Divorce Is An Absolute Must! - Chapter 30

Chapter 30: The Free Meal

◎There are still people who eat for free these days.◎

“Hmm…”

Zhu Qing’s whimpering came from the large bed.

Li Lan put on a thin blanket and walked over to Zhu Qing, observing her quietly in the moonlight.

Zhu Qing was in a deep sleep, her face pressed against the pillow, her lips slightly curled up, as if she were having a beautiful dream.

“Hmm…”

She would occasionally let out a few whimpers of dissatisfaction.

When Li Lan was a child, she lived in a welfare center and slept in a large communal bed. People would often snore, grind their teeth, scold people in their dreams, or cry in their dreams. But she had never seen anyone like Zhu Qing who liked to whimper.

When they used to sleep in the same bed, Li Lan would pull Zhu Qing into her arms when she heard her whimper. As soon as she was in her arms, Zhu Qing would stop making noise. So, Li Lan had a biased misconception that Zhu Qing’s whimpers were a sign of dissatisfaction from sleeping alone in an empty bed without anyone to hold her, and they were all directed at her.

“Don’t be unhappy,” Li Lan whispered softly.

Zhu Qing: “Hmph—”

Li Lan extended a hand and gently poked her cheek. Zhu Qing didn’t react at all. She then squeezed Zhu Qing’s mouth into a duck face.

Zhu Qing started whimpering again, frowning and turning over. This time, she was genuinely unhappy.

Li Lan returned to the bed with a sense of satisfaction.

Zhu Qing was so much fun, especially when she was defenseless against people. Li Lan felt a little nostalgic for their early days of dating. She didn’t know if Zhu Qing would break up with her again after she recovered her memory. It was highly likely that she would, since the conflicts and misunderstandings between them had never been resolved. The amnesiac Zhu Qing had maintained her usual cuteness to an extraordinary degree, which gave Li Lan a sense of stolen peace, a moment of fleeting joy.

Regardless of the future, in the present, Zhu Qing was still lying in the same room as her. She and Zhu Qing were legally a couple, and in the eyes of everyone, they were wives.

Li Lan collected her thoughts, calmed herself down, and fell asleep peacefully.

…

When she woke up in the morning, Li Lan vaguely heard a few rooster crows.

She hadn’t just heard them, actually. The rooster had been crowing in her dream all night, making it difficult for her to sleep soundly, and she had dozed off until dawn.

When she got up, Li Lan found that Zhu Qing was not in the room.

She opened the window, and a breath of fresh air came in. Under the clear blue sky were rolling vegetable gardens. Zhu Qing was walking towards the kitchen, carrying a bundle of firewood. When she saw Li Lan, she smiled and waved vigorously.

Li Lan washed up and went downstairs immediately. Zhu Qing, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, was washing the vegetable sprouts she had just picked.

“Good morning,” Zhu Qing said, full of energy.

Li Lan straightened her crooked hat and looked around. “When did you get up?”

“An hour ago,” Zhu Qing said with a laugh, pointing to the side. “There were four eggs in the chicken coop. I took two, but I saw that one of them was a different color, so I’m guessing the production team put it there.”

Li Lan looked outside and chuckled. “The production team probably just woke up. Did anyone film you taking the eggs and picking the wild vegetables?”

Zhu Qing shook her head and said happily, “Only the security camera.”

Li Lan rolled up her sleeves and sat down to wash the vegetables with her. “You silly thing, you’re happy even though you weren’t filmed.”

Zhu Qing was so happy she was shaking her head. “I’m just happy about the trip. How did you sleep last night?”

Li Lan’s expression was a bit subtle. She twitched at Zhu Qing’s cheek, which no longer had a bruise, paused for a moment, and said softly, “It was fine. Are your mosquito bites better?”

“They’re all better. The bug repellent and ointment Qian Chu bought worked really well. I’ll give her a big red envelope when we get back.” Zhu Qing said happily. Then she became a little worried. “I just don’t know if what we brought is enough.”

Li Lan pursed her lips and laughed. “It’s enough. It’s all for you. No one is going to fight with you for it.”

Yesterday, Zhu Qing was protecting the bug repellent from Yu Ling like a little hamster hoarding food. Li Lan almost couldn’t hold back her laughter.

Zhu Qing picked a handful of vegetable sprouts, chopped them up, and mixed them with eggs and flour to make a vegetable paste. She then made an omelet for herself and one for Li Lan.

