6 Chapter 3: System

Ms. Qian stroked her head and said, "Clearing wasteland is not so easy, and the food grown on fallow land may not even be enough to pay the tax. Your nephews are still young, and the land we have is enough to cultivate."

"Then what should we do? Four committed such a big mistake, and we can't just kill him. What if he's idle again and goes off gambling?"

Ms. Qian pondered. If she didn't punish Silang for making such a big mistake, the other sons and daughters-in-law would surely be dissatisfied. But if she really hurt him, whether she was willing to do that was another matter. Besides, treating his injuries would require money, and that would be truly painful.

Ms. Qian said, "Alright, tomorrow let your Four start to clear the land."

Only then did Manbao cheer up. "I will supervise Four."

"I think you just want to go out and play. The fields are full of snakes and bugs. You should not join the bustle. Just let your eldest nephew and the others follow him," Ms. Qian replied.

Manbao: "No, I want to go too."

Before, she thought her family was pretty good—no lack of food or clothes. On market days, she always had candy to eat, although she wasn't particularly fond of sweets.

Therefore, she had only wanted to learn characters, feeling that reading brought her joy. But Keke had no books to give her, only candy.

She had tasted it; those candies, though sweeter than what Second Brother brought from the market, still didn't appeal to her much.

But now she knew their family was still very poor. She needed to earn money. Since she was still young, she couldn't work the land or go out to work, so selling candy was the only way for her to earn money.

However, because she was always lazy and wouldn't dig vegetables for Keke, Keke had stopped giving her any candy to eat for a long time.

Right, Keke suddenly appeared in her mind last spring when, at last, she had completely memorized the Thousand Character Classic. Mr. Zhuang, moved, had given her a stack of his handwritten manuscript of the Classic.

Overjoyed, she ran home with the manuscript, and as soon as she got home, Keke appeared, saying it was a branch of the Encyclopedia, in charge of the Biology section, and had been accidentally left behind here.

It needed to collect many biological species to exchange for energy to leave at the Encyclopedia.

At first, Manbao didn't understand and thought she had made a friend. She happily told her mother about it.

But Ms. Qian had thought she was a child dreaming and had humored her for a while.

Manbao was smart and gradually understood that no one else could see or hear Keke, so she stopped mentioning it, pretending that this friend was visible and audible only to her.

Keke kept asking her to collect more plants, but Manbao had already dug up all the vegetables in the garden for it to collect, even the grass outside the house had been dug up, and going to distant places was too tiring; she didn't want to go at all.

For her friend's sake, she reluctantly looked for some unfamiliar grass for Keke. However, her family was always worried about her running around outside, and while her nephews and nieces could go out to play, she was always accompanied by her sister-in-law.

She could only play within the village; she was definitely not allowed to leave the village, let alone go to the fields.

Manbao nagged her mother, almost to the point of throwing a tantrum on the ground. Ms. Qian, exhausted in body and soul, seeing her daughter like this and thinking that she was at the age to enjoy playing, couldn't bear to keep her confined all the time and reluctantly nodded, "Alright, alright, go then. But you must listen to Wulang and Liulang, don't run around carelessly, and don't stay out in the sun for too long, understand?"

Manbao happily agreed.

That evening, she even had a full bowl of rice, and together with Fifth Brother, Sixth Brother, and her nephews and nieces, they rushed to finish all the vegetables.

Apart from these few children who were oblivious, the appetite of the adults was really not good. It was not easy for the family to have saved a little money, but overnight they were back to abject poverty, so one could hardly expect them to feel good.

Old Zhou could only stomach a chopstick-full of rice, feeling for the first time that the grain was suffocating and he couldn't swallow it.

The thought of those fifteen silver taels made his heart clench and ache, his eyes reddened with pain, until he finally couldn't help but smash the bowl and go give his fourth son another beating to feel better.

Zhou Dalang and his brothers, after their father had beaten Four, didn't feel right to follow suit, just sourly shoveled food into their mouths.

Ms. Qian and her daughters-in-law were eating porridge together. With autumn harvest past, aside from the men, only Manbao could have dry rice to eat; the rest all had porridge. However, the porridge was also quite thick and could at least fill them up.

But after putting down her chopstick, Ms. Qian said, "We don't have a penny left in the house, and living this way makes me anxious. Starting tomorrow, we won't make dry food, only porridge. Eldest's wife, put less rice from now on. Winter is coming, and after winter there's still spring and summer to get through."