The Fourth Miss of the Farmer’s Family

"Undeveloped, do not enter"! At the Yayu Mountain Primeval Forest Scenic Area, Yang Ziqian fearlessly walked a few steps farther. Then she stepped into empty air. When she woke, she discovered that one step had taken her very far away: The familiar buildings were gone, replaced by walls made of sorghum stalks. Gaps on all four sides let wind in from every direction, not a single roof tile covered the building, and layers of straw flew everywhere. With this design, a heavy rain would turn it into a water-curtain cave. She now had a heavily pregnant mother, who was wiping her body with tears and mucus streaming down her face. The tears dripping onto Yang Ziqian's face proved it: this was not a stepmother. When she woke, her father ordered, "Cook some wheat-flour gruel." Her mother gave birth to a younger sister, yet there was not a single egg in the household, let alone a chicken. Yang Ziqian estimated that during her mother's confinement, she would not even see one chicken feather. Her father still ordered, "Cook some wheat-flour gruel." Was this really her biological father? Three meals a day consisted of gruel so thin that one could see one's reflection in it, and wild-vegetable corn cakes without a single drop of oil. Wheat-flour gruel was already the highest treatment this family could offer. In the water-curtain cave, the Monkey King wreaked havoc in Heaven; in the thatched hut, Yang Ziqian turned the world upside down. If people could be as bold as their courage, the land would yield as much as they dared to produce. She refused to believe that a modern person from the twenty-first century would starve to death in this land of Western Song, forgotten by history. Many years later, every Yang man possessed a solid skill. They said there were seventy-two trades, and every trade had its top scholar. Whenever a Yang clansman entered an industry, there had never been a precedent for the title of top scholar going to anyone else. A lifetime of remaining single created the Yang family's prosperity. Forty-eight grand estates and more than a hundred family members stood proudly in the world, with no one daring to look down on them. The Yang clansmen did not provoke others, but no one could afford to provoke them. The Yang clansmen did not enter officialdom, yet both court and countryside trembled. More than that, they feared the head of the Yang family: from Fourth Young Miss, to Fourth Aunt, and finally to the old woman known as Fourth Grand-Aunt. They pursued a peaceful, comfortable life of ease and harmony, like an earthly paradise beyond the world. They had enough ability to create it, enough ability to protect it, and enough time to enjoy it. With one person's wisdom and the strength of the entire family, they made the clan stand proudly above all others. That was enough! It made Yang Ziqian's journey through a thousand years worthwhile!