Chapter 70: The food shop closes, soldiers are conscripted into the army.

The four family members each shared half a bowl. He finished his bowl but still wanted more, but there was none left.

His mother also loves to eat this kind of sticky and sweet food.

His dad didn't really like it; he preferred fried meatballs, especially the kind that were soft and soggy when they cooled down. He said they were so oily and flavorful that they made his mouth water, and they were more fragrant than sesame-filled glutinous rice balls.

Seeing that his father loved to eat, his mother specially asked him to chop up the little bit of meat left at home, and reluctantly poured a lot of oil into the pot to fry some meatballs.

The meatballs he made weren't as refined as Zhu Mingyue's; they had more vegetables than meat and weren't double-fried, but they were still very fragrant.

Li Zhengming teased him to his face: "I've seen you eat just as many meatballs as you have, why don't you say you love meatballs?"

Li Zhengyang chuckled, "I like them too, I like them all." It's just that meatballs are easy to make but hard to chop; he's been really afraid his mother will ask him to chop meat into small pieces these past few days.

Zhu Mingyue: "I'm glad you like it. When the dumpling shop reopens, I plan to introduce this meatball as a new product. At that time, you will be in charge of chopping the meat."

Huh? Li Zhengyang's shoulders slumped; no matter what he did, he couldn't escape his fate of chopping meat.

Zhu Mingyue could tell that he really didn't want to do this kind of work, so she explained, "Don't worry, you won't have to do it for long. After the new products are released, fewer people will probably buy them after a while, and then we won't sell them anymore."

Li Zhengyang felt relieved upon hearing this, but then became worried again. "Our shop has never lacked goods to sell. I'm afraid I won't be able to wait until then before I'm drafted into the army."

Li Zhengming quickly nudged him with his elbow: "Don't talk nonsense during the New Year, don't you understand the importance of avoiding prophecies?"

Li Zhengyang then realized that he had spoken carelessly and misspoke, so he quickly shut up.

Li Zhengming: "Thank you for your hospitality. It's getting late, so my brother and I won't bother you any longer. If you have time, please come visit us. My mother likes you very much and said she wanted to talk to you before."

Zhu Mingyue nodded, and seeing them turn to leave, she blurted out without thinking, "Wait a minute."

Li Zhengming turned around, seemingly puzzled.

Is what he just said true?

Li Zhengming understood that his foolish older brother's unintentional words had been overheard by the other party. He gave him a reproachful look, then said to Zhu Mingyue with a serious expression, "I don't know either." His gaze then drifted to Xie Pei, seemingly casually, "It's good to be mentally prepared."

Li Zhengming had previously mentioned the possibility of conscription, but the government had been slow to issue the order, and over time he almost assumed that the conscription had been cancelled.

It now appears that it has not been cancelled, but is approaching quietly.

Silence returned to the room. After a long while, Zhu Mingyue suddenly spoke with difficulty: "Xie Pei, are you scared?"

Xie Pei shook his head calmly. At most, it would just be going to the battlefield. He had killed people and seen blood before, so what was there to be afraid of?

"But I'm afraid. What if we were both conscripted?"

"Should we still build this house? What if we finish building it but can't live in it? Wouldn't that be a complete waste?"

"What will I do if you leave?"

"If I leave, what will happen to the shops in town?" He was too embarrassed to say what would happen to Xie Pei if he left her alone at home, since Xie Pei could live just fine on her own.

"On the battlefield, swords and blades have no eyes. If I can't even hold a sword properly, I won't survive more than three seconds."

Xie Pei listened quietly to his incoherent string of words, his voice trembling with sobs, and it was not hard to hear the panic in them.

“Zhu Mingyue,” he interrupted, “don’t let the unknown disturb your peace of mind.”

Zhu Mingyue: ...

Xie Pei took two bags of pastries and went out.

