10 Chapter 10 Her Background
Translator: 549690339
When Qiao Xiaomai and her brother returned home, Qiao Changshun had already ground all the sweet potatoes into a pulp, filling a whole bucket with the moist residue.
Qiao Xiaomai washed a couple handfuls of corn kernels for Qiao Dami to make into porridge while she found a large piece of hemp cloth to use as a filter screen. She and Qiao Changshun screened the sweet potato residue together, a crucial step in making sweet potato starch.
Watching Qiao Xiaomai’s adept movements, Qiao Changshun harbored some doubts, “Xiaomai, how do you know doing it this way can get that …what do you call it, starch?”
“I tried it randomly before, I just didn’t get a chance to tell mother.” Qiao Xiaomai’s answer was incredibly perfunctory.
Both Zhuang Lühe and the person she replaced were good at cooking, so this excuse worked quite well.
True enough, once she said that, Qiao Changshun immediately made the connection with Zhuang Lühe. He sighed, stopped questioning her and simply did as she instructed.
By the time they finished filtering the sweet potato residue, Qiao Dami had also finished cooking the millet porridge.
The amount of rice grains Qiao Xiaomai had added were few, making for a thin, watery dish that served only to fill their bellies with liquid.
She only drank half a bowl of the watery soup, leaving the rice grains and the five river snails for Qiao Dami and Qiao Changshun.
It’s not because her affection for her stepfather and half-brother ran deep. She had something to eat in her space; she could sneak in a meal later in the evening.
After eating a simple dinner, the family of three went to bed.
The Qiao Family’s residence consisted of three tile-roofed rooms: the central hall was the living room; the room to the left was for Qiao Changsun and Zhuang Lühe; the room to the right was Qiao Xiaomai’s.
Even though money was tight, the oil lamp was briefly lit during mealtime, only to be quickly extinguished afterwards. That night, with the help of the moonlight coming from the window, Qiao Xiaomai secretly ate some bread from her spatial storage.
She was originally just a recent university graduate. She belonged to a well-off family and battled her stepmother, terrible father, and useless younger brother for more than ten years. She finally caught her stepmother’s affair and threw out her stepmother and lousy brother. Her awful father also collapsed due to this incident.
Just when she was about to seize control of the family, she was hit by a car and time-traveled.
Not only did she time-travel, but she also ended up in the body of a poor girl whose family was alarmingly downtrodden.
With food scarcity and her mother leaving them, her father disabled and her brother young, the responsibility fell upon her to shoulder the family’s burdens.
What a depressing situation!
At this thought, she chewed her bread with greater fervor.
Well, she managed to kick out her useless stepmother and brother. Her terrible father was paralyzed, and in doing so, she avenged the mistreatment suffered by her biological mother and herself over the years.
With nothing left for her in her modern life, she decided to start afresh here.
Reminiscing these thoughts, Qiao Xiaomai wiped her mouth and resisted the urge to have another piece.
Her spatial storage was coincidentally acquired and only about the size of a soccer field. It wasn’t very useful in modern society, and aside from storing daily necessities, most of what she stored was food.
She loved cooking and was quite the foodie. However, no matter how much food she had stored, it would eventually run out, so she had to eat sparingly.
Now that Zhuang Lühe had left, and Qiao Changshun was naïve and lacked ambition, and Qiao Dami was young, she had to plan for their future survival.
With her mind filled with a jumble of thoughts, she at last fell into a deep slumber after a long while.
The next morning, after waking up, she first went to check on the sweet potato starch that they had prepared the previous night.
The starch had settled at the bottom of the water bucket. She poured out the clear water, scooped out the starch, placed it in a wooden basin, and left it to dry in the sun.
It was a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine. By evening, she could begin making starch jelly.
The thought invigorated Qiao Xiaomai. She quickly washed up and began to prepare breakfast.
