Chapter 94

Xi Junjie only stayed for a short while before tactfully taking his leave. After all, this was a rare family reunion that only happened once a year, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for an outsider like him to linger too long. Just thinking of the word “outsider” made his heart ache sourly. He quietly calculated that there were still three years until graduation, and suddenly, the road to marriage felt unbearably long.

The Li family watched Xi Junjie out the door, collectively remaining silent. About a minute later, once Roubao figured Xi Junjie had gone far enough, he couldn’t hold it in anymore and asked, “Auntie, how did you trick him into falling for you?”

“What kind of question is that?” Zhenzhen jabbed her fair finger at Roubao’s forehead. “We’re in love, alright? Got it? Besides, he was the one who pursued me.”

The moment the words “in love” were spoken, Li Muwu and Wang Sufen both covered their faces with their hands. Their daughter was always so blunt—it was hard to handle.

Seeing Roubao’s clearly skeptical expression, Zhenzhen pointed at Mingbei. “Don’t believe me? Ask your Fourth Uncle and Aunt.”

The moment Mingbei caught Li Muwu’s sideways glance, he immediately raised his hands and shook his head. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know a thing. By the time I found out they were dating, they were already blatantly holding hands in public.”

Everyone turned to Wang Xinwen. Though she hadn’t quite figured things out either, she stuck to the firm principle of not blowing anyone’s cover and nodded resolutely. “That’s right, Xi Junjie was chasing after our Zhenzhen every day.” Feeling that this alone might not be convincing enough, she added, “Every night after class, Xi Junjie would be waiting downstairs at our dorm to carry hot water for Zhenzhen. You guys have no idea—every time he showed up, the entire dorm would go wild. All the girls would be crowding at the windows to get a look at him. Sometimes they even fought to get the best viewing spot.”

Looking at Zhenzhen, Roubao summed up with a heartbroken tone, “So you girl students are all into looks, huh.”

Zhenzhen laughed, giving Roubao a sympathetic look. “Feeling hopeless?”

Roubao touched his face, suddenly a little unsure of himself for the first time. He’d never thought much about it, growing up among rough, burly men, but ever since he met Xi Junjie, he couldn’t help comparing. Looks—worse. Body—worse. Voice—not as nice. Brain—not as sharp. Roubao barely managed to stay in the top five throughout high school, and even that took effort. But Xi Junjie could be top of the class even at Imperial Capital University—how was he supposed to compete with that?

Seeing the smug look on Zhenzhen’s face, Roubao reluctantly added, “My future uncle’s perfect in every way… except his eyesight. Otherwise, how could he have fallen for you?”

Zhenzhen picked up a handful of pine nuts and pretended to throw them. Roubao quickly dodged behind Guihua, grinning. “Kidding, just kidding! I climbed that tree myself to pick those pinecones for you—you can’t waste them.”

Zhenzhen cracked a few pine nuts with a crack and tossed the shells into the trash while smiling at Roubao. “We’ll see what kind of niece-in-law you find for me in the future.”

As dusk fell, Wang Sufen hurriedly led Guihua and Zhenzhen into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Mingbei went next door to the Xi family’s house to borrow the phone and called Mingxi, letting him know that Mingdong and Mingnan had arrived and to come home early after work. Mingxi didn’t have any experiments going on at the moment and was mostly organizing materials in the office, so when it was time to clock out, he rode his old bicycle home with his wife and kid to the siheyuan.

Wang Sufen and her daughters-in-law bustled around making a table full of dishes, packing the table completely. Fortunately, the kitchen was large enough to fit everyone without feeling cramped—it actually made things feel warm and lively.

The kitchen had heating, and both stoves were still going, flames licking the clay pot with a sizzle. The table was covered with thickly folded towels, and Zhenzhen used thick gloves to place the clay pot on the table.

Lifting the lid and pushing aside the lotus leaves inside with chopsticks, a rich aroma immediately wafted out and filled every corner of the room. The sound of rumbling stomachs echoed all around. Mingdong clutched his stomach and swallowed hard. “We’ve been eating nothing but dry food on the train these days. You bring out a pot this fragrant, and I suddenly feel so empty I’m panicking.”

Mingbei was so entranced by the smell that he couldn’t even speak. He went to fetch a stack of small bowls. Zhenzhen filled them up and handed them out one by one. Guihua, seeing the thick, brown broth in her bowl, couldn’t resist taking a sip. The soup was rich but not greasy, bursting with umami. She picked up an abalone, studied it for a while without recognizing it, then took a bite—it was chewy and delicious, and the more she ate, the better it tasted. After finishing one, she tried to find another in the bowl, only to realize none of the ingredients were repeated.

