2. Down and Out Man
The candlelight was scorching, casting a layer of warm light on the simple and dilapidated house. The person was lying quietly on the bed. The face, which had been cleaned of blood stains, was pale and handsome, and surprisingly beautiful.
He looked quite young, with a thin body but not frail. Perhaps due to excessive blood loss, he fell asleep again. His long eyelashes covered his eyelids, casting a fan-shaped shadow under the lamp. His nose was very straight, and his chapped thin lips were tightly pursed even when he was sleepy. He seemed to have a rather stubborn personality.
Such a face coupled with his scarred body, looks like a pine or cypress whose branches were broken by the severe winter frost and snow but still stand tall and majestic, or like a piece of unpolished jade wrapped in stone but riddled with holes, which always makes people feel sorry for it.
Perhaps it was because of the dazzle of the light or because he was being stared at for too long, the man's long eyelashes flared and he slowly opened his eyelids.
The eyes were as black as ink, yet without any emotion, and the slightly upturned corners of the eyes had a natural coolness.
Fan Changyu didn't feel uncomfortable at all after being caught peeking, and asked calmly, "Are you awake?"
The man didn't respond.
Seeing that his lips were severely chapped, Fan Changyu thought that he was seriously injured. His mouth was dry and he didn't want to talk, so he asked, "Do you want some water?"
He nodded slowly and finally spoke: "You saved me?"
His voice was as hoarse as gravel scratching on a broken axe, totally inconsistent with his face that was like the clear moon and fresh snow.
Fan Changyu went to the table and poured him a glass of water and passed it to him: "I saw you lying in the snow in the mountains, so I carried you back. It was Uncle Zhao who really pulled you back from the gates of hell."
She paused and added, "You live in his house now. He used to be a doctor."
Although he is a veterinarian.
The man forced himself to sit up. The hand that took the chipped earthenware cup was covered with various scratches, and there was hardly a piece of intact skin. He drank a few sips of water and then covered his lips and coughed. The messy hair fell down, and the exposed part of his jaw looked even paler.
Fan Changyu said, "Drink slowly. I see that you are not from this place. I didn't know your name or where you lived, so I didn't report you to the police. Did you get robbed at Huchakou?"
He stopped coughing and lowered his eyes, with most of his face hidden in the shadows that the candlelight could not illuminate. "My surname is Yan, and my given name is Zheng. There was a war in the north, and I fled here from Chongzhou."
Lin'an Town is just a small town under the prefecture of Lizhou. Fan Changyu has never been out of Lizhou despite his great age, and he is not very clear about the current situation. However, he knows that the government collected grain once in the autumn, and it is estimated that it was for the war.
Her eyelids twitched. He had fled from the war, and was alone. His family must have met with an accident.
She asked, "Do you have any relatives at home?"
Hearing this, the man's knuckles on the stoneware cup turned white from excessive force. After a long silence, he uttered a few words hoarsely: "No more."
It turned out that the family was broken up.
Fan Changyu had just experienced the pain of losing his father and mother, so he understood his state of mind at the moment. He pursed his lips and said, "I'm sorry."
The man said "Nothing", but he started coughing again for some reason, as if blood was choking on his throat. He coughed harder and harder, and the cup in his hand fell to the ground, as if he was going to cough up the dirty lungs.
Fan Changyu was a little at a loss for a moment, but when he came to his senses, he hurriedly called Aunt Zhao and went forward to pat him on the back to calm him down.
There were many knife and sword wounds on his body. The area from his shoulder blade to his chest was wrapped in gauze. To avoid it getting on the wounds, he just put on a loose undershirt.
At this time, the heart-wrenching coughing caused his clothes to loosen, and the waist and abdominal muscles wrapped in gauze were clearly visible in the dim candlelight. However, because he coughed too hard, the wound was torn, and blood slowly seeped out of the gauze.
Fan Changyu shouted even louder outside the house: "Auntie, please ask Uncle Zhao to come back and take a look."
Aunt Zhao responded from outside and hurried out to look for her husband.
The man kept coughing heart-wrenchingly, his originally pale face turned red, and at the end of the coughing, he leaned over the bed and spat out a mouthful of blood.
