Chapter 12 Two Letters
Jiang Xi swallowed the bitter Chinese medicine, her face scrunched up, a candied fruit that Aji had bought in her mouth, wrapped in a thin quilt, and sat on the threshold of the hall, resting her chin on her hands, waiting for her to return.
This position allows Ah Ji to see him as soon as she opens the door, and also allows him to be the first to greet Ah Ji when she comes home.
As the rain stopped, Jiang Xi remembered that Aji hadn't brought an umbrella. He immediately got up, picked up the oil-paper umbrella that was placed against the wall in the hall, took off his thin quilt, and was about to go out.
Wang Si, with his sharp eyes, noticed his unusual behavior and stepped forward to stop him: "Young master, just tell us where you're going."
Jiang Xi pursed her lips: "It's raining outside, and Aji didn't bring an umbrella. I'm going to bring her one."
"Does the young master know where Miss Shang is? And where is she going to deliver the umbrella?"
“I can go and ask around, see if anyone has seen her.” His fox-like eyes were full of determination. He added, “I will find her. Getting caught in the rain will make her catch a cold and get a fever. She will be sick and uncomfortable. Ah Ji cannot get sick.”
“But my lord is still running a fever. If he gets caught in the rain and it worsens his condition, the young lady will not let us off the hook.”
Jiang Xi listened to Shang Yuji the most, so Wang Si tried to persuade him by mentioning Miss Shang.
As expected, upon hearing that Shang Yuji would be angry, Jiang Xi hesitated, and her momentum weakened: "Then, here's the umbrella, you go find Aji for me."
Seeing that he had given up, Wang Si breathed a sigh of relief, took the oil-paper umbrella he was offered, and left.
Jiang Xi picked up the thin quilt that had fallen on the wooden chair in the hall, wrapped it around herself, squatted on the large wooden chair, and stared blankly at the door that opened and closed.
He hopes that the next time it's opened, the person he longs for will appear.
Wang Si walked in the direction of the clinic, occasionally stopping to ask if anyone had seen Shang Yuji. Soon, before he even reached the clinic, he met Shang Yuji.
“Miss Shang, it was Jiang Langjun who was worried about you and asked me to come out and bring you an umbrella,” he explained.
Shang Yuji roughly guessed the truth: Jiang Xi wanted to bring an umbrella, but Wang Si persuaded her not to: "Thank you for your trouble, let's go back first."
Back on Lotus Path, I walked to the mansion gate, pushed it open, and saw Jiang Xi running towards me with an umbrella and a joyful expression.
Looking at Shang Yuji's newly bought oil-paper umbrella, he praised, "Aji is so smart, she won't get wet in the rain now that she has a new umbrella."
After saying that, seemingly annoyed by the distance between the two umbrellas, he quickly hid under her umbrella and then closed the umbrella in his hand.
Shang Yuji was amused by his nonsensical praise: "Aji knows to take shelter from the rain when it rains, unlike some people who don't know where someone is but still plan to go out to look for them."
He shyly grabbed her hem and said, "I'm just worried that Aji will get sick from the rain. Being sick is uncomfortable, and you have to take medicine. Being sick is not good. Aji, please don't get sick."
"Then why don't you go back to your room and rest properly? If you keep going like this, you won't get better."
Shang Yuji walked towards the study, and he followed her. Helpless, she pointed to his room: "I have things to do. You go and get some sleep first."
Jiang Xi wouldn't disobey her. He opened his umbrella under the eaves and looked back every few steps, saying, "I want to see Aji after I wake up."
"When the time comes, just call out 'Yunxiao' when you go out, and you can find me by listening to your voice."
"Okay!" He was satisfied with the promise and went back to his room to rest.
There was paper and pen in the study. She arranged them and said to Wang Si, who was standing outside, "You can leave now. I'll call you back later."
He responded and left.
When she was alone in the study, listening to the sound of rain, she calmed down and thought about what to do.
She couldn't handle the Jingzhou flood alone; it required the combined efforts of many to find a way out of the perilous situation.
There are priorities, and she needs the help of the eldest princess.
When the flood occurred in Jingzhou, the princess was under house arrest and learned of the news late. Moreover, she was far away in the capital and could not help.
