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墨書 Inktalez
"Hey!" Cui Xiaoman poked him in the back with a twig. "Are you still going to teach me or not?"
Lin Dahe snapped back to reality, realizing that the character for "farm" on the sand table had been transformed into a clawing figure, resembling a little person holding a fork.
"What is this... a monster you drew?"
"What monster!" Cui Xiaoman rolled her eyes. "This is me, tilling the land!"
She jumped up and mimicked swinging a hoe, nearly knocking over the oil lamp. The dim light flickered across her face, making her radiant smile even more vivid. Lin Dahe suddenly felt a warmth in his heart, as if it had been lightly scorched, and quickly lowered his head to smooth out the sand table.
"Tomorrow I'll help you with the land," Cui Xiaoman said suddenly as she was about to leave. "So you won't even be able to pay back the interest."
As her figure disappeared into the moonlight, Lin Dahe rushed towards the pile of glowing kitchen scraps. He swung the hoe and stirred it up, the rotten smell making his eyes water. On the third swing, the hoe suddenly clanged against something hard.
Clearing away the decaying vegetable leaves, he uncovered a rusty iron box. The lid was deformed, revealing a stack of yellowed papers inside. Just as Lin Dahe reached out to take a look, a red warning popped up from the system: [Land deed detected, related to main storyline, temporarily inaccessible.]
At that moment, he caught a glimpse of a shadow flashing past outside the fence—it looked very much like Aunt Ma.
The morning mist had not yet lifted when Lin Dahe was startled awake by a series of knocks on the door. Rubbing his eyes, he opened the creaking wooden door and nearly bumped into Aunt Ma's heavily powdered face.
"The Lin brothers are up early!" she exclaimed as she pushed her way inside, cradling a pair of brand new cloth shoe insoles. "I made these last night; try them on and see if they fit!"
The strong scent of osmanthus oil made Lin Dahe take two steps back. Aunt Ma was already wandering around the room, her nails stained with balsam juice trailing across the table and stove edge before finally stopping at the low cabinet in the corner—where Lin Dahe kept his birch bark notebook for recording hybridization notes.
"Oh dear!" Aunt Ma suddenly bent down to smooth her skirt. "My old leg...”
Taking advantage of this moment, Lin Dahe shoved his notebook into the stove and turned to help her up, noticing that her eyes were still darting around. He sighed casually, "Things have been going missing lately; half of the dried mushrooms I sun-dried two days ago are gone, and yesterday even the salt jar..."
"Robbers?" Aunt Ma straightened up abruptly, her eyes shining unusually bright.
"Probably just mice," Lin Dahe said as he fetched her a ladle of water. "I heard Zhou Liangzhang's family has someone good at catching them?"
The ladle clattered into the vat. Aunt Ma chuckled awkwardly and changed the subject: "Speaking of exterminating mice, you need to use Sichuan pepper... Oh! By the way!" She suddenly clapped her hands. "My niece is sixteen this year; she's great at sewing! Tomorrow..."
It wasn't until he sent off this unexpected guest that Lin Dahe's ears were still buzzing. He pushed aside some ash in the stove to check his notes and found several pages had clearly been flipped through—especially those documenting experiments on grafting potatoes with local wild yams.
The morning dew by the creek had not yet dried when Lin Dahe squatted on the bluestone slab washing clothes. In the distance came a series of splashing footsteps as Cui Xiaoman emerged from the reeds carrying two wild rabbits, her pant legs still dripping water.
"Did Ma Widow come looking for you?" she asked right off the bat.
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