Chapter 2: Eldest Uncle – Reborn!

“I know, I know, my dear child, quickly think of a solution for Dad. The debt collectors said they’d be back in three days. What am I going to give them? Is running away even an option right now? I don’t even dare to mention it to your mother. Life is hard enough as it is; if I add this twenty tael gambling debt, I’m afraid she won’t be able to bear it…”

Kill me again, boo hoo hoo!

Last night, they had just made up their minds to accept reality, let go of the past, start anew, and work hard to achieve a comfortable life.

Who would have thought that today he would mess up and be burdened with twenty taels of heavy debt.

“Dad, you should just confess. We’ll figure something out together. In this current climate, without travel permits, we can’t go anywhere. Besides, how would we run? On foot? We don’t even have a mode of transport. It would take two hours just to walk to the nearest town. Eldest Uncle here can’t manage without care at all. Eldest Sister also needs to be watched, lest she do something drastic. And what about that scoundrel who’s after her? What if we leave and she gets bullied?”

Don’t let her current petite loli stature fool you; through tireless effort these past few days, she had already befriended a few children and pieced together some information from the limited details.

The scoundrel who was after Eldest Uncle’s daughter was the village head’s youngest son.

He usually hung around in town and had somehow met Eldest Sister and taken a fancy to her, insisting on marrying her.

The village head had sent someone to make an offer, which Eldest Uncle, a scholar, had politely refused.

The matter should have ended there, but who knew that the village head’s youngest son was a thoroughly rotten bastard? When the direct approach didn’t work, he resorted to crooked ways.

He spread rumors everywhere, claiming that he and Eldest Sister were mutually in love and had secretly pledged eternal devotion, hoping to force a marriage through gossip.

Eldest Uncle had gone to reason with him, but was angered and beaten. The village head’s family acted so brazenly, even daring to lay hands on a titled scholar. She truly feared they would do something even more extreme.

“Then what do we do?” Father Yan, worried, pulled at the jacket clinging to his body, fanning it back and forth.

“I was originally planning to sell some of the wheat from the fields as capital to start a small business and earn some living expenses. But a hole as big as twenty taels—even if we sold all our family’s wheat, it wouldn’t be enough to fill it!”

The Yan Family were outsiders. Their grandparents had some family fortune and had acquired quite a bit of land, once being small landlords. Later, the old couple successively passed away, and the medical expenses, funeral arrangements… led to them selling a few mu of land.

The Yan Family had three scholars over two generations, and the tuition fees alone amounted to a considerable sum each year. Income from the land was far from enough, so they gradually sold off more.

Now, their family was left with only ten mu of land. They had always paid people to help with farm work, but this year’s conditions looked truly frightening. It was unbearably hot, and it hadn’t rained for a long time. Even managing their own fields was difficult, let alone helping others.

Some families had many sons and plenty of strong laborers, barely able to spare a hand, but normally the work paid twenty wen a day. Now, they demanded thirty wen, and the Yan Family couldn’t even find a single copper coin.

Having no choice, they could only do it themselves.

“Let’s discuss it tonight,” Yan Er Ya said miserably. The three of them were just ordinary folk.

Her mother was an elementary school teacher, her father ran a stationery store outside the school, and she herself was preparing to take the civil service exams after graduating from university. They lived in town, so expenses weren’t high. They had two apartments and a car, with five-figure savings at most.

Suddenly transmigrating, she hadn’t acquired any special skills. She did want to try selling recipes, but unfortunately, her father’s cooking skills were only at the level of home-cooked dishes.

These past few days, Eldest Sister had been lighting the fire and cooking. They had eaten multi-grain flatbreads for days, and wilted greens from the backyard rotated onto the table. Fortunately, the family still kept a few old hens, from which they could collect a few eggs daily, barely counting as meat or protein.

This family was truly poor, absolutely not faking it.

If all else failed, they could only resort to the Yan Family’s ancestral path—selling land.

