The Luck to Find Money

Grandpa Lin and Grandma Lin didn't get back until after eight. The sound of the motorcycle was easy to hear in the quiet village.

Before the motorcycle even came down the mountain, the two girls heard it and hurried to open the door.

Sure enough, the outside light had only been on a short while when the motorcycle stopped at the door. Grandpa Lin and Grandma Lin got off, both beaming.

They didn't pay the driver, and he left happily.

"Grandma, how much did you sell today?"

Grandma Lin gave the curious Lin Er a pat to shoo her aside, then glanced over and saw that the neighbors' lights were all off. She hurriedly pushed the girls back inside.

"What are you doing talking at the door in the middle of the night? Let's go inside and talk!"

Once inside, Grandpa Lin went to heat water for a bath, while Grandma Lin shook out a cloth bag on the table.

With a clatter, bills and coins spilled into a messy pile under the dim light.

Lin Huihui's eyes widened. She hurried over and reached for the money, only for Grandma Lin to smack her hand.

"What do you know about money? Don't get in the way. Go get the rubber bands from the cabinet!"

Her mother had brought the rubber bands back from outside. They were the plain kind, with nothing wound around them, and there was no telling how many were in the bundle, which looked like a chrysanthemum.

Whenever the sisters' hair ties broke, they would take two rubber bands from the bundle and wrap yarn around them to make a new one.

Lin Er came over without being shooed away, then started sorting and counting the money with Grandma Lin.

One-jiao notes, five-jiao notes, one-yuan notes, two-yuan notes, five-yuan notes, ten-yuan notes... and even red bills.

They sorted the money into piles of different sizes and bundled the bills twenty to a stack. Four buckets of river snails had earned them more than five hundred yuan!

Grandma Lin stared at the money without speaking for a long while. Finally, she pulled out a two-yuan note for the eagerly watching Lin Huihui, then glanced at Lin Er and gave her a five-yuan note.

Grandpa Lin came in, and Grandma Lin turned to look at him, her voice somewhat low.

"Let's leave the peanuts for now. We'll sell river snails first!"

The next day, the whole family got to work. Lin Er and Grandpa Lin stayed home to remove the snail tails, while Grandma Lin took Lin Huihui out to collect snails.

The snails had to be big enough to have their tails removed with a small hatchet. Pliers were more convenient for the smaller ones.

Grandpa and granddaughter snipped the big ones and chopped the small ones, working very quickly.

But there really were a lot of snails, and by noon, Lin Er had grown impatient.

"Grandma, can we hire someone to help remove the snail tails? It's too slow doing it ourselves!"

Grandma Lin looked at the two big basins of snails and didn't scold her. At noon, she went out with her bowl and said something to someone; afterward, the grandma from the house behind theirs came to help with her grandson.

They didn't have much land. They had moved there from elsewhere, and their surname was different from everyone else's in the village.

The old woman had only one son, who had gone away to work when he got married. Later, he had a son with congenital heart disease, so he sent the boy back for the old woman to raise, not wanting to grow attached and end up heartbroken.

Unexpectedly, the child was hardy. He was still fine by the time he was in his early teens, so his family took him to the hospital for another examination. They discovered that his heart condition, which had been very serious when he was little, had improved considerably, and a minor operation would now take care of it.

By then, the grandma had also passed away, and the boy was taken away by his parents. When Lin Er saw him again, she was already in her twenties, and the boy had grown into a very handsome man with a gentle air, showing none of the extremism and ruthlessness he had as a child.

"Grandma She, here's a stool!"

Lin Er brought stools for both Grandma She and her grandson, then handed them tools. She Pengfei glanced at Lin Er, took the little hatchet, and started helping. He also looked curiously at the gloves, which seemed to have been stiffened with glue.

Grandma She said nothing, merely taking a look before chatting with Grandma Lin as they worked on the snails.

Lin Er held grudges. However pitiful the boy was, the two of them hadn't gotten along. Once, when she passed his family's bamboo grove, she stepped on two shoots that had sprung up.

The little brat saw it, took a hatchet, and chopped down all her family's bamboo shoots.

She didn't know whether it had happened yet, but Lin Er remembered it.

Most importantly, because of his heart disease, the children in the village had been taught from a young age not to quarrel or fight with him.

If they upset him and something happened, their families could never afford to pay for it. After all, he really could just drop dead on the spot.

Their homes were close together, and Lin Er had often clashed with him.

With six people working on the snails at once, Lin Huihui ran back and forth serving tea and water, and also helped carry the finished snails to a basin of water pumped in advance.

In an hour, they finished both big basins.

Grandma She took She Pengfei home, and Grandma Lin began stir-frying the snails.

Lin Er asked twice, but Grandma Lin still didn't say how much she had paid for the help. She only slipped She Pengfei a few egg-yolk cakes when he left.

The boy really could sit still and had helped a great deal. Lin Er, the fake child, didn't count, so when Lin Er shared food with him while they worked, Grandma Lin unusually said nothing.

Things had finally improved for Lin Er too. Grandma Lin had asked her several times, and when she wouldn't say, she stopped probing into exactly how much money she had.

When you had no source of income but had money on you, your family would only suspect that you had stolen it from home.

Even if no money was missing, they would still wonder whether they had put some somewhere, forgotten about it, and had her find it.

But now Lin Er had already said she could earn money, and she had even taught the method to her family, who had indeed made money from it.

Even if she wasn't using that method anymore, when she had money, her family would wonder whether she had found another way to earn it.

So when she occasionally brought snacks or fish and meat home, they would only nag her a little for being greedy and liking food. They no longer asked where she had gotten them.

Lin Huihui was delighted. Her big sister had bought her new clothes!

There were only so many river snails in the river. During the seven-day holiday, Grandma Lin and the others collected nearly all the easy-to-catch snails there. Lin Er heard that they had even gone to other villages to collect them.

The first day, four buckets took two hours to sell. After that, they had returning customers and sold six buckets a day. Even Lin Er became a delivery person.

Later, Grandma Lin stopped letting Lin Huihui count the money with her, afraid someone might coax the information out of the child.

As for Lin Er, once she started junior high, she seemed to grow up all at once, and Grandma Lin no longer treated her like a child.

Lin Er was also happy that she could go to the city openly. She discovered that she really did have a knack for finding money.

She had actually had that luck in her previous life too. Back then, she had only four hundred yuan a month for living expenses in high school, and it was never enough by the end of the month. Sometimes she didn't even have the fare to get home.

But whenever she reached the end of her rope, she always managed to find some money: twenty yuan here, fifty there. It was never a huge amount, but it wasn't little either.

Now she used magic to find money, and whenever she was in the city, she got at least two or three hundred yuan a day.

She also found a good spot: the stairwell passage beside Wenchang Tower.

Few people came through there, though people above and below could see if anyone was there. The light was dim, and from a distance, money flying toward her looked much like falling leaves.

There was a wall on the left and a steep drop on the right, so people could only approach from ahead or behind, and she could see them at a glance.

With the Disillusionment Charm on and the Summoning Charm cast, as long as there was no one within fifty meters ahead or behind her, no one would see the unscientific sight of money flying through the sky.