Rebirth: Making a Fortune in Ancient Times

The next day, Liu made breakfast: thick millet porridge, leftover cornbread from the night before, and a plate of pickled radish shreds with sesame oil. The family ate to their heart's content. While eating, Xia Yu was already planning what she needed to do that day; she felt very busy.

After dinner, Zhang Youtie and Liu Shi went to the fields, and Changyun went out to play with his friends in the village. Xia Yu gathered the clothes the family had changed out of the day before into a large basin, took the soapberry her mother used for washing clothes, and prepared to go to the stream to wash the clothes. Just as she stepped out of her yard, she saw Er Ya also carrying a basin of clothes, seemingly going to the stream to wash them as well.

"Xiaxia, are you going to do the laundry too?" Er Ya hurried over to Xia Yu's side.

"Hey Er Ya, let's go together! Why haven't you come to visit me these past few days?"

"Ugh, stop talking, I'm so annoyed. My older brother is getting married, and my mother says my sister-in-law is coming into the family. She told me not to run around the village like a crazy girl anymore, but to learn to help with chores and do some needlework." Er Ya seemed to have found a place to vent her frustrations, and she started complaining as soon as Xia Yu asked her.

"My mom said a few days ago that she wanted to teach me needlework, but now I don't dare to go near her when she's doing chores," Xia Yu said helplessly.

Nine or ten years old would be equivalent to the third or fourth grade of elementary school in later generations, but in this era, they were already preparing to get married.

The two chatted as they made their way to the stream. Xia Yu deliberately kept a little distance from Er Ya, as she was planning to pump water from here to the shrimp pond in her space. What if she got too close and was discovered?

"Xiaxia, you're so far away from me, how are we supposed to chat?" Er Ya asked, somewhat puzzled by Xia Yu's actions.

"The water's running so fast, we won't be able to hear it when we're doing the laundry. Let's hurry up and wash, then we can have a proper chat later."

"Yeah, that's true, but I need to hurry up and wash. My grandma said she's going to teach me how to cook starting today. Xiaxia, I think I might not have time to go out and play anymore." Er Ya's face fell again as she said this.

Xia Yu almost laughed as she watched her friend vigorously pounding the clothes, but then she remembered that her friend was indeed troubled, and it would be unfair to laugh at her. She imitated her mother's usual washing method, first hand-rubbing the easily soiled collar and cuffs, then pounding them with a washing stick. While washing, she kept an eye on the others around her, slowly drawing water from the stream with one hand, careful not to pull it out too quickly lest others notice. It took about twenty or thirty minutes to fill the newly dug pool in her space to about eight-tenths full.

While she was still washing, Er Ya had already finished. She carried the basin of clothes to Xia Yu's side and began to whisper about her new sister-in-law. She said that her brother had chosen her and was very fond of her. Her sister-in-law was beautiful and skillful, among the best in their village. Her mother had given five taels of silver as a bride price. Hearing this, Xia Yu thought that the bride price was indeed quite high. Usually, a bride price in the village was only two or three taels. It seemed that Er Ya's parents and brother valued this wife very much.

The two talked for more than ten minutes. Er Ya looked up at the sun and said to Xia Yu, "Xia Xia, I'm not waiting for you anymore. I'm going home first." Without waiting for Xia Yu's reply, she picked up the basin and ran away.

Xia Yu watched her retreating figure and shook her head helplessly. She was still so reckless; wasn't she afraid of falling? But this time, at least she could wash clothes in peace. She hadn't washed the *Anoectochilus roxburghii* she'd collected yesterday. She needed to find a way to wash it this afternoon and dry it while the weather was good so she could exchange it for money at Baohetang. Since her mother had given her all the money, she decided that next time she went to town, she would buy some flour, rice, and meat to improve her family's living conditions.

That's just how people are. Just the day before yesterday, she was content with eating cornmeal every day, but now she wants white flour and white rice. After selling all the *Anoectochilus roxburghii* in her space, she doesn't plan to grow it anymore; she needs to think of other ways to make money. Thinking about the shrimp she saw in the space's pond that morning, she felt a headache coming on. Many were already as long as her hand, and there were countless tiny shrimp. How was she going to sell them for money? She couldn't very well say she caught them in a stream—where would she find so many big shrimp to catch? She'd have no legitimate reason to do so!

As she walked back after washing the clothes, she was still thinking about this question. When she got home, her brother hadn't returned yet, and her parents were still working in the fields. She took out a small bowl of small river shrimp from her spatial storage. Actually, she would have preferred to eat larger ones, but it seemed a bit unusual to take out large shrimp at this time of year.

She had originally planned to make scallion and shrimp noodles, but she was out of wheat flour, and she couldn't roll out noodles from plain cornmeal, so she decided to steam brown rice for lunch. She'd also make the stir-fried river shrimp with chives she'd made yesterday. Anyway, she had plenty of chives in her storage space; she could eat them for several meals without finishing them, and she also had several other kinds of wild vegetables that she hadn't had time to eat after growing them last time. Looking at the pile of wild vegetables, she decided to stir-fry some mustard greens as well. She'd never stir-fried this vegetable on its own before, but it should taste good stir-fried with lard.

First, she rinsed the brown rice she was going to eat and soaked it in a large basin for a while. While the rice was soaking, she went to the backyard and watered the vegetables in the garden with a mixture of water from the water tank and the shrimp pond in her space. Then she washed the vegetables she was going to eat for lunch, chopped the chives into sections, removed the roots from the greens, and set them all aside for later use.

Seeing that the sun was still high in the sky, Xia Yu wanted to wash the golden thread lotus that had been drying all day yesterday. However, the water tank was full of well water from her spatial dimension, and she worried that washing it with this water would make the already somewhat wilted golden thread lotus even more sprawling than yesterday. But the newly dug pond in her spatial dimension was filled with stream water and had many shrimp, so it didn't feel very clean. After thinking about it, she decided to fetch two buckets of well water instead.

Carrying a carrying pole and a bucket, she locked the courtyard gate and went to the well. There were three wells in the village, the closest to her house being over two hundred meters away. It was already midday, and there weren't many people waiting to draw water at the well. There were two little girls a bit older than her. The other one was named Wang Pingping, who was the person Xia Yu hated most in her memory.

Wang Pingping's family consisted of three brothers and five cousins, with Wang Pingping being the only girl. In a world where patriarchal favoritism was common, she was a unique case, as her family showed no favoritism whatsoever; on the contrary, her brothers doted on her. Her maternal grandfather was a scholar, and her mother, likely influenced by popular fiction, had also received some education, hoping to raise her daughter with care so she could marry a scholar and become an official's wife. Furthermore, she was beautiful from a young age, fair-skinned and unlike any other village girl. Wang Pingping was also proud and used to look down on the somewhat simple-minded Xia Yu, always calling her a fool. Xia Yu wasn't actually foolish, just less clever than Wang Pingping, which made her appear foolish in Wang Pingping's eyes. Wang Pingping remembered all the times she had bullied Xia Yu, making her a utterly detestable figure in Xia Yu's memory. Seeing her at the well, Xia Yu couldn't understand why someone who never did housework was out fetching water today.