Zhu Mingyue was quite surprised; he hadn't thought Xie Pei was the type to proactively visit others. However, it was indeed something he should do at the village chief's house.

Li Zhengyang's words ultimately proved prophetic. On the third day of the Lunar New Year, Li Zhengming was summoned back to the government office. Before leaving, he made a special trip to the Xie family to say goodbye to the two of them.

“It’s always good to be more prepared. Also, since you were originally registered as a migrant, my father has decided to change your household registration to your husband’s family, the Xie family. I will help you with the registration when I go back to the government office this time.”

Zhu Mingyue didn't know what the difference was. After all, whether he changed his household registration or not, it would still be registered in this place. At most, it would be that his original household registration had been transferred to the Xie family.

But he had a gut feeling that the village chief and Li Zhengming's actions were not just a simple change of household registration, but must have some other meaning.

Although he couldn't understand it, he was prepared to thank Li Zhengming. Before he could speak, Xie Pei thanked him earnestly first.

Li Zhengming: "No need to thank me, it's my pleasure."

Once Li Zhengming was out of sight, Zhu Mingyue turned to look at him and asked, "Do you know what the intention behind changing my household registration is?"

Xie Pei frowned and explained to him, "A long time ago, there was a large-scale conscription in Ganzhou. The only two households in the village that had migrated and settled there were conscripted."

"Since they are migrants who have settled here, they must be refugees who have fled here. Why would they conscript refugees into the army? Isn't that a bit inappropriate?" Zhu Mingyue muttered, shocked by the government's bizarre actions.

Xie Pei glanced at him indifferently: "If even the people in the state are being conscripted, why not conscript refugees?"

Yes, Zhu Mingyue suddenly realized that even ordinary people who had settled in Ganzhou would be conscripted, so why leave refugees behind? Refugees had no roots when they first arrived in Ganzhou, and most of them were alone and helpless, making them much easier to control than ordinary people who had settled there.

He swallowed hard. "So you went to visit the village chief yesterday to talk about this, right?"

"Hmm," Fortunately, it's not too late to change the household registration. What he didn't say was that Ganzhou's conscription system always involved first plundering refugees, and then filling the ranks with local people after plundering them all.

Ordinary families with only one male member will be disregarded. Families with two or more eligible male members will have at least one member conscripted.

If Zhu Mingyue were to relocate and register her household according to the original plan, she would most likely be conscripted into the army. However, if she were to move with her husband to the Xie family, only one of them would need to be conscripted.

And that person can only be himself.

Zhu Mingyue is physically weak, and once she goes to the battlefield, there is only one path: death. There is no chance of survival for her. He, on the other hand, still has a chance of survival, even if it is only a small one. He will not let Zhu Mingyue die in vain.

On the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, the festive atmosphere in the town had gradually faded away, and a notice was posted at the town gate and outside the county government office.

Those who witnessed the scene turned pale with shock.

From that day on, Zhu Mingyue's dumpling shop business plummeted, and the town seemed to be shrouded in an invisible oppression overnight. The few pedestrians who came and went all had endless sorrow on their faces.

"Let's close tomorrow."

Li Zhengyang countered, "Close down? Stop doing business?"

Even He An, who had been absent-minded while working, stopped what he was doing.

Business isn't very good right now, let's see how it goes in a while.

Actually, business is still there. Compared to the quietness of other eateries, they still have some customers every day, just fewer than before.

“Alright,” Li Zhengyang knew what was troubling him. He was extremely open-minded and thought that if he was conscripted, he was conscripted. They might not even be sent to the front lines to fight. Even if they were to fight, they might not die. In any case, life is unpredictable, so he should just live one day at a time.

Zhu Mingyue divided the revenue from the past few days after the New Year among them, and there was quite a lot of it. "Don't spend it recklessly. Keep some for later use."

Xiao Cui nodded in agreement. She dared not use it carelessly, as she had a group of younger brothers and sisters waiting to be fed!