The flood will arrive suddenly in the dead of night a month from now. If the letter is sent from Yangzhou to the capital, and then the Princess's Mansion in the capital issues the order to go to Jingzhou to control the flood, the time frame will be too long.
Perhaps the flood has already occurred, and the letter is still on its way.
To reduce delivery time, the letters will be sent out separately from her.
One letter was sent to the governor of Jingzhou in the name of the princess, while another was sent to the capital to explain the situation to the princess and ask her to help Jingzhou overcome its difficulties.
A letter sent to the governor of Jingzhou was both easy and difficult to write.
It's good that it uses the name of the eldest princess, so there's no need to explain the origin of the flood news.
The difficult parts to write about are the flood self-rescue tips and precautions.
Jingzhou is close to major rivers and lakes and has a vast area. The local area has its own solutions and experience in dealing with floods, but Shang Yuji still wrote down all the methods he knew that could mitigate the disaster.
If some methods work, then another life can be saved.
To divert water from a major river and relieve the pressure of the main tributary, ditches and lakes can be dug.
They also need to prepare water transportation equipment such as bamboo rafts and wooden boats to facilitate the rescue of flooded people.
When the flood hits, some people take refuge on rooftops, in trees, or other high places to avoid being swept away by the torrents. However, this also leaves them isolated and helpless. If they do not receive timely rescue, they often die of hunger.
Some people would try to drink the murky river water flowing by to quench their thirst, but the murky water was full of bacteria, and they eventually died from infection.
This is an important point to emphasize: tell them not to drink tap water, but to drink boiled, clean water whenever possible. With this in mind, she further discussed pre- and post-disaster hygiene issues, noting that maintaining good hygiene can reduce bacterial invasion and lower the probability of illness.
She also reminded people to protect the medicinal herbs that could cure diseases. She didn't emphasize the type of herbs, because if the flood spread and submerged the entire city of Jingzhou, every batch of herbs that could be saved would be saved.
The letter, which filled several pages, concluded by emphasizing that the rainstorm came suddenly, arriving in the middle of the night, thus missing the best time to escape. It urged Jingzhou to conduct hydrological monitoring, reinforce the dikes, and keep people on alert at night, not to underestimate the situation.
The main problem is that she can't remember the exact time of the incident, so she can only ask them to keep an eye on it.
The text only states, "In mid-July, Jingzhou was flooded, the city was submerged, and one in ten people survived, leaving them homeless."
The Jingzhou incident exists more as background to the story, and it is not mentioned much in the book. Shang Yuji could not know the details and was not clear about them, so he tried to consider all possible situations.
It's always better to be prepared for a battle than to be caught off guard and helpless.
After finishing his writing, Shang Yuji summoned Wang Si and asked him to send the letter to the official residence of the governor of Jingzhou.
"Jingzhou?"
Wang Si didn't understand when Miss Shang had met the governor of Jingzhou. The important thing was that she requested to send a letter in the name of the princess.
Shang Yuji: "I will write another letter to the Princess to explain the reason. You can send this one first."
Li Wanjing, the governor of Jingzhou, is a well-liked and respected official. He might suspect the letter's intentions and hope that, out of respect for the princess, he will take more preventative and remedial measures.
I could have waited until I finished writing the letter to the Princess before sending them together, but I didn't know how long it would take to finish writing it, so I sent the letter to Jingzhou ahead of time, and when I got back, I asked him to go to the brokerage firm on his way back.
"On your way back, go to the brokerage firm again and bring the farmhands that the broker found. I'll take a look and pick some people to work in the mansion."
The four people in the household are either not good at cooking or too busy to spare the time. Hiring a professional cook and a purchasing agent would save a lot of trouble.
Wang Si said no more and left with the letter in his pocket.
How to explain this to the princess became the real problem.
Although she and the princess have been exchanging letters frequently in the past two months, their interactions have mostly involved financial transactions.
Her current actions make it seem as if she has joined the Princess's faction, offering advice and solving her problems.
In fact, considering the various factions within the court, she was more willing to serve the eldest princess.
After all, in the later part of the book, a group of ministers and emperors who only knew how to seek pleasure in bed, who could believe that they could govern the country well?
The Jingzhou affair could not only save countless people, but also allow them to pledge allegiance to the Princess.
But explaining how she knew about the flood in Jingzhou was enough to give her a headache.