The drink was, of course, the bird’s nest soup from the sponsor. Zhu Qing added some mountain spring water and re-boiled it.

The omelet had a light fragrance from the greens. The outside was crispy, and the inside was soft. Taking a bite and swallowing it made her feel completely comfortable.

The production team finally woke up, and the cameraman filmed the two of them eating.

The footage of Zhu Qing cooking was recorded by the security camera, edited into a small clip, and released with the eating footage. This time, no one was scolding her anymore.

The usually most active fans of Li Lan, aside from a few who seemed to have no sense and complained that Zhu Qing was feeding Li Lan such rough food, all the rational ones knew that on a show famous for being “stingy and starving the contestants,” Zhu Qing was a little angel who deserved to be praised for getting Li Lan a hot meal as soon as she woke up.

Of course, the stubbornness was still there. It was impossible for them to praise her, especially since the food wasn’t anything special. It was just an ordinary omelet… even though it looked delicious.

…

On the other side, Qi Yao and Yu Ling didn’t eat breakfast at all and slept until ten in the morning.

By the time they got dressed and put on their makeup, it was already eleven o’clock.

“What are we eating for lunch?” Qi Yao said. “I’m so hungry.”

Yu Ling handed him a bottle of bird’s nest soup. “Try this. It’s pretty good.”

Qi Yao drank three bottles of bird’s nest soup and was still hungry. When he attended events, his manager would take care of him, but he often didn’t get enough to eat. He hadn’t eaten last night and was so hungry now that he was getting irritable.

The production team handed them a task card.

“Live off the land, live off the water. The contestants can go out and find ingredients on their own. If you need cooked food, you need to collect enough goods to exchange for it. The specific exchange rules are as follows:”

Below was a long list of things they could exchange for.

Wild vegetables: such as houttuynia, wild chrysanthemum, fern, and aralia, 1 catty for 10 points.

Vegetables: lettuce, carrots, baby bok choy, rapeseed, taro, etc., 1 catty for 20 points.

Seasonings: scallions, houttuynia cordata, cilantro, green garlic, etc., 1 catty for 30 points.

Firewood: 1 catty for 5 points.

Fruits: hovenia, wild pear, etc., 1 catty for 10 points.

Mushrooms: termitomyces, pine mushrooms, 1 tael for 30 points, morel mushrooms, 1 tael for 300 points (if they look good), others, 1 tael for 10 points.

Bamboo shoots: 1 catty for 50 points.

River seafood: snails, loaches, crabs, 1 catty for 80 points.

…

The items that could be exchanged for points were:

Chicken, 1 catty for 30 points.

Pork, 1 catty for 60 points.

Beef, 1 catty for 100 points.

Fruit, 1 catty for 80 points.

Rice, 1 catty for 30 points.

…

Qi Yao was stunned. “Where are we supposed to find these things?”

Yu Ling looked outside and asked the production team, “Where are Teacher Li and the others?”

The production team didn’t say anything, but someone pointed outside for them.

Yu Ling thought for a moment and said to Qi Yao, “I see a vegetable patch outside. The production team is also having us live off the land, so let’s go out and take a look first.”

Qi Yao found it hard to accept that he had to get up and work without food, but since the cameras were on, he didn’t say anything else. He found a basket and followed Yu Ling out.

Before leaving, he looked in the kitchen and said in surprise, “There are two eggs here!”

Yu Ling heard the sound and walked over, stopping Qi Yao from cracking them open to eat. She took them and shook them. “They’re raw. We need to cook them.”

Qi Yao was too hungry to be angry. He quickly lit the firewood to boil water and put the eggs in the pot.

Yu Ling, on the other hand, looked around carefully. Her eyes fell on the pile of thin wooden sticks and the water urn that was filled to the brim.

Qi Yao didn’t know how to conserve resources. He poured half an urn of water to cook two eggs and used up all the firewood.

…

On the other side, Zhu Qing and Li Lan had left early. Zhu Qing had her eyes on the most expensive morel mushrooms. Although Li Lan didn’t say anything, she had a feeling that the chances of finding them were low.

“Let’s go dig for bamboo shoots,” Li Lan suggested sincerely. “It seems like we’re getting farther and farther away.”

The vegetable patch below the wooden house was owned by someone and couldn’t be picked from at will. The vegetable sprouts Zhu Qing found in the morning were wild vegetables, but even if she picked four or five catties of them, she couldn’t exchange them for much.

