about it, its functions were surprisingly comprehensive.
Even with the instructional videos, however, making the cotton batting that went inside the quilt was still fairly complicated, and she lacked the proper tools to do it herself.
Zhou Yu searched through the original host’s memories and recalled that there happened to be a family in the village that specialized in carding cotton.
So she took Lu Cheng and three jin of cotton to their home. After waiting nearly two hours, the middle-aged husband and wife, who specialized in making cotton batting, finally turned the three jin of cotton Zhou Yu had brought into a quilt-sized cotton filling suitable for a child.
After paying a few mao in labor fees, Zhou Yu took Lu Cheng and the finished cotton batting home.
With the batting ready, making the quilt cover itself was much simpler. Following the old-style quilt-making methods shown in the system’s 1980s instructional videos, Zhou Yu cut the fabric to the proper size.
The fabric came in two colors. The lighter-colored cloth was used for the lining, while the patterned cloth was used for the outer surface. The floral fabric looked rather gaudy and didn’t quite fit modern tastes, but nearly all the fabric intended for quilt covers in the cloth shop had been made from similarly colorful prints, so Zhou Yu hadn’t really had much choice.
Next, following the system’s tutorial, Zhou Yu stitched and mended, sewed and unpicked. She repeatedly took the seams apart and redid them. By the time the sky gradually darkened, she had finally managed to sew the pieces of fabric together neatly.
Under normal standards, the quilt cover would have been perfectly usable after the third time she unpicked and resewed it.
But Zhou Yu kept feeling that the stitching wasn’t neat enough.
As a result, she spent the entire afternoon sewing and unpicking, then sewing again, repeating the process more than ten times. It wasn’t until darkness had begun to fall that Zhou Yu finally realized her obsessive tendencies had flared up again. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, she scratched her head and stopped what she was doing.
When Zhou Yu came back to her senses, she discovered that Lu Cheng had been staring at her without blinking the entire time. Assuming the child must be hungry, she asked, “Cheng’er, are you hungry?”
“Take this finished little quilt back to your room first. Then come help in the kitchen and tend the fire. I’ll make dinner.”
Putting away the needle and thread, Zhou Yu folded the small quilt neatly before speaking to Lu Cheng.
Lu Cheng nodded and took the quilt from Zhou Yu’s hands before heading toward his room.
Zhou Yu fetched some clean water and washed her hands, then returned to the kitchen to rinse the rice and start preparing dinner. Lu Cheng was quick as well. It took him less than two minutes to put away the quilt before he came back to the kitchen to help tend the fire. After setting the rice to steam, Zhou Yu began preparing the dishes.
“What would you like to eat tonight?” Zhou Yu asked Lu Cheng.
Although Zhou Yu had rarely cooked in the past, with the system’s detailed cooking tutorials and Lu Cheng helping control the fire, she found cooking surprisingly easy.
The problem was that there wasn’t much variety in the kitchen. Everything was vegetables and produce grown in their own plot of land. Lu Cheng and the original host had probably eaten these same dishes every day and long since grown tired of them.
“Anything is fine,” Lu Cheng replied softly.
He hadn’t expected his stepmother to ask for his opinion. For a moment, he was stunned, but he quickly recovered and answered.
Hearing that, Zhou Yu didn’t ask any further questions. There were only a few ingredients available in the kitchen anyway. They had eaten quite well at lunch, so dinner could be something simple.
“Then let’s make a plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and reheat the leftover vegetable egg-drop soup from noon,” Zhou Yu said to herself.
After the two of them finished their simple dinner, they each returned to their rooms to rest. Having been busy all day, Zhou Yu fell asleep very quickly.
Lu Cheng, however, hugged his new quilt and remained wide awake for a long time. Only late into the night did he finally drift off to sleep.
The next morning, Zhou Yu woke up naturally just as early as she had the day before.
This time, however, the first thing she did after waking up was not to prepare breakfast. Instead, she sat on the bed with her eyes closed and began studying the medical materials the system was playing in her mind.
Two or three hours passed in the blink of an eye. The sky outside had long since become fully bright, but Zhou Yu remained immersed in her studies, completely oblivious to the changes around her.
It wasn’t until a series of urgent knocks on the door interrupted her train of thought.
“Is anyone home?”
“Is a family member of Lu Bin here?”
A middle-aged man’s voice rang out from outside her door, accompanied by the knocking.
Having her studies interrupted, Zhou Yu frowned in annoyance.
Still, the man was already outside her house, calling for Lu Bin’s family.
Wasn’t Lu Bin the original host’s husband?
With that thought, Zhou Yu had no choice but to get up and open the door.