But all the family’s land was under Eldest Uncle’s name, so selling it would definitely require Eldest Uncle’s approval.

Given Yan Lao’er’s past actions, how could he make Eldest Uncle believe that he had truly repented and mended his ways this time, that they would sell the land to clear the debts first, and then their whole family would work hard to earn money and buy the land back…

If it were her, she definitely wouldn’t believe it.

Eldest Uncle was still lying there, unable to get up. If he knew his younger brother had gambled and owed twenty taels, he might never get up again.

Poor Eldest Uncle!

“Sigh! I’ll go turn your Eldest Uncle over.” Father Yan sighed and groaned but didn’t forget to care for the patient. His wife was busy with work, and he had cared for both his own parents and his in-laws until their passing.

He was a professional at caring for the sick.

He scooped half a scoop of water from the water jar. The sun-dried cloth still carried the scorching warmth of the sun.

“Big Brother, I’m coming in,” Father Yan called from the doorway. Without waiting for a response, he entered.

He touched Big Brother’s head; it wasn’t hot.

He dampened the cloth and meticulously wiped him, bit by bit: his head, neck, front and back, and limbs. It was very systematic, clearly something he was accustomed to, and very efficient.

As he wiped, his mouth kept moving.

“Big Brother, these days are too hard. It’s like fire falling from the sky outside. The old folks in the village say times are bad, and a disaster might be coming. The village head has organized people to watch over the old well, and each family is only allowed four buckets of water a day. That’s not even enough to water the fields. My wife is terribly anxious. She can’t wait for the wheat to ripen, so she plans to secure what she can. That’s why we went to harvest the wheat early this morning, the first in our village! Everyone in the village laughed at us, but we had no choice. If we didn’t start early, we were afraid we wouldn’t finish! The price for temporary laborers has gone up again. The day before yesterday it was thirty wen, but today they won’t even work for thirty wen. Luckily, we weren’t planning to hire anyone. My wife and I will work ourselves to death to harvest all our family’s wheat. Every bit saved is a bit earned. If disaster truly strikes, with grain in hand, our hearts won’t be flustered…”

“Big Brother, please get well soon. When you collapsed, you scared your little brother to death. You’re the backbone of our family; nothing must happen to you!”

His daughter was right. They had replaced the original family of three, so their words and actions would naturally be different from before. They needed to find a reason to explain it away. With the pillar of the family collapsing, they were terrified and helpless, so their changes could barely be explained away.

“Tian…you…” Yan Eldest Uncle suddenly spoke, startling Father Yan.

This girl, why didn’t she say her Eldest Uncle was awake and could talk?

Cough, cough, cough, cough…

Another series of coughs.

“Help me… up…” Yan Huaiwen struggled to suppress the itch and pain in his throat, speaking very slowly.

“Alright, alright, I’ll help you.” Father Yan closed his inner garment, put down the cloth, and with a push, helped him sit up. With one hand supporting his back for leverage, he picked up the chamber pot from the floor with the other and quietly asked, “Big Brother, do you need to relieve yourself?”

He had timed his return perfectly; at this hour, his Big Brother should be ready to relieve himself.

Yan Huaiwen had lived through three dynasties and risen to the highest ranks of officialdom, truly having weathered countless storms.

A ruthless official who had risen to power, he was iron-faced and merciless, always remaining calm in the face of adversity, unwavering.

Even with something as unbelievable as being reborn happening to him, he remained composed.

Aside from enduring the high fever and being tormented by illness, he had spent these past days recalling the past he didn’t want to remember, seeing his deceased loved ones appear before his eyes. There was excitement, and there was relief.

His daughter was still alive, she hadn’t been bullied and hanged herself from a beam.

His son was still studying diligently at the academy in town, not yet dragged down by him, not yet secretly murdered.

As for his second brother’s family…

They hadn’t yet angered him into splitting the family over gambling debts.

(End of chapter)

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Yan Lao’er – Yan family second son