Zhu Qing had high aspirations. In order to get more points, she resolutely pulled Li Lan up the mountain.

“That works, too,” Zhu Qing’s small wooden basket was piled high with grayish-white mushrooms and two termitomyces. “These should be enough for us to exchange for a catty of meat. I saw some garlic sprouts on the way back. Let’s grab a few to stir-fry with the meat.”

Li Lan was already salivating from hearing her talk. “Are there any scallions? The teachers are all coming this afternoon, and I don’t want my breath to smell like garlic.”

“That’s a good point,” Zhu Qing thought seriously for two seconds. “Even though the garlic sprouts don’t have a strong garlic smell, the scallions have a strong scallion smell!”

Li Lan: “…Let’s just stir-fry with wild vegetables. Let’s give up on the scallions and garlic.”

The two of them went up the mountain to dig for bamboo shoots, but neither of them had ever done a job like that before. It was only after Zhu Qing stopped an elderly woman who seemed to have been sent by the production team and asked for her guidance that they were successful.

“Do you think the production team will be tricky with their words?” Zhu Qing said, exhausted from digging over a dozen bamboo shoots. “They might say they want peeled bamboo shoots, and then we’ll only have a tiny bit left, and it won’t be heavy enough.”

Li Lan wiped the sweat from her brow and held the wooden basket as they walked back. “Then we won’t sell them. We’ll just keep them to eat ourselves.”

“Bamboo shoots are more expensive than chicken. It’s a bit hard to part with them.”

“If you eat them, it’s worth it no matter what.”

The two of them were wearing long windbreakers today. The style was youthful and fashionable. Even Li Lan had tied up her hair. As they foraged in the mountains and dug for bamboo shoots, even though the work was tiring, they could talk to each other, and they could see each other when they looked up. Their mood was always up.

The camera had been following the two of them from beginning to end. When Li Lan was leaving, she smiled at the cameraman apologetically. “You guys are really working hard, following us up the mountain with such heavy equipment.”

Zhu Qing said to the staff, “You don’t have to film us on the way down, do you? You must be tired holding that equipment. We can just use our action camera to film ourselves.”

The staff finally couldn’t help but laugh. After filming one segment, he put down the equipment. “You two have so much energy. You’re the first ones to go out and forage for food on the first day and return with a full harvest.”

This show was all about authenticity. Most of the contestants would go out with high hopes and come back empty-handed. It wasn’t because they were just messing around, but because people who hadn’t done physical work for years would lose the ability to use tools and find food. They weren’t efficient enough and focused on creating a variety show effect, so they naturally couldn’t get any work done.

Unexpectedly, Li Lan and Zhu Qing were both very efficient. When it was time to work, they worked efficiently and had great chemistry.

Li Lan waved her hand. She was used to high-intensity work and could endure any amount of fatigue. Zhu Qing, on the other hand, had great physical fitness and had always had a good habit of working out.

After returning to the wooden house, the two of them tallied up their harvest. They had two termitomyces, one big and one small. The big one was two taels, and the small one was less than a tael. The production team gave them 80 points. With the remaining ten taels of mushrooms, they had a total of 180 points.

The director checked them meticulously for a long time and finally confirmed that the two of them had indeed gotten 180 points in one morning. This was an unprecedented achievement, not to mention that they had only been out for less than three hours!

As for the bamboo shoots, it was exactly as Zhu Qing had predicted. The production team told them to peel them before selling.

The director said self-righteously, “The bamboo shoots sold outside don’t have their skins on.”

Zhu Qing took the opportunity not to sell them. “Then we’ll keep them to eat. We have enough points anyway. If we peel them, it won’t be worth our hard work.”

The director: …

With these points, Zhu Qing exchanged for one catty of chicken, one catty of pork, and one catty of rice, which cost 120 points, leaving them with 60 points.

The production team tried to recommend fruit. “How about some apples, bananas, or pears?”

Zhu Qing just shook her head. “I brought vitamins.”

The director: …

Although the production team had left a bag of flour in the house in case the contestants couldn’t find any food and were starving, Zhu Qing still thought that eating flour-based foods continuously would be unpleasant. So, she decided to eat rice for lunch.

“I’ll make you different meals,” Zhu Qing said boastfully. “To win a woman’s heart, you have to win her stomach.”

