Stealing Moonlight

1

1. Snow Cream

The first time Ruan Jing saw Li Ling'er after her differentiation was in her family's three mu of cornfield.

It was the hottest day of summer, and Ruan Jing didn't arrive home until almost dusk.

Two days and one night on a hard-seat train, most of a day on a bus, plus more than four hours on foot—even for a female Alpha, the arduous journey had nearly broken her bones.

But when she arrived home, she ran into her mother, Liang Fengying, who was preparing to water their three mu of farmland. Ruan Jing quickly put down her luggage, barely rested, filled two ladles with well water, grabbed half a steamed bun, and ran over with a hoe.

The pump house at the edge of the field was communal, surrounded by mud bricks, with a haphazardly placed asbestos tile roof covered with dried wheat straw.

It provided shelter from the wind but not from the rain. When the light was on, it practically attracted all the mosquitoes and other insects from the field. Moths swarmed against the bulb, their scales falling like snowflakes onto Ruan Jing's head.

Ruan Jing, wearing her mother's old gray cotton blouse, was using a Range Rover to pump water into the well.

She was tall with long legs, but very thin, with sharp angles and straight lines. Her profile, cast against the yellowish wall, was as graceful and slender as the tall, proud green peak behind the village.

The blouse, naturally loose and short, barely covered her navel. When she bent over, a section of her white, slender waist was exposed, providing easy access for the bloodthirsty and annoying mosquitoes, who soon left a ring of bites around her lower back.

Ruan Jing felt a little itchy and scratched a few times, leaving several red marks on her lower back with her fingernails.

But scratching only made the itchiness worse, and the mosquito bites swelled up larger. Ruan Jing had no choice but to grit her teeth and force the water pump to its full extent.

After switching off the power, as soon as she heard the pump running smoothly, she quickly turned off the lights and rushed out of the pump house without a moment's delay.

Irrigating these three acres of land thoroughly would take at least four or five hours. Most people would go home and take a nap, but the exhausted Ruan Jing sat on the edge of the field, looking up at the crescent moon in the sky.

She took a deep breath; the pure, natural scent of the field relaxed her completely.

These past few days on the road, Ruan Jing had been exposed to too many strange, unpleasant odors, especially the fishy smell that represented irritability and impatience.

The low dose of suppressants couldn't numb her sense of smell at all; the stench had left her dizzy and her nose almost unusable.

Summer in the North is divided by day and night. No matter how scorching the daytime sun, the nights bring a refreshing coolness with a gentle breeze.

Ruan Jing stretched out in the earthy wind when suddenly a faint scent of Omega pheromones wafted into her nose. The fragrance was strangely familiar; Ruan Jing had smelled it many times at school. She quickly realized it was remarkably similar to the scent of Hazeline face cream.

Then, Ruan Jing heard the laughter and chatter of young men and women in the fields behind her, along with a series of hurried footsteps. She knew the young people in the village liked to fool around in the fields, but were unmarked Omegas involved? That was truly unusual.

After all, these days, ovaries were extremely precious. Unlike Alphas, who made up over 15% of the population, Omegas comprised less than 1%, and most Omegas, especially female Omegas, often displayed extraordinary beauty at a very young age, so they were usually pampered like precious pearls.