Fan Changyu was startled, and worried that he would fall to the ground, so he quickly supported his shoulders and asked, "How are you?"
The other person's forehead was covered with cold sweat, and the area from his neck to his chest was also soaked with sweat. He looked as if he had just been pulled out of the water. He smelled a strong bloody smell, and his hair was scattered all over his forehead. He was ferocious and miserable: "I'm better now, thank you."
He wiped the blood from the corner of his lips with the back of his hand, then lay on his back, half leaning against the bedpost, gasping for breath, revealing his fragile neck, like a dying beast that had given up the struggle.
His current situation is not as good as he says.
Fan Changyu looked at the man and subconsciously recalled the moment he picked him up, when he forced himself to open his eyelids and looked at him in a semi-conscious state, like a dying wolf.
-
When Carpenter Zhao finally rushed back from outside, the man had already fainted from exhaustion, his breath barely escaping.
Fan Changyu was like an old farmer who had suffered a famine. He sat at the door with a bitter face, thinking, if this man died, should he be a good person to the end and buy a thin coffin to bury him, or just dig a hole and bury him?
After feeling the few coins left in her pocket, she decided to choose the latter option. She and her sister still had to eat, so digging a hole and burying the body would be enough.
After a while, Carpenter Zhao came out of the house with a heavy face. Without saying anything, he went to the main room and poured himself a cup of cold tea.
Fan Changyu found that the person was probably dead, so he said, "Uncle Zhao, don't blame yourself. If the person can't be saved, it's his own fate. When he dies, I will carry him to the mountain and find a place with good feng shui to bury him."
Carpenter Zhao choked on the tea and coughed for a long time before he recovered: "What nonsense! The person is still alive and well!"
Fan Changyu was stunned, then he scratched his head in embarrassment: "He coughed up blood earlier, and when you took his pulse, he looked so gloomy, I thought he was dying."
Carpenter Zhao said: "The young man has a good foundation. He has saved his life by spitting out the blood. But he has only saved his life. Whether he can fully recover in the future still needs careful care and depends on his luck."
The implication is that you will probably become a useless person who can neither lift anything nor carry anything.
He asked Fan Changyu: "Do you know where he is from? Does he have any relatives at home?"
Fan Changyu recalled the life story he had learned from the man, and sat back on the doorstep like an old farmer who had suffered a disaster. "He said he fled from the north, and everyone in his family died. He encountered bandits when he fled here, and now he has nowhere to go."
Carpenter Zhao and his wife looked at each other, opened their mouths, and remained speechless.
Saving a life is one thing, but keeping a sick person is another matter. The man's injuries are so serious, not to mention the high cost of medicine. One more set of bowls and chopsticks means one more mouth to feed.
After a moment of silence, Carpenter Zhao asked her, "What do you think?"
Fan Changyu picked up a stick and drew two circles on the ground before saying, "I carried the person back from the snow in the mountains. I can't chase him away now."
Aunt Zhao was worried for her: "Your parents passed away, and your mother Ning is in poor health and has been taking medicine. How difficult is it for you to support an idle person?"
Fan Changyu also felt that she had brought trouble upon herself, but there was nothing she could do at the moment. She said, "Let the man recover from his injuries first. When he is better, we will see what he will do."
Inside the house, the man who had been given acupuncture by Carpenter Zhao just woke up and heard this conversation. His black jade eyes turned slightly and looked towards the door.
Heavy snow began to fall again in the dark sky, and the candlelight in the house cast a layer of warm light, making it seem not so cold anymore.
The girl, wearing an old apricot-colored shirt, was squatting at the doorstep, her elbows propped on her knees, one hand supporting her snow-white cheek, and the other holding a small stick and poking at the ground randomly, her delicate eyebrows slightly frowned, as if she had made a difficult decision.
The old couple were sighing.
The man's gaze lingered on the woman's face for a moment. After retracting his gaze, he slowly closed his eyes and forced down the urge to cough in his throat.
-
When he returned home at night, Fan Changyu took advantage of his sister's deep sleep to find the wooden box hidden on the beam.
When the box was opened, there were several deeds with a big seal and a handful of copper plates inside.
The title deed was left behind by his parents after they passed away, and the copper plate was earned by Fan Changyu himself after he killed a pig.