That night, several bailiffs came to the village. They first went to the village chief's house and came out in less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. After that, they went to a few other households.

Every time they left, heart-wrenching cries could be heard behind them.

Zhu Mingyue blinked, watching them get closer and closer to her home through the crack in the door. Her heart clenched, and she felt a little breathless.

The Xie family's door was knocked on again.

Zhu Mingyue's hands trembled slightly. She stood half a meter away from the door but dared not reach out, as if reaching out would bring about a complete upheaval in her life.

Xie Pei gently patted his shoulder from behind, signaling him not to be nervous, and went forward to open the door.

The head constable, holding a booklet in his hand, caught a glimpse of Zhu Mingyue's face in the dim light and momentarily froze.

After realizing what was happening, he flipped through the name register and asked as usual, "Is it the Xie family?"

Xie Pei: "Mm."

Zhu Mingyue bit her lip, too nervous to make a sound.

The head constable turned his gaze to Zhu Mingyue: "I heard you're a refugee who fled here?"

Xie Pei's face darkened slightly. The household registration should have already been changed. The village chief's family would never bring this up in advance, unless one of the families questioned earlier took the initiative to bring up Zhu Mingtian's background.

Zhu Mingyue gave a soft "hmm" in response, and Xie Pei came back to his senses and said in a deep voice, "She is my eldest sister-in-law, and she is registered in the Xie family."

"Just asking casually." The constable nodded, clearly understanding the question.

“The government has received a conscription order. I am here on the government’s orders. Both of you are over fifteen years old, and according to the rules, one of you must be called up to the army.”

Xie Pei seemed to have known this moment would come sooner or later, and replied decisively: "I'll go."

"Xie Pei!" Zhu Mingyue had clearly realized something and tried to stop him in a trembling voice, "Let me go."

The constables didn't care what the two of them thought. They seemed not to have heard Zhu Mingyue's words at all. They simply wrote down Xie Pei's name on the spot, considering their task complete. Their mission was arduous, as they still needed to go to other households to check the eligible males.

Before leaving, the man shook his head and chuckled, muttering to himself: "How interesting."

Without knowing what it meant, Xie Pei quietly looked at it for a while and then closed the door again.

Zhu Mingyue leaned weakly against the door, feeling somewhat dazed, as if everything had finally settled down.

At the same time, my heart ached as if it were being twisted.

“Xie Pei,” he choked up, unable to speak for a long time before slowly saying, “You went to serve in my place, didn’t you?”

“You said before that refugees who migrate and register their household registration are likely to be the first to be forcibly conscripted, but if I register my household registration with the Xie family, one of us will definitely be conscripted.”

Xie Pei raised his eyelids slightly but did not speak.

Zhu Mingyue continued, "If I hadn't changed my household registration, I would definitely have been conscripted as a refugee, while you, as the only male in the Xie family, would likely not have been conscripted, right? Back when you asked Li Zhengming to help me change my household registration, you already had the idea of ​​serving in my place, didn't you?"

Xie Pei remained silent. He had never wanted Zhu Mingyue to serve in the military; he was not suited for the battlefield.

Tonight is destined to be another sleepless night.

Even late at night, Zhu Mingyue could still faintly hear mournful cries. He turned over and stared at Xie Pei in the dim, almost nonexistent moonlight.

Xie Pei's breathing was deep and even, but he had already fallen asleep.

This is the final list. Within three days at most, the recruitment notices will be delivered to each household by the village head, at which point the assembly time for those to be recruited will be known.

Zhu Mingyue couldn't sleep all night and got up before dawn.

In order not to wake Xie Pei, he got out of bed very quietly. The weather at the beginning of the year had not yet warmed up, especially in the early morning, and it was still chilly in the room even though he was only wearing a single layer of clothing.

He rubbed his hands together, gently breathed into his palms, and tiptoed to take the cotton-padded coat and trousers and put them on.

