From the family treasure tree to build an eternal family

Chapter 15 Five Years
Five years later.

summer.

Eighteen-year-old Xu Xiaoniu was working in the fields. His upper body was naked, revealing his muscular bronze body. Sweat flowed along his sculpted muscles and soaked his waistband.

He swung the hoe in his hand up and down and worked very quickly.

After weeding an acre of land in half an hour, he didn't feel tired and was ready to weed the remaining acres of pear orchard before dark.

The farmland he worked on was not the 80 acres of land of the Xu family, but the land he rented from Mr. Liu.

As his brothers and sisters grew older, there was surplus labor in the family. In order to earn more money, Xu Xiaoniu rented 30 acres of land from Mr. Liu at the beginning of last spring, paying him 20 taels of rent per year.

There are thirty acres of land, eighteen acres of which are pear orchards and twelve acres are planted with wheat.

The land rent plus the field tax was 50 taels of silver per year. With Xu Xiaoniu's ability, he could earn 60 or 70 taels of silver by working for a year.

"Daniel, Daniel~~"

A clear female voice floated from a distance.

Xu Xiaoniu turned around and saw a young girl standing at the edge of the field, waving at him. It was Chen Xiulian, a girl from the same village, a year younger than him.

"coming."

He responded, put down the hoe, and put on the coarse linen vest hanging on the branch. The originally wet vest had been dried out after being hung in the sun for half a day.

"You've been busy all afternoon, you must be thirsty. Here's some water."

Chen Xiulian smiled faintly and handed over the water bag.

"Thank you."

Xu Xiaoniu casually took the water bag, unplugged it, tilted his head back, and gulped down a few large mouthfuls. The water was sweet with honey added.

"I also brought you some locust flower cake."

As Chen Xiulian spoke, she took out a piece of cake wrapped in a handkerchief from her pocket. She gently untied the handkerchief and held it in front of Xu Xiaoniu.

"This... let's just forget it."

Xu Xiaoniu didn't dare to eat it. The last time he ate a piece of fried sweet cake from Chen Xiulian, Uncle Chen chased him into the fields and scolded him for three days.

"I made this myself. Just eat it if I tell you to. I definitely won't tell my dad."

As she spoke, Chen Xiulian pinched the locust flower cake with her fingers and stuffed it into Xu Xiaoniu's mouth.

Xu Xiaoniu quickly reached out to take it, put the pastry into his mouth and took a bite.

The crispy pastry spreads in your mouth, filling your mouth with sweetness mixed with a light floral scent.

Chen Xiulian blinked her big, watery eyes and asked, "Is it delicious?"

“Y-yummy.”

Xu Xiaoniu nodded repeatedly without swallowing the pastry in his mouth.

"How delicious is it?"

"..."

Xu Xiaoniu, who was not good at speaking, was stumped by this question. He swallowed the cake and racked his brain to describe it: "It's as delicious as my mother's."

"You mean I'm the same as your mother? Humph, I'm going to ignore you."

Chen Xiulian turned around and left briskly, taking two steps at a time.

The villagers all said that Xu Jia San Gou was a rare and good man, but she preferred Xu Xiaoniu. In fact, she just liked to see Xu Xiaoniu's dull look.

Xu Xiaoniu couldn't guess what the girl was thinking. As he watched her walk away, he realized that he had forgotten to take his water bag.

"Give it to her tomorrow."

He knew that Chen Xiulian would come again tomorrow, so he turned around and continued to do farm work.

----

When Chen Xiulian returned home, she saw a figure standing at the door from afar and thought to herself that something was wrong.

She could only pretend nothing happened.

"Dad, what are you doing standing here?"

Chen Bajin, Chen Xiulian's father, had a shiny bald head, a face full of fat and pockmarks, frog-like eyes, a sausage-shaped mouth, and was extremely ugly.

The children in the village gave him the nickname "Chen Baguai" and said he was ugly.

His expression was stern, which made him look even more terrifying. "Are you looking for Xu Daniu again?"

