Ye Tang was too busy.
She got up before dawn every day and left Eva’s house to pick dandelion and wild vegetables like sweet basil, thyme, and chicory.
Every morning, amid the misty fog in the mountains and forests, Ye Tang tried to walk farther. Walking not only strengthened her stamina but also allowed her to discover more useful plants. A few days earlier, she had found a type of red legume shrub in a sunny spot deep in the forest.
Ye Tang was very familiar with this red shrub because she often drank tea made from it in other worlds. This tea was called Rooibos Tea (the same name as the shrub itself), with a sweet taste and an apple-like aroma. Not only was it low in caffeine and low in tannins, so it wouldn’t create dependency, but it was also rich in minerals and antioxidants.
Drinking tea made from Rooibos Tea was undoubtedly beneficial for health. The only problem was that Rooibos Tea seeds were extremely hard to collect. Each pod of Rooibos Tea usually contained only one seed, and the seeds burst open and fell to the ground as soon as they matured. This made it difficult to cultivate Rooibos Tea on a large scale.
However, the Rooibos Tea in the forest was enough to ferment morning tea for Ye Tang, Eva, and Angeline.
After picking the wild vegetables and returning to the original host’s home, Ye Tang began kneading dough, letting it rise, and baking bread. Baking bread required her to chop wood and light the fire, so she chopped wood while waiting for the dough to rise. Once the dough went into the oven, she couldn’t rest; she had to sort the freshly picked dandelions and Rooibos Tea. She also needed to wash and dry the thyme, sweet basil, and other wild vegetables.
Once the bread was baked, Ye Tang immediately took the still-hot loaves to Eva’s house. There, she brewed Rooibos Tea and kept it warm in a thermos pouch. By the time Eva and Angeline woke up, they could enjoy hot morning tea at the perfect temperature.
Ye Tang truly had no time lately to care for Angeline, but leaving Angeline entirely to Eva was indeed a considerable burden on her. Ye Tang, who was always absent from Eva’s dinner table, not only boiled a special remedy for colds from dandelions for Eva but also made breakfast for Angeline and Eva without fail every day.
For breakfast, Ye Tang always baked bread. The bread she baked every day was different. From croissants to round loaves to square dinner rolls and spindle-shaped small breads, each type took on a unique flavor in her hands.
Angeline often didn’t finish her breakfast. She always secretly saved half or a whole piece of bread to savor quietly at noon or in the evening, away from Eva’s eyes. It was as if she were carefully tasting the lingering warmth left by her mother.
Every day from the second floor, Eva watched Angeline, who claimed to be playing but was actually at the edge of the Walnut Grove, gazing down the road where Ye Tang might return, slowly nibbling on bread. It made Eva’s heart ache terribly. She couldn’t bear to expose Angeline, but her resentment toward Ye Tang grew stronger.
Eva’s house had only one bedroom, so Eva slept with Angeline every night. It was usually late at night when Eva heard the sounds of Ye Tang returning downstairs.
Ye Tang, who slept in Eva’s living room at night, never went up to the second floor even once so as not to disturb Eva and Angeline’s rest.
To Eva, Angeline was like an angel; she couldn’t help but love her. Seeing the sensible Angeline never complain a word, just moping all day from missing her mother and even trying to cheer Eva up for fear she would notice, Eva knew Angeline missed her mother terribly.
Thinking of her daughter heading out early and returning late, not knowing what she was busy with, even the most delicious bread and finest red tea tasted like nothing to Eva.
Though she desperately wanted to believe her daughter hadn’t stooped so low as to sell her body, she truly couldn’t imagine any job that could let poor people eat white bread and fresh meat every day and drink high-end tea after just three to five days.
Lying stiffly in bed, stroking Angeline’s golden hair. On the sixth night since her daughter had entrusted her granddaughter to her care, Eva could no longer stop her thoughts from turning to the worst.
Today, right now, she wouldn’t fall asleep before her daughter came home. She had to ask clearly what her daughter was doing!
The moon rose over the treetops, and finally, there were rustling sounds from downstairs. Eva, who was half in dreamland, forced herself awake. She carefully climbed out of bed, afraid of waking the soundly sleeping Angeline.
Once out of the room, Eva lit half a remnant candle. She carried the remnant candle downstairs without even draping a shawl over her shoulders.
Downstairs, Ye Tang had just taken off her coat and let down her long hair tied at the back of her head.
With the help of the Lang family, her preparations had gone very smoothly.
The blacksmith, frightened by the Lang family but won over by Ye Tang with wooden wares, had stayed up late to rush-make the double-handled iron pot she wanted and even had his sons help forge a mortar and pestle for her. With the convenient pot for stir-frying dandelions, the mortar for grinding them fine, and Lang’s help—whose strength far exceeded that of an ordinary adult man—Ye Tang had made nearly twenty kilograms of dandelion coffee in these days just from dandelions.
The fermented Rooibos Tea was much less, less than a kilogram. But since Rooibos Tea and dandelion coffee had different uses, this amount was temporarily sufficient for Ye Tang.
The rumor that “you could trade meat with Mary for new shoes” spread rapidly in Abe Village. As the saying goes, “Anyone who doesn’t take advantage of a bargain like this is a fool.” Almost every household in the village was tempted to find Ye Tang and trade meat for wooden shoes.
After all, there was no private land around Abe Village, so villagers could hunt freely. A piece of meat could feed a family of three for two or three meals at most. But a pair of wooden shoes could last a person several years. Trading meat for shoes was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the villagers of Abe Village.
