Chapter 86: Waiting for praise [asking for monthly votes]
I saw several small black things suddenly jumping out of the bushes, stopping two steps away from Yuanyuan, and lined up like a military parade.
Xiaohuan's eyes widened and he almost screamed.
What came turned out to be a group of rats!
No, a bunch of voles to be exact.
Thick short hair covers the strong and capable body, the limbs are short and powerful, and the head is large. The two small black eyes on it almost blend into the black hair.
Voles feed on the roots, stems, leaves and seeds of plants. A single vole can damage a crop and is difficult to catch, which is a huge headache for farmers.
Lu Chengjing finally understood how his daughter planned to help her uncle Shitou.
As we all know, voles have short claws but are very good at digging burrows to hide themselves.
Isn’t digging a hole just digging the soil?
What to do to open up wasteland? Dig the soil!
The little girl Yuanyuan specially found a group of helpers who are good at digging dirt for her uncle Shitou.
Lu Chengjing asked his daughter, "Why is it a field mouse?"
Yuanyuan blinked her big eyes and raised her little finger to Lu Chengjing, "Four... daddy."
Lu Chengjing:?
He thought for a moment and asked tentatively: "You mean the story I told you?"
The round little head nodded, "Four!"
Xiaohuan and Shitou both looked over, "Brother-in-law, what story can you tell Yuanyuan about the field mouse?"
Lu Chengjing spit out four words, "Rat family."
Ever since Yuanyuan controlled the monkey to help his family that day, Lu Chengjing realized that his daughter was not simple. Seeing that Xiao Hui was very obedient to her words, he began to speculate about his daughter's extraordinary abilities.
So he consciously added a lot of animal-related content to the short stories he told every day. The scholar-gong compiled several childlike stories to coax his daughter-in-law, and Yuanyuan listened very carefully every time.
What surprised Lu Chengjing was that at such a young age, Yuanyuan knew how to apply stories to life, and she did so correctly.
Facing the surprised looks of her father, aunt, and uncle, Yuanyuan grinned with two small millet teeth, "Woo...okay!"
Lu Cheng’s Nestorian daughter said, “She is amazing, Yuanyuan is amazing.”
"Li...Hi..." Yuanyuan followed suit, and after repeating it to herself several times, she pointed her little finger at herself, "Lihao!"
All three of them were amused by her.
"Yuanyuan, listen to what uncle is telling you." Shitou muttered to Yuanyuan while squatting, trying to instill the essentials of land reclamation into Yuanyuan's little head.
Yuanyuan's eyes were filled with tears when she heard this. She pushed Uncle Shitou's face away from him with her little hand and waved towards the field mice who were waiting. A strange light flashed through her eyes.
The voles ran into the fields as if they had been ordered to do something, and skillfully dug holes and drilled down.
Nearly twenty voles used their housekeeping skills to dig holes in the ground, drilling back and forth and loosening the soil at the same time.
Shitou was not idle either, and together with Xiaohuan, he cleared away the weeds, shrubs, and stones on the ground.
Because the vole had chewed through the roots in the ground, it was quite easy for the two of them to pull it out.
From time to time, voles would throw rocks from the ground out of their holes.
He stared at the stones from the side, and when two or three were piled up, he picked them up and threw them outside, then piled them together.
With the help of field mice, the efficiency of land reclamation skyrocketed.
What Stone has to do is to use a hoe to turn over the soil that the field mice have loosened, and pick up the remaining grass roots and tree roots inside. The work should not be too easy compared to yesterday. So much so that when he looked at it, his round eyes turned green. This was a big treasure that helped him farm the land!
Yuanyuan was holding the milk jug in her arms. When she was finished, she handed the milk jug to Lu Chengjing and invited her father to join her.
Lu Chengjing declined his daughter's kindness. Seeing that her daughter didn't show any abnormality like the time when he summoned the monkey, he turned the wheelchair back and continued to practice his left hand calligraphy.
