The Zhou family's red brick house was built entirely with the allowance Zhou Chen had sent back over the years. Now that Zhou Chen was gone, Lin Zhilan and her daughter, left as a widow and an orphan, were allocated nothing but a dilapidated old house.
Secretary Zhou smacked his lips. "Alright, I understand. Come and collect your grain rations yourself later."
"Okay, thank you, Secretary Zhou."
Lin Zhilan hadn't expected Secretary Zhou to stand up for her in the first place.
Wang Guifen had a fierce and unreasonable temper; no one wanted to ask for trouble, and Secretary Zhou was no exception.
As soon as Lin Zhilan left, Secretary Zhou's wife, Zhang Fengying, walked out of the house.
"What did Zhou Chen's wife want with you just now?"
Secretary Zhou pulled a rolled cigarette from his pocket and sighed. "Zhou Chen is gone, and Wang Guifen kicked the mother and daughter out. She came to ask me to make sure her work points are separated from theirs."
"Sigh, it's truly pitiful," Zhang Fengying lamented. "She is still so young. I'm afraid she won't be able to stay a widow for long."
Hearing this, their youngest son, Zhou Weimin, who had been standing nearby, blushed.
Lin Zhilan was two years older than him, but he knew that all the young men in the village envied Zhou Chen.
He did, too.
Sympathy was one thing, but Zhang Fengying would never agree to let her youngest son marry a woman like Lin Zhilan, who had been married and had a child.
Especially since the Zhou family only held the minor position of village secretary.
Such a beautiful woman was not someone the Zhou family could hold onto.
Seeing Zhou Weimin's flushed face, Zhang Fengying immediately glared at him and scolded, "What are you daydreaming about? Hurry up and go fetch water!"
"Oh, right."
Zhou Weimin snapped back to reality and jogged toward the water vat in the kitchen, stumbling slightly along the way.
Lin Zhilan carried her daughter home. She hung the quilt she had brought back on the rack outside the courtyard to air out in the sun. Then, carrying her daughter with one arm and a small hoe in the other hand, she carried a woven basket on her back and headed up the mountain.
It was currently 1968. There were still nearly ten years until the economic reforms and the restoration of the college entrance examination. If she wanted to give her daughter a good life, relying solely on those meager work points definitely wouldn't be enough.
She had graduated with a Ph.D. in traditional Chinese medicine, and coincidentally, the original owner's father had been an old Chinese medicine practitioner. The forest resources had not yet been destroyed, so there were likely plenty of medicinal herbs in the mountains.
There was a purchasing station in town, and the prices for properly processed herbs were quite decent.
She didn't know how to do farm work, so earning money to pay a social wage in exchange for work points would work too.
"Oh, if it isn't Zhilan? Where are you heading?"
A man suddenly popped out from the side path. He was about the same height as Lin Zhilan, probably less than 1.7 meters tall.
He had a piece of foxtail grass dangling from his mouth and slouched his shoulders as if he had no bones, swaying as he walked.
The man was a notorious local ruffian named Zhao Ermao. With no parents to discipline him, he was lazy with work. As a bachelor, as long as he fed himself, his whole family was fed.
She didn't answer and turned sideways, trying to walk past him.
"Hey," Zhao Ermao reached out to block her, speaking with a sleazy tone. "Your man is dead, and you're still this arrogant? Why don't you just follow me from now on?"
Linlin was a bit scared and hugged her mother's neck tightly.
Lin Zhilan patted her back and took a sickle out of the basket on her back.
"Zhao Ermao, try stopping me again."
Zhao Ermao didn't panic at all. Lin Zhilan was frail and carrying a child; how could she possibly be a match for a grown man like him?
He reached out to touch her face. It was so white, tender, and smooth that if he touched it, he wouldn't need to wash his hands for a year.
Lin Zhilan understood one principle.
The soft fear the hard, the hard fear the ruthless, and the ruthless fear those who don't care about their lives.
The weaker you are, the more these people will walk all over you.
She raised the sickle and slashed it directly toward Zhao Ermao.
