Chapter 72: Sheng Wanze is Coming Back
“This set should be more than enough to last you through the bitter winter,” Sheng Wanyan said.
Secretary Zhang quickly pulled out a five-yuan bill and pressed it into her hand, followed by an enthusiastic invitation to stay for lunch.
“Here is the five yuan. You must stay for lunch today, and don’t you dare refuse me.”
Secretary Zhang was in a spectacular mood, and she certainly had a flawless grasp of social graces.
“Then I shall respectfully obey your command,” Sheng Wanyan replied with a smile. She wasn’t one to put on false airs. After all, wasn’t the entire purpose of her journey to solidify this connection?
Since both women found value in the alliance, Secretary Zhang’s household went all out, generously preparing a spread that included two hearty meat dishes.
Secretary Zhang was the mother of four children: two sons and two daughters. The oldest was ten, while the youngest little girl was only four. Sheng Wanyan reached into her bag, retrieved eight premium White Rabbit milk candies, and handed exactly two to each child.
“Thank you, big sister!”
“Thank you, sister~”
The four children were exceptionally well-mannered, accepting the treats with both hands and bowing politely.
Secretary Zhang’s parents-in-law were equally adept at reading the room. Noticing how deeply their daughter-in-law—who held immense influence as the factory director’s personal secretary—valued Sheng Wanyan, they continuously scooped the best cuts of meat into the young woman’s bowl.
“Comrade Sheng, please don’t be formal. Eat more!”
Secretary Zhang’s mother-in-law piled two more thick pieces of braised pork onto her rice until Wanyan’s bowl was practically overflowing.
“Auntie, you are far too kind,” Wanyan protested gently, holding up her hands. “My bowl is already full, and I naturally have a very small appetite.”
“Mom, Comrade Sheng isn’t lying, let her eat at her own pace,” Secretary Zhang chimed in with a chuckle.
“Exactly, Auntie. If my bowl runs empty, I promise I’ll reach for more myself,” Wanyan added. She was thoroughly stunned by such aggressive hospitality and quickly reassured them that she wouldn’t hesitate to help herself.
“Alright, then treat this as your own home. Don’t be shy.”
“I won’t, Auntie.”
The moment they finished eating, Sheng Wanyan instinctively moved to help clear the table, but Secretary Zhang immediately swerved to block her. Wanyan had already delivered a premium skincare set without asking for an exorbitant price, and she had just consumed a massive portion of their meat; they weren’t about to make her do menial labor.
“Why don’t you help my eldest son review his homework instead?” Zhang suggested.
“Of course!” Wanyan agreed readily.
While she hadn’t studied the specific curriculum of the 1970s, she held a modern doctorate degree; guiding an elementary school student was entirely within her wheelhouse. Secretary Zhang’s eldest son was currently in the third grade, struggling with basic addition and subtraction. Wanyan broke down the logic using simple, vivid analogies. For the first time in his life, the young boy actually found mathematics engaging.
Sheng Wanyan didn’t linger too long past the lessons, as her true objective for the day was the black market. Bidding farewell to the Zhang family, she navigated the urban streets, relying entirely on the original owner’s childhood memories to pinpoint the location of the local underground trade zone.
The original owner had only visited the area once as a child, but to Wanyan’s relief, the black market hadn’t shifted locations after all these years. This spared her the dangerous risk of wandering around and asking strangers for directions.
Sheng Wanyan ducked into a deserted alleyway. Ensuring no one was watching, she slipped into her spatial dimension to apply her disguise. This time, she chose the look of a sharp, ill-tempered, middle-aged woman. She packed three pounds of raw cotton, five pheasants, and five rabbits into a canvas backpack, leaving the massive bulk of her inventory secured inside her space until she could safely gauge the market.
The moment she reached the hidden entrance, an underground lookout stepped forward, blocking her path.
“Go up the mountain to fight the tiger,” the man muttered.
Sheng Wanyan froze. She truly hadn’t anticipated that the city’s black market would utilize formal secret passphrases. Racking her brain, she threw out the first logical response that mirrored the linguistic style of the era: “Go down the mountain to collect the straw…?”
Wanyan’s heart hammered against her ribs, her palms growing slick with sweat.
The lookout paused, evaluated her stern disguise, and nodded. “Get on in.”
Letting out a massive, silent breath of relief, Sheng Wanyan shouldered her heavy backpack and stepped through the threshold. The city center’s black market was vast, operating on a completely different scale than the small district market back home. The territory was packed with traders, and rare commodities flowed freely.
Wanyan pinpointed a high-traffic intersection and squatted low against the wall. In this environment, an experienced trader didn’t need to loudly hawk their wares; simply maintaining a low, guarded posture was enough to prompt desperate buyers to slide over and whisper inquiries.
The literal second the word cotton slipped from her lips, a crowd of eager buyers materialized. With the bitter winter freeze looming, every household was scrambling to secure provisions. Raw cotton, fine cloth, and fresh meat were absolute necessities.
“I have three pounds of loose cotton and a few fresh kills from the mountains,” she whispered roughly.
“Auntie, I’ll take the entire lot,” a man countered instantly, flashing a roll of bills.
