Chapter 48: Delivering Water Aye's mouth corners secretly raised an arc...
On the way back, Lin Shu didn't say anything until they reached the courtyard entrance, then she let go of his hand.
Zhou Ye's eyes subconsciously swept over the place where Lin Shu had supported him, he retracted his arms and followed her silently.
Lin Dashan rested and left. Zhou Ye continued to deal with the pile of bamboo, removing all the thin branches and leaves on the main trunk.
Before they had even started peeling the fruit for a while, the boy from Lin Dashui's family came looking for them.
Normally, Zhou Ye wouldn't have even glanced at him, but this time he looked up at the boy several times for some unknown reason.
He was fairer than the average boy, and his features were quite handsome if you looked closely, completely different from a rough guy like him.
Lin Yushu also noticed Zhou Ye chopping bamboo branches in the courtyard because that person's presence was too strong.
People in the southwest are all short. The Lin brothers are considered tall, but they are still not as tall as Zhou Ye when standing next to him.
This man, who was said to have fled from the northwest, was exceptionally tall and strong, with thick eyebrows, and looked a bit sharp, but he was quiet and taciturn most of the time, which softened the sharpness a little.
But for some reason, Lin Yushu had been a little afraid of this man since he first met him more than two years ago.
He was still young at that time and had not grown tall yet. He was deeply impressed by the group of people from other villages who fled from famine, and could even be said to be frightened.
The group of people were all ragged and unkempt, and very thin, but not the kind of skinny and pale. Especially the leader Zhou Ye, who had a bigger frame than the average man, but still looked sturdy and strong.
The eyes of these outsiders were shining, like wild wolves, and the leader Zhou Ye was like the wolf king of this pack of wild wolves, with a pair of dark eyes filled with ferocity that made people afraid to approach.
He was terrified at that time, and so were the villagers. The village head called together the young and strong men in the village, and each of them held a hoe, preventing the group from approaching.
It's not like they haven't experienced famine here before. According to the elders in the village, several decades ago, several counties in the southwest were flooded. Many people, their fields and homes destroyed, were forced to leave their homes to seek livelihoods. Only after the imperial government provided disaster relief did they return to rebuild their homes. Even when people fled famine, they rarely went to impoverished and remote places like Tianshui Village.
But at that time, this group of people escaped from the deep mountains three miles away!
That was a place that even the villagers of Tianshui Village did not dare to go deep into. However, this group of people did not know whether they bypassed the entire mountain or went directly through the mountain, trekking through mountains and rivers, and arrived at Tianshui Village.
No matter which one it is, it's extremely creepy.
Our ancestors had also said that people who are extremely hungry will burn, kill and rob. At that time, he was really afraid that this group of people would turn into bandits and plunder their Tianshui Village.
As a result, the development of the matter was beyond Lin Yushu's expectations.
Although there were some people in this group who were ready to make some moves, they were suppressed by the leader Zhou Ye and did nothing. In the end, it was Zhou Ye who came forward to negotiate with the village head, saying that he wanted to sell himself to the villagers in exchange for a bag of food.
A tall and thin man, who looked no less sturdy due to his big frame, stood there and said he wanted to sell himself, but none of the villagers dared to buy.
Lin Yushu also thought that no villager would want such a person. This was because he looked difficult to tame. Even if he was bought back home as a slave, there was no guarantee that there would not be accidents.
But Lin Yushu never expected that it was his second uncle who had the courage to buy him.
Before the family split up, the impression his second uncle gave him was that he did whatever his grandmother told him to do, always tolerant of his eldest uncle, and always helping his father. The only time he made a tough decision was when he married his second aunt's wife without any regard for the others, which made his grandmother very angry. He heard this from his mother.
Two years ago, the second uncle ignored other people's advice and insisted on buying Zhou Ye with a bag of coarse grains. This was the second time he ignored advice and acted stubbornly.
Whether it was the second uncle marrying the second aunt's wife or him buying Zhou Ye, it was ultimately proven that his tough stance was right these two times.
Second uncle's wife was a well-known virtuous woman in the village. Apart from not giving birth to a son for Second Uncle, no one could find fault with her. And Zhou Ye was even better. Since buying Zhou Ye, Second Uncle's family's fields were planted the fastest and harvested the fastest, and the crops grew better than those of other families.
Zhou Ye has great strength. It is said that he can do the work of three people. Lin Yushu has also seen with his own eyes that he can lift a large stone mortar that requires several strong men to lift together. It is truly amazing.
After Lin Yao's cousin left, the villagers started gossiping again, saying that since the second uncle's family had no daughter of marriageable age, Zhou Ye could not be a son-in-law, and he would definitely not work as hard as before. However, two years have passed, and this man is still the same.
He silently did what he was supposed to do. Whenever any family in the village needed help, he would be willing to lend a hand as long as they called him.
Gradually, this taciturn, burly man was accepted by everyone without anyone noticing, and no one said a bad thing about him anymore.
He also heard from his mother that several families in the village and even in neighboring villages were interested in marrying their daughters to him, but since Lin Yao's cousin had just passed away, it was difficult to bring it up, so everyone was thinking of waiting and seeing. When the time was right, he would find someone he knew well to go and ask his uncle and aunt what they were thinking.
Even a few days before Lin Shu's cousin came back, a distant relative from A Niang's side came to his house. After several roundabout ways, A Niang realized that she was asked to help go to the second uncle's house to get some information.
If the relationship between A Niang and Second Uncle's family hadn't been strained at the time, she would have died. Now that cousin Lin Shu has returned, and A Niang has finally reconciled with Second Uncle's family, she will definitely not mention this matter again.
Lin Yushu thought about all sorts of things, but it only took a moment. He nodded politely to the man chopping bamboo branches in the courtyard and called out, "Brother Aye."
Zhou Ye nodded calmly and replied, "Ashu is not very convenient right now, please wait for half a quarter of an hour before going in."
Lin Yushu responded quickly, standing in the yard like a skinny bamboo pole.
He Guixiang had just come out of the kitchen after clearing away the pots and pans when she saw him and quickly called out, "Yushu is here, come in and sit down."
Lin Yushu glanced at Zhou Ye and replied, "Second Aunt, I'll wait for Sister Shu to come out. She's the teacher. I'll go in when she calls me."
He Guixiang thought this was the proper etiquette for teachers, so she did not try to persuade him, but just wiped the table in the main room again.
Lin Shu was indeed not in a position to meet guests. Her trouser legs were splattered with mud, having accidentally wet them when she went to the spring to wash her feet, so she went back to her room to change into a clean pair of trousers. Her hair was a little messy, so she tied it up again.
When Lin Xiaopu saw her changing her pants, he changed his own.
Hearing the noise outside, Lin Shu walked out while tying up her hair and asked Lin Yushu, "Cousin Yushu, are you a little later today than the previous two days?"
Lin Yushu called out "Sister Ashu" and quickly explained, "Mother was afraid that I'd come too early and you hadn't finished your breakfast yet, so she asked me to come back in the evening."
Lin Shu laughed at him, "So what if you didn't finish your breakfast? You can just review your lessons. What? Are you afraid I'll pull you to the table and force you to eat? When you come, there will be only leftovers. It's unreasonable to let guests eat leftovers. How about I ask my mother to save a bowl just for you?"
Lin Xiaopu came out from the inner room, covering his mouth with his hands and laughing, and found his usual seat and sat down.
Outside the house, Lin Yushu's face flushed crimson, and he quickly waved his hands, saying, "No, no, Sister Shu, please don't!"
Lin Shu laughed out loud, "You're such a tough kid. You should learn from your big brother Aye. No matter how I tease him, he remains unmoved. I want him to be like this, so it's fun to tease him."
Zhou Ye, who was working in the yard, glanced at her when he heard this, but said nothing.
Lin Shu immediately said, "Look at him, isn't he silent?"
Lin Yushu smiled dryly and nodded, unsure how to respond. For some reason, at this moment, the feeling of being an outsider was particularly strong.