“I’m Lu Bin’s family member. What is it?” Zhou Yu asked the middle-aged man standing in the courtyard after opening the door.
The moment the middle-aged man saw someone come out, he quickly pulled a letter from the cloth bag at his side and handed it to Zhou Yu.
“I’m a mail carrier,” he said. “This is a condolence letter from the army to the family.”
The instant Zhou Yu heard the words “condolence letter,” her brows knitted even tighter.
According to the plot of the novel, this letter wasn’t supposed to arrive in the original host’s hands until Lu Cheng was over six years old.
So what was going on now?
Had some part of the plot changed?
“Comrade Lu Bin’s family, please try to take care of yourself. Lu Bin died in service to the country, after all,” the middle-aged man added when he saw that Zhou Yu wasn’t responding, assuming she was having trouble accepting the news.
His words snapped Zhou Yu out of her thoughts. Without saying anything, she accepted the letter and escorted the mail carrier out of the courtyard.
Only after returning to her room with the condolence letter did she begin opening it.
Lu Cheng had also been awakened by the man’s booming voice earlier. From his room, he had seen everything that happened in the courtyard.
When he heard his father’s name, along with words like “condolence letter” and “take care of yourself,” he no longer cared whether he might get beaten or not. He rushed out of his own room and ran straight into Zhou Yu’s room.
Carefully, Zhou Yu opened the envelope.
The letter was surprisingly thick. Inside were not only a sheet of paper but also several cash notes.
She took out the letter and read it carefully from beginning to end before emptying the stack of banknotes from the envelope.
Zhou Yu read the letter over and over several times.
She finally confirmed that this was indeed the condolence letter from the original novel. The contents matched the original text exactly. Even the denominations and amount of cash were identical to what had been described in the novel.
Staring at the condolence letter and the money in her hands, Zhou Yu felt utterly bewildered.
She had assumed there would be at least another year or two before this letter arrived. Yet somehow, the plot of the original novel had suddenly advanced at an incredible speed.
But it didn’t take long for Zhou Yu to realize what was wrong.
Looking up, she asked Lu Cheng, who was standing nearby, “Lu Cheng, how old are you this year? And what year is it now?”
Lu Cheng didn’t understand why his stepmother was suddenly asking such a question, but he answered honestly anyway.
“I’m over six years old. It’s 1986.”
“What?”
The words escaped Zhou Yu before she could stop herself.
She truly hadn’t realized it before.
The thin, undersized Lu Cheng standing before her was already more than six years old?
That meant he had already spent nearly three years living with the original host.
A six-year-old child and a four-year-old child might not seem that far apart in age, but in reality, the difference in their cognitive development was enormous.
A four-year-old didn’t understand many things and usually didn’t remember much, which was why Zhou Yu had never bothered to hide her true personality around Lu Cheng before.
But a six-year-old was completely different.
He already had his own thoughts and remembered things clearly. No matter how young Lu Cheng looked now, he probably remembered every single rotten thing the original host had done to him.
Zhou Yu couldn’t help blaming herself for making assumptions.
When she had first transmigrated into the novel, she hadn’t bothered to verify anything. Based solely on Lu Cheng’s height and appearance, she had roughly estimated where they were in the timeline.
As a result, all her original plans had been thrown into disarray by this single condolence letter.
Zhou Yu had originally intended to spend a year or two building a good relationship with Lu Cheng. Then, when he turned six, she would send him to primary school.
During that time, she had also planned to devote herself to studying medical knowledge under the system’s guidance.
But now that the timeline was different, many of those plans would have to change accordingly.
“Let me be alone for a while so I can think. Go make some porridge first,” Zhou Yu said, rubbing her temples.
She knew Lu Cheng probably had plenty of questions as well.
But right now, her own thoughts were a mess. She needed time to calm down and sort through everything before having a proper talk with him.
Now that Lu Cheng was already over six years old, there was no way she could continue following her original plan of keeping him at home.
She needed to arrange for him to start primary school as soon as possible.
And on top of that, Zhou Yu was facing even more troublesome problems.
Now that this condolence letter had arrived, the original host’s mother-in-law and her birth family would undoubtedly set their sights on the compensation money. They would probably come knocking at the door very soon.
And that wasn’t all.
There was also the original host’s lover from the novel. Zhou Yu had no idea whether the two of them had already gotten involved by this point.
With so many troublesome matters suddenly appearing all at once, Zhou Yu felt her head throb.
Could she not even study in peace anymore?
Still, she had no intention of running away from any of it.
She felt that it would be best to deal with all these problems as quickly as possible.
Only after every one of these troubles had been resolved would she be able to devote herself wholeheartedly to her medical studies and research.