Chapter 31: Repairing the Radio

Sun Xiaojuan was so infuriated by the younger generation's defiance that she felt like throwing in the towel and quitting.

Seeing Sun Xiaojuan storm out and slam the door, Leng Hui instructed Tang Lin to go rest on the bed while she handled the pigeons.

The boiling water on the stove was perfectly convenient for processing the birds.

The pigeons needed to be scalded in water to kill them, then plucked, cleaned of their innards, and finally placed into a clay pot.

Since the stove was located in the hallway, Leng Hui was genuinely worried that someone might snatch the pot along with the soup while they weren't looking.

To prevent the tempting aroma of meat from attracting unwanted attention, Leng Hui thoughtfully carried the stove back into the small kitchen inside the room. She filled the clay pot with enough water to cover the pigeons, added the ginseng slices she had bought that morning, and turned the heat down to a low simmer.

When Sun Xiaojuan returned from the restroom, she originally intended to cook. She was feeling painfully hungry from skipping lunch, only to find a clay pot sitting on the stove.

She asked Leng Hui, who was busy cleaning pigeon feathers, "Huihui, what are you cooking in that pot?"

"Ginseng pigeon soup."

"Ginseng pigeon soup?" A hint of joy appeared on Sun Xiaojuan's face. "I've heard ginseng is very nourishing for the body, though it isn't cheap."

"It isn't cheap, so don't get your hopes up. I'm making this soup to nourish my mother; no one else should expect any."

Leng Hui could naturally see that Sun Xiaojuan had misunderstood.

In this era, food was precious, and no one truly ate in isolation—especially in large families, where nourishing food would at least be shared with the elders.

However, she would have to be insane to spend her own money to stew soup for Old Lady Leng.

In the side room, Leng Mei, who was lying in bed recovering from her injuries, heard the commotion outside. She pulled a few small bills from under her pillow, stuffed them into her pocket, and emerged leaning on her crutches. She shot a glance at Leng Hui before heading out the door.

Worried, Sun Xiaojuan ignored her simmering anger and called out, "Xiaomei, your leg hasn't healed yet. Where are you going?"

"Just going out for some fresh air."

Leaving those words behind, Leng Mei slowly made her way down the stairs to the first floor and shuffled over to sit on a stone bench in the greenery.

Before long, Qi Da, whom she hadn't seen for a few days, appeared by the stone table. "You're finally able to go out. How is your leg? Is it any better?"

"It's alright. Between Leng Hui and her mother acting like they own the place, it's suffocating. I just couldn't take it anymore today, so I came out for air."

As she spoke, Leng Mei pulled some change from her pocket and handed Qi Da twenty cents. "Could you do me a favor and run to the restaurant to buy me two steamed buns?"

Meat buns were five cents each. Since she didn't have food stamps, she gave him twenty cents, with ten cents serving as a substitute for the stamps.

"Didn't you eat lunch?" Qi Da took the money. He had acquaintances at the restaurant; even without food stamps, he could buy buns by paying double the price.

Leng Mei shook her head. "It's a long story. I'm starving right now. We can talk more once you bring the buns."

Qi Da nodded, told her to wait, pocketed the money, and turned to leave quickly.

Leng Mei watched his receding figure, looking at everything around her that was once familiar, feeling that it was both real and illusory.

She touched the swelling on her head that had already subsided, unable to fathom why Tang Lin and her daughter had changed so drastically.

Qi Da returned quickly. After eating a few bites of the restaurant's meat buns, Leng Mei finally had something in her stomach to settle her.

"This is the money from the last coal sale that should be yours. It totaled two yuan and sixty cents, so here is your share of one yuan and thirty cents." Qi Da pulled several small bills from his pocket.

Leng Mei took the money. "Thank you for carrying me back last time. While I'm recovering, please be careful when you go over there alone."

Qi Da glanced around, fearing that staying with her too long would invite gossip. "Don't worry about me. Just focus on healing. If there's nothing else, I'll be going."

Not long after Qi Da left, he returned carrying an enamel mug.

"Eating just buns is a bit dry. I brought you some warm water."

Qi Da didn't linger; he set the mug down and turned to leave immediately.

Watching his departing back, Leng Mei felt no ripple in her heart.

A boy so attentive and gentle—if it were an inexperienced young girl, her heart would surely flutter.

In her past life, she indeed had feelings for him, but the thought of his family had made her hesitate.

A fierce, unreasonable mother and a willful, spoiled sister—anyone who got involved with them would lose a layer of skin.

After drinking the water, Leng Mei placed the cup on the stone table, stood up, and slowly shuffled her way back home on her crutches.

At home, Sun Xiaojuan was nowhere to be found, Old Lady Leng was still lying in bed like a corpse, and Leng Hui had taken over the table to dismantle a radio.

Seeing Leng Hui dismantling the radio so professionally with a full set of tools, Leng Mei felt a sense of doubt. Did she actually know how to repair radios?

Sensing a gaze lingering on her, Leng Hui frowned slightly and looked up. Leng Mei quickly averted her eyes and retreated into the side room with her crutches.

Leng Hui raised an eyebrow and then looked back down to test which components were broken and needed replacement.

She had completely dismantled several radios at once to see which components were usable and which were broken beyond repair, hoping to find substitutes. If she could fix even one, she would break even and could even make a decent profit.

However, these radios were truly beyond salvage.

Some had short-circuited due to water damage, with extensive burns on the integrated circuit boards and detached copper foil. Given the technology of this era, even replacing individual components would make it difficult to restore them to normal function.

The workload for repairing complex circuits was massive, and the reliability after repair was poor.

Others had broken magnetic cores in the intermediate frequency (IF) transformers or severely shorted coils. The IF transformer is a critical component in semiconductor radio intermediate frequency amplification circuits, playing a vital role in signal frequency selection and amplification. If this component was dead, the radio was essentially scrap.

Some had broken frequency converters or intermediate frequency amplifier tubes.

With such a lack of components, it would be difficult to piece together a working radio.

Leng Hui clicked her tongue inwardly. People in this era weren't fools; electronic products were major items in any household. They wouldn't end up at a scrap yard unless they were truly beyond repair.

Picking these up was like throwing money into the water.

Fortunately, she had her Space. If she truly lacked components, she could find suitable substitutes from the Space.

She mustn't forget that during the apocalypse, food and basic survival supplies were the most precious things; many items like these "non-essential" electronic products and furniture were left uncollected.

Back then, she had used her Space to collect them out of a "might as well" mentality, never imagining there would be a day when they would be useful.

After a nap, Tang Lin woke up to the aroma of food.

Coming out of the inner room, she saw various radio parts scattered messily across the table while Leng Hui was busy tinkering.

"What, did you actually fix it?"

Leng Hui stopped tinkering, screwed the outer casing back onto the radio, handed it to Tang Lin, and said proudly, "Try it!"

"Fine. Seeing how smug you look, I assume it's more or less fixed." Tang Lin took it and began to test it.

Leng Hui didn't watch her testing; instead, she stood up, brushed off the debris on her clothes, and went to wash her hands.

The pigeon soup was ready. She found a large bowl, poured all the soup from the clay pot, and placed it in front of Tang Lin under Old Lady Leng's predatory gaze. "To stop everyone else from drooling, eat it while it's hot."

Tang Lin looked up and sniffed the aroma, setting the radio aside. "I've been testing it for a while and there's no response. You didn't actually fix it, did you?"