In the afternoon, Lin Sanshui returned without showing much joy. Mrs. Jiang’s heart immediately sank, "What’s wrong? Did something go wrong with the land purchase?"
Lin Sanshui shook his head, "I bought the seventy mu of land without a well, not far from our village."
"Why did you buy this one? Didn’t we originally agree to buy that fifty mu one?" Buying this seventy mu of land left us with less than thirty taels of silver, and we would definitely need to dig a well, dashing any plans for house construction.
Lin Sanshui sighed, "Good farmland is in demand. How could they just leave it for us alone? That fifty mu was bought by someone else after I returned yesterday. It’s fortunate I was early enough to get this seventy mu, or it would have been gone too."
As for the one near Daxi River, he didn’t even consider it.
Cheap land was no good; if there were a flood, all the crops planted for a year would be washed away. He couldn’t afford such a loss.
Upon hearing this, Mrs. Jiang also relaxed, "Bought is bought, then. Let’s postpone the house building. Land is important; we’ll rely on it to make money, and we absolutely can’t delay."
Gu Nian listened, and heard that house construction was delayed, which was unacceptable.
She was hoping to have a room of her own.
So, Gu Nian quickly spoke up, "Dad, let’s use my silver for house construction first. Anyway, even if I buy a hillside, I won’t use it all, and it’s no use just sitting there."
Lin Sanshui thought for a bit, and realized it would be cold in a few months. If they didn’t hurry to build the house, they’d have to wait until spring next year to consider it.
They could wait, but when Dahu returned, the kids would have to sleep crowded.
But as Gu Nian said, her silver was temporarily unused. This text is hosted at n0velfire.net
After an internal struggle, Lin Sanshui finally made up his mind, "Alright, but that silver is your share. The silver for the house construction shouldn’t come from you, so consider the silver lent to the family, and next year after the harvest, the family will repay you with earned silver."
Gu Nian had no objection to this.
The family’s sausages had hung for so long that they were ready to eat, and Lin Sanshui took a few sausages to the new village head, Lin Feng’s house.
Considering the old village head’s lesson of being arrested, Lin Feng was easygoing—two taels of silver per mu for the hillside. Lin Sanshui generously bought two hills, and Lin Feng readily calculated it as 100 mu.
Of course, the actual area must be more than this.
The next day, Lin Sanshui and Lin Feng went to the county government to process the land deed. Buying land would certainly be hard to hide from the villagers, making Lin Sanshui, who usually did not stand out, a well-known figure in Taohua Village.
Gu Nian, holding that land deed, was so happy that her grin almost reached the back of her ears.
At night, Little Hu saw Gu Nian alone, lying on the table, holding a charcoal stick, drawing on white paper.
Of course, being illiterate, he couldn’t understand what Gu Nian was writing!
But Little Hu’s greatest advantage was that if he didn’t understand, he would ask.
Thus, in the rarely lit kerosene lamp room, such dialogue followed.
"Little sister, what are you writing here?"
"It’s my design plan for the hillside. I want to clear all the wild grass and trees on the mountain and plant fruit trees. If they grow well, we might have fruit to eat next year."