"No..." Chen Xiulian said in a low voice.

"I saw it with my own eyes! I've told you so many times and you still won't listen. Do you still want to acknowledge me as your father?"

Chen Bajin pushed his daughter into the courtyard and yelled at the woman inside, "Woman, lock her up for me. I don't believe I can't control her."

"That's it."

Chen Xiulian's mother muttered.

"Why not? If I don't take care of her, she'll be kidnapped! It's all because of your poor pregnancy. If you had given me a son, would this have happened?"

Chen Bajin kept cursing, especially at Xiulian's mother, and his saliva kept flying everywhere.

When her mother saw the fire burning herself, she quickly pulled Chen Xiulian into the house.

By the way, Chen Bajin disagreed with Chen Xiulian and Xu Xiaoniu, not because he was dissatisfied with Xu Xiaoniu.

When Chen Bajin was young, his family had only ten acres of thin land. Compared with those tenant farmers, his conditions were pretty good, but he was born ugly and could not get married.

For this purpose, he worked hard in the city for twenty years, and only returned to the village when he was in his thirties and bought another twenty acres of land.

He was able to marry a wife thanks to the thirty acres of land at home.

Unexpectedly, after getting married, my belly didn’t move for a long time. When I finally got pregnant, it turned out to be a daughter.

A few years later, she got pregnant again, another daughter.

At that time, Chen Bajin was already in her forties. After trying hard but failing to get pregnant, she gave up.

He had no choice but to find a son-in-law for his two daughters. The eldest daughter met a suitable man, but the marriage proposal failed and she insisted on getting married. Fortunately, there was still a second daughter.

Unfortunately, his eldest daughter died during childbirth of her first child, and both the mother and the child were lost.

With only one daughter left, he had to find a son-in-law.

At first, Chen Xiulian and Xu Xiaoniu fell in love with each other, and Chen Bajin was very happy. After all, the Xu family had four sons, so it was just right for them to come to his house.

But when Chen Bajin and Xu Fugui talked, the Xu family directly refused, leaving no room for negotiation.

Chen Bajin was very angry and desperate. He had worked so hard to own thirty acres of land. If he married his daughter to the Xu family, wouldn't the Xu family wipe out his entire family?

----

In the evening, at the forest farm at the entrance of the village.

Since Du Hai was not around, his eldest son Du Yong took over the supervision.

In the past few years, several students who practiced martial arts left and more children came, a total of seventeen or eighteen people.

They practiced the Bear Tiger Technique several times before stopping.

"Master is not here, what are we going to practice today?"

"How about a duel? The last time we had a duel was a month ago."

"Okay, I opened up my Ren and Du meridians a few days ago, and I'm almost done with the first level of Zhuang Gong."

"..."

Du Hai was strict with them, but they relaxed a lot when Du Hai was not around.

Du Yong was only a few years older than them and played with everyone. He picked up a stick and drew a circle on the ground.

The circle has a diameter of nearly two meters.

"Brother Yong, isn't the circle for this fight too big?"

Normally when Du Hai asked them to fight, the circle they drew was only ten feet in diameter.

"I did it on purpose. I wanted to make the circle bigger so it would be easier to play."

Du Yong glanced at Xu Xiaogou while speaking. He was not convinced because he lost to Xu Xiaogou in the last duel.

In terms of age, he was three years older than Xu Xiaogou. In terms of progress in standing practice, he was slightly better than Xu Xiaogou. How could he lose?

This time he deliberately drew a large circle to increase the intensity of the fight. Otherwise, if he wasn't careful, he would be out of bounds.

"Brother Yong and Brother Gou come first."

Amid the children's cheers, Du Yong walked into the fighting circle and looked directly at Xu Xiaogou.

Xu Xiaogou knew Du Yong's intention, walked into the circle with a smile, clasped his fists and saluted: "Brother Yong, then I'm sorry."

Du Yong also clasped his fists and said, "My father always said, give it your all."

(End of this chapter)