Chapter 221: Chapter 121: A Difficult Cousin Match

Juhua didn’t know how to bring it up with him. She tugged at the grass, thinking for a long time before finally asking, “So, the children they have… are they all okay? I always feel like first cousins are basically the same as siblings. How can they get married?”

Qingmu thought for a moment and said, “I haven’t heard of any problems! But I don’t know many families where first cousins married, so I can’t say for sure if all their children are fine. What you said seems to make some sense, though.”

He suddenly wondered, ’Is Juhua saying this because she’s not happy about Huai Zi marrying his cousin?’

She didn’t seem to be. But at least she hadn’t said something like, “Why wouldn’t he be happy? It’s such a good match!” Otherwise, if Huai Zi found out, he’d be heartbroken all over again.

Zhang Huai wasn’t heartbroken, but he was worried—worried about his cousin’s stubbornness. He never expected that Qingmu’s words from back then would actually come true.

His mother, He, was also worried.

Before, she worried because no one wanted to marry her son; now, someone was insisting on marrying him, and she was even more worried!

Huai Zi’s fourth maternal uncle had a daughter, Yu Qin, who was sixteen this year. No one knew when the young girl had developed feelings, but she said she liked her older cousin. Huai Zi’s fourth uncle was also fond of Huai Zi and wanted to strengthen their family ties through marriage with his older sister’s family.

Normally, if another family had proposed this, she could have tactfully refused and that would be the end of it. But Yu Qin was her own brother’s daughter, her niece, so it was difficult to be too blunt. Although she had told her younger brother and his wife that Huai Zi didn’t want to consider marriage at the moment, Yu Qin insisted, “I’ll wait for as long as it takes for Cousin to be willing.” This left He at a complete loss, sick with worry.

Later, she spoke privately with Huai Zi’s maternal grandmother about it, explaining that Huai Zi only saw Yu Qin as a younger sister and didn’t want to marry her.

That really stirred things up. Huai Zi’s fourth aunt was so furious she stayed home, cursing Huai Zi for not knowing what was good for him. She raged that his family was dirt-poor, yet he was still being picky.

But that wasn’t the most worrying part. The most worrying part was that Yu Qin stubbornly refused to change her mind, turning down every other matchmaker who came to her door. In just a few days, the young girl had lost a noticeable amount of weight. She wouldn’t listen to anyone’s advice, just remaining defiantly silent.

She worried that if this continued, and something bad happened to the girl, wouldn’t her own family become enemies with her maiden family?

As the saying goes, every family has its own troubles. It couldn’t be truer.

No matter how worried he was, life had to go on. After finishing his studies for the day, Zhang Huai quickly fed the pigs. Then he rolled up his sleeves, moved the firewood pile, and started digging up the rich soil underneath.

He was doing this based on what Qingmu had told him. This dark soil was the best for raising earthworms, and earthworms could be used to feed the chickens, saving a bit on chicken feed. Since Juhua was already grinding up acorns for her chickens to eat, she didn’t want to raise these disgusting things. Besides, she didn’t want to raise too many chickens anyway; she was very busy and wouldn’t be able to care for a large flock.

But Zhang Huai had paid attention.

His family had no acorns. In the first half of the year, they were short on pig feed, and the chickens were free-range with nothing extra to eat. His mother always had to find time to gather pigweed; otherwise, the pigs would truly have nothing but the northwest wind to live on. Oh, but in the spring, there was no northwest wind; they’d be drinking the southeast wind instead.

This spring, he had already raised two or three batches. He had also tried mixing pig manure with soil, but it didn’t work very well. The soil dug up from under the firewood pile was still what the earthworms liked best.

So, once a month, he would move the firewood pile to a new spot. Before moving it, he would loosen the soil, scatter some chopped thatch, and toss in a few small earthworms. Then he would stack the firewood on top.

Believe it or not, this simple, crude method was the most effective. Every time he moved the firewood and cleared out the rotted thatch and soil from underneath, he could always pick out lots of fat, plump, dark-red earthworms. The cleared-out soil could even be used to raise another batch of worms.

Though he went to all this trouble, the harvest of earthworms wasn’t huge. But after drying and crushing them, he would mix them with vegetable scraps and rice husks to feed the chickens every few days. It was a good way to add some protein to their diet. The chickens clearly laid more eggs, and the eggs were much larger too. So he began to study the art of raising earthworms even more carefully, even going so far as to cut thatch specifically to let it rot under the firewood pile.

As he dug into the dark brown soil, his brow was furrowed in thought, mulling over the matter with Yu Qin.

He had been studying for almost a year now. While he hadn’t become a man of great learning, he had at least come to understand some principles of life.

After what happened with Juhua, and after witnessing what happened with Qingmu and Liu’er, he felt more strongly than ever that one must be extremely careful with their words and actions in major life matters. A single careless sentence he had once uttered had led to severe consequences and made him pay a painful price. To this day, Juhua was merely polite to him, no longer treating him the way she used to.

That was why this time, no matter how his fourth uncle questioned him, he just clenched his jaw and refused to give in.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep