Yu Wen felt that it was his fault. Being questioned by his daughter, he couldn't help feeling guilty. He whispered, "Atang, although your mother needs to take medicine now, she doesn't have to go to the capital. Just consider this money as the money I took your mother to the capital. Besides, you have seen how your uncle Lu treats our family. How can I only care about my own family's well-being and ignore his life and death at this time?"

Yu Tang was furious and asked, "Is he in a life-or-death situation now? Will he not be able to survive without these two hundred taels of silver?"

"Almost the same!" Yu Wen said, "Your uncle Lu has offended the Pei family and can no longer stay in Lin'an Prefecture. The special examination will be held next year, and he won't get a good recommendation, so it will be difficult for him to make progress in his studies."

Yu Tang knew about this.

Retired officials usually wanted to benefit the local people. When local scholars came to Beijing for the imperial examinations, they would write a name card to officials they knew or were close to, asking them to help arrange accommodation and even give them guidance on their studies, in the hope that they would be on the list of successful candidates and achieve better results.

She sneered and said: "If I remember correctly, Uncle Lu is just a scholar, right? The Pei family wrote him a letter of recommendation, so he probably won't need it, right? Besides, the Pei family has always liked to help their neighbors, and he did What happened to offend the Pei family? Don’t you think about it carefully? "

Yu Wen obviously didn't want to talk more, and only said: "He has decided to live in the capital, and I don't know if he will come back in the future. This is the last time I help him, and it is also my way of repaying him for saving your mother's life. Please don't pursue it."

Now that things have come to this, what else can Yu Tang say?

She asked bitterly, "Where's the painting?"

After all, the painting is an antique and is worth some money. If my family is unable to afford the money for my mother's medicine in the future, I can pawn the painting.

Yu Wen handed the scroll to Yu Tang in a flattering manner.

As Yu Tang spread the scroll on the desk, he muttered, "You are so nice. If he pawns the two hundred taels of silver, he can only get a hundred taels of silver at most..."

Before she finished speaking, her eyes widened.

This was not the painting "Fishing in Songxi" that she often took out to caress and admire in her previous life.

In her previous life, after her parents had an accident, the painting was left at home and forgotten. It was not until she got married that her uncle, considering that the Li family she was going to marry into was a family of scholars, wanted to buy some calligraphy and paintings for her dowry to make her wedding more decent. The painting was then found again. And because her parents' accident was related to the painting, she kept it as a memory, carefully kept it, and took it out to look at it from time to time.

She remembered very clearly that there were twenty-three seals on this painting, and the last two seals were "Chun Shui Tang" and "Shou Mei Weng". "Chun Shui Tang" was stamped next to "Shou Mei Weng", and at this time, the place where the "Chun Shui Tang" seal should have been stamped was stamped with "Mei Lin".

This painting is fake!

Yu Tang was furious and said, "Father, Lu Xin is a villain!"

Seeing his daughter repeatedly slandering his friend, Yu Wen felt unhappy. He walked over and, while trying to collect the scroll and put it away, he said, "How can you talk like that, kid? Everyone has flaws. Don't always focus on your uncle Lu's faults. When judging a person, you should look at the main thing..."

"No!" Yu Tang interrupted his father and stopped him from rolling up the scroll. He pointed to the seal with "Meilin" on it and said, "Dad, look, this should say 'Chun Shui Tang'..."

Yu Wen laughed and said, "I asked you to study but you didn't. Now you are making a fool of yourself! I don't know whose seal 'Chun Shui Tang' is, but this 'Mei Lin' is the private seal of Lord Zuo. I have studied Lord Zuo's manuscripts and seals in the past. The one in your uncle Lu's house was given by Lord Zuo to his father. It would be strange if it didn't have this seal. You see, this 'Shou Mei Weng' is the nickname of your uncle Lu's father."

Yu Tang was completely confused.

Could it be that the famous paintings she often played with in her previous life were fake?

Yu Tang was unwilling to give up, so she asked Yu Wen to find someone to appraise it.

Yu Wen disagreed: "Your father is not good at studying, but he will never go wrong in appraising a few ancient paintings from the previous dynasties."

Yu Tang's confusion grew.

In her previous life, after she married into the Li family, there was a thief in the house. Afterwards, when everyone counted the belongings, she was the only one who lost two or three gold ornaments. At that time, she was surprised that someone who went to the Li family to commit thieves in the high-walled courtyard could only steal these few things.

Could it be that the painting had been stolen at that time?

Yu Tang didn't want to recall her days at the Li family, but she couldn't deny that it was a knot in her heart. Especially the resentment towards the people in the Li family, any mention of it would make her tremble with anger and speechless.

no!

She couldn't just sit there and pretend nothing happened.

Yu Tang asked Yu Wen for the painting "Fishing in Songxi" to go and see it, but secretly took the painting to Pei's pawnshop.

The Pei family only opened a pawnshop in Lin'an.

At the intersection in front of Lin'anfu Pier.

The shopkeeper is still the fat and fair Tong Gui.

In her previous life, Yu Tang had received a lot of dowry from him.

She tied her hair up, dressed like a country woman, and quietly entered the pawnshop.

Manager Tong was not at the counter, and the person guarding the counter was his son Tong Hai.

Like Tong Gui, he is also plump and fair. Although he is only twenty years old, he always smiles and is very amiable.

Yu Tang handed the painting over and whispered "live pawn".