Actually, her family used to be quite well-off, but now they live in such a tight situation because her father spent a large sum of money to buy a pig shed years ago.
Her father was a famous butcher in the town. He felt that buying pigs from pig dealers was not cost-effective, so he planned to build a pig shed in the countryside and hire people to help raise pigs. But before the pig shed was built, both the husband and wife met with an accident.
The funeral almost used up all the money the family had. With no income, Fan Changyu had no choice but to kill pigs to make a living.
It's not that she didn't think about selling a few acres of land to meet the emergency, but the laws of this dynasty stated that if parents died, daughters could not share the family property without a written deed from their parents during their lifetime. If the deceased had no children, the family property would go to the parents and siblings.
Fan Changyu was a girl, and she could not transfer the property left by her parents, nor could she mortgage it and sell it for money.
Her uncle was a gambler who owed a lot of gambling debts. He wanted to take her family's house to pay off his debts. He would come to make trouble from time to time and force her to hand over the house deed.
Fan Changyu naturally refused. Not to mention that the house was where she and her parents had lived for more than ten years, she had feelings for every tree and blade of grass there. If she didn't even have a place to live, would she and her sister end up wandering the streets?
Because he was afraid that his younger sister was too young and might be tricked into letting the secret slip, Fan Changyu did not even tell his younger sister where he had hidden the land deed.
She poured out the copper coins from the box and counted them. There were three hundred and seventy coins in total, which were the little money she had saved after deducting daily expenses from slaughtering pigs.
In fact, even if she didn't take the man in, her family would have difficulty making ends meet.
Making money by helping people slaughter pigs is not a long-term solution. In the last month, many families slaughtered pigs for the New Year, so business was good. After the New Year, there was almost no business. Fan Changyu thought that he had to reopen the pork shop at home.
She did some calculations in her mind: a live pig in the last month costs 15 wen per pound, so the cost of buying a pig weighing 80 jin would be 1,200 wen per pound.
After the slaughter, there are about 60 pounds of meat left, all sold at the price of fresh meat, 30 cents per pound, so one pig can make a net profit of 600 cents.
If you brine the pig’s head and offal and sell them as salted vegetables, the price will only go up further.
During the New Year holidays, every household has to entertain guests. However, ordinary families seldom have a complete set of seasonings at home, and cannot cook any decent dishes. Most people go to the street to buy some cooked food. Salted pork is quite popular during this season.
The idea was good, but the problem was that she couldn't even afford to buy a pig right now.
Fan Changyu sighed quietly, put the copper plate into his sleeve pocket, put the title deed into the box and put it back on the beam.
I have to think of a way to get enough money to buy a pig.
The author has something to say:
Note: Different dynasties in ancient times had different degrees of popularity for pork, and the price range was also high and low. This article is set in a fictional dynasty where pork was eaten a lot. Some prices refer to the "Research on Prices in the Song Dynasty", and some are set by the author. The price does not need to be too real, as long as the article can make everyone laugh~
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Recommend my gay friend Jiang Yue's new novel "I Lie Flat After Becoming the Heroine's Maid"
Jiang Tang transmigrated into a novel about house fighting and became a maidservant of the heroine who won the family's life.
According to the original book, the heroine was pregnant. She relied on her pretty face to climb into the hero's bed, but was ruthlessly driven out and sent to a manor, where she froze to death miserably on a winter day.
As far as Jiang Tang knows, the heroine of this book, Lu Jinyao, is a lucky otaku and a master of fighting. As long as you follow her obediently, you will be able to rise to prominence and live a life of luxury in the near future.
*
Jiang Tang thought she had won the game easily, and that she could live happily just by staying in the tea room every day, eating, drinking, having fun, and talking about the couple of the hero and heroine. However, the heroine became pregnant and lost her appetite, and the hero threatened to kick them all out.
Jiang Tang:?
Jiang Tang: It hit me, but not completely.
*
Being a maid in a marquis's mansion was a high-paying job. She had to work at fixed times, receive a monthly salary, and tips from time to time. After retirement, she could become a local landlord with her small inheritance.
Jiang Tang aspires to be a good maid.
However, this maid accidentally became the heroine's sister-in-law.
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