Chapter 11: The House Leaks Wind, Light, and Rain

Moving house in the village was a matter of great significance; one couldn't just do it haphazardly. It required choosing an auspicious day, or if that wasn't possible, selecting the first or fifteenth of the lunar month.

Therefore, Father Zhou decided they would move today.

Zhou Chenglei and Father Zhou took cleaning tools and went to tidy up the old house.

Worried that her husband wouldn't be as meticulous as a woman when it came to cleaning—as she had quite high standards for her living environment—Jiang Xia said, "There's no need to pack much of my stuff. I'll go help clean as well; more hands make light work."

The original owner of this body had married into the family not long ago and had been ready to divorce at any moment, so many of her belongings were still sitting in red, white, and blue patterned bags, unpacked.

Now was the perfect time to move.

"Alright, then let your mother stay behind to sort through the things with your sister-in-law."

Tian Caihua, however, felt that Jiang Xia was being shrewd. By pretending to be hardworking and offering to clean, she was leaving Mother Zhou behind to sort through the belongings.

By doing this, would she have the heart to give the old, broken, or undesirable items to her mother-in-law?

She was truly underestimating her!

How cunning!

Suddenly, she thought back to the entire process of the family division. Jiang Xia had played the part of a virtuous woman who didn't fight for anything, making Tian Caihua look like someone who was petty, acerbic, and unfilial in every way. In the end, aside from gaining a bit of an advantage with the new house, the two elders hadn't suffered a single grievance because of the couple.

The more Tian Caihua thought about it, the angrier she got!

*Bah!* She didn't believe for a second that Jiang Xia truly didn't fight for anything or want nothing. What a sly fox!

She was simply insidious!

She suspected that the two elders would probably feel that Zhou Chenglei and Jiang Xia were being treated unfairly by moving to the old house, and might even secretly take some private savings to subsidize them.

Thinking this way made Tian Caihua unhappy again.

Jealousy made her temporarily forget that Jiang Xia was planning to divorce. Why would she care about such things?

*

The Zhou family lived in a small fishing village, making a living from the mountains and the sea; thus, most villagers relied on sea fishing.

Furthermore, their area was mostly plains with few mountains and sparse population, so every household had a fair amount of farmland.

The villagers' lives were decent enough; they wouldn't go hungry.

The Zhou family's old house was relatively close to the sea, though not right on the shore—just nearby.

Houses close to the sea were heavy with moisture and quite damp; living there for a long time could easily lead to rheumatism. There was also the risk of destruction if a tsunami hit. It certainly lacked the poetic sentiment of "I have a house facing the sea, where spring flowers bloom." Consequently, villagers rarely chose to build right on the coast.

While the seaside scenery was beautiful, they saw it every day and didn't find it special.

It was only later, with economic development, that many houses and hotels were built on the coast to create tourist zones and selling points.

Jiang Xia surveyed this long-abandoned stone house. The courtyard walls were also built of stone, looking very sturdy and full of history.

The courtyard was overgrown with weeds, but it was quite large.

In her previous life, Jiang Xia had been a city dweller. After her parents passed away, her house was sold to cover debts, and the place she lived in afterward was a basement apartment assigned to her grandmother before she retired as a sanitation worker. It was tiny, dark, and had no windows; even flowers couldn't survive there.

It wasn't until she passed her university entrance exams, paid off the medical debts incurred from her grandmother's treatment, and spent two years as a graduate student that she finally had enough money to buy a one-bedroom apartment in Beijing in full. Cruelly, she had transmigrated before the building was even completed.

So, in this life, she had never lived in a house with a courtyard!

This courtyard was huge, and Jiang Xia liked it instantly. She decided that once she divorced, she would buy a house with a courtyard of her own—planting flowers in the front and fruit trees in the back.

Using this courtyard as a prototype, her mind was already racing with ideas on how to design her own little garden in the future.

