Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Intermarriage
"I wonder if Master Chi is engaged? The servants in our house already have two children by your age."
“No!”
Yinzhen's tone was deliberately tinged with a hint of anger.
The maid Xianrong has a straightforward temper and speaks directly.
What do you mean by his age? He is only sixteen.
It's no wonder that such a stupid servant was sent to the dilapidated farm by Nara clan so that she could turn a blind eye to it.
"Perhaps it's not your destiny yet. I can introduce you to the beautiful and virtuous maids in the mansion. What kind of woman do you like? I'll have someone keep an eye out for her."
Seeing that the scholar was busy processing the bamboo strips and did not respond, Xianrong laughed awkwardly and changed the subject.
"Mr. Chi, do you like wild chrysanthemums or gardenias?"
"Or maybe jasmine? Osmanthus? When Madam Zhu is ready, put the wild flowers that help you sleep into the sachet and put it in Madam Zhu. I guarantee you will sleep soundly."
Xianrong tied the woven bamboo lady with a hemp rope and threw it into the well to cool down.
"We... Lin Shu likes to use cloves. Lin Shu said there's a blue-purple flower in the West called something like incense sticks. The smell of it can calm the mind and help you sleep, remove freckles and beautify your complexion, clear away heat and toxins, and relieve spasms and pain."
"It's lavender." Chu Xian stepped into the yard carrying a bucket of river sand.
Lavender was only introduced into China in the 1950s and 1960s, and is now hard to find in the Qing Dynasty.
"Xianrong, you're trying to fool people with matchmaking again. I'll definitely go and tell the girl about this. You better be careful of what happens."
Xianrong and Suiqing were not ordinary servants, but female guards carefully cultivated by her father.
Although Xianrong is a chatterbox, she is very skilled in martial arts, while Suiqing is well-read and proficient in the art of medicine. The two of them, one literary and one martial, complement each other.
Xianrong is also her savior.
It was Xianrong who risked her own life to rescue her from the suffocating ice.
Although she, Xianrong and Suiqing are master and servant, they are more like close sisters.
"Look at my stinky mouth, I can never keep it closed. Talk more, watch more, talk less and make fewer mistakes." Xianrong quickly covered her mouth.
Chu Xian reached out and poked Xianrong between the eyebrows, feeling extremely helpless.
Xianrong and Suiqing have two extreme personalities. Xianrong is a chatterbox, while Suiqing is a taciturn person who never says a word.
If the personalities of these two could be balanced, Chu Xian wouldn't have to worry about no one backing her up if something happened to her in the future.
"Lin Shu, the pottery jars have been washed and brought here." Sui Qing pushed over a wheelbarrow filled with pottery jars of all sizes.
"Xianrong, help me sift the river sand and boil it, then wash it with cool well water. Once the river sand is completely cool, place the middle jar inside the large jar."
"Fill the gap between the two jars with cool, moist river sand. Place a small jar filled with cold boiled water inside the middle jar. Fill the gap between the middle and small jars with saltpeter water and place in a cool place."
"Lin Shu, what are you going to do? I'm completely confused."
Xianrong frantically took out a fine sieve to filter out the river sand.
"I want to make ice."
"But this village doesn't have an ice cellar. How do we make ice?"
"I want to try making ice with saltpeter powder." Chu Xian threw the saltpeter into the stone mortar and pounded it into powder.
"Miss Lin, ice cubes or ice drinks made using the saltpeter ice making method taste terrible and are not good for your health." Yinzhen kindly reminded.
"I know, but I only make ice to cool down in the summer, not for consumption."
How could Chu Xian not know that saltpeter contains potassium nitrate, which will be converted into nitrite in the human body, causing a decrease in the oxygenation capacity of hemoglobin and triggering a disease called blue baby syndrome.
But the heat was unbearable, and her body was so fragile that she urgently needed ice to cool down.
"Making ice from saltpeter consumes a lot of saltpeter. One hundred kilograms of ice requires one hundred or even one hundred and fifty kilograms of saltpeter powder..."
Yinzhen stopped talking abruptly. He found that the saltpeter used by Lin Shu was extremely fine and of extremely high purity.
"I know, but the specific amount of saltpeter required depends on the ice-making method and the purity of the saltpeter. If I use ice water to help the saltpeter freeze, I can solve the problem of saltpeter depletion."
"How...can you extract such pure saltpeter powder?" Yinzhen was increasingly unable to see through Lin Shu, the little maid.
His inquiring gaze fell on three large urns nested together.
It only takes two jars to make ice with saltpeter. Fill a large jar with water, then place a small jar in the water. Fill the small jar with saltpeter water. As the saltpeter dissolves, the water temperature in the small jar drops and gradually freezes.
This method consumes a lot of saltpeter and is not as good as storing ice in an ice cellar.
The key is in the third small jar.
Yinzhen reached into the small jar filled with wet sand and was suddenly struck by a sharp chill.
Lin Shu cleverly used wet sand to isolate the heat and slow down the melting of ice cubes, so that he could make an ice jar without ice cubes.
As the cold water in the small jar was stirred to become more viscous and gradually solidified into ice, Yinzhen was astonished.
After dinner, Chu Xian smiled and took out a palm-leaf fan to fan the broken ice, bringing a slight coolness to the stuffy kitchen.
"Xianrong Suiqing, please help move the ice jar into the east room, and put one in Master Chi's room as well."
"The ice will last all night without melting away."