Wait, she could learn from the mysterious old man of the sea salt method and then fabricate an unknown old woman.
The method doesn't have to be old, as long as it works.
Having learned from her first experience, Shang Yuji was quite adept at fabricating a non-existent old woman.
One moonlit night, while she was alone, she encountered an old woman dressed strangely, with mysterious totems painted on her hands and face. The old woman looked towards Yangzhou with a sorrowful expression and murmured:
"Jingzhou, Jingzhou, the water city in July, resentment abounds, so sad, so sad, so sad!"
Adding a touch of mystery, the old woman disappeared in the blink of an eye after she finished singing, and could not be found anywhere.
The reason given was that she could use a pretext to get away with it, and the rest of the content was that she hoped the Princess would intervene and save Jingzhou.
Just as she finished writing, she heard Jiang Xi wake up and shout "Yun Xiao!" She responded from afar, "Hey, I'm in the study!"
Seeing Jiang Xi dressed neatly and enter the study, Shang Yuji then sealed the letter and asked him to call Old Chen.
After Old Chen arrived, he handed him the envelope meant for the Princess and asked him to deliver it to the capital.
Even with the fastest horse, it would take half a month for a letter to reach the capital. And once the capital received the news, it would take another month to send people from the capital to support Jingzhou.
Thinking about it this way, the urgent report of the flood in Jingzhou was sent to the capital. As a result, the court officials were vying for profit and making excuses. But after a series of procedures, including the approval of disaster relief, the preparation and transportation of disaster relief materials, Jingzhou was not left with an empty city. It can be said that the local officials were competent and the people survived tenaciously.
The incident happened so suddenly that Shang Yuji didn't know if what she did could help Jingzhou. One idea after another popped into her head, and she ended up writing letters for nearly an hour and a half, her wrists aching terribly.
She frowned, rotated her wrist, and the next moment a fair, delicate hand with pink knuckles took her right wrist and gently kneaded it.
"It doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt." Jiang Xi gently rubbed the wrist bone she was holding.
Fearing she was still uncomfortable, he used the method she had used to comfort herself, breathing into the wrist bone he was massaging: "Get well soon."
Shang Yuji let him do as he pleased, using her free hand to move the mahogany stool until it bumped into the stool he was sitting on. Then she turned to the side, rested her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes to rest.
"Is Aji tired?"
"Yeah, a little."
"Then Ah Ji, lean against something and rest for a bit."
"Wait for Wang Si to come back and wake me up."
"Okay." He softened the pressure of kneading her wrist and responded.
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Fulai Inn, in the isolation room.
The shopkeeper was sorting through the "small business" he had recently received, dividing them into large orders, medium orders, and small orders according to the amount of money involved.
The list of two thousand taels for information gathering, placed at the top of the list in the morning, was separated from the other trivial matters such as finding cats and dogs, and the two thousand taels occupied a separate page.
Having been in business for so long, it's rare to see such a large fixed-price order.
He carefully tucked away the papers with various lists written on them, pushed open the hidden door inside the room, walked through the narrow corridor that only innkeepers could pass through, and made two large turns before finally arriving at his destination.
A high wall surrounds the open space, and long eaves block the view from above.
The walls on all four sides are labeled “Entrustment Area”, “Transaction Area”, “Submission Area” and “Q&A Area”.
This is a Jianghu job posting point that every large Fulai Inn has, also known as a Jianghu part-time job posting point, which provides a place for martial arts people who pass by the inn to work, whether they are short of money or just want to take on a job.
The shopkeeper greeted the servant who was in charge of verifying whether the orders had been completed, and then arranged the orders on the order wall according to the order of large, medium and small orders.
When the shopkeeper was grappling with two large orders totaling two thousand, he thought of the impoverished second disciple of the martial arts master. If the disciple could take on this big order, it might ease his burden a bit.
The next moment, the shopkeeper wiped the sweat from his brow from his work, and in the instant he looked up, he met the person who had climbed over the wall in a glance that seemed to last a lifetime.
If the shopkeeper knew a formidable man named Cao Cao, he might understand this inexplicable feeling, which can be described as "speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives".
The shopkeeper paused for a moment, then asked in confusion:
"Lin Mingshan? What brings you to Yangzhou?"
"Also, the inn has a door. Next time, come in through the door!"
A note from the author:
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