Chapter 8: Uncanny

A group of people were busy working in a flurry of activity. Lin Yuannan took a moment of leisure to come over and tease his daughter for a while, only to be shooed away by Wang Cuilan.

She beamed with joy as she picked up Lin Xiangrong: "My sweet granddaughter, the precious treasure of our family."

"Ah, ah..." Lin Xiangrong waved her lotus-root-like arms, staring at Wang Cuilan with her large, round eyes. It was so lively outside—did they really find a rabbit?

They arrived just in time.

But, could these people hear what she was thinking?

They wouldn't mistake her for some kind of spirit, would they?

Lin Xiangrong couldn't help but imagine the miserable fate of being treated like a monster. She shivered and opened her tiny hand to grasp the finger Wang Cuilan had extended.

"Grandma's little sweetie." Wang Cuilan felt her finger being held and became even more delighted. *My granddaughter still likes me the best.* "Don't worry, Grandma won't throw you away. Little Ni is our family's great benefactor!"

*Can they actually hear me or not?*

*Forget it, let nature take its course.*

"What 'little sweetie,' pfft!"

Zhang Miao, having sharp ears, heard Wang Cuilan’s words. Thinking of how she had given birth to two daughters and was nearly cursed to high heaven by Wang Cuilan for it, she felt even more resentful.

"A great benefactor?"

Fang Hongying, who was bleeding the rabbit, scalding it in boiling water, and skinning it, pricked up her ears.

Catching the term "great benefactor" from the noisy chatter, she muttered it to herself, then thought of Dafu, who had nearly drowned, and fell silent.

"What kind of benefactor."

A malevolent spirit is more like it!

"Mom, are we eating rabbit tonight?" Dafu asked, his dark, round eyes wide. "Are we having meat tonight?"

At five or six years old, he already understood what was a rare treat and what was trash. This rare treat was, of course, meat, which was hard to come by even once a month.

Hearing there was meat, Erfu and Sanfu crowded around.

"Yes, there's meat. Go play on the side, don't get in my way," Fang Hongying said, giving each boy a slap and chasing them away.

"Lan," Lin Dawei said after washing his feet and stepping into a pair of worn-out shoes. He walked over to Wang Cuilan and looked down at Lin Xiangrong, who lay in her swaddling clothes with round cheeks and large eyes, looking much like the blessed baby girls in New Year paintings. His heart filled with joy. "Let me hold her."

"You're all thumbs, don't you go dropping my sweet granddaughter!" Wang Cuilan scolded while teaching Lin Dawei how to hold the baby.

Lin Xiangrong understood the difference between being full once and being full every day. She knew the whole family favored boys; otherwise, her grandfather wouldn't have waited until now to hold her.

However, seeing her grandfather looking at her with such kindness, holding her clumsily yet carefully, she figured he must have had a change of heart. Lin Xiangrong squinted her eyes and smiled at him.

Zhang Miao’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

*The father-in-law is actually holding the little money-loser?!*

*Oh my god, has he been possessed?*

Never mind a girl, Lin Dawei rarely even held the three boys in the family. Now that he was holding a girl, not just Zhang Miao, but even Lin Yuannan and Lin Yuanxi were stunned.

Lin Yuannan, returning to the room after chopping wood, froze when he saw his father holding his youngest daughter: "Dad?!"

Was this really his father?

He rubbed his eyes: "Am I seeing things? You're actually holding Little Ni?!"

*Didn't you say girls aren't even worth holding?*

Lin Yuanxi glanced at the grinning Lin Xiangrong, then looked at his own two daughters working hard in the yard, feeling a bit bitter: "Dad, the wood is chopped. Shall we go to the backyard to water the crops?"

*Why is the old man so biased?*

*What’s wrong with my two daughters compared to the third brother’s girl?*

"Alright." Lin Dawei nodded and gently placed his granddaughter back into Wang Cuilan’s arms. As he passed Lin Yuannan, who was preparing to feed the pigs, he patted him on the shoulder: "Yuannan, you’ve fathered a good daughter."

Lin Yuannan was overjoyed.

The doubts that had surfaced in his mind quickly dissipated.

Although he didn't know why his father and mother had suddenly become so good to his Little Ni these past few days, the benefits were going to his wife and daughter, so he certainly wouldn't ask any questions.

As for what Lin Yuanxi and the leg-injured, hard-of-hearing Lin Yuandong thought, that had nothing to do with Lin Yuannan.

A large pot of meat was served under the expectant gazes of the whole family.

