Chapter 90 Chapter 90: Fishing for the tripod.
When Ji Fu regained consciousness, he felt Jin moving around in front of him. When he moved, he realized that he was tied up tightly with hemp ropes. He cursed weakly:
"You dare to murder your own husband? I will report you to the village head and the county magistrate, and I will have you executed by public execution..."
Jin blocked his mouth with a dirty rag and he fainted again.
"If he really tells his mother about it in the future, how can we stop him? We can't tie him up forever." Ji Yuan said.
Jin hugged the trembling Ji Zhi, touched her cheek, held her head, combed her bun again, and looked out the window at the dark night, as if hardening her heart, and said:
"We can't stay here any longer. He'll sell you all off sooner or later. Let's leave and go to your aunt and look for your brother along the way."
"Yes, the county magistrate said that the thief took her brother north. We should ask about them along the way. But my aunt's family is far away in Handan. Where would we get the money for the trip..."
His aunt's home was far away, and he couldn't afford to visit relatives during the holidays. Ji Yuan had only heard of his aunt since he was born, but had never seen her in person. What's more, Ji Fu had gambled away all the family's money, so it was likely that the three of them, mother and daughter, couldn't even scrape together a hundred coins.
Jin came to the chicken coop in the yard. The two chickens that were originally there had been caught and sold by Ji Fu long ago, and only chicken droppings and chicken feathers were left inside.
Jin reached in, rummaged around in the corner, pulled out a piece of cloth, untied the knot on it, and inside were the silver earrings and ring that Ji Fu had asked for.
When Jun Gu was still alive, she had left some small change for her, but she was not careful and Ji Fu found it and gambled it away. She only hid this little bit that was left.
"Fortunately, Aung didn't fall over, so we have money for the journey."
Seeing the glittering silver jewelry in the moonlight, Ji Zhi felt relieved.
Jin said, "This is not enough. It's less than two taels in total."
The craftsman who made this piece of jewelry couldn't afford to use much silver, so it turned out to be extremely simple and thin. Now, when you hold it in your hand, it has lost its original shape.
"I have!"
Ji Zhi turned around and went into the west room. He took out a coin bag from the mouse hole under the bed and poured out a pile of five-zhu coins, fifty in total.
This was all the money she had saved up every day from her small business in the past without Jin's knowledge.
Jin poked her on the head and scolded her, "How dare you, you little bitch, hide some money from me? I didn't tell you that I didn't have enough money, but you didn't give it to me. It would be a shame to lose it if I left it with you. Give it all to me."
After saying that, he didn't hesitate and took all the money.
Ji Zhi stood aside with his hands hanging down, looking at them with a helpless look, his body aching.
Then I heard Jin say, "These are not enough. I heard that it will take some time to complete the mission. I will take advantage of this opportunity to sell the twenty acres of land at home."
The next morning, Ji Fu was still gagged and tied up in the west room. Jin took her two daughters to the village headman to get permission to go to Handan. The reason for their departure was to look for their son and to stay with relatives.
However, the family's twenty acres of land was not considered top-quality farmland, but only average. In addition, they were in a hurry to sell it, so they only sold it for eighteen taels.
When outsiders saw her selling the land, they were suspicious, but when they heard that she had lost her child and was selling her property to find him, they could understand her eagerness.
Someone also asked, "Where's your Ji Fu? I haven't seen him in a few days. How could he not come for such a big event as selling the land?"
Jin lied, "I found a job as a rickshaw driver in the county and I'm not going home to live."
Everyone was convinced.
Seven days later, a villager took the key that Jin had entrusted to him before leaving and unlocked the door of the main house, but was surprised.
Ji Fu was lying on the ground, looking thinner, with feces and urine all over the floor. When he saw people coming, he was lying on the ground like crickets. The foul smell on his body made people cover their noses and retreat.
The fellow suppressed his nausea and pulled out the rag that was blocking his mouth. He only heard him say:
"I want to report to the police..."
That vicious woman only gave him preserved beans to eat every day, and she even gave him limited water for fear that he would urinate too much. Now his throat was so hoarse that he couldn't even speak completely.
Let’s talk about Ji Xu and his group.
Accompanied by Che Fu's team, they traveled safely for thousands of miles, passing through Shouchun, Hefei and other places, and arrived near Pengcheng.
We have travelled nearly half of the three thousand miles, which is really a happy thing.
There were many waterways near Pengcheng, and land transportation was impassable, so they took a boat to enter the city.
There were many people dressed as fishermen parked at the ferry, some of them paddling bamboo rafts.
