Chapter 1919
"But why am I the one who has to bear her anger and temper?" Jiang Liu asked Jiang's father in confusion: "Is it because it's easy for me?"
"Because I'm weak, because I'm small, because I'm the easiest to bully, so do I have to bear all her anger, all her dissatisfaction, all her beatings and scoldings?"
Jiang Liu asked Jiang's father sincerely: "Is it easy when she hits my left cheek and I extend my right cheek to her so that she can hit me comfortably and vent enough?"
"There are so many people in the world who have a hard time. Do I have to extend my face to them to be hit?"
"I understand your difficulties, but who will understand me?"
Jiang Liu's voice was carried to Jiang's father's ears by the summer night breeze: "I really understand you, from childhood to adulthood, I never cause trouble to you. No matter if I am bullied or scolded by others, I almost never ask you to support me or complain to you, because it will only bring more scolding from you. You only ask me to be a little bit better. I have already been a good boy. How can I be better? "
"I was not raised by you. You didn't spend a penny on me. I went to primary school for five years in the village. My grandfather took care of me. I spent only two cents a day in junior high school for three years. Let’s not talk about Grandpa’s salary as a forest ranger these years. Even the scraps that Grandpa and I have collected are enough to support me, right? All the clothes I have worn since I was a child are old clothes that my cousin no longer wants. The only new clothes I have are bought by my aunt. How can I make it difficult for her, for you, and for you to vent your anger on me all the time? "
"I know that high school tuition costs a lot of money. I have already said that I earn money to go to school. I don’t want your money. If this still doesn’t work, then calculate the money you have spent on me since I was a child, give me some time, and I will pay you back, okay?"
"If there is a price for being pregnant for ten months and breastfeeding for two months, can you please give me a price and I will give you all of it? It's not like Nezha who cut off his flesh to return to his father and cut off his bones to return to his mother. I don't need to cut off my flesh and blood piece by piece and give it back to you, right?"
Jiang Xi's sharp words made Jiang's father fall into a long silence.
He didn't know what went wrong. From what he had seen since he was a child, all families were like this. He didn't treat Jiang Xi badly.
Was he wrong?
He supported his parents and children, loved his wife, worked hard, and never stopped for a day.
Was it his wife's fault? Shouldn't his wife beat the children? But didn't they all grow up like this? In the countryside, which child was not beaten by his parents when he grew up? Not to mention beating, even kneeling as punishment was commonplace.
Was it the daughter's fault? But as the daughter said, she had been well-behaved and sensible since she was young, and listened to her parents and elders. When her two sons were naughty, she never caused trouble for her parents and was friendly to her two brothers.
So what was wrong?
Jiang's father couldn't figure it out.
He knew that Jiang's mother shouldn't beat the children, but it didn't seem to be a big deal.
In his eyes, it was natural for his wife to educate her children.
Jiang Xi didn't go home at night, and she was not in a hurry. After Jiang's mother fell asleep, she quietly slipped back to the yard.
Jiang's father left the door open for her, and she went in to get a flashlight, took a bamboo basket, and went to the field ditch to fish for lobsters.
While fishing for lobsters, she saw many loaches and eels floating on the surface of the soil in the fields. She suddenly remembered that many children here would take their father's mining lamp and go out to catch loaches and eels at night. They used rows of sewing needles embedded in discarded toothbrushes.
They tied the toothbrush with densely packed sewing needles to a thin bamboo pole and used it to cut the loaches and eels that floated on the surface and lay motionless in the paddy field. The loaches and eels were nailed to the densely packed toothbrush needles, and no matter how they twisted, they could not escape.
They didn't even have to go into the water. They just had to stand on the ridge and shine the mine light on the loach and eel and poke them. They could catch two or three pounds of loach and eel in one night.
Loach is a good thing for the body and has the reputation of "ginseng in water".
She didn't hesitate and went home with half a bamboo basket of lobsters. She took a candle, an old toothbrush, a pack of sewing needles, and tiger pliers. After cutting the bristles off the toothbrush, she used tiger pliers to clamp the sewing needles, burned them red on the candle one by one, and embedded them on the toothbrush head. Then she found a thin bamboo pole to tie it to, tied a densely toothed bamboo basket around her waist, and fished for lobsters while catching loach and eel.
By around ten o'clock in the evening, she had already caught half a basket of loaches, estimated to be more than three pounds, and half a cage of lobsters.
She did not go home, but took the half cage of lobsters she had caught earlier and carried them to the mountain.
The mountain road at night is very scary. It is not only scary that you may encounter wolves, but also the graves on both sides of the road.
Jiang Xi remembered that she walked to and from school alone every day in junior high school. In order to take a shortcut, she needed to walk on a flat mountain path. There were many graves beside the mountain road. At that time, she had many scary illusions about these graves in her mind. Every time she passed by, she would look straight ahead, lower her head, and silently chant "Amitabha" in her heart to resist the fear.
In the silent night, this section of the mountain road was particularly long.
Jiang Xi was not without fear. She was not afraid of ghosts, but wolves.
After finally arriving safely at the mountain ranger's hut, Jiang Xi knocked on the door. Grandpa Jiang was startled and asked, "Who is it?"
"Grandpa, it's me!"
Grandpa Jiang thought he had heard wrongly and asked again, "Who is it?"
"Grandpa, it's me, Xingxing. I have no place to live, so I came to your place!"
The rope for the light in the hut was tied to the head of Grandpa Jiang's bed. He stretched out his hand and pulled the light, and then he got up quickly to open the door. He saw that she was carrying a large basket on her back and holding a bamboo basket in her hand. He hurried to take it, his tone angry and anxious: "Why did you come to the mountain so late? How can you be so brave? What if you meet a wolf?"
