——But my mother did not see the world getting better as she wished, and no one saw it.
Everyone said it was a prosperous year, but the situation of money being light and goods being plentiful became worse and worse. Mother's health was getting worse year by year, and she became even more emaciated after she became pregnant, except for her belly which was surprisingly big. Song Wanru had seen Daddy bowing to the doctor with a sad face countless times, but no one expected that Daddy would die first.
"Three hundred strings of cash make you a Tongpan; five hundred strings of cash make you a Zhimige." Children in Tokyo can all sing this ballad, and officials in Tokyo are all similar to it, but the poor father can only afford to buy medicine for his old wife. He holds the little Song Wanru in his arms and teaches her with a smile, "If you want to fill the gullies, you must let go. I laugh at my crazy husband who is getting even crazier as he ages." The world is getting worse and worse, and poor officials are not allowed to walk on their own. The superiors want to be promoted, to flatter them, and to have a good reputation. The father has read the sage books of loyalty to the emperor and patriotism all his life. He can't follow the example of the thief who killed his wife's family and turned against them, nor can he follow the evil official who forced the first exam to plunder the people's fat. The only person the father can follow is the depressed and self-destructive old man.
"The departing birds are resting at night on the island. They stretch their necks and flap their wings, crying sadly for each other. Their longing gaze makes me sad. Alas, you old people, how can you forget your worries?"
Half of Tokyo was in peace and prosperity, while the other half was in turmoil. Before he died, the emaciated father had a collection of poems by the Three Caos next to him, but the page was still on the page that Song Wanru had asked about last month. He looked at his wife, daughter and son, and sighed sadly, "I have no place to stand in this world. What will I do after I die?"
But what can be done? Song Wanru doesn't know, and neither does her mother who is about to give birth and her brother who is not yet 20 years old. Dad passed away at the end of the year. My brother copied books, did odd jobs, and sold hard labor every day to earn a simple coffin for a hasty burial. My mother was sick and bedridden. A new official was replaced in the palace, but he has not been able to live well for many years. My brother first said with a gloomy face that the Jin soldiers crossed the river and the capital was under martial law, and then it was rumored that the Jin people wanted money, silk, gold and silver.
The officials and the ministers agreed.
Without her father, the family was completely plundered, with nothing but bare walls and no food left in the jars. On the second day of the second month, the dragon raises its head. Song Wanru didn't know whether the dragon raised its head or not. She only knew that she lowered her head again on that day, lying on the couch where her father had often rested and crying loudly - her mother had given birth to a little brother, and she finally couldn't bear it anymore, so she followed him to look for her father.
They had to keep wearing the mourning clothes that they hadn't changed out of yet. Candles and lamps were expensive luxury items. They couldn't even afford funeral objects. Song Wanru and her brother could only stand guard in front of the coffin in the endless darkness. She didn't know what happened. Why did she suddenly lose her father and mother? She didn't know who to blame. Her father wasn't killed, and her mother wasn't killed. Song Wanru watched her father and mother fall ill and hated her own inability to do anything.
The cold February night was filled with cold wind, and the darkness was like a monster that was eating people and laughing silently. She looked at her mother's coffin in front of her with tears in her eyes, but she could only hear her own heart-wrenching cry and the weak cry of her brother in her brother's arms. Song Wanru didn't want to hear this. She wanted to hear her father tell her "The moon is dark and the geese fly high, and the Shanyu escapes at night", and wanted to throw herself into her mother's arms, but they were all gone, and her brother was still a premature baby. She only had her brother.
Nanshan is fierce and the wind is blowing, she only has a brother.
——Dad and Mom, I finally understand "Liao'e", but I miss you.
Daddy and mommy could no longer answer her. All she could get was the sobbing wind and the howling of her weak brother. Song Wanru was now a sister. Song Wanru had always been a spoiled little sister, but now she felt heavy as she held her kitten-like brother. She had always been obedient, but as a sister, she had to be sensible.
The whole court was full of scholars. Song Wanru wiped away her tears, tied up her hair, exchanged her makeup, hairpins and rings for money, and dressed like a boy in shorts, tiptoed to make a fire, chop wood, cook, mend, and coax her younger brother. She stopped her brother who had just finished work and insisted that he read a book. Didn't Daddy say that my brother was the best at reading in several generations? If you read, you can pass the imperial examination, and if you pass the imperial examination, you can become an official with a salary. If you become an official, no one will bully them because their family is poor and have all their wealth taken away. With a salary, my younger brother can buy paper and ink in the future, and eat the sheep's head and sweets that they once tasted.
The crops grew in January and ripened in March. After seven or eight months, Song Wanru had become as easy as a servant who worked as a farmhand. Summer passed and autumn came. The frost was heavy and the dew was cold, but her brother only brought a little firewood home and told her in a hoarse voice that the Jin people were coming again.
It's not that they haven't thought about leaving Tokyo. But this is Tokyo, the capital of a country. If the capital is destroyed, where will the emperor go, and how will the country survive? They never dared to imagine that the country would be destroyed, and they never dared to imagine that the story of the Western Jin Dynasty's monarchs and ministers would be repeated on them - they didn't believe that the capital, where all the scholars and common people in the city wanted to fight, would be conquered! Yes, their family was poor, but in which dynasty didn't there be poor people living in simple houses? There was more than one family with red doors and noble houses with ding gongs and drums, jades, gold nuggets and pearls, and there were more than one princes and grandchildren in the palace who sang and played music all night, with smoke and fog all around. Isn't this the scene in the peaceful years? How could the emperor abdicate after more than a dozen years on the throne, and the army came, and it was like a building was about to collapse?
Song Wanru couldn't figure it out, and she didn't have time to think. On November Bingzi, the Jin army crossed the river and imposed martial law in the capital; on Yiyou, Olib's army arrived at the city; on Guisi, the capital was bitterly cold, and Nianhan's army arrived at the city; on Jiawu, it rained and snowed, the government officials wore armor and climbed the city, and the Jin army attacked the Jinmen Gate.
The city will not fall, my brother firmly told Song Wanru, the government has issued an order to all places to come to the defense of the king. Even if the people of Song resent the government, they will not be against the brutal Jin who massacred the city. My brother even stopped resenting the government that plundered the people's wealth. If I can ruin my family to help the country, if I can save the world with gold and silk, what's the harm?
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