Chapter 251: It’s Raining
All six slots on the student roster were currently empty.
Jian Xingxia tried dragging and dropping the names of employees whose skill levels were below professional grade into the slots, and it worked.
However, the remaining blank spaces displayed “Awaiting Admission.” When Jian Xingxia clicked on an empty slot and selected “Admit,” a shocking scene unfolded before her.
A long list of names appeared on the virtual panel.
[Xu Sanniu, Sewing Level (Level 0)] [Student’s Inner Thought: There’s another hole in my pants, so they’re going to laugh at me again tomorrow. They’ll say I’m a motherless child who wears pants with holes. If only I knew how to do needlework, I could sew them up myself…]
[Sun Dongniang, Sewing Level (Level 2)] [Student’s Inner Thought: I went to sell my handkerchiefs today, but they were rejected again. Sigh. It’s a pity I only know how to stitch them but don’t know how to embroider. Plain handkerchiefs don’t bring in any money, yet my embroidery always gets sent back. The rice jar at home is empty. How on earth can I embroider beautiful patterns…]
[Qin Shuang’er, Sewing Level (Level 1)] [Student’s Inner Thought: This is so hard. How can anyone actually master needlework? Even though all my clothes are made by professional seamstresses, my parents say a woman has to marry. And once you marry, you have to make shoes, embroider pillowcases, and sew clothes for your husband’s family… How annoying. I don’t want to get married, and I don’t want to make clothes for anyone else!]
[Old Madame Su, Sewing Level (Level 2)] [Student’s Inner Thought: My little grandson came back today and said the tiger-head cap worn by Old Zhou’s grandson looked wonderful. He wanted me to make one too. But how could I know how to make a tiger-head cap! At my age, I wonder if there’s any place left for me to learn…]
Jian Xingxia scrolled through seven or eight pages in a row, and the roster still stretched on.
If hiring temporary workers was like posting a job advertisement and letting the system automatically filter and match them, then admitting students meant Jian Xingxia could take the initiative to handpick the candidates based on their skill levels and inner thoughts on the list!
It had changed from a blind selection to a deliberate curation.
Jian Xingxia suddenly felt a heavy weight of responsibility on her shoulders.
Judging by their inner thoughts, there was a vast difference between the students and the employees. The difficulty level of the employees’ plights was much higher, whereas many on the student list lived decent lives and simply wished to perfect their craft or add a minor skill.
However, she was the one choosing the students from this roster.
In other words, her decision could drastically alter the lives of the people on this list.
Whom to select, and whom to leave behind, became a profound dilemma.
Looking at the extensive list, Jian Xingxia’s initial wave of excitement and agitation suddenly ebbed.
But within moments, she rationalized it. This long list was just like a school of stranded, thirsty little fish on a beach—there might be thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of them, and she couldn’t save them all.
However, every single little fish she did save would be truly rescued.
With that thought, Jian Xingxia selected Xu Sanniu and Sun Dongniang.
The list was too long for her to review every name, but among the ten people on the very first page, these two seemed to be in the most urgent need of help.
Jian Xingxia decided to select them first to see how it went. For the remaining four slots, she planned to wait until Lin Sanniang and either Ruan Xiang or Shaoyin came over tomorrow to ask them. Perhaps some of their close sisters might happen to be on the list.
She wanted to see if she could recruit specific individuals this way.
As for the bamboo weaving side, Jian Xingxia didn’t have much to pick through. Bamboo weaving wasn’t a mainstream skill. Although the applicant list was long, it mostly consisted of people who simply wished to acquire a trade. Not many wanted to learn it due to extreme destitution, so Jian Xingxia simply picked six impoverished souls.
Having recruited eight newcomers in one go, Jian Xingxia felt a bit apprehensive.
She had no idea what kind of scene tomorrow would bring.
Xujia Village.
Xu Sanniu stood before her dilapidated, low mud hut, watching the sun gradually dip behind the mountains.
The sky grew dark, and the temperature dropped along with it.
Only when the very last trace of daylight faded away did Xu Sanniu withdraw her gaze, turning around to call the small dog beside her into the house.
The interior was pitch black. Her lamp oil and candles had long since run out, and she had no money to buy more, so she always waited until there wasn’t a single shred of light left outside before coming indoors.
The door to the broken hut swung shut. There was no lock, so she simply inserted a kindling stick into a hole in the door frame.
It couldn’t keep anyone out; sometimes, a particularly strong gust of wind could blow it right open.
The little dog whimpered in Xu Sanniu’s arms.
It was hungry.
But Xu Sanniu’s stomach growled even louder than the dog’s. Her abdomen throbbed with a sharp ache from starvation; the last time she had eaten anything was the day before yesterday.