Unlike Guihua, who ate delicately, Roubao and the other younger ones gobbled theirs down. Zhenzhen had barely taken a few bites when their bowls were already empty. Seeing half the pot of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall already gone, Zhenzhen stingily gave them each just one more spoonful. “You young ones need to eat less. Leave the rest for my grandma, dad, and mom.”

Grandma Li usually liked to have a sip of wine with dinner, but tonight she couldn’t even be bothered with that. Her mouth didn’t stop once. Hearing that the rest was for her, she nodded enthusiastically. “I was thinking the same. Come on, Baor, give Grandma another bowl.”

“On it.” Zhenzhen noticed her grandma especially liked the sea cucumber and fish maw, so she gave her a generous portion. “Grandma knows the good stuff.”

Grandma Li beamed. “Everything tastes great. Zhenzhen, you should learn how to make this from Junjie. That way we can stew it at home too.”

Zhenzhen placed a bowl of the dish by Grandma Li’s hand. “It’s not especially hard to cook, but the ingredients are hard to gather.” She pointed them out one by one with a spoon. “Sea cucumber, abalone, fish maw, fish stomach, softshell turtle skirt, shark fin, fish lips… deer tendon, pig stomach, lamb shank… both land and sea ingredients—dozens of them. Just buying everything takes a lot of work.”

“This pot must’ve cost a fortune,” Grandma Li frowned. “We can’t just eat their food for nothing. I’ll get some ginseng from my chest and give it to the Xi family—we’ve got to return the favor.”

Zhenzhen took a sip of soup and said, “We can’t give it directly to Auntie Ling. New Year’s is just around the corner. I’ll put it in with the New Year gifts—it won’t draw attention that way.”

Grandma Li nodded approvingly. “My granddaughter’s all grown up, more thoughtful than me.”

“That’s because you raised me well!” Zhenzhen grinned, placing a piece of sweet-and-sour rib in her bowl. “Your favorite—sweet and tangy.”

Mingdong finished his soup and let out a satisfied sigh. “Zhenzhen, your future mother-in-law’s cooking is amazing.”

Just then, Mingbei looked up while gnawing a rib, yanked the bone off with his chopsticks, and swallowed the meat in a few bites. “His mother-in-law? You’ve got it wrong, big bro!” Having been bribed weekly with Xi Junjie’s snacks and occasionally treated to gourmet meals at home, Mingbei had become his number one fan. “Xi Junjie made this. I’m telling you, he cooks even better than national banquet chefs.”

Mingnan burst out laughing. “As if you’ve ever eaten at a state banquet.”

Mingbei raised his head defiantly. “Even if I haven’t, I can still imagine it—no way it tastes better than this.”

“This whole pot was made by my future uncle?” Roubao froze mid-bite, his expression conflicted. “Is it really this hard to get a wife in the capital now? You gotta look good and know how to cook?”

Zhenzhen’s big eyes curved with a laugh. “That’s why, Roubao, after you finish the college entrance exam, you’d better start learning. Otherwise, no girl’s gonna want you in college.”

“Sigh, I tried learning last winter,” Roubao said gloomily, stuffing a bite of twice-cooked pork in his mouth. “But my mom said my shredded potatoes came out thicker than my fingers. My fingers are about as nimble as my toes—totally hopeless.”

“Then you’re done for,” Mingbei said with wicked glee. “Girls in the capital are hard to chase. No skills? No chance.”

“I’ve decided to apply to a university in Bingcheng,” Roubao looked at Mingnan with hope. “What do you think, Third Uncle?”

Mingnan gave him a sidelong glance and smiled. “Girls in Bingcheng aren’t easy to woo either.”

Roubao looked utterly defeated. “It’s over, Dad. Maybe we should just go back to Anbei to find me a wife.”

Mingdong couldn’t help laughing. “Is there anything in that head of yours besides finding a wife? I’m telling you, if you don’t get into a university in the capital next year, I’ll deal with you myself.”

Roubao immediately wilted, burying his head and eating three bowls of rice before perking up again. “I was just thinking, getting into a university in the capital sounds pretty good. At least I’d have a chance to eat food made by my uncle.” Then he stood up. “Great-Grandma, Grandpa, Grandma—take your time eating. I want to go back to my room and study.”

“Go on,” Grandma Li said, smiling. “You didn’t get much rest on the train these days. Don’t stay up too late.”

“Hey!” Roubao responded and said goodbye to everyone before leaving. Back in his room, once he opened his textbook, the playful grin from earlier with Zhenzhen disappeared. His face grew serious and focused, and he quickly immersed himself in his studies.

Zhenzhen withdrew her consciousness and smiled as she asked Mingdong, “Roubao studies pretty seriously, doesn’t he?”

