Pan Shuangquan’s father began cursing directly, "You must have been blinded by lard to get tangled up with that whore Lin Luye. Luckily you’ve divorced that whore. Look at what that whore did marrying into our family, lazy and gluttonous, and not even bearing you a son, just two deceitful daughters, and I still have to find you another wife."
The more he cursed, the more Pan Shuangquan’s father felt frustrated at his lack of progress, "How good it would have been if you had married An Jing. An Jing is now a First-class Good Citizen, how glorious is that, even if she can’t bear children, others would still admire her. To have a First-class Good Citizen in the family is such an honor, if you had married An Jing back then and brought this honor to our family, I wouldn’t have minded even if you asked to take two more women as secondary wives."
Pan Shuangquan sat in silence, taking the scolding from his father. When he learned about An Jing becoming a First-class Good Citizen, he was beside himself with regret.
He truly regretted it.
If it hadn’t been for Lin Luye back then, he would have already married An Jing, and that status of First-class Good Citizen would probably have been bestowed not on An Jing but on him, her husband.
There had never been a First-class Good Citizen in Pan Family Village!
The more he thought about it, the more regretful he became.
As he regretted, the people of Jiuping Village also felt regret, but what could they do, having already fallen out with An Jing and Xiao Changyi? They couldn’t even go to leech off their happiness, and it made them extremely uncomfortable.
Seeing their adversaries live better and better lives while their own lives got worse, how could their hearts not feel bitter?
As soon as Wang Youbao learned that An Jing had been made a First-class Good Citizen, he hurried from town to congratulate her. He also brought a pound of tea leaves as a gift to celebrate An Jing’s new status.
An Jing unceremoniously accepted it.
Wang Youbao also unceremoniously stayed for a meal before leaving.
The tea leaves brought by Wang Youbao were quite good. An Jing brewed a pot of tea, and then she and Xiao Changyi leisurely enjoyed it in the courtyard, feeling a sense of idle pleasure in the brief respite from life’s demands.
"Husband, our family no longer has to pay taxes," An Jing said, quite pleased with this point.
"Husband." She suddenly leaned on his shoulder.
Xiao Changyi wrapped his arm around her shoulder, letting her lean more comfortably, "Mm?"
"Our sweet potato harvest is almost done. When the ground is frozen enough, let’s make vermicelli."
"Even though we planted over an acre of sweet potatoes, we only harvested so little. We still need to keep some for eating, I don’t know if we can manage to make fifty pounds of vermicelli. I was planning to sell it, but now it seems we can only make enough for ourselves."
"If you want to sell, we can buy sweet potatoes from others to make vermicelli. Sweet potatoes aren’t expensive."
In this era, sweet potatoes were not considered prestigious food, only eaten by the impoverished, which kept their price low and few people bought them; they were generally kept by the poor for their own consumption.
If it’s the same piece of land, sweet potatoes yield much more than rice or wheat.
Using sweet potatoes to stave off hunger was a good strategy.
"I was thinking of selling them for some money if possible, since you all don’t have vermicelli. Maybe we could make a good amount of money. But now we’re not short on money anymore, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just make do with this little bit we have. We’ll just make it for our own consumption. It’s going to be deep winter when the ground freezes, too cold. We don’t need to make ourselves work that hard."
"As you wish." He had no objections.