Chapter 1 Falling into the Water
In the second month of spring in the third year of Taihe (1368)
Last year, severe cold and heavy snow caused disasters, resulting in a poor harvest in Kyoto Prefecture.
Whether it was the Tatars on the grasslands, the Oirats, or the Han people inside the pass, everyone was short of food and clothing. Within two months of winter's arrival, no fewer than a hundred people had frozen to death. Refugees gathered around the capital and took the opportunity to rob government granaries, nearly causing a major disaster.
The government responded relatively quickly, and after suppressing the rioters, it promptly allocated grain for disaster relief.
However, the good times didn't last long. Just as the turmoil inside the pass was suppressed, war broke out on the border, and seven or eight able-bodied men from Linjiatun in Kyoto Prefecture were also conscripted to serve in the army.
The Lin family was one such family. The Lin family had three sons and one daughter, and their family alone produced three able-bodied young men.
Da Niu, along with his eldest and second sons and the other four households in the village, were conscripted as soldiers and taken to guard the border.
Logically, a village should be able to provide seven or eight able-bodied men, and each family should be able to provide one able-bodied young man for service.
However, Er Niu's second brother, Er Niu's family, because their son had gained favor with the teachers at the school, sabotaged their family by attributing their deaths to Er Niu's elder brother, Da Niu's family.
Although Da Niu's family was indignant, the quota had already been determined, and there was no room for maneuver, so they had no choice but to go and serve in the military.
However, because of this, the two families stopped interacting and even acted as if they didn't know each other when they met, even if they were from the same village.
Only Chang's mother, her two daughters-in-law, and their twin children remained at Da Niu's home. The eldest daughter-in-law, Wang, and the second daughter-in-law, Niu, each had a daughter, both under ten years old. The third daughter and the fourth son were twins, aged 14, and looked almost identical. Because they had children late in life and were twins, Da Niu's family doted on them extra.
The youngest son was sent to school early, and the youngest daughter didn't do much work, only doing some simple chores at home.
The eldest and second sons were especially fond of their younger siblings because they were about ten years apart in age. They also married off their younger siblings a few years later because the family was not well-off when their younger siblings were young, and they had to support their youngest son to go to school.
Families with slightly better financial means usually start looking for their children when they are fifteen or sixteen. However, the two sons of the Lin family didn't meet their spouses until they were eighteen or nineteen.
Lin's father and mother had farmed for many years but hadn't saved much money. It wasn't until the year Lin's second brother went up the mountain that they started by gathering wild vegetables to make soup. They were lucky enough to dig up an old Solomon's seal that was quite old. They exchanged it for some money at the pharmacy and sent it to the two of them. They learned some skills from the carpenter in the village and their health gradually improved.
Lin's father was a shrewd man. After learning that medicinal herbs could be exchanged for money, he often went into the mountains to look for and dig them up. If he thought they were useful, he would take them to the pharmacy to inquire. He could always find some useful medicinal herbs in a basket. After going back and forth like this several times, he remembered the appearance of many medicinal herbs.
After that, the family's life gradually improved, and they were able to save money to marry off their two sons.
February is the coldest time of year in Kyoto Prefecture.
The cold wind swept across the riverbank, carrying the lingering snow. The river was still covered with a thin layer of gray-white ice, and faint cracking sounds could be heard from beneath the ice, as if spring was quietly stirring beneath the frozen earth.
As dawn broke, wisps of smoke rose from the low courtyard enclosed by rammed earth walls. Icicles hung from the thatched eaves. Niu Shi, her head wrapped tightly in a coarse hemp turban, breathed out white steam as she filled the stove with dried millet stalks. The millet porridge simmering in the iron pot bubbled and sizzled, its salty aroma mingling with the scent of pickled mustard greens, spreading through the crisp air.
