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Shen Yunfang stood with one hand on her hip and the other holding a winnowing basket, looking up at the mountain behind her house.
This must be a branch of the Changbai Mountain range; the locals call this mountain Maogai Mountain because from a distance, it looks like a hat placed there, hence the name.
Due to the season, the mountain no longer appeared lush and green. Many of the trees had yellowed leaves that had fallen off, yet in Shen Feiyang's eyes, it was just as beautiful.
Shen Feiyang, who had only climbed mountains during trips, longed for them to a certain extent. That feeling of expansiveness one gets upon seeing a great mountain was inexpressible.
After standing quietly for a while, Shen Feiyang remembered the hungry hens clucking away. He quickly turned and walked to the front yard, tearing off the outer leaves of the Chinese cabbage planted in the ground along the way. Once back in the front yard, he chopped them up quickly, with a few thuds on the chopping board. Then, with reluctance, he grabbed a handful of cornmeal from the bag and mixed it in, making the chicken feed.
Shen Yunfang knew that if others saw her making chicken feed this way, they would definitely scold her for being wasteful. People were hungry, and here she was, feeding the chickens fine grains. At this time, cornmeal was also considered fine grain.
Shen Yunfang felt the pinch as well, but she always knew the adage: "You can't catch the wolf if you don't give up the child." If she wanted the hens to lay eggs, she had to feed them well. She had no other choice but to rely on these four old hens.
After tidying herself up, she pushed open the gate and stepped out. As long as she was alive, she had to go to work.
Following her memory, Shen Yunfang walked on the dirt road for more than ten minutes. She passed several villagers along the way, none of whom spoke to her. Yunfang didn't mind. The original owner of this body had been a person of very little presence, shy by nature, usually walking with her head down near the edge, never initiating a greeting. After her mother died and she became even more offensive, the villagers essentially treated her as if she didn't exist.
This was convenient for the current Shen Yunfang. She didn't have to engage much with these people, avoiding a lot of trouble and reducing the chances of being exposed.
Along the way, she saw low and dilapidated mud houses. Only when she reached the very front did she see the most impressive building in the village—five adobe houses that belonged to the production team of Gaijiatun.
Gaijiatun was part of the Wuxing Brigade and had a production team consisting of sixty-six households with over three hundred villagers. One of the team leaders was Shen Yunfang's uncle, Shen Yeqing, and there was also an accountant and a women's director.
Surrounded by mountains on three sides, Gaijiatun was more than an hour's walk from the nearest village and even farther from the Wuxing Brigade. Life in this ravine had its upsides and downsides.
The upside was that this place was so remote that leaders usually didn't come here to implement revolutionary work. Thus, during the years when the revolutionary storm raged everywhere else, life in Gaijiatun continued as usual, working and living through their days. By the time that storm reached the village, it had turned from fierce winds into a gentle spring breeze. After Shen Yeqing organized the villagers to study the directives from above, they went back to their usual routines. So the turmoil on the outside didn't have much impact here, making it a peaceful and content place to live.
The downside was its remoteness, which led to poverty. Although nobody starved to death, most families had little to no money, and many people never left the village in their entire lives.
The Gaijiatun production team's courtyard resembled that of an ordinary farm, divided into a front and a back yard. The front yard was larger, typically where the team leader held meetings or conveyed directives outdoors. The back yard wasn't small either, housing sheep pens, pigsty, cowsheds, horse stables, and two special little houses that served as storage rooms—one for fodder and the other for farming tools.
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Shen Yunfang first went to take a look at the pigsty and quickly covered her nose. There were two big fat pigs inside, but the hygiene was terrible; the pig manure had not been cleaned up yet, and the smell was too intense. The cowshed next to it was the same, the cows were gone, probably taken to work in the fields, but their dung and all hadn't been cleared either.
Without a doubt, her little sheep wouldn't be any cleaner. She walked to the sheepfold and looked inside, there were fifteen sheep, big and small, in total. She thought it best to clean up when she came back in the evening, then she opened the gate of the sheepfold, which she knew how to do so well, and those fifteen sheep conscientiously lined up and walked out.
Walking the same path every day, these sheep didn't need anyone to lead them. After leaving the sheepfold, they followed one another along the little path up the mountain.
Shen Yunfang, guided by memory, pulled out a little whip from a corner of the sheepfold, which she usually used to herd the sheep.
Alright, time to herd the sheep up the mountain meant she had to head back the way she came.
Going back was not as quiet as when she had come; the dozen or so sheep bleated now and then, quite loudly. Look, she hadn't even left the brigade's courtyard, and the brigade leader—her uncle—had been drawn out by the bleating.
Shen Yeqing was inside the brigade office talking with the accountant when he heard the sheep's bleats move from the backyard to the front. Usually, this noise only happened when his grandniece went out to graze the sheep.
Remembering what Fuzhen had said about the child being sick, he signaled the accountant to stop and pushed open the door to step outside.
"Yunfang, are you feeling better?" Shen Yeqing looked closely at his niece's complexion, which indeed seemed a bit jaundiced; it looked like she really was sick this time.
It wasn't that Shen Yeqing distrusted his niece so much; it was mainly because the child was too lazy. At home, she let her three younger siblings spoil her, behaving in whatever way she pleased, good for nothing. Since she had been on her own this year, she would seize every opportunity to shirk work.
If it had been someone else brazenly slacking off like that, he would have sorted them out using his authority long ago. But now it was his grandniece slacking off. Even if he didn't consider the close family ties, he had to take into account her current status as someone who was all alone and give her some leeway. If he really cut her work points, she'd end up staying at his home indefinitely next year.
Nowadays, she showed up every so often at his home for a meal. His wife had already nagged him about this several times, but what could he do? After all, it was his own niece, and if her parents had been alive, he wouldn't have bothered interfering at all. But given the circumstances, if he, as an uncle, didn't step in, he would be criticized by others.
Not to mention, he was quite aware that his wife hadn't spared Yunfang from her disparaging remarks. However, the girl acted as if she hadn't heard them and kept coming over for meals. So, what else could he do?
All he could hope for now was that Yunfang would get to work seriously. He wasn't asking for much—just that she should be able to support herself. In a couple of years, when she was of age, he planned to arrange for her to marry the Li Family's younger son, and that would be his duty as an uncle fulfilled.
The newly arrived Shen Yunfang had no clue about the inner workings of her uncle's mind. Seeing someone coming out of the house to talk to her, she instinctively knew it was her uncle, and she spoke with slight nervousness, "Um, I had a bit of a fever, but it's gone today. I'm not feverish anymore, just still feeling a bit weak."
This also served as an explanation for why she hadn't gone to work yesterday.