TATLC Chapter 62

The wedding banquets of this era were much worse than those in his previous life. In his past life, resources were abundant, and even the most basic wedding banquet had at least ten or twenty dishes. The fancier ones had everything from lobster to crab to crocodile.

Here, the wedding banquet only had eight dishes in total, including both meat and vegetables, and that even included a plate of fried peanuts and a plate of pickled radish. Still, it was already quite decent.

Everyone at the table ate until their mouths were greasy, and every plate was cleaned completely. Two teenage boys at the same table had probably been quite hungry normally, so they ate very aggressively.

Lu Lin suddenly remembered things from his childhood in his previous life. When his family was poor as a child, what he looked forward to most was visiting relatives. If anyone was hosting a dinner party, he would show up early. Back then, if there was a rare dish of pistachios on the table, everyone would stare at it.

Later though, when living conditions improved, everyone found these rural gatherings somewhat troublesome, and would only arrive right on time.

After resources became abundant, all kinds of nuts could be found in piles on Taobao. You could eat them without spending much money, but somehow they didn’t taste as sweet as before. Lu Lin had been eating well lately, so he found the food on the table not appealing.

The others were different. Except for Lu Lin, most people at the table were eating with their heads down, afraid of missing out.

After attending the wedding banquet, Lu Lin went to visit Uncle Zhou and brought him some rice and grain.

The old hunter felt embarrassed about always taking things from them for free, and kept declining. But under Lu Lin’s insistence, the old hunter still accepted it.

After going down to the village and picking some vegetables, he returned to town.

Lu Lin drove the cart, thinking about Chen Xiaomi’s recent listless appearance, and couldn’t help but feel worried.

As soon as Lu Lin returned to the house in town, Chen Xiaocai rushed out excitedly. “Lin-ge, my brother is having a baby!”

Lu Lin froze in surprise.

He suddenly realized that Xiaomi had seemed to feel tired often lately, and his appetite seemed to have increased too. He didn’t expect that he was having a baby. Lu Lin immediately felt an indescribable excitement, and beyond the excitement, there was also a magical feeling.

Chen Xiaomi was lying lazily on the bed. He glanced at Lu Lin and said, “You’re back?”

“Are you okay? What did the doctor say?” Lu Lin calmed his emotions and asked.

“The doctor said I’m in good health and there shouldn’t be any problems. As if I didn’t know that already. Xiaocai is very nervous and insists I lie down. This brat is getting more and more outrageous, actually trying to boss me around now.” Chen Xiaomi grumbled.

Lu Lin looked at the sulky Chen Xiaomi and smiled helplessly. “Xiaocai is just worried about you. He said it’s already been two months.”

He scratched his head, feeling rather confused that Chen Xiaomi was already two months pregnant and he didn’t even notice any signs at all.

Chen Xiaomi patted his belly. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

Lu Lin looked at Chen Xiaomi. “It’s still better to be careful…”

“How were the dishes at the banquet?” Chen Xiaomi asked.

“They were okay.”

Chen Xiaomi hesitated for a moment and asked, “Did anyone… say anything about you?” Chen Xiaomi knew that Lu Lin’s reputation was better than his, but because he had married into his family, it wasn’t much better.

“Everyone was quite polite. I told them I have a monthly salary of two taels of silver, and those people were all very envious.” Lu Lin said.

Chen Xiaomi tilted his head. In town, usually only managers earned two taels, ordinary long-term workers didn’t get that much. No wonder the villagers were envious. In reality, Lu Lin was the boss; selling bags alone brought in dozens of taels monthly, not to mention the alcohol sales. His finances were quite comfortable. Two taels of silver was already very modest of Lu Lin to say.

Chen Xiaomi glanced at Lu Lin. “How much have we saved up recently?”

“Almost a hundred taels.”

Chen Xiaomi was surprised. “Didn’t we earn much more?”

Lu Lin sighed, “But the expenses are also big! We have to pay so many embroiderers, and we bought another batch of expensive fabric…”

Chen Xiaomi looked at Lu Lin for a while and said, “Our family eats too extravagantly.” They had several dishes every day, which was too excessive. Chen Xiaomi had never dreamed that life could be lived like this, with vegetables and meat every day, and if he wanted some snacks, he could buy them freely.

Lu Lin tilted his head. “In life, if you don’t eat good food, what other pleasures are there?” One of the bigger advantages of this world was probably that all the grain was pure and natural. As long as it was cooked properly, the dishes made were all very delicious.

Chen Xiaomi pouted. “You’re making excuses for being picky. I want to eat ice cream.”

Lu Lin shook his head and said, “Didn’t you already eat one? It’s not good to have too much.”

Chen Xiaomi shot Lu Lin a glance with a hint of annoyance that seemed to say “here you go again.”

Lu Lin just smiled. “I heard people at the wedding say that Li Fangyue and Lin Xiu’er are both pregnant too.” Some people also said that Chen Xiaomi might be infertile, but there was no need to tell Chen Xiaomi about that.

Chen Xiaomi widened his eyes and tilted his head. “Everyone’s getting pregnant at the same time!”

At the Lu’s

Having someone pregnant in the family was a happy occasion, but they also caused headaches.

