“Why didn’t you invite Bai Lan over for dinner?” Miao Daju asked her youngest son at the dinner table.
Xu Jianbei replied, “She already ate at her grandmother’s house.”
“She could still come over for a bowl of soup or something. You’re getting married soon. It’s a good chance for her to get to know the family better.” Su Xiaomei chimed in warmly, playing the role of the good sister-in-law.
Xu Jianbei had no idea what she was up to again, so he simply acted as if he hadn’t heard. Everyone else in the room had the same attitude.
Bai Lan lived right in the courtyard. There was no need for her to “get to know” anyone.
Miao Daju felt that her eldest daughter-in-law was probably cooking up some scheme again. She shook her head helplessly and continued talking to Xu Jianbei. “Have you two given any thought to the wedding date? There’s only about twenty days left until the New Year. Do you want to wait until after the New Year to get married?”
As it happened, they hadn’t had time to discuss the date yet.
“I’ll talk it over with her after dinner.”
“Alright, since you have your own plan, your father and I won’t push. When it’s time to come and propose, just let us know in advance.”
This youngest son hadn’t grown up by her side. After he came back as an adult, he was very independent. He arranged everything for himself. Miao Daju regretted not being able to be more involved, but she was also proud to have such a self-reliant son.
Thinking this, she glanced at her eldest son, who was eating with his head down like a starved ghost. She felt a surge of anger.
Xu Jianbei saw his mother glaring at his eldest brother again. He and his third brother exchanged a glance, both speechless. Their eldest brother really wasn’t much to look at. It wasn’t as if their family had meat every meal, but there was no need to go scrambling through the dishes just to find a tiny shred of it.
Xu Jianbei decided that after he married Bai Lan, he would figure out how to handle meals properly. He couldn’t let his eldest brother’s behavior be so nauseating that people lost their appetites.
—
Bai Lan, unaware of what was happening in the Xu family, went home to clean up her room.
She had shared a room with Bai Ping before. But Bai Ping was no longer a member of their family, and their relationship had soured. Afterward, Bai Ping had taken all of her belongings and her dowry, leaving behind a lot of clutter that hadn’t been cleaned up.
Now that she had some free time, Bai Lan started tidying up.
There were useless scraps of fabric, old broken wooden boxes, and even several pairs of worn-out cloth shoes. As Bai Lan cleaned, she felt like cursing. Bai Ping had left all this garbage behind. She was so annoying.
Despite her frustration, Bai Lan cleaned quickly. After the room was tidied up, she would have it all to herself. Earlier, she had suggested to her eldest sister that her family of three move in, and Bai Lan would move in with her second sister. But her eldest sister had refused. Bai Lan guessed that her eldest sister was thinking of saving up to buy a house.
Bai Lan strongly encouraged this idea. Houses weren’t expensive now. Buy one now and hold onto it for eight or ten years, and the appreciation would be simply shocking.
Suddenly, Bai Lan’s movements stopped. There, in the corner of the wall hidden by the bed boards, was a tattered notebook. It looked like one left over from her school days.
Bai Lan had a gut feeling there was something in it. So she pushed aside the bed boards, picked up the notebook, and sat down at the desk to read.
The beginning of the notebook contained homework assignments. But later pages were filled with all sorts of random writing. The content was shocking.
Qiu Chengcai: worthless, worthless…
Dozens of “worthless” filled the pages. It was easy to imagine just how much resentment Bai Ping had harbored.
After “worthless” came Bai Li and Xu Qiang. Bai Lan’s expression turned serious. Her second sister’s name was written together with this Xu Qiang. Could it be that this Xu Qiang was her second sister’s future partner?
Not knowing exactly what Bai Ping had dreamed, Bai Lan could only make a mental note of this. She would keep an eye out to see if this person ever appeared around her second sister. But come to think of it, why did this name sound familiar?
Bai Lan tried to remember but couldn’t, so she let it go for now.
After her second sister’s name came Liu Meiling and Xu Jiannan: rich.
Seeing this, Bai Lan wasn’t surprised. They were the protagonists of the short drama. Bai Ping’s dream probably contained some plot details. So it wasn’t strange that she knew about Liu Meiling and Xu Jiannan’s future.
Bai Lan thought that was just about it. But unexpectedly, there was one more page.
The contents written on this page left her too shocked to speak.
After a long moment, Bai Lan copied down the contents of that page. Then, she quickly called her eldest and second sisters over to help. They threw all the cleaned-out clutter into the trash pile. As for the notebook itself, she threw it into the coal stove and burned it.
Having lost such an important notebook, Bai Lan figured that once Bai Ping settled down in the Song family, she would definitely remember it and come back looking for it. By burning it first, Bai Lan ensured that Bai Ping would be left grasping at nothing.
What she hadn’t expected was that Bai Ping’s dreams were all related to money and to powerful, influential people.
Yes, the last page contained records of famous and powerful figures who would appear in the future. But Bai Lan, having traveled from the future, already knew about all of them. Besides that, there were quite a few records of bargains and treasure finds.
For example, when and where someone had discovered some valuable artifact.
Newspapers and television might not report on such things, but they would definitely spread through local folklore.
