Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 2
Mutual Reliance
She had only transmigrated over for less than a day, but Mo Yan could already tell that the only one who cared about her in this family was her sister Mo Ling.
Her mother Mrs. Liang hadn’t even spoken to her all day, while all Mo Feng knew was to ask when it was time to eat.
And now, their entire family were arguing over an egg. Mo Yan couldn’t imagine what her days would be like in the future.
As Mo Yan entered the kitchen, she slowly said, “I shouldn’t eat this entire egg by myself… how about we divide the egg between us?”
Mo Ling looked at her sister with confusion. It was probably due to the disparity between how she was speaking right now and how she spoke previously.
Mo Feng rolled his eyes at her, “What are you talking about, ‘divide the egg between us’? I’m the future head of the house, how can you be on equal footing with me?”
Was this what he learnt from that school of his?
Mo Yan sat at the table and smiled slightly, “Then, do you know about the family’s income and expenses? What plans do you have to make money in the future?”
Her sister couldn’t help but smile secretly. Mo Feng didn’t have an answer, so he said, “With how poor we are, the most valuable things in the room are you two. If I don’t get my egg right this instant, I’ll sell both of you!”
When she heard this drivel, even Mrs. Liang couldn’t stand it anymore and slapped the table, “Shut up! If we’ve fallen to the point where we have to sell the family’s daughters, how will you ever marry a good wife?”
So the reason she was unwilling to sell her daughters wasn’t because she cared about them, but rather because she wanted her son to marry well in the future.
Mo Feng’s belly started rumbling. Dropping the rhetoric, he started scooping porridge into his empty bowl. Mo Ling handed Ms. Liang and him two piping hot steamed buns, giving her mother the boiled egg as well. [1]
Mrs. Liang deshelled the egg, but didn’t eat the entire thing. Instead, she split it into four roughly even portions. She gave one to both of her daughters and the remaining two to her son. Mo Feng shoved one into his mouth, but dropped the other in Mrs. Liang’s bowl.
Mo Ling handed her portion over Mo Yan, “Eat! You need to grow big and healthy, so you won’t fall when trying to climb up a ladder.”
“Did she fall?” Mrs. Liang didn’t even raise her head to ask this question.
“She wanted to help cover up the wheat grains but fell. Thankfully, she’s alright now.”
Mo Feng mumbled through a mouthful of pickled vegetables, “What can she do? She’s just a waste of space, we should-”
Mo Ling used her chopsticks to tap her bowl, “If you talk about selling her again, we’ll go on strike and let you starve to death. Even though Yan’er has had a weak body from birth, she still tries to help out. What about you!”
“Aren’t I studying?”
“So why haven’t you taken the imperial examination yet?”
Back then, the imperial examination system was still imperfect, and not everyone could take part. You had to be recommended by a scholar from your village. But who in their right mind would recommend Mo Feng, of all people?
Mo Feng was already fourteen. At this age, the vast majority of boys would be reasonably fit and strong, but he was still weak. To him, studying was just the best excuse for him to avoid having to help out in the fields.
When Mrs. Liang thought about her son’s future, she couldn’t help but sigh. Aside from his above-average looks, Mo Feng was completely useless.
“When your dad comes back next year, I’ll ask him to help you find a job in Yi City! You can only marry well if you have a good job, after all.”
Mo Yan still hadn’t seen their dad and didn’t know what kind of a person he was, but judging from the state of their home, he was probably incompetent and couldn’t be relied on.
This body was really pitiful. It was skin and bones, and didn’t have much of an appetite either. Mo Yan was full after half a bowl of porridge. Then, because she was afraid of saying the wrong thing, she kept quiet and looked at this new family of hers.
Mo Ling cleaned up after dinner, with only Mo Yan helping to stack the bowls and plates by the side of the stove.
Mrs. Liang’s room was illuminated by a lamp. Inside, she was repairing the soles of a pair of shoes using the faint light the lamp emitted. They were larger than Mo Feng’s feet, so it went without question that those shoes belonged to Mo Zenian.
Mo Yan followed her sister into their room. Mo Ling took out two pieces of paper from under her pillow, and there were charcoal images of flowers on both.
“Yan’er, which one looks better?”
One image depicted a peony, and the other had a lotus on it. Mo Yan’s favourite flower was a lotus in her past life, so she pointed at it and said, “This one. Lotuses grow in dirt but still stay pure, which has good implications.”
“Sis, where do you want to sew this onto?” Mo Yan raised her small face and asked Mo Ling.
“Clothes for the New Year,” Mo Ling said with a hint of bliss. During the New Year, they didn’t have to work, so she could finally take a breather for a few days.
Judging from our family circumstances, we can’t afford silk for New Year’s clothes. And is it really worth it to sew these pretty flowers onto linen clothing?
“It’d take too much time to sew these onto clothes. What if we made smaller drawings and sewed them onto the hems of our clothes instead? They’d look better even if they were only drawn using one colour.”
“But we don’t have outlines of those! We got these from Mrs. Cao.”
“How about I draw them?”
Mo Feng wasn’t in his study, so Mo Yan grabbed a brush and paper. The rain hadn’t stopped, but no one knew where Mo Feng had gone off to after dinner.
She put the paper on the kang and started drawing with the help of a lamp. The images included both blossomed lotus flowers and lotus flowers which hadn’t fully bloomed yet. It was simple, but it wasn’t crude or ugly.
She had just finished drawing when Mrs. Liang shouted from the northern room, “Go to sleep! You’re wasting precious oil!”
The two sisters blew out the lamp and laid down on the kang.
“Sis, does father send any money to us?” Mo Yan asked.
Mo Ling huffed lightly before replying, “2000 dollars a year, but mother gets none of that. It’s all taken by the old woman living in the back courtyard.” [2]
The woman Mo Ling was referring to was their grandmother.
“So why doesn’t mother go and find father in the city?”
“She used to go, but the two would start arguing as soon as they met, so she stopped going.”
Mo Yan fell asleep as she imagined how her parents would argue when they met.
The next day, Mo Ling woke up as soon as the rooster started crowing. After cooking breakfast, she hurriedly ate a few mouthfuls before going to the fields.
It was harvest season. The Mo family had already reaped all their crops from the harvest, but the land still needed to be tilled, watered and seeded for the second harvest. They didn’t have any oxen or ploughs, so the two meagre acres of farmland they had were tilled by Mo Ling and Mrs. Liang. The most important part of farming was timing. If they missed a fairly small window of time, the harvest would grow poorly.
Mo Feng returned home at an unknown time last night, and he was still sleeping. He only woke up reluctantly when Mrs. Liang shook him awake, and lazily went out after eating.
Mo Yan wasn’t hungry, so she only ate half a bowl of porridge and a small steamed bun dipped in sauce. Then, she washed up before leaving the house. She wanted to know what Chenzhong Village was like.
As she left, she followed an alleyway north and came across two cottages in their back courtyard. She remembered the old woman Mo Ling had been talking about, so she went towards it.
There were bamboo curtains covering the entrance of the northern cottage, so she couldn’t go inside. But when she walked to the southern cottage, there was an old woman drying food in a large basket. Two chickens were circling around her and the food as she tried to chase them away.
“Go to the trees to find worms to eat! This food isn’t for you.”
Edited August 16, 2023, to try and get the rest of the story up to the current standards. This includes using the current terms and polishing up the translation.
[1] I assume that these steamed buns are staple foods that aren’t even worth mentioning.
[2] As part of the editing, I’ve corrected the monetary system according to what I know, after a year of translation. A thousand dollars is roughly equal to one silver tael, and those are the two main currencies used throughout the story.