Xiaohuan remembered that the washed clothes had not yet been hung up, so she went back too.
On one side, children Yuanyuan and Uncle Shitou were happily reclaiming wasteland. On the other side, Shang Wan drove an ox cart to the brick kiln.
The steward still remembered Shang Wan. After reading the contract, he led Shang Wan to get the bricks.
"Mrs. Shang, how many bricks can your ox cart pull? I'll have someone load them for you."
Shang Wan was not sure. He heard from the steward that an ordinary ox cart could pull 300 bricks. Thinking that his oxen had drunk the water from the Lingquan, he asked the steward to load 500 bricks and unload the bricks in case it couldn't be pulled.
The steward asked people to load bricks into the bullock cart and said, "This cart costs five hundred, so four thousand bricks have to go back and forth eight times. Why are you the only one here?"
Shang Wan said: "The family is in the process of reclaiming land and can't spare any manpower. It won't be a problem if I make two more trips."
The steward thought of the young man in a wheelchair that day and saw that Shang Wan was born fragile. He couldn't help but feel some sympathy and thought about asking the waiter to help him take him twice.
Shang Wan didn't even bring any stones with him, so how could he let the waiter follow him?
After politely refusing, the manager just thought that Shang Wan was too pushy and did not insist. He just asked the clerk to be more careful.
Shang Wan still underestimated his own oxen, and he could easily pull 500 bricks. Seeing that there was still room in the oxcart, he asked his assistant to fill it up, and the last cart contained 600 bricks.
After Shang Wan thanked the man, he drove the bullock cart away and walked to a deserted place. He raised his hand and put all the bricks into the space, and drove the bullock cart to the city.
Only when we entered the city did we find out that the disaster relief food from the court had arrived, but when we opened it, half of the bag of food was filled with stones.
Fortunately, Mr. An was prepared and used the food he raised to pacify the victims in time. At this moment, the government was arranging people to deliver food to each village.
Shang Wan estimated that the government officials should go to Liushu Village first, after all, the disaster in Liushu Village was the most severe.
She noted this down and went to a drink shop to buy goat milk and store it in a space for her cubs. Although Xiaohuan was wondering where her son Shang Wan kept the goat milk, she wouldn't ask more questions if Shang Wan didn't tell her.
Then I went to buy lime, which I will use when building walls. After leaving the city, he also collected the lime into the space.
Counting the time, Shang Wan returned to the brick kiln and asked the man to load 600 bricks again.
After resting for half an hour in search of a place, Shang Wan returned again with six hundred bricks.
The two men responsible for installing bricks were wondering why Er Shangwan came back so quickly.
Shang Wan only said that he should unload the bricks at his relatives' houses. If the relatives live nearby, they can come back quickly.
After seven trips back and forth like this, Shang Wan had finished moving the bricks. She took out the steamed cake Xiaohuan had prepared for her and drove the ox cart back to the village.
She was about two miles away from the village. She took 500 bricks from the space and loaded them on the oxcart, and headed home slowly.
Smoke was already rising from some houses in the village, and the oxcart was still some distance away from home. Lu Chengjing wheeled his wheelchair, with Yuanyuan sitting in his arms, and they came out together.
"Yuanyuan said you're back." Lu Chengjing explained, without asking why Shang Wan came back after a day out.
Shang Wan jumped off the ox cart, holding the reins loosely and walked home with the father and daughter.
Yuanyuan tugged on Lu Chengjing's shirt, and her little voice urged: "Daddy!"
"Okay, I'll tell your mother." Lu Chengjing patted his daughter reassuringly and told Shang Wan about Yuanyuan's summoning of Voles to help Stone clear up wasteland.
Yuanyuan raised her little head and waited for her mother to praise her.
But Shang Wan didn't bother to praise her and asked: "My dear, you asked the field mouse to help you with the work, will you be paid?"
(End of chapter)