Some of them were holding wooden ropes. Ji Xu had never seen anything like this before, so he took a closer look.
It was a small boat with a hollow water hyacinth at the bottom and a wooden board tied on top. It could accommodate three or four people by using the buoyancy of the water hyacinth.
The boatman made a living by ferrying people across the river at Jindukou. The fee for a trip into the city was calculated based on the number of people, usually ten cents for an adult and five cents for a child.
The three sisters of Jixu, plus an ox cart, could not fit on a single raft. The old man who was rowing the boat said:
"Well, young man, you can hire both of us. We can put a plank in the middle and fasten it to the ends of the wooden raft. Then we can tie up and ride on it. It will be enough to carry your whole family."
"good."
Ji Xu hired two wooden rafts, tied them together and carried four people across the river. His sisters sat in the middle, either holding or carrying the cloth bags.
Because the ox had never crossed the river, and fearing it might go mad, Ji Xu followed the old man's instructions and covered its eyes with a towel, then stayed by to steady it. Che Fu, the garrison commander, hired three bamboo rafts tied together with four horses, and, along with the men and the ox cart, also crossed the river into the city.
Feng and Zhu looked around on the water, their eyes full of curiosity.
I saw that Pengcheng was built by the water, and the waterway led directly into the city. They actually sat on wooden rafts and rowed all the way into the city.
Even the gatekeeper who checked their messages was sitting on the boat, turning the oar sideways to receive them.
In the city, people were floating on the water and walking on the land, people were singing on the water, and people were turning on the shore. Men, women, and merchants, dressed in hemp and silk, were walking on the streets in a mixed crowd, which was dizzying to the eyes of the onlookers.
"Wow! Look at that big guy!" Ji Feng exclaimed.
"That's a tower ship." The old man holding the oar said with a smile.
I saw a ship as high as four stories high sailing into the city. From a distance, the tip of the white sail almost scraped the arch of the city gate. When I got closer, I saw singers and dancers playing and having fun on the deck, and I could vaguely see the figures of young men drinking and chatting happily on the boat.
Compared with the tower ship, the wooden boat that Ji Xu and his companions were riding was like an ant.
"Gods and Bodhisattvas, these people are too good at enjoying themselves. They have turned boats into buildings." Ji Feng was astonished and exclaimed repeatedly.
She was holding a large bag and had another one tucked under her feet. The road was dusty from days of traveling, and her hair was tangled from not washing for many days. She wondered what it would feel like to sit on that boat.
"Liang rice, selling liang rice!"
Shops on both sides of the river were bustling with hawkers, and small rafts on the water were also doing small business soliciting customers.
"Lotus, freshly picked lotus flowers!"
"Brayfish, fresh big bream!"
"Peach water, my dear, buy two liters of peach water, it will quench your thirst."
When Ji Xu and his companions went ashore, a small merchant was selling peaches on the bank. The basket was filled with large fresh peaches, and next to it stood a wooden or stone mortar. The peaches were put into the mortar and pounded, and the juice flowed into a bamboo tube. Some malt sugar was also added to the mortar.
Ji Xu thought, isn’t this freshly squeezed peach juice?
So he said, "Give me thirteen tubes."
The ten people led by Che Fu will be arriving ashore behind them soon. Thanks to being able to travel with them, this trip will be much less stressful.
"Brother Fan, drink some peach juice to quench your thirst." Ji Xu and his father Fan Chang said.
"Alright! After this farewell, we don't know when we'll meet again, so let's drink this instead of wine!"
Fan Chang said that he had been enjoying the journey with Ji Xu, and that his stomach had been well fed. So he said:
"Whenever you pass by Wushang County in the future, be sure to come to the north of the city to find me, Fan Chang! I'll take you to roast fat sheep and eat fine wine!"
The two sides said goodbye, and Ji Xu and her sisters drank sweet peach juice while looking for an inn to stay.
“It’s really delicious.”
Ji Zhu sat on the ox cart, holding the bamboo tube, gulping down every drop, licking her lips, and shaking the bamboo tube, unable to bear to throw it away.
Along the way, they were reluctant to throw anything away and picked up any scraps, not to mention dry branches. They even wanted to pick up the dried cow dung and horse dung they saw on the road and burn them. Sometimes they were in the middle of nowhere and had no shop to go to, so it was particularly difficult to find what they needed when they needed it.
They were reluctant to throw away things like torn bags and leaking bamboo tubes. The bags could be patched up and still used at the post station, and the leaking bamboo tubes could still be used to hold rice. This time, since there were many people with Che Fu's group, they were used.