Chu Xian covered her lips and yawned. She had been busy these past few days, and even if the sky fell tonight, she would still get a good sleep.
In order to save ice, Chu Xian and two maids lived in the east room.
After taking a shower and changing clothes in the simple ear room, Pu Yi stepped into the cool room. Chu Xian stretched her waist comfortably and lay down on the spacious earthen kang with her head tilted back.
Half asleep and half awake, the sound of Xianrong and Suiqing bickering in low voices came.
"you go."
"Why should I go? I just treated his wound today."
"You go, he's too old-fashioned, like a cold-faced devil, hard to talk to and hard to serve."
"I'm not going."
It turned out that Sui Qing and Xian Rong were shirking responsibility and were unwilling to help Chi Zheng, who had difficulty walking, wash up.
Worried that Xianrong Suiqing's true identity would be revealed by the clever Chi Zheng, Chu Xian endured the tiredness and sat up.
"I'll go."
She is now Lin Shu's maid. If her words and actions are completely unlike those of a maid, Chi Zheng will definitely become suspicious.
It was a rare opportunity to meet a handsome and kind man that she liked, and she didn't want to scare him away.
"Lin Shu, I'm here."
When Xianrong saw the girl pick up the copper basin, she immediately rushed to grab it.
Chu Xian didn't say anything, but just glanced at Xianrong lightly, and Xianrong immediately lowered her head and stepped aside.
Sui Qing also bent over and withdrew his hand.
Chu Xian picked up the copper basin and went into Chi Zheng's house.
"Master Chi, I'll help you wash and change your clothes."
"This is the clothes of Bao Sanchun's son. It looks brand new and shows no signs of being worn."
As she spoke, Chu Xian raised her foot and crushed a centipede to death.
Past experiences made her very observant of people's expressions. Chu Xian noticed that although Chi Zheng looked calm, he was not happy.
Worried that Chi Zheng would misunderstand that she had deliberately arranged a room with centipedes, Chu Xian hurriedly explained, "The west room is the brightest and cleanest. If it weren't for the spacious earthen kang in the east room that can accommodate three people, I would have slept in the west room."
"I've slept in a room more damp than this for a year. It was so damp that there were a lot of centipedes at night. I was woken up in the middle of the night by a centipede crawling on my back. When I reached out to grab it, it bit me."
"I've been bitten by centipedes many times. It's okay, they're not lethal. I'll prepare a few more mugwort sachets for you to repel the insects."
Chu Xian pretended to be calm and comforted the scholar.
She casually used a pair of scissors to pick out the candle wick that was covered with flowers. The room was silent and quiet as small blue-black midges fluttered around the candlelight.
The candlelight flickered, illuminating the scholar's handsome face.
"Does it hurt a lot?" Yinzhen was stunned. He never thought that Nara would be so cruel and harsh to her servants.
"I forgot about it a long time ago." Chu Xian said casually in a hoarse voice.
"Miss Lin, how much silver do you need to redeem yourself from your master?"
Chu Xian was slightly startled and handed the wrung-out handkerchief to the scholar.
"I am a slave who has signed a death contract. Even if my master is willing to release me from the contract and remove my slave status, I cannot marry a commoner and can only be a concubine."
Since ancient times, the nobles and the lowly have not been able to intermarry, and the lowly can only marry with the lowly. It was not until Emperor Yongzheng abolished the status of lowly people that the lowly people in the world were able to escape the bad fate of being lowly for generations.
It would be great if Yongzheng could abolish the slavery system earlier, so that she could find good husbands for Xianrong and Suiqing.
In fact, there is another way to get rid of Xianrong and Suiqing's status as a slave. That is, after she becomes the Fourth Lady, she can persuade the Fourth Prince to include them in the same banner as the Fourth Prince and make them his subjects.
"Miss Lin, I just found five travel passes in the cracks in the corner of the wall. I think they were left by Bao Sanchun for his escape."
Chu Xian's melancholy thoughts were pulled back. She took the pass and found that the age characteristics described on the pass matched those of Bao Sanchun's family of five, and even their destination was outside the Great Wall.
The slaves' travel passes and identity cards must be retained by their masters to prevent them from escaping.
The unforgivable Bao Sanchun must have killed countless innocent lives before he could collect these five suitable travel permits.
She couldn't even report it to the police. If others knew that her farm was involved in a murder case, it would definitely implicate her father.
"I will hand these passes over to the young lady later. I have no say in the matter."
Chu Xian was worried as she helped Chi Zheng wash and change his clothes.
When she returned to the east room, Xianrong and Suiqing were standing anxiously by the door waiting for her to return.
"Xianrong, do you know the identities of the twelve slaves buried in the backyard who were...tortured and killed by the young lady?"
"I remember them all. They were all the corpses I handled..."
Xianrong didn't dare to elaborate, for she was worried about retribution. Every year during the Ghost Festival, she would burn paper money for the slaves who died tragically.
"Do those people have parents, brothers, sisters, or other relatives?"
"Eight people have it, and the other four don't."
"Okay." Chu Xian turned around and took out the money box hidden in her bag.
"Take this silver. Give each of the eight families two hundred taels as compensation."
"Go outside the pass again and divide the remaining silver among five households according to the addresses on these passes."
"But this money still needs to make up for the shortfall in the girl's dowry. If there is no money to make up for the dowry, what will the girl get married with?"
Xianrong anxiously reminded the girl.
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