Chapter 05 She and He Are Separated by Thousands of Waters and Mountains

Qiao Qingyu pondered for a while and had a rough idea in her mind; she looked around and began to specifically dig soil where there were wild grasses.

When she returned home with half a basket of soil, she was also panting from exhaustion.

Luckily, she was an orphan in reality, parentless and had been self-reliant, so her physical and mental adaptation was fairly good.

It was just a pity for her three hundred square meter villa, the brand-new sports car, and designer bags...

Qiao Qingyu stood in the uneven yard with her hands on her hips, a strange thought suddenly emerged in her mind. Was there a possibility that she and the original owner had swapped places?

A few moments later, she shook her head; thinking about anything now was meaningless. What mattered most was surviving.

When she was cleaning the yard earlier, she had found two wooden boxes. In the seventies, cardboard boxes were scarce, and important items were sent in these kinds of wooden boxes.

They must have been used by He Xiuyu to mail books.

With a bit of modification, these boxes could be filled with soil for planting things.

Although she could not distinguish between wheat and grass, the skill of growing vegetables, which was ingrained in the Huaxia people's bones, was easily activated.

She also had to be thankful that the original owner was lazy. The ashes from burning firewood were not discarded and were piled up in the corner. As a scholar, although she studied economics and was called a financial genius by insiders, she knew that the main component of wood ash was potassium carbonate—an inexpensive and fully nutritive inorganic fertilizer.

After mixing the wood ash with the dug soil and putting it into the wooden boxes, Qiao Qingyu entered the lab by verifying her fingerprint. She took out a bottle each of seeds for onions, ginger, garlic, cabbage, and spinach. It had to be said, the lab's seeds were great, each one plump and bursting with life.

Qiao Qingyu was actually puzzled—why could her fingerprint open the lab?

Unfortunately, there were no answers at present.

After planting them, she returned the rest to the lab. As Qiao Qingyu passed a row of shelves, she suddenly stopped. On the third row, there was a kind of seed called thousand silk hemp, a deep-rooted annual herb that flowers from May to June and fruits from June to August. It's highly adaptive and can be planted in all kinds of soil…

A brief bit of information followed, mentioning its three main values: the leaves and roots have medicinal value, the seeds can be pressed for oil, and the stems are rich in fibers that can be used as raw materials for paper-making and synthetic cotton. Plus, it can improve soil quality…

It seemed similar to castor, but had many more uses and values.

However, Qiao Qingyu had never heard of thousand silk hemp.

Could it be a foreign species or a plant that had long been extinct on Earth?

She contemplated thoughtfully. It could be planted in any kind of soil and could improve the soil as well; she gently stroked the bottle, then left the lab.

She and He Xiuyu were separated by vast distances, and divorce was inevitable. Besides, the main male character was inevitably destined for the main female character—according to the laws of romance novels, anyone who competes with the main female character for a man never ends well.

Therefore, she could only stay here for a maximum of two months before she would have to leave.

Qiao Qingyu stopped thinking about the thousand silk hemp. She moved the wooden boxes with a few vegetables inside to the room, placing them at the end of the heated brick bed. The temperature here was suitable due to the large temperature differences between day and night in the Northwest, and there was plenty of sunshine during the day, so it should be suitable for the development and growth of the seeds.

This was also a bit of an experiment.

In the evening, Qiao Qingyu sewed up the sun-dried quilt cover, spread clean sheets and pillowcases on the bed, and then started boiling water for a bath. She had endured it for a day; although the original owner was quite clean, it still wasn't quite the same.

Until the moon was high in the sky, Liu Qiao Wen hadn't come to return the money.

It seemed she had taken Qiao Qingyu's words merely as the wind by her ears.

That night, she simmered a little porridge and had it with soybean sauce for dinner. When Qiao Qingyu lay down, she let out a long sigh and finally felt fatigue. She thought she wouldn't sleep well on her first day in the novel, but surprisingly, she slept dreamlessly until dawn.

After tidying up, Qiao Qingyu went to the families' office, an ad hoc organization located in the old village committee's yard.

There were three people in charge.

The director was Director Lin's wife, Shen Fen. The other two were young staffers, one named Zhu Mingli and the other Sun Aizhi.

Their main responsibility was the logistics for over three hundred women in the families' quarters—arranging things like school admissions for children, finding jobs for the base staff's families to supplement household expenses, and dealing with family disputes and neighborhood disagreements…

The work they handled was very trivial, quite similar to that of a street office.

At that moment, with the door open, the three inside the room were visibly shocked upon seeing Qiao Qingyu.

Wasn't this He Xiuyu's new bride?

Ever since Zhu Mingli had found her a job feeding pigs in the cafeteria and she had been scolded, no one from the office dared to assign Qiao Qingyu any work.

But today, Qiao Qingyu was not here to find work; she was seeking an opportunity to learn. With the original character having not even completed elementary school, she had no reason or excuse to participate in the college entrance examinations this year or the next.

Thus, she had to concoct a genius persona for herself!

Qiao Qingyu composed her expression and stood in front of Shen Fen's desk, bowing her head, her voice trembling slightly with genuine remorse, "Director Shen, I'm here to apologize to you."

Hmm?

Shen Fen, holding a large tea mug, paused, puzzled, looking at Qiao Qingyu, only to be surprised to find that this morning's Qiao Qingyu seemed different from the one she had seen a few days ago.

Her head was bowed, showing only her eyelashes, dark as raven feathers; her lips were rosy, and she had tied her hair in a ponytail with stray strands falling on her shoulders. The morning sunlight cast a golden shimmer on her, making her appear radiant.

Shen Fen's heart skipped a beat, unable to define the feeling as she listened to Qiao Qingyu's slightly embarrassed words, "Director Shen, revolutionary work does not discriminate between the high and low, the noble and the humble. I need to reflect on this. Although Staff Zhu arranged for me to feed pigs and I shouldn't have been picky, I still need to explain—I grew up in the countryside but never fed pigs because it's not that simple; it involves lots of scientific and cultural knowledge…"

Shen Fen's expression somewhat softened—these were words she liked to hear. Before coming to the Northwest, she had been a teacher at a key high school, but had followed her husband's career to this remote place.

"You're right to reflect on this, and you shouldn't use abusive language either. Everything should be discussed rationally; the ways of a belligerent rural woman can't be used here."

She then emphasized her tone, "Qiao Qingyu, you should also consider Xiao He a bit more…"

"Yes, yes, intellectuals speak differently indeed, Director Shen. You're absolutely right in your guidance. Don't worry, I will correct my mistakes."

Qiao Qingyu's voice was heartfelt, and she glanced apologetically at Zhu Mingli, "Staff Zhu, I'm uneducated, so I thought when you said that shameless and despicable people are best suited for feeding pigs, you were scolding me. I am really sorry…"

Suddenly, the room plunged into utter silence!