Zhao Ermao instinctively tried to dodge, but Lin Zhilan's movements were fast and ruthless. As the sickle came down, his pilled shirt was instantly slashed open, and a bloody gash appeared on his arm.
"Ah!" Zhao Ermao cried out in pain. Clutching his arm, he stumbled back two steps. Looking at the seeping blood, he was both shocked and furious. "Lin Zhilan, are you fucking crazy?"
Linlin was already crying softly in fear. Lin Zhilan hugged her, soothing her gently, then held the sickle horizontally in front of her. Staring at Zhao Ermao, she said, "If you ever try to bully me and my daughter again, believe it or not, my next slash will be at your throat!"
As she spoke, her eyes were locked onto Zhao Ermao, sending chills down his spine.
Zhao Ermao was intimidated by her gaze.
He was a bully who preyed on the weak and feared the strong. He had harassed Lin Zhilan before, but she had always dodged away in shame and anger. When had she ever drawn a blade on him like this?
The wound on his arm burned with pain, and Zhao Ermao felt a wave of dread.
"Crazy woman! You're a fucking lunatic!" Zhao Ermao cursed, trying to act tough while quivering inside. "Consider me unlucky today, but you just wait!"
After dropping his harsh words, he turned and ran away in a sorry state.
It wasn't until Zhao Ermao's figure disappeared from sight that Lin Zhilan's tense back finally relaxed a bit.
Feeling her daughter's small body still trembling, she quickly dropped the fierce look on her face and gently patted the girl's back.
"Don't be afraid, baby. Mommy beat the bad guy away."
Linlin tightly hugged her neck, tears flowing into the crook of her mother's neck, but she didn't make a sound.
Zhou Chen was a hero, but he couldn't be considered a competent father.
Linlin was three years old, yet she had only seen him a few times.
Linlin's personality was somewhat similar to the original owner's—sensitive and timid.
Whenever she cried, Wang Guifen would scold her as a jinx, claiming she was crying all the family's luck away.
Now it seemed she had developed a conditioned reflex, too afraid to even make a sound when she cried.
She would just have to guide her slowly.
Bringing a child along, Lin Zhilan didn't dare venture deep into the mountains, so she stopped near the foot of the hill.
The surrounding woods were dense, filled with the continuous chirping of birds.
Linlin's attention was soon drawn to the bird calls.
Lin Zhilan found a large tree stump for her daughter to sit on and began searching for medicinal herbs nearby.
In the eyes of a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, many plants were medicinal, but the overly common ones weren't worth much.
After searching for a long time, she luckily discovered an agarwood tree that had been struck by lightning.
Agarwood was an excellent medicinal material; it was the resin secreted by the agarwood tree during its self-healing process. In modern times, its price was at least dozens of dollars per gram.
Lin Zhilan carefully chopped off that piece of agarwood, placed it in her basket, and covered it with a layer of wild vegetables.
The sun had risen to its peak, and Lin Zhilan prepared to take her daughter down the mountain.
As Lin Zhilan focused on the path, Little Linlin hugged her neck and pointed at a patch of grass. "Mommy, berry."
"Berry?"
Lin Zhilan looked in the direction she was pointing, and a flash of red suddenly caught her eye. Her heart leaped with joy.
These were no ordinary berries!
They were clearly wild ginseng seeds!
And it was a six-leaf one at that!
Besides that, there were several other three-leaf and four-leaf wild ginseng plants nearby!
Lin Zhilan put her daughter down, took out her tools from the basket, and carefully dug out the six-leaf ginseng plant completely, without damaging a single rootlet.
Taking advantage of her daughter not looking, she transferred it into her space.
The remaining plants weren't very old, so she transplanted them into her space as well.
As for the ginseng seeds, she taught her daughter to scatter them casually in the forest. Decades later, they might just find a destined person.
Lin Zhilan hugged Linlin and kissed her on the cheek. "Good baby, you're mommy's great little helper!"
The original owner had certainly loved her daughter too, but she wouldn't have expressed it so boldly.
Being kissed by her mother for the first time, Linlin shyly buried her face in her mother's embrace.
When the mother and daughter descended the mountain, two uninvited guests appeared at their door.