At the village entrance, the ancient locust tree's branches are gnarled and twisted like iron. A flock of crows shrank their necks and cawed noisily. At the base of the tree, a few sticks of incense were stuck in front of the local earth god temple. The faded red paper couplets had been torn in half by the north wind, revealing the mottled characters "Pray for a Bountiful Year".
"Mom, call Auntie and the others to eat!"
"Sigh~, Er Ya and San Ya, go find your aunt and come back for dinner."
Lin Changshi was scattering chicken feed in the yard while calling out to the house.
Two little girls, about five or six years old, rubbed their eyes and came out of the main room, answering sleepily, "Grandma, Auntie isn't in the room."
Lin Changshi straightened up and looked at the two little ones who came out of the house: "Wash your face and go look around in the fields. Auntie must have gone to find wild vegetables."
"Okay, milk."
The men from several households along the official road squatted by the wall, eating frozen millet buns with thin porridge, their breath condensing into frost on their beards.
The willow baskets at their feet were piled with newly whittled wooden plowshares—the snow between the ridges had not yet melted, but the sunny slopes already showed specks of wet, dark soil. The old farmer poked at the frozen ground with the tip of his shovel, shook his head and muttered, "We still have to wait for a 'dragon raising its head' rain!"
The old farmer turned his head and saw the two little girls who had just come out. He grinned and said, "Er Ya and San Ya, are you going to find your aunt?"
The two little girls' faces were chapped and red, and they even snotted a couple of times. The younger one replied in a clear voice, "Yes, Uncle Jiu, my mother told me to call Auntie back for dinner."
The old farmer waved his hand: "I saw your aunt on the ridges this morning. She must have gone to pick wild vegetables. There are few wild vegetables on the ridges these days. Your aunt is probably going to the riverbank to look for some."
The little girls exclaimed "Hey!" and ran hand in hand over the field, their short legs darting across the ridges.
The distant Western Hills stretched out in a vast expanse, and at their foot, brick kilns burned day and night. Bare-chested craftsmen loaded carts of newly fired blue bricks onto government oxcarts, the cart tracks leaving two deep, muddy marks on the icy dirt road.
Suddenly, the sound of horses' hooves broke the silence, and a courier wrapped in a sheepskin coat galloped past, startling several gray geese from the reeds on the riverbank. They fluttered across the gray sky, their wingtips brushing off a few unmelted snowflakes, which fell beside the boundary marker of the military farmland outside the village.
—There, a group of armored guards were reprimanding laborers for dredging ditches, preparing for spring planting and drought.
The little girls didn't dare to look any longer and hurriedly slipped along the path towards the river.
Thick layers of ice covered both sides of the river. Further ahead, a sudden ice hole appeared on the river surface, with the thin layer of ice in the center cracked into a tortoise-shell pattern. Ice shards wrapped with withered reeds swirled in the turbid yellow water, while a bright blue figure rose and fell within the hole, shouting something.
Er Ya's face turned pale as she ran towards the riverbank, calling out, "Auntie? Auntie?"
Sanya also panicked, and the figure bobbing in the middle of the river became increasingly familiar to her.
The dark blue padded jacket, soaked with river water, sank as heavy as a piece of pig iron, forcefully silencing the girl's cries for help. The peach blossom hairpin in the girl's hair was also washed away, its whereabouts unknown.
The two little girls cried out for help in desperation.
Fortunately, the guards and laborers nearby heard the girls' screams. After a moment's hesitation, the guards picked up their whips and jogged over.
Upon seeing that it was a person approaching, the young girls didn't care who it was and pointed at the girl struggling in the middle of the river, shouting, "Sir, my aunt has fallen into the water, please save her!"
Bingwei paused for a moment, then looked around in the fields, as if searching for something.
The younger girl panicked and hurriedly tried to wade into the river.
Bingwei grabbed the little girl: "Are you crazy, you little brat! The frozen river is freezing cold, you'll die if you fall in! Don't move!"
Bingwei grabbed the little girl, turned around, picked up a stick, and stood on the ice, slowly moving towards the center of the river.