In this era, let alone eating meat, if a family lacked labor, even having enough to eat was a problem.

Even with so many laborers in their family, there were many mouths to feed. The men would eat until they were sixty or seventy percent full, managing to get some solid food, while the women could only eat until they were fifty percent full, mostly drinking thin gruel and getting hungry quickly.

But there really wasn't a single bite more to be had.

"Rabbit leg, nobody is allowed to eat my rabbit leg!" Erfu drooled, shouting that it was all his, and reached for the meat in the basin with his dirty hands.

"Eat, eat, eat, all you know is how to eat." Wang Cuilan was quick to slap Erfu’s dirty little paws away.

Just as she was about to divide the meat, she saw Lin Yuandong smiling and grabbing two rabbit legs first, giving one each to Dafu and Erfu.

"Third brother, Dafu and Erfu aren't in good health, so we won't give a rabbit leg to Sanfu," Lin Yuandong said, exchanging a satisfied smile with Fang Hongying.

"It's fine, it's just a rabbit leg, consider it Sanfu letting his brothers have it," Lin Yuannan said with a shy smile, though he didn't let anyone else take a large piece of meat, placing it into Sanfu’s bowl instead. Sanfu was so happy he immediately picked it up and licked it all over.

The eldest brother’s family stiffened but said nothing; at least his two sons got to eat meat.

Besides, the second brother’s family had two daughters; they wouldn't get a single bite of meat. How could girls eat meat?

There was still plenty in the pot.

Seeing that Dafu, Erfu, and Sanfu had all eaten meat, Zhang Miao, who had only given birth to two daughters, felt she had to stand up for herself. She tentatively smiled and asked, "Mom, should we share this meat with..."

"Share what?"

Wang Cuilan slammed her chopsticks down, picked up the basin, and distributed a few pieces of meat to the men in the family, pouring a little meat broth into each daughter-in-law's bowl.

Dani and Erni stood to the side, not daring to approach. They could only smell the aroma, swallowing their saliva repeatedly, rubbing their clothes with their hands, wondering how delicious the meat must be.

"How can little girls eat meat?" Wang Cuilan huffed, sitting down and stirring the coarse grains in her bowl with her chopsticks, not intending to let her granddaughters taste even a hint of the meat. "Who didn't come up the same way? If you eat meat now, what will you do when you get married? Are you going to fight your children and your own husband for it? Spoiled!"

Zhang Miao opened her mouth but didn't say anything else, though she was very unhappy that she hadn't received much meat.

"Third daughter-in-law, you eat more." Wang Cuilan’s eyes darted, and she moved a piece of meat from Lin Dawei’s bowl over. "Produce more milk, don't let Little Ni go hungry. By the way, we can't keep calling her Little Ni forever."

"Thank you, Mom." Zhou Zhaodi quickly took the meat and ate it, fearing that Zhang Miao across from her might snatch it away.

"I’m thinking of going to the village head and the party secretary to give Little Ni a name," Wang Cuilan said after a moment of contemplation.

"What?!" Zhang Miao exploded again: "A name?"

*Is the third brother’s girl a spirit? How did she bewitch the mother-in-law like this?*

"Is it for the three girls and the boys, or just for Little Ni alone?" Zhang Miao asked, trying to stir up trouble.

Hearing about naming, Lin Yuanxi paused his chopsticks, his only remaining left eye fixed on Wang Cuilan: "If you're going to name one, name them all, otherwise don't name any. Which family doesn't just call their girls Big Ya, Dani, or Daniu?"

"That won't do. Little Ni can't be called that. Little Ni is our family's treasure, isn't that right, Little Ni?" Wang Cuilan rocked the wooden stroller.

Lin Xiangrong, who was listening to the family’s bickering in the stroller while recalling the plot, thinking about how to reasonably help her family avoid the tragic fate of the original story and how to improve their lives, grinned at Wang Cuilan. She blew bubbles with her little mouth and reached out to grab Wang Cuilan’s sleeve.

*[Naming is good! Grandma is the best!]*

*Huh?*

Wang Cuilan was startled. She wasn't holding Little Ni, so how did she hear a voice? Could she hear it just by being close?

But then she thought, Little Ni was a fairy descended to earth, so why wouldn't she!

But since no one else could hear it, and it seemed only she could, did that mean that in Little Ni’s heart, she, the grandmother, was the one she was closest to?!

Oh my, in that case, blessed by Guanyin and having a precious granddaughter to repay her, she could consider herself a person full of good fortune!