"Not going to sleep?" A slightly lazy, deep voice rang out.

Zhu Mingyue paused in her dressing, then looked at Xie Pei, who no longer looked sleepy at all; his eyes were even clearer than Xie Pei's.

Zhu Mingyue casually put her pants on: "I'm not going to sleep, I can't sleep. I'll go make some dry food."

"It's still early, I'll sleep a little longer."

“It’s getting late,” Zhu Mingyue shook her head. “The call for entries may come out soon, and it will be too late to prepare then.”

He was under immense pressure, and his guilt towards Xie Pei had reached an unbearable level. His intuition told him that if he didn't do something for Xie Pei, he would eventually break down in bed.

He had heard in high school history class that ancient conscription usually followed the principle of selecting the strongest among those with equal wealth, and selecting the richest among those with equal strength. The former was to recruit more physically strong men, while the latter was because wealthy families could provide better equipment.

Now that things have come to this point, he is no longer naive enough to think that entering the barracks will guarantee them enough to eat and wear or that they will be given excellent weapons.

Even if they were distributed, they would likely only be mass-produced, crudely made scrap metal. The government would never give good weapons to these people who were forcibly conscripted and had not received any training, and they would certainly not prioritize feeding those who had not yet gone to the battlefield.

Zhu Mingyue's brain was racing. Suddenly, the image of the pancakes Li Zhengyang ate flashed into her mind. Although they were dry and hard to swallow, they were very filling when eaten with water.

By the way, this kind of pancake is also very lightweight, portable, and doesn't spoil easily.

Besides the coarse flour flatbread that Li Zhengyang's mother often made, he also knew a lot of dry food that was both filling and easy to store in later generations.

Foods like steamed corn bread, baiji bread, guokui, and naan all share similar characteristics.

Of course, they can't just eat noodles; although they're filling, they're prone to malnutrition. Xie Pei loves meat, so he'll have to find a way to cook more meat for him to take on the road.

The New Year has just passed, and we still haven't finished eating the meat we prepared before the holiday. Beef and rabbit meat are the most left over, so we can make more beef jerky and rabbit jerky.

He had never tried it before, but had eaten it many times, so he figured it wouldn't be too difficult if he put his heart into it.

Zhu Mingyue always acts decisively and never procrastinates. When Xie Pei came over, he was cutting beef strips. "I've boiled some sweet potatoes and eggs in the pot, you can make do with that," he said, glancing over. "By the way, do you want it plain or spicy?"

Xie Pei: "Either is fine."

Zhu Mingyue could only feel a little more at ease by doing things for him. Xie Pei didn't want him to rest and overthink things, so after a moment's thought, he added, "Make it spicy."

It's good to be busy, so he doesn't even have time to overthink.

In the vast village, Zhu Mingyue was not the only one busy.

Li Zhu'er's father sat on the doorstep, looking somewhat dazed.

Li Zhu'er's newlywed wife timidly approached with a bowl and chopsticks, saying, "Father, Mother just cooked. Please have some."

He snapped out of his reverie, looked at his young wife, sighed, took the bowl, and ate without saying a word.

It's called a meal, but it's really just thin soup with a few grains of rice floating in the bowl. It's just enough to fill you up with water.

There was nothing they could do. All the family's money had been squandered by that spendthrift son. Getting a wife was secondary. They had taken a few taels of silver from the Xie family's land sale and were hoping to save some, but Li Zhu'er had found them several times and taken them to the county to drink and carouse.

But that alone was not what chilled him to the bone.

Last night, soldiers came to his house to count the conscription. His son, who was only over twenty years old, should have been conscripted more than his father. However, in front of the soldiers, he rolled up his trousers, revealing the wound from when he fell down the slope while drunk, and exaggeratedly pretended to be a cripple.

To say that Li Zhu'er was lame is true, but by now only a slight trace remains, and it does not affect his walking.