Jizhu muttered, "This is great, I can use it as a cup."
I stuffed it into a cloth bag and prepared to rinse it out when I got to the inn.
"Let's go and see the Sishui Qiu Ding!"
"I heard Zhou Ding has left Sishui! Go check it out!"
Just as we were looking for the sign of an inn, a surge of people suddenly blocked the road and made it impossible to pass. Crowds of people rushed to the Si Shui Bridge.
Ji Xu looked up and saw a crowd of strong men on the bridge, working together to pull a rope from the Si River.
"One, two, three! Pull!"
"One, two, three! Pull!"
The slogans were like thunder and could be heard across the river bank.
Officials in uniform brought in a group of official horses and cattle, tied them up with ropes, and whipped them as they shouted slogans, driving them in one direction.
The calm surface of the Sishui River suddenly rumbled, and one corner of an ancient cauldron was lifted out of the water by a rope!
However, because it was too heavy, the rope broke.
The soldiers and civilians on the bridge worked together and fell backwards in large numbers. When the tripod fell back into the water, it created a huge wave and soaked a group of people on the shore, which showed how huge it was.
"It's the dragon's tail!"
"There's a dragon in the water! I saw its tail!"
"It was the dragon's tail that broke the rope!"
The crowd shouted, and word spread from one to ten, and from ten to a hundred. The people were all convinced and turned around to say that they had seen it.
Ji Feng rubbed his eyes again and again, "Where is the dragon? Why can't I see it? Brother, Xiaozhu, have you seen it?"
Ji Xu didn't see it, she felt that the rope broke because the tripod was too heavy.
Ji Zhu also shook her head, "I didn't see it, it was just a huge wave."
"Didn't you see the dragon's tail in the waves?" asked the people living by the river.
Ji Feng stared at the water, her eyes wide open like bells. "It's really strange. Everyone can see it, but I can't? I must see it today."
As dark clouds gathered, the sky suddenly became dark, as if a heavy rain was about to fall.
"Change the chains, change the chains quickly!" ordered the official in charge of the bridge.
The people on the banks of the Si River were talking about it. Their faces were wet with raindrops, but they were unwilling to leave for a while. They all covered their heads with their sleeves to watch the excitement.
Even the building ship in the water stopped, and a row of young men in the cabin leaned out and pointed at the place where the tripod fell and talked.
"I don't know how long this rain will last. If the water level rises, it will be difficult to retrieve the tripod."
"We have to fish it out as soon as possible."
People at that time were superstitious about tripods. According to legend, Yu cast nine tripods to symbolize the nine provinces of the world. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Zhou royal family declined, and the powerful vassal states all wanted to take the nine tripods for themselves. Until the Qin Dynasty destroyed the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the nine tripods were lost in the scramble. It is said that the nine tripods sank into the Sishui River in Pengcheng.
The Records of the First Emperor of Qin records: "On his return, the First Emperor passed through Pengcheng. He fasted and prayed at the shrine, hoping to retrieve the Zhou tripod from the Si River. He ordered a thousand men to dive into the water to search for it, but they could not find it."
Think about it, the First Emperor went to Sishui to get the tripod but failed. Now, people in Sishui are about to see that they can lift the tripod out of the water. Naturally, people are excited. Even the prefect of Pengcheng hurriedly dismounted and rushed to the bridge to give orders.
As the rain got heavier, Ji Xu and his companions entered the inn first.
This inn was different from a post station. It was run by a private merchant. The owner was standing at the door watching with great interest. A boy greeted the guests in the store, helped her unload the cart, and led the cow into the stable.
Ji Xu asked for a room near the Si River, so that he could see the scenery on the bridge by opening the window.
Sisters Feng and Zhu were fascinated by the way they fished for the tripod.
"Sister, what the waiter said is true. Could it be that there really is a dragon in the Si River?"
Ji Feng leaned against the window and looked out.
On the way in, the waiter told them the story of the first emperor seeking the tripod at Sishui, a story passed down from generation to generation in Pengcheng.
"Speaking of that time, it was just like this time. The tripod was halfway up when a dragon head came out from inside and bit the rope off. Unfortunately, the tripod sank into the water again and could no longer be found." The waiter just described it vividly.
"I don't know if we can salvage the tripod this time." Ji Zhu said.
Ji Xu said, "I don't believe there are dragons in the water. Whether we can fish it out or not is not the point. The more people there are on the banks of the Si River, the easier it will be to sell our fifty bronze mirrors."
"That's great! I actually forgot about this!" Ji Feng turned around and said happily.
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