Every day before dawn, Uncle Qin would shoulder a hoe and go out to the fields.
Mainly because during the day Uncle Qin still had to handle deliveries for the family, so all the work in the fields had to be done in the mornings and evenings.
When Runsheng was home, he would go along with Uncle Qin to the fields.
Always on schedule, Xiong Shan would also shoulder his farming tools and come to meet them.
For Xiong Shan, after all the storms and hardships he had been through on the river, this pastoral, reclusive life felt like a kind of enjoyment.
More than that, he got to go to the fields every day with Lord Qin — and, importantly, they were still farming Li Sanjiang’s land.
Lately, though, Uncle Qin, while still taking Runsheng along as before, wouldn’t let him work; he would make Runsheng just stand in the field.
Runsheng was obedient.
If told to stand, he stood.
It wasn’t because he wanted to slack off — these days he often couldn’t control the strength in his hands.
Even a simple hoeing could accidentally gouge out a pit; farm tools were getting broken all the time.
Other families patched and kept their tools for generations; the tools at Li Sanjiang’s had all been replaced with new ones recently.
Xiong Shan yawned.