A Fisherman's Daughter by the Eastern Sea 2

On the way back with Chuncai, Wen Qiushui carried an armful of food given to her by several aunties. It was just the right time, as everyone was preparing their evening meals.

Wen Qiushui watched the women building fires and cooking, carefully observing their every move.

By the time Wen Qiushui said goodbye to Chuncai and returned home, Li Xiangyi was no longer in the courtyard across the way.

Wen Qiushui felt somewhat restless. She had wanted to try living out her life as an ordinary person, but although she had memories of everyday necessities, they were unfamiliar to her. She had thought that, since she lived in a remote spot, she would naturally have time to reconcile them with her memories.

She had not expected Li Xiangyi to live across the way. In her previous life, Wen Qiushui had dealt with him plenty. Unless he paid no attention, his keen perception was among the sharpest of anyone Wen Qiushui knew.

Would Li Xiangyi recognize that she was a different person again in this life?

Wen Qiushui put away the food she had brought back, then went inside and shut the door.

After eating a few pieces of pastry from her space, Wen Qiushui gave no more thought to the future and went to bed early.

A single glance was enough to tell that Li Xiangyi was gravely injured. Thinking of the poison he had suffered in her previous life, Wen Qiushui was not afraid of him in his wounded state. If he interfered with her plans, she would not mind sending him on a trip to the underworld.

Although she had been somewhat acquainted with Li Xiangyi in her previous life, this was a different world. Even if he was the same person, he was not the one she had known, so naturally she did not care what became of him.

With such thoughts wandering through her head, Wen Qiushui's first night as a fisherwoman passed.

Early the next morning, Wen Qiushui was sorting through the ingredients at home when she thought of Li Xiangyi across the way. No, Wen Qiushui sorted through her memories again: the traveling physician staying in the fishing village for a time was not called Li Xiangyi, but Li Lianhua.

Li Lianhua, who lived across the way, had also gone out early, to who knew where.

Wen Qiushui was quite pleased. She would not have to do the things she had been contemplating, such as disposing of a body and erasing the traces. With no one around, she recalled the original owner's memories and began building a fire to cook.

It was her first attempt, and even with those memories, she was rather inexperienced. The porridge she made had a distinctly scorched taste. Wen Qiushui did not mind, though. After all, she had made it with her own hands, and she ate it with pickled vegetables, thoroughly enjoying it.

She did not go out afterward, either. After losing her parents, the girl's temperament had already changed somewhat. Apart from shopping and gathering pearls, she generally stayed indoors, having less and less contact with the villagers.

After rummaging through every corner, she found only five taels of silver in all.

Wen Qiushui covered her face. In her previous lives, even a tip she casually gave out would have been worth more than this. An ordinary person's life was hard indeed.

And she still had things to fall back on and nothing to worry about. If it were the original owner, with only five taels to her name and no real skill to support herself, who knew how hard life would have been?

After making do with lunch, Wen Qiushui went pearl diving again. She truly could not stand living with nothing but four bare walls. She needed to start earning money soon; then, if she took a few things out of her space, no one would find it strange.

Usually, villagers went pearl diving in groups. Pearl diving was dangerous, after all, and they needed someone nearby. At the very least, that person could help recover a body.

But Wen Qiushui would not run into any danger, and she wanted to dive deeper and stay down longer, so she naturally went alone without saying anything. In any case, after losing her parents, the original owner had lost her desire to live, and she had done this sort of thing more than once.

When she reached the shore of the Eastern Sea, she spotted Li Lianhua, who had gone out early that morning. He had gathered a pile of timber and was hammering away, building a small house.

Wen Qiushui glanced at the white hemp clothes he wore and thought of how she had killed Shan Gudao in her previous life. She understood then that, in this life, Qi Mushan had still died at Shan Gudao's hands.

Neither of them spoke. Compared with Li Xiangyi, who had always retained a touch of childishness in her previous life, this Li Lianhua was much more melancholy.

Wen Qiushui walked over to the moored boat, untied the rope, and rowed out to sea.

Li Lianhua watched Wen Qiushui's retreating figure, a trace of puzzlement flashing in his eyes. Over the past two days, Miss Wen's bearing seemed to have changed a great deal.

But the thought passed in a flash. He was only a traveling physician struggling to get enough food and clothing. What did it have to do with him how others were?

So he bent his head over the work of building the little house once more.

This time, Wen Qiushui was alone and rowed a little farther out. From her experience diving the day before, she had also worked out a breathing technique specifically for holding her breath. She came away with quite a haul.

Some seafood, dozens of tiny pearls, and several large, exceptionally beautiful pearls in several colors all went into Wen Qiushui's Chaos Pearl. For ordinary people without power or influence, finding something valuable was not a blessing, but a disaster.

That was the warning given to the original owner by her parents, who had seen much of life and survived to the end while fleeing disaster.

Besides some small pearls and seafood, there were also some better-quality swords and sabers, so she had returned with a full load. After Wen Qiushui surfaced, however, she did not hurry back. Even at her speed, she had found so many valuable things a little too quickly.

Only when the sun was setting did Wen Qiushui leisurely return home with a bamboo basket full of her catch on her back.

She was in no hurry to sell the small pearls. She intended to string them into little pieces of jewelry and sell them in the city, which would earn her more than selling the pearls alone. After all, the pearls were of ordinary quality, and buyers would surely try every way to force down the price.

After casually cooking the seafood she had brought back, Wen Qiushui began circulating the Heavenly Devil Instruction.

Even though she wanted to live an ordinary person's life, she was not an ordinary person after all. No matter the circumstances, circulating the Devil Cultivation Method to improve her body was her first priority.

Her ultimate goal was to grow stronger, and the Heavenly Devil Instruction and the Chaos Pearl were the most important things she relied on. Thus, even if she wanted to cultivate her State of Mind, she could not stop cultivating the Devil Cultivation Method or repairing the Chaos Pearl.

Just like that, two years quickly passed. The original owner had fled with her parents from a young age, then helped her family fish and gather pearls. Her health had also suffered after her parents died, leaving her constitution even weaker than Qiao Wanmian's. In two years, the Heavenly Devil Instruction had only broken through to the first level, barely repairing all the hidden injuries in her body.

Li Lianhua, who lived across the way, had finished building his little house and moved out of the village a year earlier.

Wen Qiushui gradually grew accustomed to life as a fisherwoman. The only thing troubling her now was that, because she had regularly brought back good catches over the past two years, her household had gradually become better off, and the village aunties had begun making discreet inquiries about her marriage again.

Wen Qiushui could imagine that, once her mourning period ended in six months, people would surely swarm in to press her to marry for the sake of her family's assets.

But Wen Qiushui only wanted to experience this life; she did not want to sacrifice herself for it.