"Come into the main hall quickly. Xiao Pu, I've already tested you this morning, and you can't escape. I'm going to test your lessons from the past two days to make sure you've memorized them before we move on. While it's true that biting off more than you can chew can make you chew more, if you've chewed it all, I'd love to have you gallop along the way and catch up with the others as soon as possible."
Lin Yushu breathed a sigh of relief, sighed, and hurried in.
Soon the sound of two people asking and answering each other could be heard in the main room. Zhou Ye was far away and could not hear clearly.
He buried his head in his work, and when he had removed all the small branches from this batch of bamboo, he left the yard without saying a word and went to the back of the house to continue working on the fish pond.
The fish pond is big, and if he wants to plant Acorus calamus all around the pond, he has to carry a dustpan back and forth several times.
I didn't dare carry this thing in a backpack, for fear that it would be crushed by the pile, so I could only carry it a few times with a dustpan.
When Zhou Ye came back, he could hear Lin Shu's teaching voice in the room, which was neither too loud nor too soft. It was all some complicated and incomprehensible things that he could not understand.
He worked silently, and the energy that had been accumulating in his chest since waking up in the morning, which seemed to last the whole day, suddenly disappeared by half.
Zhou Ye actually knew how to read, but he had never been to school and could only recognize a few big characters.
Poor families don’t have the opportunity to learn to read and write. Even if the whole family works together, they can only support one scholar, but he was the one who was abandoned from the beginning.
My grandfather said that he was very strong and was born to beg for food in the fields. As long as he had this strength, he would not be afraid of not being able to finish plowing the fields or planting crops.
His father thought more about it and just wanted him to be a butcher. He said that butchers earn a lot of money and have no shortage of meat to eat. With his strength, being a butcher is just right.
In the end, it was A'niang who thought hard and asked someone to find a way for him and sent him to be an apprentice to a blacksmith in town.
No one ever asked him whether he wanted to study, as if his great strength meant he had no chance of studying.
Later, he listened to his cousin reciting, and he did learn a few sentences after listening so much, but he was not interested in all the nonsense. He just wanted to learn a few more characters so that he could understand words and do math, so that he would not be cheated when he went out to buy and sell goods or sign contracts with others.
But in the end, the one who taught him to read was not his cousin, but his master's wife...
Before he knew it, Zhou Ye had planted Acorus calamus along most of the edges of the fish pond.
The lush Acorus calamus looked a bit desolate against the empty fish pond paved with stones but without a drop of water. He couldn't imagine what this place would look like after it was filled with mountain spring water and full of fish.
His mind is always poor and he can't think of any beautiful scenes.
After breakfast, the sun grew stronger and stronger, and hot sweat broke out on Zhou Ye's forehead.
"Brother Aye!" Someone suddenly called him from behind.
Zhou Ye paused and turned around slowly.
A drop of hot sweat rolled down from the corner of his eye. He blinked and saw Lin Shu running towards him with a smile, holding a bamboo tube of water in her hand.
Zhou Ye wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, "Ashu, you were teaching, why did you run out?" It shouldn't have been less than an hour.
"I'm not a donkey pulling a millstone. Can't you ask me to take a break and drink some water? When I drink water, I think of you."
As he spoke, he handed him the bamboo tube filled with mountain spring water and said, "I guess you must be too busy to even drink water. You used to bring a bamboo tube with you when you went to work in the fields, but how come you didn't bring any back home?"
Zhou Ye looked at her cheerful eyes that were always smiling, and after a moment's pause, he reached out to take the water, explaining, "There's a mountain spring behind the house. I'll go drink it when I'm thirsty."
"The spring water has all flowed into the ditch. How can it be as clean and sweet as the spring water that Brother Aye fetched from the mountain spring this morning? Take a couple of sips! Your lips are all dry and chapped. After you finish drinking this water, put it aside. Put it where you can see it at a glance and drink from it from time to time. Oh, and remember to close the lid tightly to prevent small flies from falling in..."
Zhou Ye listened to her mumbling a lot, took a sip of mountain spring water from the bamboo tube, and secretly raised a faint arc at the corner of his mouth through the cover of the bamboo tube.
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