His wife, as if she had conspired with her son beforehand, cried and said that her son had been lame for more than half a year.

The government doesn't accept disabled people, as long as there are other eligible men in the family who can be conscripted. So, this father was put on the roster.

His wife came over, her tone ingratiating: "Master, don't be angry with the pig. He had no choice."

Li Zhu'er's father couldn't be bothered to even look at her. The once harmonious family had fallen apart.

The atmosphere at the village chief's house was much more harmonious in comparison. Li Zhengyang, carefree, squatted by the stove and shouted, "Mom, bake some more pancakes."

"I know." His mother glared at him irritably, but didn't stop making the pancakes in her hands: "Didn't you always complain to me that you didn't like them before?"

“That was before,” Li Zhengyang muttered. “Once I get to the army, I reckon I won’t even have enough to eat. Xiangniang will have to make me some flatbread.” It might not taste good, but it’s really filling!

His mother's eyes started to sting again as soon as he mentioned it, and she began to complain again: "Tell me, there's a war in the south, why are they recruiting soldiers here out of the blue?"

"As Zhengming said, the imperial court issued a conscription order. People in the south have either died or fled. There are hardly any people left, so we can only conscript people from the north."

His mother wiped away her tears. "You think I don't know? I am, I am," she said, then she wanted to cry again. "It's all your father's fault for being useless. I've never seen any child from a high-ranking official's family be forcibly conscripted by the government."

Li Zhengyang's father: ...

His mother kept nagging: "My son already has a son who works in the government, who is practically a soldier. Why can't you make an exception for him?" She was clearly still resentful about her failed plea last night.

Li Zhengyang: "Mom, that's different. I'm going to the front lines to fight. If I don't go, Zhengming has to go. If neither of us goes, Dad will have to go."

She was feeling very depressed at home. She had filled a basin to the brim with baked flatbread and it was almost overflowing. With a flick of her shovel, she picked up a dozen or so flatbreads and was about to head out: "I'm going to the Xie family to deliver some flatbreads."

The village chief gently scolded, "How strange! I haven't seen you visit the Xie family all year round. What time is it now? Why do you still want to bother them? Maybe they're busy making pancakes right now."

Li Zhengyang stopped chasing after his mother: "That's right! Xie Pei must be just like me."

In their view, Xie Pei would be the one to accept the contract in the end.

Even if we put ourselves in their shoes, Zhu Mingyue is the son of the Li family, and they would never let him suffer in the army.

The reason is simple: physical weakness is secondary; the main reason is that he is too good-looking. The army camp is full of men, and not all of them are good people. If even a few of them have bad intentions, the consequences would be unimaginable.

This is why Xie Pei approached his family to ask them to change Zhu Mingyue's household registration, and he readily agreed without asking any questions.

To put it bluntly, someone like Zhu Mingyue entering the military is like throwing a big piece of fat meat into a doghouse—not even enough to fill a person's teeth.

If Xie Pei goes, at least there won't be such a threat.

Li Zhengyang's mother: "I'm going to soak up some of Mingyue's good fortune."

Li Zhengyang sighed, "Where did you get all this good fortune to share? If that were true, Xie Pei wouldn't need to join the army."

His mother glared at him again: "He doesn't need to go."

Li Zhengyang: ...How should he put it? His mother is obsessed. He has always seen how good Xie Pei is to this sister-in-law. So Zhu Mingyue didn't have to go because of good luck. It was simply because Xie Pei found a way to take her place.

His mother wouldn't listen to him and only left him with her back turned. Li Zhengyang glanced at his father, then turned and ran to catch up with his mother.

Zhu Mingyue was somewhat surprised when she opened the door.

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The author's note: Mingyue may seem a bit weak right now, both physically and mentally, but this is a result of her upbringing. Children born in peacetime, especially minors who have never experienced war, are mentally inferior to their peers in ancient times.

Experiencing the harsh realities of feudal society will help you grow up quickly.