Perhaps she had choked on water from struggling for too long, because the girl in the middle of the river was struggling more and more weakly.
"Hey, young lady, hold onto that stick!"
The girl struggled a few times, but was still about half a meter away from the stick.
Bingwei hesitated for a moment, seemingly realizing that the girl was almost out of strength. But in this weather, going to the river would be suicide. Not to mention that the weather was too cold and the river water was too cold, even if he were rescued, she would definitely get sick. These days, even a small cold can kill a person.
He has an elderly mother at home, so he really doesn't dare to gamble.
Seeing that the girl was about to slowly sink to the bottom, Bingwei gritted his teeth and prepared to take off his clothes.
But a young man dressed in blue jumped down and grabbed the girl, pulling her ashore.
"Uncle?"
The boy's tattered blue cotton-padded jacket billowed out like an air sac in the water.
"Grab the scabbard!" Perhaps feeling that the wooden stick was not very sturdy, Bingwei directly unfastened his waist sword and stretched it out.
The boy held the girl's armpit with one hand and gripped the scabbard tightly with the other, his knuckles frozen purpler than the copper nails on the hilt.
The boy, with the girl whose face was almost blue from the cold, grabbed the scabbard and, with the help of the guard, brought her ashore.
"Sister? Sister?"
The cold wind made the boy shiver, and his lips instantly turned pale. He shook the girl twice, but she didn't respond, so he patted her back a few more times.
Bingwei frowned and turned the person face down: "Get the water out of her mouth and nose!"
The boy glanced at the guard, who was holding his older sister face down and slapping the girl's back hard. The girl choked and spat out a mouthful of water.
The boy breathed a slight sigh of relief, but when he looked up and saw Bingwei, his heart tightened again: "Thank you, sir. The weather is cold, so I'll take my sister home to get treatment first."
Bingwei nodded without saying anything, turned around, found the whip he had dropped, and got up. He watched as the boy, soaked to the bone, staggered forward carrying the girl on his back. The two young girls followed closely behind, running towards Linjiatun, which was not far away.
"Grandma, Mother, quickly boil water! My aunt and uncle have fallen into the water!!!"
The little girl was followed by an old farmer, who was none other than Uncle Jiu, who had greeted them. He helped carry the unconscious girl into the inner room.
"Eldest son's wife, go boil some water. Children's mother, don't turn off the brazier. Let Second son's wife get the children's clothes first, then go find some dry bran. Take off their clothes and rub Fifth Sister and Sixth Brother's hands and feet before covering them with blankets. Cold evil has entered the meridians and needs to be slowly expelled. I've already asked your aunt to go and fetch a doctor. This kind of cold can be deadly. The two little girls shouldn't stay here. Go help your mother boil water and find bran."
"Oh dear, how did I fall into the ice pit out of nowhere! Uncle Jiu, I'll go find some bran right now."
The boy ran back, his face pale from the cold, his lips slightly purple, and his body trembling. Taking off his wet coat didn't help much. He crawled into his room and got into bed, and soon a blush crept onto his face.
However, thinking of her unconscious older sister next to her, she endured the discomfort and didn't utter a sound.
Er Ya carried a bowl of ginger soup filled with loofah pulp and slowly moved over: "Uncle, Grandma asked me to bring you some ginger soup."
The boy was a little dizzy, and he forced a smile: "Sigh, it's too hot to handle, give it to me."
The boy took the ginger soup, sipped it a few times, and then drank it all down when he felt it wasn't too hot.
"How is your aunt?" the boy asked, looking up.
"The doctor just arrived and is looking after you. Uncle, are you feeling better? The doctor will come to see you in a little while."
After drinking the ginger soup, a warm current flowed through the boy's stomach, but his mind became increasingly sluggish. He only managed a low murmur before the world spun around him, and he collapsed onto the bed, unconscious.
"Grandma, Uncle has fainted! Quick, get a doctor to take a look!!!"
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