Gu Qingyao's days were very uneventful now that she was home. Besides Sun Mei frequently coming to her home to pester her, nothing much had changed.

The girls in the brigade were acting strangely. They were clearly deeply jealous of her and obviously hated her, but few of them were openly antagonistic.

Almost no one mocked her like Chen Honghua and Gu Ruoqing had frequently done in the past!

Gu Qingyao was puzzled. What had happened?

It had started to snow that day. Gu Qingyao prepared some things and put them in the basket before she went down the hill to visit Chen Goudan.

The child had changed his name to Chen Feng, but many people in the brigade still preferred to call him Goudan.

After a year, the house at the foot of the hill had clearly been mended. It was in a visibly better condition than it had been at first. Chen Feng and his younger sister, Chen Xiaocao… actually, her older brother had also changed Chen Xiaocao's name to Cheng Qingqing!

Chen Feng adored his younger sister and did not like other people to call her Xiaocao. In the past, his younger sister had been too young for a proper name, so his eldest uncle and aunt had called her Xiaocao, with negative implications.

But the two children were not very cultured, and did not know how to pick a new name. After thinking for a long time, he thought that since gra.s.s was green, he might as well call her Qingqing!

When Gu Qingyao arrived, Chen Feng and Chen Qingqing were sitting in front of the fire at home. Chen Qingqing was sewing while Chen Feng was adding wood to the fire.

“Elder Sister Gu!”

Chen Feng hurriedly stood up when he saw Gu Qingyao.

Gu Qingyao smiled and said, “Chen Feng, how have you been? I've been away for months, so I'm here to visit you now that I'm home.”

Chen Feng smiled. “We're doing well. Elder Sister Gu, you don't need to worry about us.”

Gu Qingyao put down the basket and took out its contents.

There was a side of bacon, about five kilograms in weight, two dried fish, a few links of sausages, and twenty over eggs. There was also five kilograms of fine dried noodles.

She had plenty of this type of noodles in her inters.p.a.ce. In modern times, they were packaged in small portions. After she took them out, she removed the packaging and it was somewhat like the kind that was sold loose in later times.

She had about five kilograms of it, packed in a small cloth bag.

This was a rare item. In these times, they could not be found in a typical village. Even if they wanted to eat noodles, they would make it themselves from flour. Such fine noodles were very rare.

“I didn't bring any vegetables for you. I know you have plenty of such things put away. These are for you. Keep them and eat them slowly. Both of you are growing now, don't shortchange yourself.”

Chen Feng pursed his lips when he looked at the items. He was deeply moved.

“Elder Sister Gu, you've been good enough to us. Now that I've brought my sister to live by ourselves, our lives have improved greatly. I managed to earn many work points this year. Our food rations should be enough for my sister and me. We have also preserved plenty of wild herbs, and we've planted lots of cabbage, carrots and potatoes in our own plot. We won't go hungry.”

Gu Qingyao glanced at him. “Are you sure you won't go hungry? The grain you obtained can at most ensure you won't starve, right?”

Chen Feng bowed his head. “Actually, we'll be doing pretty well to just avoid starvation.”

Indeed, this was quite a feat. In these times, plenty of poor people had no food.

Gu Qingyao sat down by the fire. “How about your sister? She's so young. She must have some nutritious food or she won't grow tall. Since I'm giving you these things, you should just accept them. If you are really too embarra.s.sed to take them, you can repay me when you've grown up and truly have the capability to do so.

“The new year is almost here. Don't you want to give your younger sister some nicer food?”