“He’s alright at studying and willing to work hard. Gets up at five every morning to memorize texts. But he’s a bit careless when doing problems—he’s missed first place a few times just because of silly mistakes,” Mingdong said. “Still, you know how the academic level is back home. It’s nothing compared to the capital. When I took the college entrance exam, it wasn’t nearly as hard as it is now. If you’ve got time these next few days, help him catch up on his schoolwork.”

Zhenzhen readily agreed. He was her biological nephew and at such a critical stage—how could she say no? She even started planning to prepare a test the next day to gauge Roubao’s level, so she could tutor him more effectively.

Zhenzhen was a doer. After dinner, she returned to her room, lit the desk lamp, and stayed up until midnight putting together a test. She peeked into Roubao’s yard with her consciousness and saw the light still on. From the window, she could see Roubao studying. Putting on her cotton coat, she went to the kitchen to heat up some leftover braised beef and steamed buns and brought them over to him.

“Roubao, you’re still awake?” Zhenzhen knocked gently on the door and asked. Roubao rubbed his eyes, stood up, and opened the door. When he saw the midnight snack she brought, his face lit up. “Auntie, you’re the best. You knew I’d be hungry and even heated up food for me.”

After setting the food on the table, Zhenzhen smiled and pulled out a stack of white papers from her coat and handed them over. “I’ve got something even better for you.”

“What is it?” Roubao asked around a mouthful of steamed bun as he took the papers. The word “Math” jumped out at him, and he instantly choked, the bun stuck halfway in his throat in utter despair.

Zhenzhen patted his back to help him swallow and helpfully flipped through the rest of the packet. “There’s also Chinese, Physics, Chemistry, all that. Work hard, okay? I’ll be grading them when I get up at noon.”

Roubao glanced at the clock on the wall—it was already 12:30 AM. Then he looked at the thick stack of tests in his hand and was dumbfounded. “You’re sleeping until noon? And I’m supposed to finish all this before then?”

“Are you moved by the effort I put into these test papers?” Zhenzhen smiled, propping up her chin as she looked at him. “Don’t worry. You’ll be seeing a lot more of these in the future. Oh, and I heard from your dad that you often lose points on tests because of careless mistakes. If you do that on my papers, you’ll be hanging upside down from a tree doing a hundred sit-ups per wrong answer.”

The bun in Roubao’s mouth dropped into the bowl of braised beef. Zhenzhen stood up and patted his shoulder. “Enjoy your midnight snack while you can, kid. You may not have such a good appetite tomorrow.”

Roubao looked mournfully at Zhenzhen. “How about you give Doubao a set of papers too? He’s only in his first year of high school and already ranked tenth. Totally unacceptable.”

Zhenzhen gave him a half-smile. “Don’t worry. Once you’re liberated, his good days will be over.”

Seeing Roubao channel his grief into appetite, Zhenzhen happily returned to her room to sleep.

Since the start of the holiday, Zhenzhen had rarely stayed up late. Although she didn’t sleep until noon the next day, she still didn’t wake up until around ten. Stretching lazily, she felt completely relaxed. Scanning the yard with her consciousness, she saw Roubao writing diligently at his desk, Doubao doing homework with the two boys from the Mingnan family, Tangbao helping Grandma Li string beans, and the Mingbei couple playing blocks with Mian Tiao.

Since nothing urgent was happening outside, Zhenzhen decided to stay in. She blinked into her space, made herself a bowl of noodles with the chicken soup she’d stewed earlier, then set the temperature to twenty-eight degrees and lounged on a sun-drenched rocking chair in her pajamas, memorizing vocabulary. It wasn’t until Tangbao came to call her for lunch that she blinked back onto her bed.

Zhenzhen wasn’t a lazy child. No one would fault her for the occasional sleep-in. After lunch, she went to Roubao’s room to check his test. His foundations were solid, but he fell into traps on two of the trick questions. When Zhenzhen marked the key points in red, Roubao’s face turned green. He had told himself repeatedly to read the questions carefully—how did he forget again in the moment?

“Kicking yourself for having no memory, huh?” Zhenzhen said with a smile. “No worries. You’ll remember after doing your sit-ups.” She already had the answers in mind when writing the test, so it took her less than an hour to finish grading. “You got five wrong due to misreading the questions. Others that you just didn’t know don’t count. That’s five hundred sit-ups. How many days you planning to finish them in?”

“Five days?” Roubao asked, face full of dread.

“Sure,” Zhenzhen agreed easily. “We’ll take the next set of tests five days from now.”
—

The next day was Xi Junjie’s grandmother’s birthday. Xi Junjie wanted to coordinate their departure time with Zhenzhen, but the moment he walked through the gate, Mingbei mysteriously dragged him to the garden.