From these records, Bai Lan could be certain that Bai Ping’s dreams were only related to herself.
And Bai Ping had written down the details of the treasure finds she had heard in her dreams, probably intending to go find them herself. But now, they were all Bai Lan’s gain.
Thinking about Bai Ping’s expression when she inevitably missed out on these treasures, Bai Lan found it particularly amusing.
She even planned to go and pick up one of those bargains in the next couple of days. But before that, Bai Lan would go find her second sister and casually ask if she knew a man named Xu Qiang.
The answer she got was indeed “don’t know.” Bai Lan didn’t press further. She didn’t want to cause something to happen by asking about it when nothing had happened yet. The butterfly effect was no joke.
And so, Bai Lan had a very pleasant day. When she fell asleep that night, she had another one of those special dreams.
The last time she’d had this kind of dream was after her eldest sister divorced Qin Shengli. This time, the dream was about her brother, Bai Baowei.
In the dream, Bai Baowei hadn’t changed his surname, nor had he been reunited with the Bai family. He was still called Fang Baowei.
This Fang Baowei worked hard and lived diligently. Like all ordinary people, he got married through a matchmaker around the age of twenty. His married life was uneventful until, around age thirty, Factory Director Fang passed away unexpectedly. Then Qian Chunyun started causing trouble.
First, she stirred up so much trouble that Fang Baowei divorced his wife. Then she offered to help take care of her grandson. But she spent all her time playing mahjong and ended up losing the child. With his son lost, Fang Baowei lost all focus at work. He embarked on a difficult journey to find his child. He wasted half his life and finally, at age fifty, found his son. Unfortunately, by that point, he had suffered too much while searching. He died just a few days after finding his son, before he could truly enjoy the reunion.
Throughout those decades, Qian Chunyun never felt guilty about losing the grandson. Instead, she thought she had raised Fang Baowei so well, and yet he had wasted his time looking for his son instead of earning money to support her in her old age.
Thanks to Factory Director Fang’s death compensation and later the government’s favorable policies—her pension was ten thousand yuan a month—her life never fell into poverty.
After Fang Baowei died, Qian Chunyun even took a share of his death compensation.
At the end of the dream, Qian Chunyun looked as if she had finally broken even on her investment. That was exactly what woke Bai Lan up in anger.
After waking up, Bai Lan pounded the bed board. She felt that just sending Qian Chunyun back to Haicheng was letting her off too easily. No way. Bai Lan got out of bed and decided to write up a report about Qian Chunyun’s child-swapping and mail it to all the major newspapers in Haicheng.
She would make it impossible for Qian Chunyun to live in Haicheng too. She had heard that Factory Director Fang was going to divorce Qian Chunyun. But knowing how he operated, he would probably give her quite a bit. Bai Lan didn’t want Qian Chunyun to take the money and keep a good job, continuing to live comfortably in Haicheng.
Those materials were published in the major Haicheng newspapers half a month later. Because the vile child-swapping incident was made public, Factory Director Fang—who hadn’t originally planned to fire Qian Chunyun—ended up not only divorcing her but also firing her from the factory.
In the end, Qian Chunyun couldn’t go out in Haicheng without people throwing garbage at her. She couldn’t get along there anymore, so she had no choice but to go to the farm where her parents had been sent.
Of course, those events came later. Anyway, after writing the materials, Bai Lan finally slept soundly.
When she woke up, she saw her brother Bai Baowei eating breakfast in the main room and chatting with her parents. Feeling good, she called out “Brother” and, with his smile echoing in her heart, went to work full of energy.
At work that day, the older aunties and married women at the cafeteria naturally asked her many questions about the child-swapping incident.
Bai Lan was now dedicated to spreading the word about Qian Chunyun’s “good deeds.” She told the story of the child swap with such twists and turns that after she finished, not only the older women but even the chefs in the back kitchen were cursing out Qian Chunyun.
During the lunch break, Bai Lan went to find Xu Jianbei for lunch and mentioned writing the materials.
“That’s good. People like her haven’t suffered enough. Letting everyone know what she did will make others think twice before doing the same.”
If you do something bad and your reputation is ruined, you couldn’t survive in this era.
As they chatted, Bai Lan brought up going to the recycling station together after work.
“The one just outside the alley?”
Bai Lan nodded. There was a recycling station not far from Xinghua Alley. It wasn’t large. The station manager was a good friend of Widow Hu’s husband. Gao Qingqing had also been introduced there by him.
“Yanzi has been working there for over two months now. I heard she’s still waiting for a full-time spot. But Hu Aihua is also waiting for a full-time spot. I don’t even know if the recycling station gets one full-time opening a year.”
Hu Aihua was Widow Hu’s daughter. She also worked at the recycling station as a temporary worker. Qin Yan had been squeezed in by Bai Dad through his connections.
Two other people working there had also gotten in through connections. So that full-time spot was highly sought after.
“I’m planning to go there to find some old books to read.”
The reason she wanted to go to that recycling station was because Bai Ping’s notebook had recorded a treasure find opportunity.
If the record was correct, around this time, a batch of leftovers from raided homes—after others had picked through them—would be sent there. And among them was a huge hidden treasure.
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