Chapter 156: Leave Without Pay

Chapter 156: Chapter 156: Leave Without Pay

"Uncle, my report card is out! I got perfect scores in both Language Arts and Math. Now you have to keep your promise."

At the school gate, the moment Gu Nuan Nuan saw Zhang Wei Qiang, she rushed over and waved her report card enthusiastically in his face. Her excitement was impossible for him to ignore.

"Really? That good?" A little incredulous, Zhang Wei Qiang snatched Gu Nuan Nuan’s report card and read it over twice. A proud smile spread across his face. "With grades like these, getting me to keep my promise is no problem at all. So, tell me, what do you want me to do?"

"It’s a secret for now. You just have to promise that you’ll agree to whatever I ask, no matter what it is. Deal?" Gu Nuan Nuan tilted her head back to look up at her uncle, carefully confirming her request one more time.

"Deal. Even if you asked me to commit murder and arson, I’d do it for you," Zhang Wei Qiang joked.

"You’d better remember what you said today, Uncle! A promise is a promise, and it’s wrong to lie—especially to a child, right?" Gu Nuan Nuan cornered him with his own words. This way, not only would he be speechless later, but no one else could object either. Of course, just in case he tried to back out, she quickly added, "I definitely won’t ask you to do anything illegal like murder and arson, so you can rest easy."

"So young, yet so clever, already knowing how to hold my words against me. Do you really not trust your uncle that much?" Zhang Wei Qiang playfully tapped Gu Nuan Nuan on the head and said with a laugh. "But my promise has an expiration date. If you don’t cash it in by the end of summer vacation, it’s void. So you’d better hurry up and decide what you want from me."

"It’s not that I don’t trust you, Uncle! I’m just... happy. Yes, I’m just really, really happy. Hehe." Gu Nuan Nuan quickly denied it, then let out a silly giggle. The excitement in her heart was indescribable. ’Since my rebirth, there have been two things that matter most to me. The first concerned Mom, and I’ve already managed to completely change that outcome. Now, the second one is more than halfway secured. How could I not be ecstatic?’

After all, before getting her report card today, she had been ninety-five percent sure of her grades, but with something this crucial, she couldn’t help but feel a little anxious until the results were official. Now, finally, she could breathe a sigh of relief. She shook her head smugly. "It won’t take that long. I’ll definitely know what I want you to do for me before August."

"Alright, take your time thinking. Hop on. We’re going to Lihua Village." Zhang Wei Qiang smiled, shook his head, straddled his bicycle, and patted the crossbar in front of him.

"Yay, yay! I wonder how Grandpa and Mom are doing with the house in Lihua Village? Is it almost finished?" Gu Nuan Nuan’s spirits lifted at the mention of Lihua Village. As she climbed onto the crossbar of her uncle’s bicycle and got settled, she asked, "By the way, Uncle, didn’t we say Mom was picking me up today since I got out of school early? How come you’re here instead? Did you take leave again?"

"That’s right. And this time, it’s a very long leave—a full year, in fact." Seeing that Gu Nuan Nuan was settled, Zhang Wei Qiang started pedaling, and the bicycle shot forward. He waited until they had gone some distance before he continued.

"A whole year?" Gu Nuan Nuan was completely baffled.

"A while back, I went with your grandpa to check out that Fish Spring you discovered," Zhang Wei Qiang explained. "After we got back, we all talked it over and decided to submit an application for ’leave without pay’ for one year. In other words, for the next year, I don’t have to go to work. I can help you guys figure out how to sell the fish. We didn’t tell you sooner because you were busy with exams, and we didn’t want to distract you."

Unconsciously, even Zhang Wei Qiang had begun to treat his niece as an equal, someone he could talk to as if she were an adult.

’So the "leave without pay" policy, which became so popular in the nineties, already started back in the eighties?’

It dawned on Gu Nuan Nuan, and a happy grin spread across her face. "That’s great! Now Grandpa and Mom won’t have to worry about going into the mountains alone."

"Exactly. I managed to find time to make a small crossbow for each of them for protection, but wild boars have been spotted in those mountains. I’m still not completely at ease with them going up there by themselves. Besides, if we really want to make this fish business work, they just don’t have enough people."

Zhang Wei Qiang nodded. "Based on all that, I decided to just go ahead and take the leave. But we don’t need to spread this around; for now, no one knows besides us. I’m still leaving for ’work’ every day like normal, but I’m going straight to Lihua Village to help out. We’ve all talked it over. Once your house in Lihua Village is finished, your grandparents will use the excuse of moving there to stay with you for a while. Then, we’ll start exploring the routes. You guys have two properties in Lihua Village. The one we’re tearing down and rebuilding is right at the foot of the mountain. It’s in a very remote spot with no neighbors, which is perfect for us to go in and out of the mountains later. It’ll be nearly impossible for outsiders to notice our comings and goings."

A smile appeared on Zhang Wei Qiang’s face as he thought about the ideal location.

"We’re not renovating? We’re rebuilding it from scratch?" Gu Nuan Nuan was pleasantly surprised.

"The original house was too run-down. Even if we renovated it, it would still be small, and it’d be a huge hassle. Since we’re planning to come and go often, rebuilding from the ground up makes more sense," Zhang Wei Qiang explained. "Besides, your mom has almost enough money on her now. If she’s a little short, it won’t be hard for us to chip in. To make things more convenient for the future, we also talked to one of the Lihua Village officials and got an adjacent plot of land approved. This way, we can build a much bigger house all at once."

’Is this what they call a happy accident?’

Gu Nuan Nuan’s eyes crinkled into a smile as she thought about the future value of a house in Lihua Village. She knew that in the future, Lihua Village would not only offer extremely high subsidies for land acquisition but would also become a beautifully developed tourist destination—a high-end, classy one at that. As a result, anyone who owned property there could get filthy rich. They could simply open a small inn, run an "agritainment" business, or, if they wanted to keep things simple, just rent the house out.

The more she thought about it, the happier she became. Her eyes darted around slyly as she asked, "Uncle, have you ever thought about suggesting to Grandpa and Grandma that you guys should get a plot of land in Lihua Village and build a house, too? Since you’ll be visiting so often, wouldn’t it be nice to have your own place?"

Right now, building plots in Lihua Village were the cheapest thing around. It was easy for anyone, even outsiders, to get a plot approved, and it was all perfectly legal. In just a few years, however... tsk, tsk. Forget about outsiders—even the local villagers would find getting a new plot of land next to impossible.