The trees in the garden were all at least a hundred years old, tall and towering. Xi Junjie was still wondering why Mingbei had brought him here in the middle of winter when he heard a shivering voice counting: “Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty…”

Following the voice, Xi Junjie saw Zhenzhen sitting high up in a tree. On a thick branch beside her hung someone upside down, doing sit-ups while sobbing and counting.

Xi Junjie’s face turned green with fright. He hugged the tree trunk and looked up, shouting, “Zhenzhen, come down now! You could fall!”

The one hanging from the tree almost burst into tears. “Uncle, are you blind? I’m the one about to fall!”

Xi Junjie hadn’t recognized who it was at first, but the word “Uncle” brought a sudden sense of clarity and joy. “Then be careful while doing your sit-ups—don’t fall.”

Roubao nearly cried for real. Zhenzhen burst out laughing in the tree, and only after Roubao finished all one hundred sit-ups did she pull him up. Watching the two of them perform such dangerous moves three or four meters above ground, Xi Junjie felt his soul nearly leave his body.

She climbed down a bit and, seeing the ground was less than two meters away, Zhenzhen did a light somersault, landing silently in front of him.

Turning around, Zhenzhen saw his pale face and realized she had probably scared him. She grabbed his hand with an awkward smile and gently shook it. “You know my hometown is by the mountains, right? I’ve been climbing like this since I was a kid. It’s really not dangerous for me.”

Xi Junjie pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly. “But to me, it looked like you were going to fall.”

Feeling the faint trembling of his body, Zhenzhen wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled her cheek into his chest. “It’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

Roubao was still panting as he climbed down. When his feet finally hit the ground, he turned around and saw the two hugging tightly. His legs gave out and he plopped down at the base of the tree.

Mingbei shook his head and pulled him up. “It’s only been a few years and your legs are already giving out after a hundred sit-ups? You seriously need to work out more.”

“I was scared by those two,” Roubao muttered, gesturing toward Zhenzhen and Xi Junjie. “Aren’t they afraid Grandpa will see and break their legs?”

Mingbei rubbed his chin and commented fairly, “Your aunt will be fine. As for Xi Junjie… not so sure.”

As soon as he finished, they saw Zhenzhen suddenly tip her head up, wrap her arms around Xi Junjie’s neck, and Mingbei immediately realized what she was about to do. He quickly clamped his hands over Roubao’s eyes while keeping his own wide open to watch.

Thankfully, Zhenzhen was mindful of the audience and only gave Xi Junjie a brief kiss before letting go. “Feeling back to normal now?”

Before Xi Junjie could answer, Mingbei chuckled bitterly, “You two might have come back to your senses, but my soul just about flew away.”

Roubao pried Mingbei’s hands off his face, looked at the three of them with varying expressions, and was completely confused.
—

On Xi Junjie’s grandmother’s 80th birthday, Zhenzhen wore a knee-length woolen skirt and a calf-length wool coat. Since leggings didn’t exist in this era, she wore footed pants underneath, paired with a pair of ankle boots from the department store. Even in the future, this outfit wouldn’t be considered outdated.

Her birthday gift for the Xi family’s grandmother was a painting she had done herself—“Turtle, Crane, and Peony”—along with a hundred-year-old ginseng and a century-old lingzhi mushroom, all classic longevity gifts.

At exactly nine o’clock, a car pulled up at Zhenzhen’s door. She carried the painting in one hand and the box of ginseng in the other, while Mingbei helped carry the lingzhi mushroom wrapped in red cloth.

This Lingzhi mushroom was something Zhenzhen had specially cultivated during her trip back to the mountains of Beicha. She first found a Lingzhi the size of a fist, then placed a round mold with the character for “longevity” engraved on it over the mushroom. She accelerated its growth until it filled the mold completely before stopping. When the mold was removed, the “longevity” character appeared clearly and sharply. Zhenzhen then enlarged the Lingzhi even further, making the lines more natural and the character look as if it had formed organically.

Xi Junjie helped Zhenzhen organize everything before supporting her into the car.

In this era, the Imperial Capital wasn’t as sprawling as it would be in the future. Especially among families with some status, most didn’t live very far apart. After about ten minutes of driving, the car pulled up in front of a traditional courtyard residence. Judging from the several cars parked at the entrance and the faint sound of voices from inside, it was clear that quite a few guests had already arrived.

Perhaps sensing that Zhenzhen might be nervous, Xi Junjie gently squeezed her fingers as he helped her out of the car and said softly, “Don’t worry. I’ve got everything covered.”