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This afternoon, after school had let out, Lady Wen said that there was no need to go to school in the afternoon, so Yingbao and her two younger brothers went with their mother to the South Slope to pick cotton.

All the cotton planted on the South Slope had completely bloomed and was ready for harvest.

The entire Jiang Family and some villagers were helping pick cotton in the fields, and most of it was already picked.

By the time Yingbao and her mother arrived, the white cotton that had been picked was piled up on the bluestone slabs in the courtyard, forming three large heaps.

“Oh, so this is cotton.” Chen Cunzheng and the Clan Leader, having nothing better to do, strolled over to the Jiang Family’s new house on the South Slope. Seeing a yard full of white cotton, they couldn’t help but grab a handful to examine.

“It’s really soft!” The Clan Leader couldn’t get enough of the fine, soft cotton.

He asked Jiang Sanlang, “Sanlang, are you selling this cotton?”

Jiang Sanlang nodded, “We can sell what’s left after keeping some for our own use, but we can’t sell all of it.

His daughter said the cotton could be spun into thread and woven into cloth, so he was planning to first spin some thread at home to try making cotton cloth.

Spinning cotton into thread is way easier than using ramie or kudzu fibers.

As long as you’re careful when harvesting and keep it away from leaves and grass, and then remove the cotton seeds, you can directly start spinning. It’s not like ramie or kudzu, which need to be soaked, stripped, pounded, and drawn out into threads—truly an exhausting task.

This year, the Jiang Family didn’t plant much ramie and didn’t even bother to harvest the kudzu on North Mountain.

Chen Sanyou asked, “Sanlang, where did you find these seeds?”

“My daughter Baobao bought them from a salesman, who said they were foreign seeds.” Jiang Sanlang didn’t conceal the truth.

His daughter did indeed buy a lot of seeds from the salesman, but as for where she got them from later on, he had no idea.

The Clan Leader looked at Yingbao, smiling, “Your Yingbao is indeed very lucky. In my sixty years, I’ve never seen a child more blessed than her.” No one could match her luck.

Other people could easily buy cotton seeds from a salesman, seeds that he had never seen in his life. Ah, all the useless things in his house should really be tossed into a dung pit to make compost.

Jiang Sanlang simply smiled, not saying anything.

With this four-acre field of cotton, he estimated he would harvest more than two thousand catties of cotton. After removing the seeds, he might have a thousand catties of raw cotton.

A thousand catties of raw cotton, once dried and fluffed, could be used to create two new cotton outfits for everyone in his household and more than enough cotton quilts.

The items needed to process the cotton were also suggested by his daughter. She even drew a long bow for fluffing the cotton and explained that it could be used to make the raw cotton into fluffy fillings.

Apparently, the salesman had told all these to his daughter.

“Sanlang, are you selling these cotton seeds?” Chen Sanyou asked. “Can you sell some to my family for planting?”

Jiang Sanlang scratched his head, hesitating.

He was not ready to sell all the cotton seeds yet.

Because he would need seeds for the dry areas on the South Slope belong to his eldest and second brother, as well as his parents’, not to mention he himself definitely wanted to plant more than ten acres next year. These seeds might not even be enough.

Seeing Jiang Sanlang’s dilemma, Chen Sanyou said, “Sanlang, I don’t need much, just enough for planting two acres.”

Upon hearing this, the Clan Leader immediately craned his neck towards them, “Sanlang, my family will also do with seeds for two acres. Ah, my old cold leg can’t stand the cold.”

Someone among the villagers laughed and said, “Old Man Chen, you’ve had that cold leg for how many years now, but we’ve never heard you complain about the cold when there was no cotton.”

The Clan Leader shot a glare at him, his beard bristling in annoyance, “You little brat, always talking too much.”

The group burst into laughter, saying, “We’ve already talked to Jiang Sanlang about buying cotton seeds. If you want some, you’ll have to follow the rules and get in line.”

