Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn-Chapter 16: Every village has its own hard-to-read scripture

The village chief was indeed very welcoming of Zhu Shijun's arrival. Zhu Shijun has almost lived in the village for two months now, and the only people he had dealt with were Sister-in-law Lian and the village chief's family. Compared with the village party secretary's deliberate flattery, village chief Jin Dafu was much more sincere about Zhu Shijun's arrival.

"Director Zhu, there was no need for you to come personally, just send a message through Sister-in-law Lian," said the village chief upon Zhu Shijun's visit, his usually loud voice lowered a few degrees. Ge Village wasn't all that big, and the most common way to call someone here was just to stand at one's doorstep and shout out a few times, but of course, such a greeting method was obviously not suitable for Zhu Shijun.

"Da Fu, I've said it many times, stop calling me director," Zhu Shijun said with a smile upon seeing the village chief's flustered demeanor. This village chief of Ge Village was an honest man. When Zhu Shijun had just been demoted, he first went to the county, where not a single local official was to be seen, let alone a car for pick up. In contrast, when hearing the news, the village chief of Ge Village got up at four in the morning, borrowed a tractor from someone else, drove for over four hours on mountain roads, and waited at the county's bus station with his family of four.

"Director, listen to what you're saying, it's simply what I should do. If it wasn't for the money you gave my father back then, Ge Village wouldn't be where it is today," said the village chief, and couldn't help wiping the corners of his eyes with his sleeve. People say that Zhu Shijun was a corrupt official, but back in the day, the old village chief had gone all the way from the township to the town, and then to the city to secure relocation funds for the villagers. Somehow Zhu Shijun, who was then the factory director at a cigarette factory in the neighboring province, got wind of it and with a stroke of his pen, donated thirty thousand Yuan for the relocation.

Back in the early nineties, thirty thousand Yuan could provide for the entire village for a year. After the old village chief got the money and settled the villagers, he brought his whole family to the city to kowtow to Zhu Shijun only to find out that Zhu had already been transferred to Jing City a month earlier as the newly appointed director of the National Tobacco Bureau.

Seven years passed in the blink of an eye. Just before he died, the old village chief took his son's hand and left him with two dying wishes: one was to take good care of Ge Village, and the other was to not forget to go to Jing City to kowtow to Director Zhu if his son ever came into money.

"Why bring up things from so many years ago? I came today to buy some rice seeds from you," Zhu Shijun didn't mention that the thirty thousand Yuan resulted in an accusation against him for embezzlement at the disciplinary inspection department. Instead, he steered the conversation towards the acre of land behind his house. Rice seeds are different from the regular rice harvested by farmers; they need to be carefully selected, and the grains must be full, with high survival and ear-bearing rates per plant.

After hearing this, the village chief was somewhat troubled: "Director Zhu, you must not be used to eating the grain we grow here in the mountains; you can't use our village's grains." Different soils produce different grains; Leigong Mountain's terrain is fragmented and steep. The moderately fertile soil is all concentrated on slopes with a twenty-five degree incline, which according to national soil and water conservation regulations, are not allowed to be cultivated.

The terraced fields the villagers cobbled together are fragmented, and the rice grown is barely enough to meet the villagers' daily needs. The village chief's stomach is used to the local soil; he isn't picky. But Director Zhu and his granddaughter are obviously not used to it.

It was the concern for his granddaughter's increasingly gaunt face that made Zhu Shijun want to improve Xiao Xian's dietary conditions as much as possible.

"How about you come down to the town with us tomorrow and see if the local seed station has suitable rice seeds? But the soil in the mountains isn't great. Rather than that, it might be better to buy rice down the mountain and transport it back to the village," the village chief suggested. Now the roads are better than before, and going down the mountain is not so hard. Most of all, he thought that Zhu Shijun, stuck in the village all the year round, must be feeling bored to death.

"That sounds good. Also, about the incident with that boy from the Miao Village, it was actually Xiao Xian who was in the wrong, having wronged him. Tomorrow I'll leave Xiao Xian with Sister-in-law Lian and go down the mountain with you, to buy some gifts to make amends at Dongnan Miao Village." The town market is crowded and noisy, and Xiao Xian's legs haven't recovered well, which is not suitable for long-distance travel.

When the village chief spoke about rice planting, he also sighed over the difficulties; Ge Village had been designated as a "poor village" for three consecutive years. The villagers always complained about the government's poor site selection and the bad soil quality. The village chief of Ge Village was aware this was one reason, but the villagers' nature was also a major contributing factor.

The Dongnan Miao Village by Black Mountain never experienced shortage in their harvest and even clinched the title of "Top Ten Strong Villages" in the province last year. How could the soil quality differ so much, separated only by White Dragon Pond? Ultimately, it's because the Miao people are hardworking, toiling day and night, whereas, the Han Family are content with barely scraping by lazily on a few thin plots of land for their sustenance.

After hearing this, Zhu Shijun kept it in mind, and became even more determined to visit the Miao Village in a few days.

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The matter with the rice crop disrupted Zhu Shijun's original plans. He'd been exercising outside continuously for over a month and had roughly explored the surrounding mountains and geographical landscape. Relying solely on "diligence" couldn't change the soil quality; there must be some secret the Miao family had.

When he returned home, Xiao Xian was already obediently curled up in the room taking a nap. The elder didn't have the habit of napping, so he went to the back of the house to prepare to mix mountain soil into the stored field soil.

Arriving at the back of the house, Zhu Shijun checked the plowed soil; not a single stone was left out. Xiao Xian was really putting her heart into it. But the more he looked, the more Zhu Shijun felt something wasn't right—where had his tools for tilling and storing soil gone?

The hammer and the hoe, and even more absurd was that the iron nails used to secure the bamboo frame had disappeared. If this were the city, it might be possible for things to go missing, but how could tools vanish in such a simple and unsophisticated mountain village?

Maybe a villager borrowed them in a rush and hadn't returned them yet. Little did Zhu Shijun know, all the missing tools had been "fed" by Xiao Xian to her garbage space.

Inside the house, Zhu Xiaoxian wasn't sleeping well either; she was busy watching over the "sugarcane seedling" in the space.

After having its fill, the "sugarcane seedling" exhaled a few puffs of green mist, letting out a sound similar to a satisfied burp, and slowly sprouted a bud. Xiao Xian was both shocked and delighted; she had finally figured out a pattern. For the "sugarcane seedling" to grow, there were only two methods: one was relying on the green mist absorbed from outside the space at night. The other was for her, as its master, to be self-reliant and constantly "feed" it with "iron material." But where could she get so much metal?

"Xiao Xian," Zhu Shijun called out from outside a few times. Xiao Xian quickly pretended to be groggy from just waking up and peered out the window.

"Sister-in-law Lian has something to do tomorrow and can't take you with her. Tomorrow, you'll go to the market with your grandfather." After asking Sister-in-law Lian, Zhu Shijun learned that her son had brought a new girlfriend home and was unavailable to help look after Xiao Xian these few days, so he had to take Xiao Xian to the market with him.