Around a little after four, when work points were being tallied, Jiang Heng was still at the village committee office, recording who had earned how many points each day. At that moment, with his back straight and pen flying across the paper, he had no idea that his newly married young wife had already become the center of attention in the village.
Down the mountain, many villagers had gathered near their homes, crowding together out of curiosity.
“Look, Su Jin’s been up the mountain all day and hasn’t come down yet. Could it be she’s embarrassed because she can’t cut enough firewood?”
“Who told her to brag so much?”
Meanwhile, Su Jin had just finished handling a withered tree. She picked up her sickle and swiftly chopped the branches into manageable pieces. The other branches were still green and would need to be dried later—too much trouble. She simply collected the fallen branches, trimmed the twigs from the trunk, and set them aside.
Wiping the sweat from her face with her sleeve, Su Jin noticed a hen with several chicks foraging nearby. The mother hen saw her too and spread its wings to protect the little ones. It noticed Su Jin standing there but didn’t dare to run, keeping a wary eye on her.
Su Jin saw the gleam in the hen’s eyes. With a mother hen and chicks, she could take them all home. But anything caught on the mountain was supposed to be turned in to the village—it was communal property. If others saw her taking them, they would definitely get jealous and demand she hand them over. They might even accuse her of selfishness for taking what belonged to everyone.
If it had been a wild boar, she could have swung her sickle at its neck and bled it out. But this was a mother hen with chicks, and they all had to stay alive.
Su Jin was seven or eight meters away. If she moved now, the mother hen could escape into the grass in a blink. She needed to be quick. She faked a move to distract the hen, making it think she wasn’t the target, causing it to relax slightly. Then, in the next instant, she lunged forward, grabbing its wings. The chicks chirped helplessly, unaware that a “bad woman” had caught their mother.
“Chirp, chirp~~”
Su Jin counted—there were five chicks. With one swift scoop, she gathered them all into her hands. She picked some leaves and pulled up some weeds, laying them at the bottom of a basket, then tied the mother hen’s wings and feet with a strip of grass rope. She placed the chicks among the mother hen’s feathers.
After finishing, she had bundled several piles of firewood, carried a thick stick across her shoulders, and had the basket on her back. These loads were nothing to her; since the age of ten, she had undergone Spartan-style training, where carrying fifty pounds while running long distances was basic.
Walking down the path, Su Jin even found some medicinal herbs by the roadside. “What a treasure! Gotta grab a few.” She followed the marked trail and descended the mountain smoothly.
The villagers below watched, amused. Only a few scattered people were still up the mountain with small bundles of firewood. A single family would barely get through a day with so little.
“Hey, look, that’s Su Jin!” Some sat under the trees, some stood, and others even climbed up to observe. From afar, her face couldn’t be seen; the tall bundles of firewood on her shoulders completely blocked her.
One man leisurely fanned himself. “No way. If she can carry all that firewood, I’ll write my name backward.” But some others were envious.
“Who do you think she is? Carrying that much firewood back—so capable!”
“Yeah, just looking at those bundles from afar… Even two strong men would struggle to carry that uphill.”
Another villager, Li Dagen, was panting heavily, fanning himself with his collar. He had gone up the mountain today too. “Cutting firewood up there is so hot! I only managed this little, and it’s still useless!”
Some women nearby scolded, “You didn’t go a few days ago when there was plenty of firewood. Now, look, barely anything’s left because you were lazy.”
Li Dagen’s forehead glistened with sweat. “I didn’t want to! I’ve been working all the previous days and couldn’t take leave. The firewood I got came from deep in the forest.”
Some older men looked down on him for whining about small tasks.
“You kid, and you’re exhausted from such little firewood? Look at the one coming down the mountain—don’t know which family cut so much.”
Li Dagen was incredulous. “There’s barely any firewood on the mountain! Where did this come from?”
Everyone craned their necks, eager to see the person carrying the dozens of pounds of firewood.
“Ah!! It’s Su Jin!” The young men perched in trees recognized her. Their jaws almost dropped in shock when they saw her.
“No way… it can’t be… are you blind?”
Only the young men in the trees insisted it was Su Jin; the others refused to believe it. A woman holding a sewing needle remarked, “You must be mistaken. Su Jin looks delicate; there’s no way she could carry all that.”
“See for yourselves.”
As Su Jin passed by, she noticed everyone staring at her. Was it because they saw the chicken? No—before leaving the mountain, she had fed the mother hen and chicks medicine to make them sleep; they wouldn’t make a sound.
Li Dagen walked over, his eyes wide and a bit foolish. “Aren’t you Jiang Heng’s newlywed wife?”
Su Jin didn’t know why everyone was gathered there; maybe they liked chatting under the trees in the evening. At that time, with no phones or electricity, people had nothing else to do.
She barely went out before and didn’t recognize anyone, so she just nodded and moved on.
Old Mrs. Lu chased her. “New bride, did you cut all this yourself?” The suspicion in her voice was palpable. She kept questioning, as if Su Jin were a criminal who had to explain everything.
Su Jin rolled her eyes. “Who else would help me cut it?”
Old Mr. Lu added, “You definitely couldn’t have carried all that yourself!”
Su Jin slammed the bundles onto the ground with a thud, raising a cloud of dust. Her annoyed expression made the villagers’ hearts skip a beat—they sensed she was about to lose her temper.
