Chapter Fifty-One: The One Behind the Scenes

Jiang Dalin brought over a cart and some people. After tying up Qiu Youyou and Li Chaosheng, he said to Jiang Zhuguo, "Uncle Zhuguo, keep an eye on the village. I'm taking these two to the county seat!"

"No rush!" Jiang Zhuguo waited until Jiang Dalin had finished tying them up and was eagerly trying to climb onto the oxcart before speaking in a leisurely tone, "Lianjun rode his bicycle to the county town. You stay here and keep watch over these two. Make sure they don't escape before the military comrades arrive!"

Jiang Xiahai watched as her Uncle Dalin—who had his rear end stuck up in the air—suddenly slumped down.

"Uncle, why didn't you say so earlier?" Jiang Dalin jumped off the oxcart, looking rather helpless. "How did I offend you this time?"

"You didn't!" Jiang Zhuguo raised a hand to pat Jiang Dalin on the shoulder and sighed. "You, ah, don't always rely on me! I'm getting old, and my legs aren't what they used to be. How can I keep doing this? When I step down and someone else takes over, what if they don't get along with you? Who will you rely on then?"

Jiang Dalin's mouth twitched. He looked at his uncle, who spoke without turning red or running out of breath and could probably run faster than him on those agile legs, and said speechlessly, "Uncle, just yesterday you were beating Jiang Jing at home! Aunt Jinhua said even the wild pheasants on the mountain didn't jump as high as the two of you!"

Jiang Zhuguo immediately raised his hand and cuffed Jiang Dalin on the head. "What kind of nonsense are you spouting! I'm telling you to use your brain more, so use it!"

Jiang Dalin rubbed the back of his head. Still suspecting that something he had done earlier—while Aunt Hua wasn't home—had angered Uncle Zhuguo, he leaned over to Jiang Hua and asked in a low whisper, "Aunt, when is Uncle finally going to stop being mad?"

Jiang Hua gave him a bewildered look. "Your uncle isn't mad!"

Jiang Dalin's face twisted into a knot of confusion. Standing nearby, Jiang Xiazhu imitated her grandfather, letting out a heavy sigh while shaking her tiny head as if she simply couldn't bear to watch any longer.

Jiang Dalin let out a "hey" and scooped the little girl right up into his arms. "What are you sighing for, little one?"

"Grandpa!" Jiang Xiazhu pointed at Jiang Zhuguo, and then pointed at her grandmother. "Grandma!"

"Well?"

"Together! Don't separate!" Jiang Xiazhu pulled a solemn little face and stared sternly at Jiang Dalin. "Before, separated!"

Pausing, Jiang Xiazhu cupped her hands over her chest, shaking her head and swaying from side to side with a dramatic sigh. "Missed, got sick! Understand?"

Jiang Dalin's mouth twitched. Seeing Jiang Zhuguo listening with an old face that had turned red but offered no refutation, he understood even if he didn't quite want to.

Wasn't it just that his Uncle Zhuguo couldn't leave because of his position as the party secretary? And because his aunt had stayed out a few days longer on account of that brat Jiang Jing, his uncle had simply—gotten sick!

Jiang Dalin couldn't help hugging Jiang Xiazhu tightly, taking two or three steps toward Jiang Zhuguo to murmur in a low stream of complaints: "Uncle, you can't be like this! How many people envy the position of party secretary? When you're the secretary, our aunt has face when she goes out, right? Besides, a man still has to strive for his career. What does it look like to always follow behind your wife? Doesn't that make you look like you're living off a woman?"

Jiang Zhuguo chuckled with benevolent amusement, conveniently taking Jiang Xiazhu from Jiang Dalin's arms. "I'll talk to your wife about this later!"

Jiang Dalin remembered the raw strength in his own wife's hands—the kind that could chop spare ribs into neat little pieces with a single cleaver stroke—and shivered. "Uncle, you mustn't—"

"Besides, even if I'm no longer the party secretary, I wouldn't be living off a woman! My sons will support me, what's there to worry about?"

Jiang Dalin fell silent. He glanced not far away at Tiedan, who was jumping up and down right outside Uncle Zhuguo's doorway, and suddenly understood: he and his uncle both had wives who were equally virtuous and capable, and the only thing he lacked compared to his uncle was a son!