Tang grew increasingly frustrated lately. After Lin Xiu’er became pregnant, she pushed off a lot of her tasks, and Li Fangyue followed suit.

If Tang argued with Lin Xiu’er a few times, she would pretend to be sick, and Tang couldn’t do anything about it.

After his wife became pregnant, Lu An also stopped turning in his salary on time, saying he needed to keep it for emergencies.

Grandma Lu was quite partial to her youngest son, so she let it be.

But with money only going out and not coming in, the family was beginning to struggle financially.

The old woman complained, “Everyone just eats without working. Now Cheng Yu needs to pay tuition again. The students at the academy all look down on those without money. If there’s no money, he’ll be looked down on. What should we do?”

Brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones all cost money, and the crops from the fields weren’t ready to harvest yet.

Old Man Lu looked at his wife. “If there’s really no choice, let’s sell another mu of land.”

The old woman was reluctant. “Sell another mu?” The Lu family could live well in the village precisely because they had a lot of land. They had already sold two mu of land for Cheng Yu’s wedding. If they kept selling land, wouldn’t they become poorer and poorer?

The old man sighed. “We can’t farm it all anyway.” If they rented it out for others to farm, after paying taxes, there wouldn’t be much profit left.

Grandma Lu sighed. During spring planting, everyone in the family tried to avoid work, so she had to hire people to plant. But during busy farming season, basically every household was busy, so labor was very scarce. Usually twenty-some wen could hire someone, but during busy farming season, even forty or fifty wen couldn’t get anyone willing to work.

She hadn’t worked in the fields much for several years and almost collapsed from exhaustion in the fields.

Hiring people also cost a lot, which pained her greatly.

“I heard that brat Lu Lin found a job in town and earns two taels of silver a month.” Wang said with some displeasure.

Lu Lin’s casual lie about the two taels of silver salary at Zhang family’s wedding spread rapidly through the village and naturally reached her ears.

Wang always believed that the second son was stupid, and that Lu Lin born to the second son was unlucky and incompetent. When she heard that Lu Lin found a job in town and even earned two taels of silver a month, Wang immediately felt unhappy.

Wang had always been proud of her fourth son’s job. When she found that Lu Lin and Chen Xiaomi had actually found a job with the same salary as Lu An, she immediately felt it was impossible.

The old man sighed, his feelings somewhat complicated.

Ten fingers have different lengths, and the old man was also partial, but not as extreme as his wife. Still, he hadn’t paid much attention to the second son’s family.

“What are you planning?” the old man asked.

Wang grumbled, “That Shuang’er Chen Xiaomi is strange and weird. He probably can’t even have children. The money Lu Lin earns will probably all benefit Chen Xiaomi’s two burden brothers.” If Lu Lin really earned two taels of silver a month, that would be over twenty taels a year.

Wang suddenly felt that having Lu Lin marry into Chen Xiaomi’s family was a huge loss. They had only asked for ten taels of silver from Chen Xiaomi back then.

Old Man Lu also felt some pain. With the second branch gone, he began to miss the good things about the second branch. Recently, the family had been in constant mess over farming, cooking, washing clothes, chopping firewood, carrying water, and other matters.

The old man suddenly realized that when the second branch was around, the family never had so many problems, and there was always someone to do the work in the fields.

“With a fierce Shuang’er like Chen Xiaomi, Lu Lin probably can’t control him. The salary is probably all managed by Chen Xiaomi.” The old man sighed.

This land needed to be maintained. When the second branch was around, the second son would occasionally go to the riverbank to get some silt for fertilizer. After the second son left, the land’s harvest seemed much worse than before. This land would probably get thinner and poorer.

Wang cursed and said, “That worthless Lu Lin has learned to be just as ungrateful as Chen Xiaomi.” The old man was also somewhat surprised by Lu Lin’s behavior.

In the old man’s view, even if Lu Lin married out, he wouldn’t cut off contact with this side. However, the reality was that after Lu Lin married out, when the family asked him to help with work, he pushed it all off.

He had no idea that before marrying out, Lu Lin had already been replaced by another soul.

If it had been the original owner, if the Lu family said a few nice words, he really might have obediently come back to work, and might even have brought things from Chen Xiaomi’s family back to the Lu family. After all, although the original owner resented his grandparents’ favoritism, he was inherently filial to a fault.

Lu Cheng Yu sat in his room trying to review his books, but couldn’t focus on a single word.

Zhang Dazhu’s family had invited Lu Lin to the wedding banquet but not him, which made Lu Chengyu extremely upset. When he heard that Lu Lin and Chen Xiaomi had both found work in town, Lu Chengyu felt even worse.

When villagers mentioned Lu Lin before, most said Lu Lin was honest but incompetent. Now when they mentioned Lu Lin, many people changed their tune, saying Lu Lin was actually quite good, and he looked quite spirited too. It was just that he had been exploited too harshly by the Lu family before, so it didn’t show.

Lu Chengyu felt that the villagers’ words carried a bit of sympathy for Lu Lin and also a bit of criticism for his grandparents’ favoritism, which made him uncomfortable.

I would be very successful in the future. No matter how successful he becomes, he would just be someone doing odd jobs for others.

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