Currently, the courtyard was full of weeds. Because it was an old house built decades ago and had been uninhabited for two or three years, it had fallen into disrepair. Lacking human presence, many of the roof tiles had fallen off. Standing inside, one could see light peeking through the gaps in the tiles.

Where light leaked, rain would surely follow.

Father Zhou frowned. "We need to buy some tiles to repair the roof. Otherwise, it'll be trouble when it rains or during a typhoon."

Zhou Chenglei: "I'll go buy them tomorrow."

Jiang Xia looked up at the sky: it was a deep, watery blue, looking unlikely to rain, but she suddenly remembered the plot of the book.

In the book, a super typhoon made landfall along this coast. After the typhoon, the seaside was teeming with fish and shrimp, and the female lead would run there to gather them to sell to earn living and tuition expenses, as school was starting in September. However, she was too bold; while chasing a fish, she ran too far out and was swept into the sea by a wave, only to be saved by the male lead.

According to the plot, the original owner and the male lead were supposed to divorce and leave today, which meant the female lead should be making her appearance!

But who knew when that super typhoon would arrive?

Feeling a bit anxious, she said, "August is the peak season for typhoons, and there's no telling when it might rain. It's still early; can we go buy some tiles and fix the roof now?"

Father Zhou replied, "We've had weather forecasts since this year. During a typhoon, the radio station will broadcast warnings telling everyone not to go out to sea."

Jiang Xia felt a tiny bit relieved, but she couldn't help but wonder, "Are the weather forecasts accurate?"

"Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't."

Jiang Xia: "..."

Father Zhou added, "The weather forecast is for the entire city, and there are so many counties under the city."

Noticing her worry, Zhou Chenglei said, "Dad, I'll go see if there are any tiles for sale now. Once I bring them back, we should be able to fix the roof in an afternoon."

Father Zhou didn't want to stay alone with his daughter-in-law for too long, so he said, "I'll go! You two stay here and clean."

There was a tile kiln in the neighboring village that offered home delivery, so there was no need to haul them manually, and Zhou Chenglei didn't insist on going.

After Father Zhou left, Zhou Chenglei looked at the weeds in the courtyard. Since weeding would be quite strenuous, he said, "You go clean the inside; I'll clear the weeds in the yard."

Most of the furniture had been moved out, leaving the house empty. It had been cleaned during the move, so it wasn't cluttered, just dusty. It wouldn't be too exhausting for her to clean.

Jiang Xia had no objections. She tied her headscarf, covered her nose and mouth with a cloth, and then set off with great determination to inspect her "new home" with a broom.

The house had a total of four rooms. The living room was in the middle, with rooms on either side.

The living room was very long and deep, with a layout that wasn't particularly good.

On either side of the main house were two smaller, lower buildings. The left one was the kitchen, equipped with two large stoves and two smaller, lower ones beside them.

The right one was a storage room for farm tools and similar items.

Next to the kitchen was a low, narrow room which served as the washroom—the bathroom.

The bathroom floor was paved with red bricks, while the kitchen and storage room were not. The main rooms were paved with old, square floor tiles, which was acceptable.

Jiang Xia had heard her college roommates mention that their hometowns still had mud-brick houses from the 50s and 60s where the floors weren't tiled at all, just hard-packed earth that had turned black over time.

The house also had a backyard, which was quite large. It contained stone-built pigsties, cattle sheds, and chicken coops, though they were all in a state of disrepair.

After her tour, Jiang Xia felt it was much better than she had imagined. She decided to start cleaning with the rooms.

The old house had electricity and lights. Jiang Xia pulled the string on the wall by the door, and the tungsten bulb flickered to life.

Holding a long broom, she decided to start by sweeping the cobwebs from the walls and ceiling beams.

As she finished the four walls and raised her broom to sweep the beams, she suddenly found herself making eye contact with two snakes perched on the beam.

"Ah!" Terrified, Jiang Xia dropped her broom and bolted out of the room like the wind, her face cloth blowing away in the process.