The emptiness in her stomach twisted painfully, and even pressing the warm little dog against it did nothing to ease the discomfort.
Frustrated, Xu Sanniu struck the aching spot on her stomach twice with her fist—the superficial pain of the blow briefly supplanted the hollow, gnawing ache within her.
Pain was pain, but Xu Sanniu wasn’t afraid of superficial injuries. She frequently fought with the people who called her a bastard child, and she had endured countless beatings over the years.
But she was terrified of the hunger pangs.
The pain from a beating would fade after a short while, but the ache of an empty stomach could torture a person continuously, keeping them awake all night.
The little dog was still whimpering beside her.
Xu Sanniu picked it up, holding it level with her eyes, and said crossly, “Stop making noise! I haven’t eaten anything either! Didn’t I give you half of the steamed bun I begged for the day before yesterday?”
The dog continued to whimper, unable to comprehend her words.
Xu Sanniu chided it, “Do you want to run off with Ye Baoshan and his crowd? You’re an idiot! They’re only luring you over because they want to skin you and eat your meat!”
“Is it so bad staying with me?” Xu Sanniu grumbled testily. “No matter how hungry I get, I’ve never eaten you, have I? Whenever I find food, I always split it half-and-half with you!”
“If you hadn’t run off after Ye Baoshan and those boys, I wouldn’t have chased you like crazy, and I wouldn’t have torn a hole in my pants!”
Xu Sanniu pressed the little dog back against her aching stomach and reached down to feel the gaping tear over the knee of her pants. “Such a massive hole… how am I going to patch it? These are the only pants I have. From now on, they’re all going to laugh at me.”
Xu Sanniu buried her face in the plump fur of the little dog.
Her stomach ached, and her fists could only provide a fleeting distraction. As soon as the sting of her blows faded, the agony in her stomach flared up to torment her once more.
Xu Sanniu forced herself to try and sleep. With neither light nor fire in the house, the only thing she could do after dark was sleep.
But having gone two days without food, the cold seeped deep into her body, and even cradling the dog failed to warm her.
The gaping hole over her knee, in particular, let the freezing wind pierce right through the joints of her bones.
It was already September, and the autumn wind grew chillier by the day.
The dilapidated door rattled violently under the wind, banging against the frame.
Xu Sanniu looked toward the broken door panels that failed to block her line of sight. Once the next autumn rain fell, she could go and find her mother.
Her mother had frozen to death during the autumn last year.
Her mother was a simpleton who had wandered into Xujia Village from goodness knows where. She had been mistreated by someone and subsequently gave birth to three children, though the first two were snatched away and sold.
By the time Xu Sanniu was born, the simpleton mother refused to let her go under any circumstances, keeping her clutched in her embrace whether she was begging for food, sleeping, or using the latrine.
Xu Sanniu had traveled all over with her simpleton mother begging for scraps until she turned nine years old. Together, they gathered wood and stones from all around to construct a tiny shelter that resembled a dog kennel.
Xu Sanniu had also learned to wield a sharpened bamboo spike, thrusting it at the large hands that reached toward them out of the dark.
Last autumn, a torrential rain fell, and the broken hut leaked from every corner. She caught a chill from the rain, developed a severe cough, and burned with a fever that left her speaking in a delirium.
Her simpleton mother had piled every single article of clothing and blanket onto her body. The next day, she miraculously woke up.
Her mother wasn’t home, so she unsteadily dragged herself out the door, only to meet the bizarre stares of the villagers.
They had gathered in one spot, yet they collectively opened a path for her by unspoken consensus.
At the end of that path, in the middle of the crowd, lay her simpleton mother, curled into a tight ball, her body already ice-cold and stiff.
She was still clutching a bundle of stripped reed stalks in her arms.
Xu Sanniu thought she was truly a fool.
The reed blossoms had already been stripped clean at the very beginning of autumn. Impoverished families who couldn’t afford cotton-padded clothes would stuff reed blossoms into their coarse hemp garments, packing them tight to stave off a bit of the chill.
But what use was a bundle of bare reed stalks?
Was it truly worth running out into the freezing frost in the middle of the night, only to freeze to death in the very first rain of autumn?
Xu Sanniu wouldn’t cry for her. She was such a fool that she was better off dead; it was good that she died, for she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.
As Xu Sanniu thought this, she felt a wetness on her face.
She raised her hand to touch it—there was water—so she tilted her head back to look upward.
“It’s raining.”
The onlookers from the village also looked up at the sky. “It’s not raining. The rain fell last night and stopped this morning.”
But Xu Sanniu ignored them.
It was raining.
