Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 179
Nothing to Miss
Mo Yan entered the house and went past the kitchen when Mo Zenian exited it, “Yan’er, you’ve come back. Come wash your hands and get ready to eat.”
After looking inside the kitchen, she saw Ms. Liang working busily in the kitchen, and freshly-cooked dishes had been placed on the dinner table.
She went outside to the opening in the courtyard wall to take a look. The land outside, formerly riddled with potholes, had been weeded and roughly flattened. They wanted to build the foundations for a house!
Ms. Liang called for them to have dinner, and Mo Yan sat at the table when Mo Zenian unexpectedly handed her a pair of chopsticks, “Yan’er, start eating!”
At this moment, his face was full of compassion, and in that moment, Mo Yan surprisingly felt warmth in her heart. When they were saving Mo Zheng at the fork in the road, and the two men rushed over to steal the bag of counterfeit money, when Mo Zenian went to protect her with his body, she felt the same sense of warmth.
From what she could tell, Ms. Liang had agreed to remarry Mo Zenian. However, when she thought about her paternal aunt and her elder grandmother, Mo Yan felt a headache coming on.
“Mother, is my paternal aunt’s family coming over for a meal on the second day of the New Year? And will we still need to invite my elder grandmother over for the New Year’s Eve’s dinner?”
When Mo Feng heard that, even he put down his chopsticks, “That won’t do, it took a lot of effort to get rid of them!”
Ms. Liang replied pleasantly, “You two, don’t worry, we’re no longer considered related and they won’t be coming over to our courtyard.”
Mo Zenian didn’t add anything, nor did Mo Yan and Mo Feng say anything, so the atmosphere was rather chilly. Mo Yan started shovelling food into her mouth, wanting to leave as soon as she had finished eating, when Ms. Liang suddenly said, “We’re planning on building the foundations for a house at the south of the courtyard.”
After seeing that neither Mo Feng nor Mo Zenian had any response, just replied with an ‘oh.’ Ms. Liang continued, “I’d initially already saved up over 40 silver taels, but half of that was spent on your sister’s dowry…”
So she wants money. Mo Yan swallowed the food she was eating unhurriedly before saying, “The workshop hasn’t turned a profit yet. The financials are only going to be tallied at the end of the year, and I might not necessarily get a lot of money. My salary from the commercial firm has mostly been used to pay off my loans, so I don’t have much left.”
Ms. Liang slapped her chopsticks onto the table, “If you’re working all the time with nothing to show for it, then stop going to that firm of yours!”
Mo Zenian said from the side, “Don’t be so agitated, let’s talk with the children,” before turning to Mo Yan, “Yan’er, seeing that you’re so busy you can’t even return home, you must have too many things to do at the workshop. You must need someone who’s experienced with running businesses, how about…”
No wonder he had been so earnest today, so this was his aim all along. Mo Yan decisively cut him off, “No way, I’m just helping them out, and I have no say within the operations of the workshop. Also, I have to go, otherwise the few dozen silver taels I borrowed will have to be returned all at once. If you can take that money out, I won’t go to work anymore.”
Her parents were constantly scheming and wanted repayment for just showing a smile. She put down her bowl and exited the house and brood at the banks of the pond, not even scared and affected by the owls hooting.
She only slowly walked back home when the sky went dark and it started to get cold. After all, she didn’t want to catch a cold again.
When she went back home, she packed a few sets of clothes before falling asleep.
Early the next morning, Mo Yan was woken up by the whinnying of Lu Junming’s big white horse in the courtyard. She hastily got dressed and ran out to see Mo Feng pull on the reins of the horse with all of his strength. However, it refused to follow Mo Feng, and he was raising a whip, about to whip it.
“What are you doing?! Hands down!”
Mo Feng replied, “What do you think I’m doing? I just want to use it to power a carriage for a few rides, but this damn horse refuses to listen to me! It deserves to be beaten!”
After saying that, he raised his whip again, and Mo Yan went over to take his whip away, “This is Lu Junming’s horse, and it’s a warhorse. You can’t use it to pull a carriage.”
“What warhorse? All horses in the countryside have to be used to pull carriages, otherwise, what are you feeding it for?”
