As expected, it was Xia Hongxia. The attitude, the tone— just as annoying as Xia Xiaolan remembered. When Xia Hongxia grabbed her arm, Xia Xiaolan smacked the back of her hand. 

Startled by the pain, Hongxia immediately let go.

“ You hit me?! ”

Xia Xiaolan sneered. 

“ What are you, the Queen of Heaven? I have nothing to do with the Xia family anymore. If you're rude to me, why should I care who you are? ”

Hongxia was instantly speechless.

Back when they lived together, Xia Xiaolan had always been competitive and strong-willed. The two cousins were constant rivals. And after that dramatic head-banging incident, Xia Xiaolan seemed even more fearless than before.

Hongxia instinctively shrank back, then remembered she was supposed to have leverage.

She looked Xia Xiaolan up and down.

“ Keep acting tough. Does your boyfriend know about your past? ”

Boyfriend?

Apparently, Hongxia had seen Chen Qing and assumed he was Xia Xiaolan's boyfriend. Xia Xiaolan couldn't even be bothered to explain.

The Xia family no longer had the right to demand explanations from her.

As for rumors? Her reputation was already terrible.

County No. 1 High School wasn't letting her transfer in because of her reputation. She didn't even need to attend classes every day. The school cared about one thing: grades.

If she could help them produce another university student next year, that was all that mattered.

Reputation?

Reputation didn't affect gaokao scores.

Among village women who judged a woman's worth by whom she married, reputation mattered a great deal. But once you stepped outside that tiny world, it mattered surprisingly little.

It wouldn't stop her from making money.

It wouldn't stop her from getting into college.

Looking at Hongxia, Xia Xiaolan felt only disdain. Spending even another minute talking to her was a waste of time.

“ You should worry about yourself instead. I heard you're working at Zhang Ji Snack Shop? ”

She paused.

“ Zhang Ji... interesting. ”

“ I want nothing to do with anyone in the Xia family. If any of you still have a shred of dignity, stay away from me. Whether Xia Ziyu eventually brings the whole family to glory or not, I won't benefit from it. But if you keep bothering me, don't blame me when I stop being polite. ”

Some people simply had no shame. Xia Xiaolan disliked every member of the Xia family.

She hadn't taken revenge yet only because she was too busy.

If they insisted on throwing themselves in her path, she wasn't going to play saint.

Hongxia really did work as a helper at Zhang Ji, but there was no way she'd admit it. Working odd jobs at a privately owned snack shop wasn't exactly prestigious.

She lifted her chin.

“ It belongs to the Zhang family! You're just jealous because Cousin Ziyu got into college and found a great boyfriend. Even her uncle's family is making big money now! ”

She laughed mockingly.

“ And look at you… kicked out of the family. Found yourself a new boyfriend so you can compete with Cousin Ziyu? ”

So it really was the Zhang family's business. Otherwise, who would hire someone as lazy as Xia Hongxia?

Hongxia claimed the shop belonged to Xia Ziyu's maternal relatives, but Xia Xiaolan suddenly remembered Zhang Cui's hands. For someone supposedly working hard, Zhang Cui's hands had surprisingly few calluses.

Was she really in the county city just to accompany Xia Ziyu while she studied? Maybe not. Maybe the shop belonged to Zhang Cui and Xia Changzheng.

Having gotten the information she wanted, Xia Xiaolan lost interest in the conversation.

“ Remember what I said. Don't provoke me. That's the only reason we're still getting along. ”

For a brief moment, a sharp edge flashed through her usually gentle-looking eyes.

In her previous life, she had managed teams and companies. When she became serious, she carried an authority that intimidated people without raising her voice.

Xia Hongxia, just a seventeen-year-old village girl, was thoroughly frightened.

“You... you...”

She stood there stammering while Xia Xiaolan walked away.

Only after a long while did she recover. Then she remembered her original plan.

She had wanted to use Xia Xiaolan's secrets as leverage and get introduced to students at County No. 1 High School.

If Xia Xiaolan could find a boyfriend there, why couldn't she? Sure, she wasn't as beautiful. But she was an innocent, respectable girl. In her own mind, she wasn't inferior to Xia Xiaolan at all.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became.

Xia Xiaolan had always had high standards. 

First Wang Jianhua, now this new guy.

That meant Chen Qing must be pretty impressive.

Maybe he was a little dark-skinned, but who cared? Men didn't need fair skin. His features were handsome enough.

Hongxia tried to recall his face.

She would expose Xia Xiaolan's true nature in front of him. Once he learned the truth, he would surely be grateful.

Then they'd start talking.

And once they started talking...

Wouldn't feelings naturally develop?

Imagining herself comforting a heartbroken Chen Qing and watching their relationship blossom, Hongxia couldn't help smiling foolishly.

Meanwhile, Xia Xiaolan found herself increasingly curious about Xia Ziyu.

Getting into college from a place like Dahe Village was rare, but not impossible. 

The more interesting question was Zhang Ji. If the shop truly belonged to Xia Ziyu's family, then things became very suspicious.

Judging by the customer traffic, after expenses the shop had to be making at least four or five hundred yuan a month, possibly more.

That was more than many rural families earned in an entire year. If Xia Ziyu's parents were earning several thousand yuan annually, there was no way her university expenses could consume all of it.

Yet despite having money, they still squeezed every last bit they could from the rest of the Xia family.

The biggest fool had been the original Xia Xiaolan's father. He had practically emptied out his own savings for them.

In a family that never formally split assets, everyone hid money.

Did Xia Changzheng and Xia Hongbing really only have a hundred yuan to contribute?

Impossible.

Even if Zhang Ji wasn't entirely funded by Zhang Cui and Xia Changzheng, they were definitely among the owners. Opening a snack stall didn't require much capital, but building it into a successful restaurant took time.

Neither the Xia family nor Zhang Cui's family had started wealthy enough to launch a business of this scale overnight.

It had clearly grown gradually.

The question was: whose idea had it been?

Even Xia Xiaolan hadn't initially planned to open a snack business after her rebirth. The idea only came after she began selling eggs and realized factory workers were her main customers.

She had considered buying cheap offal from the meat-processing plant. Good cuts of meat were hard to obtain, but every day countless pigs, cattle, and sheep were slaughtered.

There would always be intestines, stomachs, and other leftovers available. Prepared properly, offal tasted just as good as meat. At this point in history, those ingredients weren't nearly as popular as they would become later, so they were cheap.

If someone else had thought of the idea first, Xia Xiaolan wouldn't have cared much.

She knew plenty of ways to make money.

She could simply choose another one.

But if Xia Ziyu's family had beaten her to it?

That bothered her. 

She wasn't a saint.

Why should she be happy seeing Xia Ziyu's family prosper?

Perhaps the business had started when Xia Ziyu entered County No. 1 High School and Zhang Cui moved into town to accompany her.

Eventually, Xia Xiaolan stopped at Aunt Huang's noodle stall, a place she visited often. She ordered a bowl of noodles and casually brought up Zhang Ji.

As fellow food vendors, Aunt Huang knew plenty. The moment Zhang Ji was mentioned, she launched into a detailed explanation, her voice full of admiration.

“ Now they've made it big, but they started out as a street stall. A rural woman running a tiny stand by herself. In just two or three years she went from a roadside stall to a proper restaurant. She even brought her brothers from her maiden family into the business… ”

To Aunt Huang, Zhang Ji represented the dream. She knew its history by heart.

As Xia Xiaolan listened and ate her noodles, her suspicions were confirmed.

Zhang Ji wasn't owned by Xia Ziyu's uncle's family.

It belonged to Zhang Cui.