Seeing Ye Tang directing the Big Gray Wolf brothers Lang and Xiu to do this and that, with three little wolf cubs innocently watching nearby, the villagers, itching with eagerness, lacked the courage to approach and talk to her.
Jasmine was still afraid of the Big Gray Wolf family too. But thinking of her daughter’s ecstatic expression upon getting new shoes, Jasmine mustered infinite courage. Amid the villagers’ gazes of shock, surprise, fear, or worry, she fearlessly walked to the yard and called out in a trembling voice: “Mary, are you there!? I have something to discuss with you!!”
When Jasmine left the yard, many villagers saw the two exquisite new pairs of shoes in her arms.
Thinking that more people would keep coming to Ye Tang to trade meat for shoes, and not knowing how many new pairs she had left, the villagers no longer feared the Big Gray Wolf. Twenty or thirty villagers swarmed toward Ye Tang, most clutching large pieces of meat.
Ye Tang had the villagers come one by one in order. She negotiated with each individually, gave them shoes according to the agreement, and left maintaining the queue to Lang.
At first, the villagers flinched at Lang, but upon realizing that Lang spoke, gestured, and moved with far more refinement and elegance than they humans did, most felt embarrassed. While awkward, many couldn’t help secretly imitating Lang’s postures and movements.
The children accepted it even better. On the fourth day the Lang family worked for Ye Tang, the village children were already playing with them. Boys liked using Lang’s strong arms as pull-up bars, hanging from them. Girls liked stroking his fluffy soft tail, and the youngest even liked riding on his neck.
“Lang! Good morning!”
Young boys running errands for timid parents also jumped up to high-five Lang.
By now, it couldn’t be said that everyone in Abe Village accepted the Big Gray Wolf family as neighbors. But at least no one pointed weapons at them anymore.
And while the Lang family drew all the villagers’ attention, Ye Tang quietly disposed of eighty percent of the wooden shoes left by the original host’s husband and obtained a large pile of contracts.
Not every household wanting shoes had meat to trade, and Ye Tang didn’t accept just any meat.
So what about those villagers who came late, couldn’t get shoes, and had no meat at home? What did they do?
The solution was simple. Ye Tang signed contracts with them, clearly stating that she allowed them to take wooden shoes on advance, on the condition that once they had suitable meat, they had to inform her first. Ye Tang would decide whether to accept it. If she declined this time, the contract remained valid until she received the meat. If a villager reneged, the Old Village Head would step in to collect.
Old Village Head Morgan had already agreed to Ye Tang’s request. This old man doted on his granddaughter, but he felt guilty toward the original host, who had been bullied by her.
Bread, meat, wine, wild vegetables, dandelion coffee, Rooibos Tea—all in place. Before returning to Eva’s house, Ye Tang got word from the blacksmith that the handcart she commissioned was ready, and she could pick it up tomorrow.
This handcart couldn’t have come at a better time. The east wind Ye Tang awaited had arrived; this handcart was the first rocket she would launch.
“—God, God! Who’s there? Who are you!?”
Ye Tang, who was undoing her shirt buttons, turned around and saw Eva on the stairs, nearly dropping the candle.
“Mother?”
The familiar voice made Eva cover her mouth. She truly didn’t dare recognize the woman before her—the Mary she knew was never such a beautiful woman.
She had watched Mary get married, watched her give birth. She knew well how household chores, childbirth, and child-rearing had worn away her rose-like daughter’s youth and beauty.
Yet the woman standing before her now was radiant and blooming, like a flower nurtured by morning dew, fertile black soil, and placed in a gemstone pot—ever unfading.
Her skin had a delicate, warm luster; her cheeks were fair with a healthy pink glow. Her lips remained sharply peaked but were soft, glossy, like the freshest, plumpest cherries. Even with only the faint light of the remnant candle indoors, her golden hair draped over her shoulders like threads spun from gold.
The woman before her wasn’t wrapped in the shabby dresses Eva was used to; she wore men’s clothing that surprisingly suited her slender yet curvaceous figure, exuding a natural, spirited handsomeness.
How could such a clear-eyed beauty have been a drunken wretch just a week ago? She almost suspected her daughter had been possessed by a demon!
“Mother, please keep your voice down. Angeline is still sleeping upstairs, right? It wouldn’t be good to wake her.”
The original host had a cold relationship with her mother. Ye Tang had no intention of getting close to Eva, whose ideas and views differed so greatly from hers—Eva, who believed her daughter had no choice but to sell her body if she didn’t marry. Ye Tang’s impression of her wasn’t good.
“I have to get up early tomorrow. If you don’t mind, I’d like to rest now.”
As she spoke, Ye Tang took off her shirt and tossed it onto the sofa. Then she sat down and removed her long pants.
Eva was choked by Ye Tang’s words and stood there dumbfounded, mouth agape.
Indeed, this was the kind of thing her disagreeable daughter would say… And there were no suspicious marks on her daughter’s body or legs, no signs of licentious behavior.
The woman before her wasn’t possessed by a demon, and her daughter truly hadn’t sold her body. Her skin was pristine white, save for hands and feet blistered and bloodied from work, with occasional breaks in the skin.
Each scrape, each blister was proof of her hard work.
Thinking that this woman, covered in scrapes and blisters on her hands and feet without a single frown, had once been the daughter she cherished in her palm, Eva’s eyes instantly reddened, and her heart ached faintly.
Was it too late now to sincerely say “I’m sorry” to her daughter?