Mo Yan put a saddle on the horse, and led it outside. The big white horse snorted before obediently following her. Mo Feng spat out ‘Disobedient livestock’ behind her, but it was ignored and Mo Yan set off on horseback.
She only realised she hadn’t taken the clothes she had packed after she left the alleyway. But it didn’t matter, she didn’t want to go back there, and it wasn’t like anyone there would care whether or not she came back.
Mo Yan rode directly into the workshop, and Mo Zheng had been playing in the courtyard, “Big sister, I want to ride the horse too!”
She dismounted, placing him onto the back of the horse before leading them to the stables.
Mrs. Zhen had a broom in her hand when she smiled faintly at her, “You two siblings have a really good relationship, but why don’t you bring Zheng’er back home?”
Mo Yan couldn’t begrudge her for not knowing Mo Zheng’s circumstances, and wanted to find a time to explain it to her and her husband. More urgently, she needed a room to stay long-term, but there weren’t any spare rooms left. After thinking about it, she wanted to split Ms. Hua’s room in half. After all, she would be moving back in after her new house was fully completed and renovated.
Lu Junming returned from Jiaolan Courtyard, and after seeing her arrive at the workshop so early, he knew she must have had a bad time back home and definitely hadn’t had breakfast yet.
He handed the large wrap with meat in his hand over to her, and Mo Yan instantly had a smile on her face, “I can’t eat this much on my own, how about we split it, then see if Godmother has anything light we can eat?”
The two walked into the kitchen, but saw the Zhen couple working busily instead.
Seeing the two of them walk in, Mr. Zhen asked them to take a seat, then took two bowls and filled them within something from a clay pot on the stovetop. Mo Yan went over to take a closer look and saw some extremely tender tofu inside.
“Here, try some tofu pudding from the Hunan region.”
Tofu originated from Hunan, and what the north knew as old tofu was known in the south as tofu pudding. [1]
Inside the pot was beef mince, daylily and eggs mixed together and poured on the tender tofu. After that, he sprinkled on some spring onions before handing it to them.
“We like sweet tofu pudding in the south, but I heard Ms. Hua say that people in the north don’t really like sweet food, so I wanted to give this a try. Tell me how it tastes.”
Mo Yan spooned some with a bamboo spoon and put it into her mouth. The tofu was tender, and the beef mix added fragrance to the dish.
“Not bad, but not everyone likes eating beef. You should try a vegetarian mixture or a pork mixture, and see whether it works or not.”
Seeing a man looking just like her father serving her food with compassion, Mo Yan’s eyes instantly reddened.
Lu Junming had discerned something was bothering her a long time ago, and asked, “Have your parents been troubling you?”
Mo Yan shook her head, but the tears just kept falling. When Mr. Zhen saw her crying, he didn’t know what to do. He reached out to wipe her tears, but then retracted it, “Good child, don’t cry, if there’s anything bothering you just tell us. We might be able to help you out.”
Mo Yan said with reddened eyes, “In my next life, how about I become your daughter?”
Mr. Zhen responded, “That would be good! My wife and I haven’t had the privilege of becoming parents in this life!”
He must have been thinking about his missing daughter, and Mo Yan said, “How about you tell us about your daughter Zhen Luan! We might be able to help look for her.”
The man sighed, “Speaking of which, she isn’t our biological daughter, we adopted her…”
Mrs. Zhen interjected, “It was all because of my inability to give birth! After we split families, we raised our daughter to the age of ten with great difficulty, only for her to go missing. It seems like we’re fated to not have any children in this life!”
Mo Zheng smelled the fragrant food and ran in, “Sis, what’s the good-smelling food, I want to have some too!”
Mr. Zhen served him a bowl as well, and seeing Mo Zheng happily demolish his bowl of food, the two were so happy they couldn’t stop smiling.
P.S. With any luck, this means minimal interaction with the rest of the Mo family from now on. Which is good, because I really don’t want to deal with Mo Feng’s house being built and that worthless bastard actually getting married.
[1] From what I personally know of it, it’s typically served sweet with yellow sugar where I’m from, and I’ve literally never heard of anyone having it savoury (although Wikipedia says it’s fairly common in the north.)