Li Lan didn’t stop Zhu Qing from talking big in front of the camera, and she couldn’t hold back her laughter.

“Alright, alright. Both the person and the stomach are yours.”

Zhu Qing looked at her with feigned anger. “Don’t laugh at me.”

The two of them walked to the kitchen, chattering and laughing, but one thing was not so great. When Zhu Qing came back, she found that the small wooden sticks she had picked up for kindling, the small pieces of firewood she had chopped from the storage room, and the urn full of water she had carried back from the village well were all gone.

Li Lan walked in, and her eyes followed Zhu Qing’s. She understood what had happened.

“I’ll go chop firewood and get water. You rest first.”

Zhu Qing shook her head, a little unhappy. “You start the fire. I’ll go get the water.”

The production team chimed in at an opportune moment. “Bottled water is 5 points a bottle. They’re all sweet springs from the mountain.”

Zhu Qing was about to say no, but then her eyes darted around. “How many milliliters are in one bottle?”

The production team said five hundred.

Zhu Qing said, “Then if I carry a bucket of water down from the mountain, one bucket is about 10 liters, which is twenty bottles of water, 100 points!”

The production team was silent for two seconds and then coldly refused. “No.”

Zhu Qing still grunted and carried the water back, but this time she didn’t go to the public well at the east end of the village. Instead, she knocked on her neighbor’s door down the slope and, with her sweet-talking and three bamboo shoots, got permission to use their nearby well.

The area was close to the water source, so there was no shortage of water. Every household had a well that didn’t need to be dug very deep. The water source was clean and endless, so they wouldn’t be stingy with Zhu Qing taking a few buckets.

The production team, who had been defeated by this workaround, focused on filming the negotiation process and edited it as the highlight of the day. There were some people you just had to admire. She was seriously trying to earn money, rarely interacting with the camera or the production team, but she was the one who provided the most entertaining content.

Soon, Zhu Qing had finished making two dishes and a soup: stir-fried pork with bamboo shoots, mushroom and bamboo shoot soup, cold-dressed purslane, and rice with a handful of millet—which Zhu Qing had exchanged for with two handfuls of rice.

“It smells so good,” Li Lan said, holding her bowl. She looked at the dishes on the table, then at the camera, and then at Zhu Qing. “How did you get so good at using a big iron pot?”

“Of course,” Zhu Qing loved hearing Li Lan praise her. It made her happier than anything else. “We still have some chicken left. I’ll pan-fry some chicken fillets for you tonight.”

Li Lan asked curiously, “Do we have any oil left?”

The damned production team had only left them with salt and soy sauce, no oil. Zhu Qing had stir-fried the vegetables with the lard she had rendered from a piece of pork belly.

“There’s still a piece of pork belly left. This iron pot is very well-seasoned. It won’t stick with just a little bit of oil,” Zhu Qing said, and she sighed with emotion. “Actually, the conditions the production team gave us are quite generous. If we didn’t have this pot, we might not have been able to eat a hot meal today.”

Zhu Qing was genuinely feeling that the conditions were not bad, but Qi Yao, who had returned with a dusty and disheveled face, didn’t think so.

“Where did you get your food from!” Qi Yao’s eyes were green with hunger as he asked the production team. “How come they have a meal?”

Li Lan looked up at him, and her eyes passed over him to see Yu Ling behind him.

Yu Ling was carrying a wooden basket filled with a pile of wild vegetables. The sportswear she was wearing was a bit dirty, and she was panting heavily from exhaustion.

Qi Yao was even more a mess. His knees and elbows were covered in mud, as if he had taken a hard fall.

Zhu Qing said in shock, “Did you… chase wild rabbits and dig for bamboo rats?”

Qi Yao became angry just from the mention of it. “We walked to the foot of the mountain and saw a vegetable patch. We didn’t see anyone around, so we thought they were wild vegetables and picked a few. Who knew that a dog suddenly started barking and running towards us? We were so scared that we ran, and that’s how I fell.”

Yu Ling’s face was extremely awkward. The truth seemed to be a little different from what Qi Yao had said, but Zhu Qing and Li Lan tacitly didn’t press for details. They just comforted him. “Then you should hurry up and change your clothes and see if you’re hurt.”

Qi Yao sat down directly and waved his hand. “No need to rush. The first thing I need to do now is eat. Where did you get your food? Can I have a share, too?”

Li Lan and Zhu Qing looked at each other, and neither of them said a word.