Jiang Sanlang replied with a somewhat helpless smile.

These five people who came to help him, he had already agreed to sell them twenty catties of cotton seeds each, which would be a hundred catties in total.

Now the Clan Leader and the village head also wanted to buy, and it wouldn’t be right for him to refuse. As such, he would have to part with forty more catties.

He was planning to plant ten acres of cotton next year, and by his calculations, one acre required ten catties of seeds, which would be a hundred catties.

His oldest and second brothers, as well as his parents, all wanted to plant ten acres each, which would need three hundred catties of seeds.

He estimated that he would have about four to five hundred catties of cotton seeds left.

These seeds were rare items, he wouldn’t even consider selling them to people from outside the village for less than a tael of silver per jin.

Of course, this was not something to tell the Clan Leader.

After picking the cotton, the most exhausting task was pulling out the cotton stalks.

These stalks were like small trees, they had to be uprooted so the next step of ploughing the field could be done.

Fortunately, Jiang Sanlang was popular now, and there were many people coming to help.

A random shout in the village would bring twenty or thirty young men, and in just one day, they would completely uproot the cotton stalks in the four mu of cotton field.

Yingbao stayed the night at South Slope with his two younger brothers and his parents and was brought back to the village the next day.

As soon as she got home, Erni ran over and told Yingbao a shocking piece of news about Chen Zhao’s family.

“You don’t know, Chen Zhao’s eldest sister, jumped into the river yesterday, ” Erni said with a keen interest.

Yingbao was taken aback.

Chen Wan jumped into the river?

“What happened then?” she asked. “Is she alright?”

How to say, her feeling toward Chen Wan was like a familiar stranger.

In fact, the offspring of the Han family hardly had any affection for each other and did not have the usual sisterly love that ordinary families do, they were mostly indifferent.

They would neither sympathize nor help each other.

This included herself too.

Of course, she felt no affection for her sisters, but she loved her twin brothers to the core.

She thought back to her previous life in the Chen family, when she suffered so much to the point of nearly dying, but they wouldn’t even look at her.

By then, Chen Wan was already in her teens, and Chen Zhao was only two years younger than her eldest sister.

However, ever since the Han family had their son, Chen Xu, her two sisters liked him very much, especially in front of the Han family, they were almost flattering their younger brother.

In her previous life, when she had just arrived at the Chen family, she had tried to treat them as if they were her own sisters. When her eldest sister was being hit by the Han family, she would pity and feel sorry for her, blocking her and pushing her to run away.

As a result, she herself was hit by the Han family, locked up in a chicken cage without food at night.

Yingbao actually thought that her eldest sister would care for her a bit, at least give her some food.

As the Chen family was not poor, they had hundreds of acres of fields, most of which they leased to other families to farm, so there was never a shortage of food at home, sometimes they ate better than the Jiang family does now. Even though Chen Wan often got beaten, she never had her food or clothing deducted.

In the end, nothing happened. The next day, Chen Wan didn’t even ask her a question, let alone sneak her out.

“I heard she was saved,” Erni blinked her eyes, “It was a passing fisherman who saved her.”

“A fisherman?” Could it be the fisherman Chen Wan later married?

Chen Wan later married a fisherman who was six or seven years older than her, and was said to be doing well.

“When people saved her, she had no clothes left, she was lying naked on the ground, and the fisherman was patting her stomach to get the water out.”

Erni was excited as she spoke, “Now, Chen Zhao’s eldest sister has been seen naked by all the people in the village, how is she going to explain herself to her future mother-in-law?”

Yingbao: “…Erni, you’re not even nine years old yet, how do you know so much?”

Erni snorted, “Who doesn’t know this?”

Village children matured early, some were already engaged to be married and began the ritual greetings at eight or nine years old.

During the New Year and other holidays, the in-laws would send gifts, and they would always give the girl a length of red cloth to make clothes.

So all the girls in the village would come to see the betrothed boys, staring at them until they lowered their heads to their chests..