The wolves in the mountain would go to the village to steal chickens and pigs at night. Thinking that his granddaughter might encounter a pack of wolves coming down the mountain, Grandpa Jiang was scared to death.
Jiang Xi also understood Grandpa Jiang's worries, and said with a smile: "I have nowhere to go, so I can only come to see Grandpa."
This sentence made Grandpa Jiang's eyes red, "Next time, come earlier, don't run up the mountain alone after dark."
"Yes." Jiang Xi nodded obediently.
"Have you eaten?" Grandpa Jiang asked while looking for leftovers in the bamboo cabinet and fried rice for Jiang Xi.
"Yes, I cooked dinner, how can I not eat?"
They didn't mention Jiang's father and mother.
Grandpa Jiang fetched water for Jiang Xi to wash.
Jiang Xi grew up here with her grandfather when she was little, running all over the mountains, and she was very familiar with every place in the mountains. She also had clothes here, so she took a toothbrush to brush her teeth and washed herself briefly.
Grandpa Jiang put two long benches together, lit two plates of mosquito coils on both sides, and planned to sleep on the long benches at night.
The forest ranger's bed is only 1.2 meters wide, very small. When she was a child, she could sleep with Grandpa Jiang, but now that she is older, she can't sleep with him.
Jiang Xi looked sad and said, "Grandpa, you go to bed. I'm small, so I'm just right for sleeping on the bench."
Grandpa Jiang just pushed her and said, "It's midnight, go to bed quickly."
Jiang Xi argued with Grandpa Jiang, sitting on the bamboo chair and refusing to go to bed. Finally, Grandpa Jiang had no choice but to go to bed himself, but turned the fan towards Jiang Xi. Jiang Xi didn't refuse and lay down on the narrow long bench to sleep.
This time, she, like Jiang's father, experienced the pain of being carried away by mosquitoes in the mountains.
Although she had covered her face with a straw hat, when she woke up in the morning, her face was still covered with thirteen mosquito bites and both eyelids were swollen.
At daybreak, Jiang's father rushed to the mountain. After seeing Jiang Wu in the mountain hut, he felt relieved to go down the mountain.
Grandpa Jiang cooked breakfast, sweet potato porridge, boiled eggs, and a bowl of stinky, fragrant, and bitter rotten radish.
If Jiang Wu was not there, Grandpa Jiang's breakfast would be simpler. He would just make a bowl of homemade sesame paste or fried rice with water, or boiled egg drops with water.
Seeing the rotten radish in the small porcelain bowl, Jiang Wu suddenly knew why Grandpa Jiang's health was so bad. Grandpa Jiang lived alone and was too lazy to cook. He ate rotten radishes three times a day. How could he be healthy?
Jiang Xi couldn't sit still any longer. She peeled the egg and forced Grandpa Jiang to eat it. She went down the mountain to buy two pieces of tofu from the tofu seller, went back to Jiang's house to get the letter paper and pen she had bought before, and went back to the mountain.
At noon, she cooked loach and stewed tofu for Grandpa Jiang.
Grandpa Jiang was very happy that his granddaughter could come to the mountain to accompany him. He got up early in the morning with a smile on his face, took his old hunting rifle and went to patrol the forest, and by the way, he looked for pheasants, rabbits, rat snakes and the like. If not, he would go to the mountain stream to catch some crabs and bring them back to fry for his granddaughter.
Grandpa Jiang lived up to his nickname of "Old Caterpillar". He walked slowly with his hands behind his back and his back hunched.
Jiang Xi's novel, after finishing the outline and character setting yesterday, officially started writing today. The title is very simple - "The Years I Solved Cases in the Song Dynasty".
The opening mentions the heroine's identity as a forensic doctor. Later, she accidentally traveled to the Song Dynasty and became the daughter of a head constable in the Kaifeng Prefecture. The little daughter was twelve years old and learned some boxing from her father. Because of the recent sensation of the headless corpse case in Kaifeng Prefecture, she followed her father to investigate the case. She accidentally fell on her head and woke up as the heroine. Her father was also very worried because he could not find the murderer of the recent headless corpse case. Afterwards, the heroine followed her father and used some common modern crime-solving techniques to find clues for her father, remind and guide her father, and successfully solved this headless case.
Because of the talent shown in the first case, the heroine's father, the head of the police, paid more attention to her. When there was a case, he would take her with him.
Because she had a draft in mind, Jiang Xi started writing smoothly and wrote 6,000 words in one morning.
She was eager to make money, so she had a strong desire to write. At noon, she cooked stir-fried lentils and stewed loach with tofu. Seeing that the two mu of land reclaimed by Grandpa Jiang in front of the house was full of long beans, Jiang Xi took a bamboo basket to pick long beans after lunch and asked Grandpa Jiang to wash them in the mountain stream. Then she continued to write the novel.
After Grandpa Jiang washed and dried all the long beans and brought them back to dry, Jiang Xi started to pickle the long beans. Grandpa Jiang wanted to come over to help, but was firmly stopped by Jiang Xi.
Grandpa Jiang was very upset that he couldn't help: "You go do your homework, pickle the long beans, I'll do it."
Thinking that no matter what Grandpa Jiang pickled, it always tasted soft and rotten, Jiang Xi sternly rejected him: "No! You can't!"
After finishing all this, Jiang Xi wrote another 6,000 words in the afternoon.
Two days later, Jiang Xi copied out the first 40,000 words he had written in the past few days, took the lobsters he had collected in the past few days, rode his bike to the city, and mailed out all the manuscripts he had written in the past few days.