C9 Chapter 9

The two of them were in the middle of a heated argument when her uncle, Liu Xianyi, showed up. Spotting Liu Wenmei in the crowd made his head ache.

Every time his niece came out to work, her mother would show up at his place and raise hell. Seeing Wenmei now, he honestly had no idea where to put her.

After thinking it over, Liu Xianyi decided to send her to the cotton fields to pick off bugs. It was peak season, when the bollworms were at their worst, and bug-picking was about as simple as it got. Maybe this time her mother wouldn’t come storming into his house and chew him out.

Wenmei had always complained the work was too hard and tried to slack off, so nobody wanted to be paired with her. Today, Liu Xianyi assigned her a section of field and told her to finish it on her own.

When Wenmei got the assignment, she looked out over the wide stretch of cotton and was pretty satisfied with her uncle’s decision. Working alone meant fewer headaches. She reached out with her psychic power—and sure enough, there were plenty of bugs.

Bugs had never scared Wenmei, but she glanced at her soft, pale hands and thought about the callused ones she’d had in her last life. She pulled a pair of gloves from her space and put them on.

With her psychic power backing her up, no bug survived anywhere she passed. She finished one row, constantly reaching out to grab a bug, pulling her hand back, and dropping it into her container. Her arm started to ache, so she took out her water bottle and took a sip. Using the tall cotton plants as cover, she slipped the bottle back into her space. The moment her hand felt lighter, she realized the bugs she’d just caught had gone into her space too.

Wenmei hurried to take them back out. Those bugs could be turned in for credit, and she could also bring them home to feed the chickens. Chickens that ate bugs laid eggs, and when they got old, they could be cooked. All of it mattered—she couldn’t afford to let the bugs die.

Seeing they were fine, Wenmei relaxed. Back in the apocalypse, her space couldn’t hold living things. She hadn’t expected it to work differently here.

She tested it a few more times and found the bugs could only stay alive in her space for about five minutes. That discovery made things easier. Now she just used her psychic power to locate a bug, reached out to touch it, pulled it into her space for a short while, then dumped the collected bugs into her bag. Before long, she’d cleared every bug from the section she’d been assigned.

Liu Wenmei brought the bag of bugs to find her older brother, Liu Wenguang. The usual scorekeeper was Sunn Tiantian, but she hadn’t shown up for work today, so Liu Wenguang was filling in.

“Big brother, I caught every bug in my plot. Come check it off for me,” Liu Wenmei said. She’d always had a good impression of him—Liu Wenguang was the kind of guy who took responsibility and wasn’t afraid to act. In the book, her brother was a minor antagonist who did well for himself on the black market. He secretly found out that Sunn Tiantian was the one who ruined their whole family, so he deliberately got close to her—only to be framed and sent to prison after Sunn Tiantian teamed up with Zhao Haixing.

“Little sis, you’re not messing with me again, right? If you didn’t finish and I still give you full credit, my dad will beat me half to death,” Liu Wenguang said. After getting burned by Liu Wenmei a few times before, he was a little nervous seeing her come over.

“I’m your actual sister. Why would I lie to you? And look at all these bugs—what, you think I just magically made them up?” Liu Wenmei opened the bag so Liu Wenguang could see.

Liu Wenguang looked into the bag and decided to trust her one more time. He followed Liu Wenmei to the plot and did a quick check. Sure enough, he didn’t find a single bug, so he gave her full credit.

“Hold it. You can’t just give her full credit—we don’t agree. That’s an abuse of power, and we’re telling the Leader,” Lee Lamei said. She’d already seen Liu Wenmei heading over to turn in her work, and she’d brought a few people along.

“Grandma Lee, I’m not abusing anything. My little sister’s got more skill than you ever will. If anything, full credit still feels like I’m shorting her,” Liu Wenguang shot back. He’d come to hate Lee Lamei—those last few beatings had her fingerprints all over them.