Seeing how wonderfully straightforward the buyer was, Wanyan didn’t waste a second, swiftly trading the goods for cash. Once he vanished into the crowd, she moved to a completely different sector of the market, squatted down again, and pulled another batch of supplies from her space.
She strictly adhered to her strategy of selling small, untraceable amounts at various corners, liquidating her inventory piecemeal. Within a little over an hour, she prepared to withdraw. She could intuitively sense that the lookouts and syndicates running the city’s black market were far sharper than the ones back in her district. If she didn’t vanish immediately, the anomalies in her inventory would draw dangerous eyes.
Her instincts were dead accurate. The moment Sheng Wanyan slipped out the exit, the market overseers realized a single trader had been moving massive quantities of high-grade goods across multiple sectors. But by the time they flooded the corridors to track her down, she had completely dissolved into the urban landscape.
“The target slipped right past us, and no one managed to lock down her identity!”
“Keep your eyes peeled next week! If she shows her face again, alert me instantly!” the foreman barked.
Sheng Wanyan was entirely oblivious to the ripples she had caused. Ducking into a public restroom, she stripped away her disguise, changed back into her standard factory clothes, and retrieved a brand-new bicycle from her spatial dimension.
She absolutely refused to endure the suffocating, foul-smelling transit of the municipal bus a second time; she would much rather let her lower back suffer the bumpy ride home.
It was already five o’clock in the evening by the time her wheels touched the district lines. Approaching the perimeter of the tube-shaped building, she seamlessly returned the bicycle to her spatial dimension and strolled into the courtyard on foot.
That night, locked safely inside her bedroom, Wanyan eagerly tabulated her underground earnings. Liquidating the raw cotton had proven to be an absolute goldmine; she had successfully moved two hundred kilograms of product. Combined with the profits from her wild game, brown sugar, and miscellaneous rations, her single afternoon trip had netted a staggering 958.34 yuan.
This single deployment was equivalent to the revenue of three or four grueling trips to the district market. Content with her massive treasury, she resolved that for the remainder of the winter season, she would never risk stepping foot into the black market again. Her capital was locked down.
With her weekends free, Sheng Wanyan began knitting a custom winter sweater for Gu Tingxiao. She selected a rich, charcoal-gray wool yarn—a color that was exceptionally pleasing to the eye while remaining highly resistant to the dirt and mud of a military camp. Her manual dexterity had reached a master level; her needles flew with incredible speed, entirely shedding the clumsy pacing of her early attempts.
Her life settled into a deeply satisfying, leisurely rhythm. She peacefully knitted her sweaters during her quiet hours at the Propaganda office and dedicated her evenings at home to translating the capital newspaper’s foreign books. The mechanics manual was incredibly dense, packed with highly sophisticated technical jargon and formulas that required an immense amount of cognitive energy to decode.
She was acutely aware that the domestic technology of this era remained severely underdeveloped, forcing researchers to study foreign publications to advance national infrastructure. Realizing that her precise translations would directly aid the country’s top scientists filled her chest with a deep sense of pride and purpose. She attacked the manuscripts with immense positivity, determined to finalize the text as quickly as possible so it could reach the laboratories where it was desperately needed.
Still, the sheer volume of the text was staggering. Staring down at pages of industrial terms left her temples throbbing with a brain-taxing ache. She pulled out a massive English-to-Chinese technical dictionary, utilizing her sharp intellect alongside her modern insights to conquer the difficult paragraphs.
The weeks bled past in a quiet blur. Half a month later, a heavy envelope from Sheng Wanze arrived at the apartment.
The letter announced that he and his fiancée, Pan Yue, had officially secured their transit authorization and boarded a long-distance bus; they were scheduled to touch down in Chengdu by the middle of the month. Furthermore, Pan Yue’s parents intended to carve out a window from their own schedules to travel down to the city, allowing the two clans to host a formal summit dinner.
Backed by the substantial cash reserves Wanyan had quietly funneled into the household, Mother Sheng’s face was filled with absolute confidence. The family had aggressively stockpiled a massive inventory of prime meat over the past few weeks, with Wanyan routinely walking through the door balancing two or three pounds of fresh pork or beef. Throughout the brutal winter, the Sheng household would never have to worry about food shortages, ensuring they could entertain their esteemed guests with the highest level of luxury.
“Even though the current political climate prevents us from hosting a massive, public wedding banquet, we must absolutely furnish every single asset and comfort the bride deserves,” Grandma Sheng declared, addressing Father and Mother Sheng during dinner. By choosing to forego a traditional, rowdy celebration, their family already owed a debt of face to Pan Yue; they could not afford to slight her in any other capacity.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Mother Sheng reassured her instantly. “The heavy bridal quilts, the goose-down pillows, the painted washbasins, and the custom mahogany wardrobe are all brand-new and sitting in their room.”
“We’ve also successfully organized the high-grade state coupons required to purchase a new bicycle, a wrist-watch, and a radio set for the couple.”
Grandma Sheng nodded in approval, her expression solemn as she issued a final maternal directive. “When it comes to distributing the household resettlement funds among the children, you must remain flawlessly fair and just. You cannot show a single shred of partiality to one over the other.”
“That goes without saying, Mom,” Mother Sheng replied warmly. “Everything will be executed exactly as we initially agreed.”
