Chapter 43: Received the Royalties
Before heading out, Sheng Wanyan meticulously prepared a five-kilogram sack of rice, deliberately mixing a small amount of fine soil and chaff into the grain.
During her previous venture into the black market, she had noticed that the rice sold there was never perfectly clean; it was always laced with a bit of grit, and pure white rice was an incredibly rare sight. The stock was completely different from the refined grain sold at the state-owned Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, where warehouse workers were specifically paid to sift and clean the inventory. She had been a bit too careless to notice that detail last time, but she refused to make the same mistake twice.
Along with the rice, she packed five wild pheasants and three pounds of brown sugar into her heavy canvas backpack. Satisfied with her setup, she slipped out of her space, assumed the slow, measured gait of a fifty-year-old peasant woman, and melted into the shadows of the black market.
Sheng Wanyan returned to her usual corner and squatted down. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before a cautious buyer approached her.
The initial contents of her backpack sold out rapidly, prompting her to discreetly restock from her space whenever no one was looking. To minimize risk, she only worked the corner for about half an hour before packing up and moving to an entirely different intersection.
Since it was a rare day off and she had plenty of time, she was determined to maximize her earnings so she would have more cash to quietly tuck away at home. She systematically rotated through five or six different intersections, hawking her goods while keeping a hawk-like watch on her surroundings.
“Auntie, I’ll take whatever brown sugar you have left,” whispered a middle-aged man in his early forties. His daughter was currently pregnant, and he was desperate to buy something nutritious to build up her strength.
“That’ll require a coupon, plus two yuan,” Sheng Wanyan rasped back, keeping up her older-woman persona.
The man pulled out a small wad of cash, carefully counted out two yuan, and handed the bills over along with a local food coupon. Sheng Wanyan passed him the remaining two kilograms of brown sugar. The moment the man vanished into the crowd, she quickly steered herself toward the exit. She had lingered far too long today; any further delay would inevitably draw unwanted attention from the local market lookouts.
Once clear of the black market lanes, she ducked into a deserted alley, slipped into her space, and immediately changed back into her clean city clothes.
She dumped the day’s earnings onto her bamboo table and began counting. By keeping her transactions small and constantly shifting locations, she had managed to pocket a staggering twenty-four yuan in just a few hours.
She had also accumulated a thick stack of miscellaneous ration coupons. Content with her haul, she resolved to avoid the black market entirely for the next month to ensure she didn’t draw the spotlight.
Sheng Wanyan sorted through the coupons, picking out every single ticket set to expire by the end of June. After leaving her space, she headed straight for the city’s main Supply and Marketing Cooperative.
The stack of expiring tickets was quite substantial, consisting mostly of standard food coupons; people in this era considered specialized commodity tickets far too valuable to part with and usually hoarded them until the last possible moment. Wanyan was determined to burn through every single expiring coupon she held. It didn’t matter how much she bought—anything she couldn’t immediately use could be stored indefinitely inside her temporal dimension, ready to be brought home whenever the family ran low.
By the time she reached the counter, she had purchased five kilograms of sweet pastries, two bottles of premium Moutai liquor, three pounds of pork, three pounds of fine white flour, and two large cans of nutritional malted milk. She even used her clothing coupons to buy two high-quality cotton sweatshirts for her parents, which would be perfect for their daily factory shifts.
Once her shopping was complete, she found a secluded spot, ducked into her space, and organized her purchases. She left the bulk of the goods in her warehouse, stepping out with only a single pound of pastries, one pound of the fresh pork, and her parents’ new sweatshirts before heading home.
The family hadn’t eaten meat in over two weeks, so bringing home a modest one-pound cut of pork wouldn’t arouse any suspicion from the neighbors. She arrived just as the building’s communal kitchens were starting to fill with dinner smoke, allowing her to slip inside entirely unnoticed.
When it came to meat, everyone in the Sheng household preferred rich, fatty cuts, whereas Sheng Wanyan strictly avoided them. Accordingly, she had chosen a piece that was predominantly fat but still carried a decent strip of lean meat. At the dinner table, the lean portions were automatically deposited into her bowl; the entire family knew she couldn’t stand greasy food.
Mother Sheng always sighed at this habit, privately thinking her daughter simply didn’t know how to appreciate good food. In this era, fatty meat was the ultimate luxury. With such a picky appetite, Mother Sheng worried the girl would surely suffer grievances once she married and lived under a husband’s roof.
Since it was a rest day, Mother Sheng took over the cooking duties. Her culinary skills were undeniable; her braised pork belly was deeply savory, perfectly caramelized, and completely melted in the mouth without feeling overly greasy. She had also prepared her signature braised pork with preserved mustard greens, a dish so tender it practically dissolved on the tongue.
The family ate in blissful, rapt silence, savoring the rich flavors until their tongues practically curled.
“Wife,” Father Sheng smacked his lips contentedly, breaking the silence. “We should definitely eat like this more often.”
Mother Sheng shot him a dry, devastating glare. It was always the ones who didn’t manage the household ledger who had no concept of how expensive daily necessities actually were.
