She Only Cares About Cultivation

The sisters turned their heads in disbelief: "Sister An, you... are you really saying this?"

"What’s real or not? Look at you two, so thin, it makes my heart ache. Stay with me and recover for half a year, and by the end of the year, we can roll up our sleeves and get to work, right? I won’t charge you money. If you feel bad about it, just help me with some work. Anyway, I have two acres of land and there’s no tax to pay. We can plant something around the house and between the three of us, it should be just enough." If necessary, her space could supplement, as they were too pitiful, and she couldn’t resist acting like the Holy Mother.

Her words moved the sisters deeply, and they knelt to bow before her.

"Sister An, you really are our savior. Don’t worry, we have plenty of strength..."

When they arrived at the yard where the sisters would stay, the size was truly spacious. The Northeast certainly has large spaces, especially during these times when there was no talk of a homestead base, all built according to one’s own conditions. Particularly this yard even had a grinding plate; because the grinding plate was too heavy, no one moved it. But if any family needed such a large grinding plate, they would come here, as it was abandoned, just like the grinding plate placed under the large old tree at the village entrance, it was available for everyone’s use.

"It’s said this family used to sell tofu, the eldest son was a carpenter, and the youngest son was a soldier. The family’s condition was passable. Look at these bright three hall rooms, the flank rooms on both sides, the pig sty built up, the walls around, there was even a donkey here before. Alas, what a pity..."

Seeing the grinding plate in this house, An Yi’s eyes sparkled, as if she had an idea.

Then the three sisters began to briskly clean up various odds and ends in the yard. Useless items, along with broken twigs and leaves, were piled up and set on fire.

Useful things were brought out to the yard, dried in the sun, dismantled, then taken to the riverside to wash clean, repaired and patched up, to be made into a bed mattress for use.

The damaged doors, walls, roofs, the three women didn’t want to involve others, especially avoiding entanglements with men in the village, to prevent gossip. Fortunately, back when Yishui stored lots of broken scraps picked up during the war times, all from old folk’s homes, and she did good deeds by burying entire families. In some places, entire villages were wiped out with no one to tidy up, she would bury the village in a large pit and erected a memorial.

Such incidents were quite many, and she didn’t donate these things elsewhere; even the planks she used for her own house were picked from the space. That was like a treasure trove like mysterious space. So after seeing the situation of the house, she went home.

An hour later, the sisters went to An family to transport back the front gate, house door, window frames, tiles, pickle jar, pots and pans, water-fetching yoke and wooden bucket—anything she could think of was stacked on a cart. They sorted it in three trips, and all brought back to Qiuxia’s home.

They went to the back mountain to transport yellow clay mixed with chopped straw, blended together, climbed onto the roof with a ladder, and patched missing tiles.

The things brought back were scrubbed clean and placed in the yard to dry. Looking at the somewhat low courtyard wall, she spoke to the sisters.

"Tomorrow we’ll make some clay bricks, stack the courtyard wall higher, and embed pieces of glass shards on top. I have them, they can fend off some animals."

She had a dog, ugly and often coveted. Could these two girls not be cautious? Especially since their experiences were known to everyone.

And she was limited to rumors, discussed privately, no one dared say these things to her face, since the government came to build her house, allocated her two acres that were tax-free. The house built was so nice, so big, outsiders receiving such good treatment can’t just be explained by the term ’martyr’s orphan’. So relatively speaking, she lived a considerably better life, and those mysterious airs did her favor.

Li Qiuxia and Liu Caihua were quite curious about An Yi, for example, a woman like them who endured harm, why she could live so well? Her home seemed like a treasure box, anything could emerge, though she claimed it was picked up, some things hardly seemed to be picked up.

Yet they saw her take things out from the cellar, they didn’t know how she secretly installed so many items, truly marvelous.