Rolling up his sleeves, Jiang Dalin charged forward and roared, "What are you playing for? Go back inside and read your books! Have you learned that arithmetic I gave you earlier?"

Tiedan stood frozen at the doorway, staring at his father as if the man had lost his mind.

Jiang Xiazhu watched Jiang Dalin's angry, retreating back, then looked up with a puzzled expression at her grandfather. "Team leader?"

How on earth did someone like this ever become the team leader?

Jiang Zhuguo smiled. "Don't let this kid act all foolish and dense in front of us. Back when the harvests were bad a few years ago, when we went to collect relief grain, this was the exact kid who rolled up his sleeves in the county and town and got into shouting matches with everyone!"

The village had even managed to hoard some grain from the black market back then.

Remembering when Jiang Dalin had come to him with that idea, his face had burned with shame, but his resolve had not wavered in the slightest.

"Uncle, I know I'm scheming against people, that it's a black-hearted thing to do! But I can't let the uncles and brothers standing behind me take that kind of risk! Those few outsider families were never of one heart with us anyway, so I'll play the double agent. Once they run out of grain, I'll step forward. If anything goes wrong later, if there's any trouble, the responsibility will be entirely mine! Not a single family that bought grain on the black market will be exposed!"

At that moment, Jiang Zhuguo had realized that this boy had grown up, and the Yangyang Production Brigade would not suffer under his watch.

Jiang Xiazhu listened to Jiang Zhuguo's low murmur, nodding her head from time to time in a picture of total agreement.

Seeing this from the side, Jiang Hua felt a trace of a smile blossom in the depths of her eyes.

By the time they returned home, midday dinner was already prepared.

However, there were two extra little boys sitting in the room.

Jiang Xiazhu glanced at them. She wasn't very familiar with them, so she didn't speak, simply trailing behind her grandmother like a little tail.

At noon, they ate vegetable soup flavored with the meat from the morning's meat buns.

Seeing that everyone in the family had a bowl, Jiang Xiazhu sat in her chair, happily swinging her short legs as she pointed at her grandfather and then at the bowls of soup held in everyone's hands. "Fair!"

Jiang Zhuguo raised an eyebrow and smiled proudly. "Our Xiazhu's brain is just so sharp! She figured out what Grandpa meant this morning right away!"

Praised so, if Jiang Xiazhu had a tail, that tail would be spinning like a propeller by now.

Seeing this, Liu Jinhua's two grandsons, Jiang Yuan and Jiang Lil, couldn't help but reveal looks of envy in their eyes.

In the afternoon, Jiang Dalin ran over once more to brief Jiang Zhuguo. "Those educated youths didn't manage to run off to the county seat! But a few of them went over to Han Dahua's place, and I noticed Han Dahua looked like she was planning to go out tonight! The educated youth office and the education committee might get involved in this!"

"Nothing major will come of it!" Jiang Jing was sitting nearby wiping the table. Hearing Jiang Dalin's worried voice, he chimed in casually, "They still wouldn't dare snatch people away from the military! You're a team leader now, why are you still such a coward?"

Hearing the first part of what he said, Jiang Dalin felt a weight lift from his chest. But as his gaze shifted to Jiang Jing, who was wearing an apron, he couldn't resist retorting, "With how virtuous and domestic you are, how come you haven't managed to find a wife yet?"

With that, he turned on his heel and bolted.

Jiang Jing sneered. "If he hadn't run so fast, I would've kicked him for sure!"

The moment the words left his mouth, his rear end received a swift kick.

"In front of me, whose father are you trying to be?"

Jiang Jing rubbed the backside that had just been kicked by his own flesh-and-blood father, enduring it in silence amid Jiang Xiazhu's gales of giggles as he went back to wiping the table, daring neither to speak nor to show anger.

As night fell—

*Clack.* The sound of a small pebble tapping against the windowpane startled the occupants inside.

A shadowy figure slipped out into the moonlight.

Catching sight of the figure standing outside the courtyard wall, Jiang Jing raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to speak, but the moment his eyes landed on the person standing behind that figure, his pupils suddenly constricted into pinpricks.