Witty Wife, Better Life-Chapter 82 - 80: Dividing the Money

After lunch, Shen Yunfang briskly headed home; there was still a pile of chores waiting for her. Focused on enjoying her own meat, she had completely forgotten about the two fat pigs at home.

Once home, she first chopped some wild greens and mixed them with sweet potatoes, boiling a large pot of pig feed. She carried it to the backyard and poured it into the trough before starting on other tasks.

The second batch of chicks had already hatched: out of thirty eggs, twenty-seven chicks emerged. This time she was more fortunate: twenty hens and seven roosters, bringing her total number of hens to fifty-one and roosters to ten.

Now, with sixty-one chickens, ten ducks, and ten geese, the daily feeding of over eighty fowl was no small feat.

After feeding the chickens, she glanced at the sky and decided not to take the sheep out again. She gathered some mature earthworms and threw them into a basin. Then she lit the stove, grabbed the cutting board, and prepared to take advantage of the free time to stock up on dried earthworms.

With a growing population of earthworms breeding very quickly, she needed to process a batch every two days.

She had an uneventful afternoon—without any particular worries, her hands moved quickly and her efficiency greatly improved.

By the time the handcrafted gong sounded, she leisurely slipped out the back door, divided the sheep in the back, tying up the ones belonging to her family and driving the others back to the production team.

It had been like this for days; to avoid drawing attention, she used the back door for coming and going during work hours. The front door remained locked with a large padlock, saving her from quite a bit of trouble.

In the evening when she returned home, she took out half of the leftover braised pork from lunch and picked some green beans from the backyard. She also grabbed a potato and set another stew cooking.

After dinner and finishing the household tasks, seeing that Brother Dashuan and his wife had not yet arrived, she bolted the main door, carried the sun-heated water inside, drew the curtains, and began to bathe.

Shen Yunfang was quite fortunate; she had a constitution that didn’t incline to sweating. Even in summer, her skin felt cool to the touch. Nevertheless, with these conditions, she still preferred to bathe every evening, otherwise, she would feel uncomfortable.

When darkness had fallen—probably past eight in the evening—the main gate was finally knocked on.

Shen Yunfang opened the gate and, sure enough, there stood Brother Dashuan and his wife.

"Brother Dashuan, have you had your dinner?" She noticed his travel-worn appearance and feared he had come straight to her place without eating.

"I have, you don’t need to fuss," said Brother Dashuan’s wife, also feeling for her husband. Traveling to the city was different from going to the county; just one way could take over four hours by bicycle. Round trip, it was nearly nine hours. She knew her husband well—he would certainly have held back from eating and drinking in the city, starving himself for the whole day.

Since he had eaten, Shen Yunfang didn’t press the issue, "Brother Dashuan, did everything go smoothly this time?"

"It went well," Dashuan replied as he entered the east room and began pulling out money onto the ’kang’—a traditional Chinese heated bed.

"As soon as I arrived, I found my eldest brother, and he was so happy to see the pork I brought that he gave me a good price. After selling the pork, I came straight back. The money is all here."

"How many kilos in total?" Dashuan’s wife asked. She had been too busy serving him his meal at home to ask earlier.

They didn’t have a big scale at home, and with the morning rush, they hadn’t weighed to see exactly how much the meat totaled in kilos.

"A bit over two hundred and fourteen kilos, they rounded it to two hundred and fifteen kilos, one yuan and twenty cents per kilo, totaling two hundred and fifty-eight yuan," Dashuan said.

"That high a price?" Shen Yunfang was surprised. The state was buying live pigs for only fifty cents per kilo at present, and people from the state bought pork for a little over eighty cents per kilo. She had not expected the price to jump by fifty percent when sold privately.

"Heh heh, if it were fatter, the price could have been even higher." Dashuan was very proud of the amount he had made today, even though the money wasn’t his.

Nowadays, people preferred fatty meat; it tasted good and yielded oil. Wild pigs had more lean meat than domestic pigs, so at this time, they were less favored.

Dashuan and his wife sat at the edge of the heated brick bed, watching Shen Yunfang sit cross-legged on the bed counting the money. Exactly two hundred and fifty-eight yuan, not a cent more, not a cent less.

Shen Yunfang counted out forty-three yuan and pushed it toward Dashuan and his wife. She pocketed the remaining two hundred and fifteen yuan.

"As agreed, no matter what price Brother Dashuan sells it for, I’ll just sell it for one yuan per kilo, and the rest is all yours."

"This..." Dashuan’s wife eyed the money in front of her with envy, but she also knew it was a gesture of Shen Yunfang’s consideration for her family, and theoretically, she shouldn’t take it.

"No buts or ifs, this is honestly earned by my Brother Dashuan’s skills. If it weren’t for Brother Dashuan, even if the pig weighed a thousand kilos, I wouldn’t have made a dime. Isn’t that right? Besides, sister-in-law, we have a long way to go. If you don’t take this money, I would hesitate to ask Brother Dashuan for help in the future." Once the money was given, it was genuinely meant to be given and needed to show its worth.

Dashuan’s wife could see that Shen Yunfang was sincere about giving the money and, after some thought, she stopped refusing and pocketed the money graciously. Only then did she ask, "You got more business later? You can’t catch wild pigs every day, can you?"

If other people saw a wild pig, they would have run away in fright. Not everyone was as lucky as Yunfang, who could trap such a large wild pig by digging a pit.

"Not exactly, but I still have two domestic pigs at home, don’t I? In a few months, I’m thinking of asking Brother Dashuan to help me sell those as well," Shen Yunfang said.

Now that she knew Brother Dashuan had such reliable connections, naturally she wanted her year’s hard work to be valued at its highest; selling a pig at fifty cents a kilo versus a whole yuan a kilo was not the same.

"How will you explain this in the village? Everyone knows your family raises pigs. When it’s time to sell, if your pigs are gone and you haven’t butchered them, wouldn’t that clearly tell everyone you sold them privately? If someone caught you, that would be a serious crime. Yunfang, it’s fine to make a bit of money, but let’s not think about this too much," Dashuan’s wife exclaimed, startled. Selling wild pigs was one thing; no one knew about it, and once sold, that was that. But selling domestic pigs was different; too many watching eyes, and if they suddenly disappeared, it would be blatantly obvious to others that you’ve made a mistake.

Shen Yunfang truly hadn’t considered this problem, "Can it be? I don’t usually interact with others."

In her past life, the relationships between people, because of concrete and steel, had become so indifferent that you might not recognize someone who lived opposite you for years, never having spoken. Everyone was only concerned with their own doorstep, which led to Yunfang’s somewhat presumptive thoughts.

"Oh, you don’t realize... even though you don’t interact much with others, our village is only so big. If there’s something happening at your home and just one outsider knows about it, you may not need to wait until evening for the entire village to find out. Weren’t your piglets caught at your aunt’s place? So what secrets do you think you could possibly have?" Dashuan’s wife, holding back from saying more, thought about how a few of her close friends had gossiped about Yunfang. With people struggling to live, she kept two pigs and so many chickens; how could anyone not have their suspicions?