Tong Hai took the painting with a smile and opened it carelessly, but his expression froze the moment he saw the scroll. Although he immediately put on a smile, the shock on his face was caught by Yu Tang.

It can be seen that Tong Hai has already developed a good eye by this time.

"Please wait patiently, young lady, and go to the inner hall to have a cup of tea first." He smiled like Maitreya Buddha, "You think this is an antique calligraphy and painting, and we need to let the guests in our shop take a look before we can make an offer."

Why is Pei's pawnshop considered fair and just? Many pawnshops will deceive you when they see you pawning something, asking you how much money you want to pawn. And no matter how much money you ask for, they can devalue the item you want to pawn to nothing, and persuade you to pawn it anyway.

Yu Tang nodded. His anxiety since he knew his father had bought this painting was relieved a lot.

Her fate was so wonderful, everything was changing, but at least she was familiar with the Pei family's pawnshop, and the managers and assistant managers were still the same as before.

She followed the shopkeeper Xiao Tong to the inner hall.

A gust of wind blew by, and the camphor tree in the courtyard rustled, causing a few koi fish raised in the pond below the tree to pop their heads out from under the water lily leaves.

Yu Tang couldn't help but slow down his pace and looked around for a few times, but he heard someone talking faintly behind the half-closed glazed window opposite.

She went by reputation.

I didn't see anyone's face, only the silhouettes of two men through the crack in the door.

The fat one was Tong Gui, and she recognized him at a glance. The tall one wore a plain blue silk Taoist robe, and stood tall with his hands behind his back. Even from a distance, even through the Taoist lattice, she could sense his majestic demeanor.

It must be that a big customer came to the shop.

Yu Tang came here to work as a prostitute under an assumed name, and fearing that his identity would be exposed, he dared not look too much, but could not help but pondering secretly in his heart.

He has such a good demeanor, yet he acts like a bully. I don't know whose son he is...

She shook her head, feeling inexplicably a little regretful.

After drinking two cups of tea, the shopkeepers, Big and Little Tong, came in together.

"This young lady," said the shopkeeper Tong Da, wiping the sweat off his face as he took the scroll she had handed to the shopkeeper Tong Xiao, "This painting of yours is a fake."

Fake painting?!

Yu Tang stood up suddenly.

She knew that Lu Xin was not a good person!

In the previous life, her father bought his painting without refusing, so he at least sold her father a real painting. In this life, her father was unwilling to buy his painting, so he simply sold her father a fake painting.

Yu Tang gritted his teeth.

But deep down, I had to admit that if she hadn't intervened, this would never have happened in this life.

Since she was the one who caused the trouble, it was natural for her to clean up the mess.

If we can't get back the real painting from Lu Xin, we must get back the silver from him!

Yu Tang snatched the painting from the hands of Tong Dazhang, and said bitterly: "Thank you, Tong Dazhang, sorry to bother you."

The shopkeepers, Tong Da and Tong Xiao, stared at her blankly, as if they were frightened.

Yu Tang had no choice but to force a smile.

She could resent Lu Xin if she wanted to, but she shouldn't take her anger out on Tong the manager.

"I'm sorry!" she apologized, "I didn't realize it was a fake painting. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

The shopkeepers, Big and Little Tong, were really well-mannered. If it had been someone else who had taken a fake painting to pawn, they would have been treated as scammers and thrown out on the street to be laughed at.

"No!" Shopkeeper Xiao Tong stuttered, "You, your headscarf fell off."

What happened if the headscarf fell off?

It took Yu Tang a while to react.

In order to pawn the shop, she specially found an old dress of Shuangtao. Not only that, she also combed her hair into a woman's style and wore a pink velvet flower. She had thought about putting on some powder to make her face look more haggard. But when she found Shuangtao's powder, she complained that the powder used by Shuangtao was not fine enough. Shuangtao said she would go to "Xie Fuxiang" to buy a new box. Then she felt that it was not worth spending two taels of silver on this - two taels of silver was enough for her mother to buy medicine for half a month.

Yu Tang thought that in her previous life, she just wrapped her hair casually and went into the pawnshop without anyone recognizing her, so she was careless and wrapped her hair like in her previous life. However, she forgot that she had just come of age and her face was as tender as the cherries that had just grown fruits on the branches in March. She was still youthful and cute. No matter how you looked at her, she looked like a child wearing adult clothes. Even a blind person could tell that she was dressed in costume.

Yu Tang's face flushed red, he tied his hair in a hasty manner, grabbed the scroll and left the pawnshop.

At noon in midsummer, the sun is so scorching that it is hard to open your eyes.

There was no one at the pier. Under the eaves of the shop next door, the shopkeeper was lying on a rocking chair with his clothes exposed, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan. The shop's dog was curled up listlessly beside the rocking chair. The cicadas were chirping tirelessly, making the quiet afternoon even more depressing.

Yu Tang came back to his senses.

She just asked whether the painting was real or not, but she didn't figure out what made it fake?

What would she say if Narusin denied it?

Yu Tang hesitated for a moment, gritted his teeth, and went back to the pawnshop.

In the shop, the man in blue that she had seen before came out at some point and was talking to the shopkeeper Tong: "You are so young and yet you are cheating people. If you encounter such a thing again in the future, you must not tolerate evil!"

Shopkeeper Tong stood in front of the man, bowing and nodding. Just as he was about to agree, he looked up and saw Yu Tang walking in.

He was speechless and looked embarrassed.