“And exactly how many meat coupons do you think we are allocated each month?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. He thought about eating meat all day long, completely blind to how exhausting it was just to wait in the butcher’s lines.
“Hey, come on, wife,” Father Sheng grinned, offering a look that said he couldn’t be easily fooled. “Our household receives six pounds of meat coupons a month.”
Mother Sheng’s temper flared so violently she nearly flipped the dining table right then and there.
Sitting on the side, Sheng Wanyan silently gave her father a thumbs-up in her heart. Her father was truly a brave soldier to test her mother’s boundaries like that today. Was he trying to lead a peasants’ rebellion to liberate himself from her financial rule?
Mother Sheng let out a cold, menacing sneer. Father Sheng’s shoulders immediately slumped. He shuddered, quickly stuffed a piece of mustard green into his mouth, and lowered his head, not daring to utter another syllable.
Under the oppressive weight of Mother Sheng’s radiating fury, the family quietly finished their meal and retreated to their respective bedrooms uncharacteristically early. As for what kind of disciplinary “reckoning” awaited Father Sheng behind their closed bedroom door, no one dared to ask.
In truth, Mother Sheng’s nerves were tightly frayed because of Sheng Wanze’s upcoming wedding in October. Even though a grand public banquet was out of the question, hosting a proper series of private dinners for their close friends and relatives would still cost a small fortune. More importantly, sourcing enough quality meat for multiple gatherings was an absolute nightmare.
She refused to let the prominent Pan family look down on the Sheng household. They had to put on an impressive, flawless display to prove exactly how deeply they cherished and valued their new daughter-in-law. If the Pan family left Chengdu feeling slighted, it wouldn’t just damage the Sheng family’s reputation and strain in-law relations—it would inevitably cast a miserable shadow over the young couple’s future marriage.
Yet, despite her heavy mental burden, Father Sheng had chosen tonight to playfully nag her about their meat rations. She resolved that he wouldn’t know peace until she had thoroughly exacted her revenge for his thoughtless comments.
Over the following weeks, Sheng Wanyan focused entirely on her factory duties. Thanks to her strict adherence to a low-profile routine over the past month, Niu Fangli had finally stopped monitoring her and Wu Jiaxiu’s every move. Whenever the two friends spoke, they strictly confined their office chatter to general news and neighborhood gossip. Even if Niu Fangli’s suspicious nature made her itch to uncover some illicit trade, she couldn’t find a single shred of evidence to use against them.
During her quiet desk hours, Wanyan also managed to complete two gorgeous sets of knit sweaters and trousers for Grandpa Sheng. The moment the old man received them, a proud, sweeping smile settled onto his face, and it hadn’t faded since.
By the middle of June, Sheng Wanyan still hadn’t received any mail from the capital’s newspaper office. She estimated she would need to head to the post office central to the city in a few days to check in person, just in case the delivery was delayed. Still, she felt no anxiety whatsoever, calmly gliding through her daily routines.
Sure enough, a few days later, her patience was rewarded. When she checked the post office counter, the clerk handed over two official envelopes alongside a thick, heavy bundle of source materials dispatched from the capital. The volume of documents was noticeably double the size of her previous assignment; it was clear proof that the editors in the capital had fully recognized her exceptional talent and reliability.
Sheng Wanyan found a deserted alleyway, transferred the heavy bundle securely into her space, and quickly pedaled her bicycle back home.
That evening, she locked her bedroom door and tore open the first envelope. Inside was an official letter from the editorial department stating that due to her flawless accuracy, they would be supplying her with significantly larger bulk shipments moving forward. Just as she had requested in her previous note, they expected her to translate and return no fewer than thirty articles per month.
For this deployment, the newspaper had shipped her a staggering eighty articles of varying lengths. Tucked inside the second envelope was the cash payment for her inaugural manuscript.
Her first submission had comprised thirty translated articles, totaling exactly 21,000 words. At the standard professional rate of one cent per word, her royalties amounted to a crisp, substantial 210 yuan.
Originally, the agency had intended to convert a portion of her earnings into premium commodity coupons, but after reviewing her explicit written request stating she only required direct currency, they had bypassed the coupons and sent the full balance in cold, hard cash.
Staring down at the thick stack of bills earned through her own hard labor, Sheng Wanyan felt a profound sense of fulfillment ripple through her chest. Her eyes even grew slightly misty. In this rigid, unfamiliar era, she realized that only when a person establishes their own tangible value can they truly begin to feel a genuine sense of belonging to the world around them.
Yet, as that sense of belonging settled into her skin, a familiar, deep-seated ambition began to stir. Human nature was inherently driven; having tasted success, she naturally found herself craving more. In her past life, she had watched countless elite tycoons obsessively chase money, power, and legacy, and she was no exception to that rule. If anything, her unique circumstances had only made her internal drive more formidable.
Sheng Wanyan carefully locked the cash and letters away inside her bamboo cabin, pulled out the first stack of the newly arrived foreign articles, and immediately began translating.
Having reaped the immense financial rewards of her intellect, she was entirely addicted to the hustle.
