While the women chatted in the courtyard, Granny Mo urged Mo Xiaoman to go inside and change her clothes.
Mo Xiaoman avoided Liu Fengying's glare and slipped into the east room. She first ran to the kitchen in the backyard and lifted the lid off the iron wok—she was starving. Just drinking from the Spiritual Spring wasn't enough; she needed something solid in her stomach.
She remembered from her past life how Liu Fengying would often send her out to do chores and then cook delicious food for her own children. She'd boil a pot of white rice and fry up a couple of fragrant eggs, or mix flour to make dough drops, or even grind glutinous rice to make fried dough balls... If Mo Xiaoman happened to catch her, Liu Fengying wouldn't even flinch. She'd just shoot her a cold glare and say, "Your little brother and sisters are still young and get cravings. You're the big sister, so don't fight them over food!"
'How old was I back then? I craved it just as much, but when had I ever tried to fight for it? Even if I had wanted to, I could never have won against Liu Fengying!'
Liu Fengying and Mo Guoqiang... Ever since her past life, from the moment she learned she wasn't their biological daughter and that they had abandoned her in Beijing, Mo Xiaoman had hated them. She was even more regretful of her own stupidity, for wasting all her heart and energy on this nest of vipers with whom she shared no blood, reducing herself to a wretched state, neither human nor ghost.
Reborn in this life, Mo Xiaoman didn't hesitate for a moment. Her only thought was to find a way to escape this hellhole as quickly as possible.
'I'll figure out the future later!'
She lifted the lid of the large iron wok. Sure enough, there was half a piece of leftover rice crust inside. Mo Xiaoman grabbed it, stuffed it into her mouth, and chewed vigorously, swallowing it down in a couple of gulps.
Then, her eyes fell on several eggshells tossed into the stove's firebox. 'It's raining today, so Liu Fengying isn't at work. She must have made fried rice for her little brats to satisfy their cravings!'
'Hmph! That black-hearted woman and the unfilial Mo Guoqiang truly are a match made in heaven! To keep Grandpa and Grandma from getting even the slightest scrap from them, they built the kitchen in the backyard. No matter what delicious food they made, they never shared any with Grandma. They didn't even want Grandpa and Grandma to smell it!'
'Of course, Grandma wouldn't be getting any of today's fried rice either!'
Mo Xiaoman counted the eggshells. Five eggs! 'I can just imagine how fragrant that fried rice must have been!'
Her eyes darted around before she looked up. A small, lidded bamboo basket was hanging from a wooden beam. Mo Xiaoman dragged a stool over, climbed on top, and carefully took the basket down. She lifted the lid. Aha! It was a bowl, more than half full of golden, fragrant fried rice. 'This must be for Mo Guoqiang!'
Without a second thought, Mo Xiaoman took a pair of chopsticks from the holder by the cupboard, found a small bowl, and divided the fried rice in two. She set the small bowl aside and, cradling the medium-sized bowl from the basket, rapidly shoveled the rice into her mouth. Resources were scarce in the countryside back then: a jin of pork was one-and-a-half yuan plus a meat ration coupon of the same value, a jin of salt was seventeen fen, and an egg cost five to seven fen. Getting to eat fried rice was almost like celebrating the New Year. This was all thanks to Liu Fengying's cleverness; she had reconnected with her biological daughter in the city. That daughter would give them five or ten yuan from time to time, which was enough for them to have a few good meals a month.
Mo Xiaoman, however, was just trying to fill her stomach. She had no time to savor the delicious flavor; her only goal was to get the fried rice down as quickly as possible.
'In her past life, even if she were about to faint from hunger, she would never have dared to take down and eat the food hanging from that beam, even if she saw it with her own eyes. For one, she was terrified of Liu Fengying. For another, she would have thought it was being saved for her father. He was out there working hard; she shouldn't be the one to eat it!'
Now, she not only had the guts to eat the fried rice, but she did so without the slightest guilt.
After she finished eating, she put the now-empty medium bowl back in the small bamboo basket, replaced the lid, and hung it back on the beam. Then she ran over to a hole in the wall and felt around inside. Sure enough, her fingers found a softcover notebook—Liu Fengying's account book!
Mo Xiaoman flipped through it. In her past life, she had only finished the second grade. But later, she met *that person*. He couldn't move on his own, but he used his influence to find her four or five teachers and mentors all at once. For three years, they crammed all sorts of knowledge and skills into her, allowing her to avoid a life of ignorance. Thanks to them, she had been able to rely on her own abilities to lead a respectable, comfortable, and dignified life, never again having to worry about falling into poverty.
The thought of him again made her nose tingle. She sighed, gently rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. She rolled up the notebook and, holding the small bowl of fried rice in one hand, ran back to the main room. There, she carefully climbed the wobbly wooden ladder to the loft to change her clothes.
The wooden loft wasn't large, only about seven or eight square meters. Mo Guoqiang and Liu Fengying had their children sleep up there because the family didn't have any spare bed frames. The kids just spread mats woven from bamboo strips on the floorboards and slept on those. Although Mo Xiaoneng was a boy, he was still young, so he slept with his sisters. Mo Xiaoqiang, as the Mo family's eldest grandson, was given special treatment. He had his own room behind the main room's incense hall.