I used rebirth to bury his captivating gaze.

Chapter 58 Never Forget Your Original Intention (Yu Mei Insists on Comparing Herself with Yu Han)

Undeterred, Yang Yumei dialed the radio channels again and suddenly heard an advertisement for an art academy. She turned the volume down, afraid of waking her sleeping father.

Diao Yan walked away without paying any attention to her actions.

Yu Mei held the tape recorder close to her ear, listening intently to the advertisement that was playing. It essentially said that the art school in Jiaxing City, within the province, was recruiting students, specifying age limits and offering both correspondence and in-person courses.

After listening, she happily turned off the tape recorder and carefully placed it back next to her ailing father.

The next day, early in the morning, she carried her old schoolbag and went from street to street looking for discarded tin cans. She walked for a while without finding any, but then she turned around and found several empty tin cans in a ditch.

She gritted her teeth, determined not to get dirty for the sake of her goal. She turned sideways, stretched out one arm, and went to pick it up.

Suddenly, Wang Ermazi from the village walked up to her and said with a grin, "How did this college student end up like this, picking up trash? Why don't I talk to your mother about you marrying me?"

Yang Yumei was furious upon hearing this, and immediately pulled back her outstretched arm, shoving Wang Ermazi, who was standing next to her, into the mud.

"Yang Yumei, I was just joking with you, you can't kill me."

"I'm telling you, Wang Ermazi. If you ever joke with me like this again, I'll make you eat shit."

"Okay, okay, I won't do it again next time."

"Clean those tin cans for me with the water from this ditch, and then give them to me."

"Yu Mei, what do you need this piece of junk for?"

"Hurry up and stop talking nonsense."

"Alright, I'll tell you! It's not that I'm afraid of you, it's just that a good man doesn't fight with a woman." Wang Ermazi said, cleaning up a few small iron boxes and handing them to her.

Yang Yumei turned and left.

Wang Ermazi said to her retreating figure, "I'm not going to fight you. Who's going to wash my clothes if I get them dirty?"

Yu Mei started making cutting boards. She went to another village and bought two living big trees. Then the owner used a saw to cut them down, cut off the branches and twigs, and used the seller's horse-drawn cart to send them to the woodworking factory in the township. There, an electric saw split the two thick logs into several pieces, and then sent them back to the Yang family compound.

Yang Yuhan was taking her summer vacation in the south wing, where she was in her final year of high school. She saw many large white wooden boards in the yard and smiled as she looked at the wet boards drying in the sun. She thought that once she finished making her vegetable graters, she could sell them and then go to the Jiamusi Academy of Fine Arts to study painting.

Yang Yuhan immediately understood what Yu Mei was trying to do. But that's good; people should have ambition. It remains to be seen whether she can hold out until the last line of defense.

Ten days later, Yu Mei finished making the cutting boards. She rode her bicycle to two neighboring villages and called out her wares along the dirt road in front of each row of thatched houses. Soon, all thirty cutting boards she had placed on her bicycle were gone.

She also brought two large cucumbers for an on-the-spot experiment. The two cucumbers were used up because of how useful the cutting board she made herself was.

She sold cutting boards for three consecutive days, going from village to village, and quickly sold them all! Her money-filled satchel became increasingly full!

She turned and rode her bike back to her village. As she passed the street in Tuandingshan Township where people did business, she saw a little girl, about her age, wearing a newly made hostess outfit, walking out of a tailor shop.

She yelled, almost being heard by the girl, then muttered to herself, "Holy crap, this dress is gorgeous."

Then he stopped smiling, looked at his own rustic clothes, and realized he was obviously from the countryside.

If she could wear that PR girl outfit, she would definitely look better than that girl.

But then she thought again and decided against it. She worked so hard to earn money so she could go to school, realize her dreams, and achieve success in her career. She didn't care what kind of clothes she wore.

She calmed her suppressed emotions, and then, feeling much better, she strode home on her bike.

After dinner in the evening, she counted the money the vendor who sold cutting boards had put in her flower-patterned schoolbag, and then she laughed! But she only laughed for a quarter of an hour before stopping.

She muttered to herself, "What's so funny? The money I make is only enough for half a year's tuition at art school. I wrote to the art school's admissions office a few days ago and found out it's a year's tuition. This amount would be more than enough for correspondence courses at home!"

Yu Mei fell asleep while thinking. She had a dream in which she was wearing that black PR girl uniform. Everyone was looking at her and applauding!

A few days later, Yang Yuhan finished her three-year college entrance examination at the key high school in the county and went home for summer vacation!

She took her luggage from the school dormitory back to the south wing of the compound.

Her father had become increasingly thinner after not seeing her for a few days. She wanted to take him to the county hospital to see what was wrong, but he kept saying there was nothing wrong with him.

Liu Shulan also looked a bit older than in previous years, and of course, she had also grown taller to 1.67 meters.

She looked out the window at the quiet courtyard, and saw no one coming out of the other rooms.

She then asked Liu Shulan, "Mom, what school did Yumei go to? Is my third uncle's health any better?"

"Yu Mei, she's not cut out for studying at all, all she does is show off! It's driving her mother crazy."

"Yu Mei made so many cutting boards last time and sold them for money, wasn't it to pay for her schooling? Why don't you go to school?"

"She started like this: she sold a lot of cutting boards for a good amount of money. But when she realized that the money wasn't enough to pay for three years of art school tuition, she raised a small, fat white pig at the market outside the courtyard. When the pig grew up, her brother and sister-in-law secretly sold it without giving her any money. They said that the pig's feed came from their own farm, and that it was barely enough to feed the three people in the east room, let alone feed a fat pig."

"Mom, why does Yumei have to do everything like me? He wants to learn to paint too? Besides, the pig feed is cornmeal and corn grits that we harvest from the mill, and the extra corn bran is used to feed the pigs. How is it that he's using the grain he grows?"

"You child, you always talk in circles. Corn husks are only used to feed pigs after the corn is harvested."

"Mom, you really do make a good point."

"Alright, let's stop talking about other people's business. How do you feel about your college entrance exam this year?"

"What else can it be? It must be great."

"You silly child, you startled me, and you're being mysterious with your words."

"Mom, how about we make pork dumplings for lunch today? Consider it a welcome-back feast for my triumphant return! Hehe!"

“Okay, it just so happens that Wu Sanbao’s family at the east end is slaughtering a sow. Let’s go buy some meat.”

Suddenly, Yu Han looked up sharply and saw a stunningly beautiful woman dressed in a black PR outfit in the courtyard outside the window.