Chapter 93 It's normal that Xiao Bai Niao, the madman, can't understand human speech.
The protagonist of the new story of Paper Wedding Dress is surnamed Xiao and named Xiao Bai Niao, but her name is not an imitation of Xiao Huang Ying. If you have to say, it should be Xiao Huang Ying imitating her—the story of Bai Niao came first, and then the inspiration for quitting smoking came from her.
The story Yao Xiaoyu wrote wasn't particularly novel; it was simply a tale of revenge after trying every possible route and finally discovering that only brute force could make the beasts obey human commands and act like humans.
Xiao Bainiao was a helpful female college student with excellent grades and a bright future. However, on the day she received her graduation certificate, she was identified as a runaway daughter-in-law by a human trafficker because she bought him a bowl of noodles while he was disguised as an old man.
"This woman is crazy; she's talking nonsense."
Upon hearing the trafficker's words, all of Xiao Bainiao's struggles and pleas for help became futile and pointless. The traffickers, working in perfect harmony, successfully took her away and sold her into the deep mountains, where she became the wife of an old bachelor.
Xiao Bainiao still harbored some illusions. She begged the old bachelor who bought her to release her, promising to repay him double the money, and saying that this kind of trafficking was illegal... But who would listen?
The wives in every household in the village came from human traffickers. They had long since reached a consensus that women bought with money were all crazy, and you couldn't trust what crazy people said.
Xiao Bainiao was tied up in the mud house, her feet chained. Her tears never stopped, and she hysterically cursed the man, wishing him a bad end. But the man didn't even listen: it's not surprising that a madman would say anything. If he could curse someone to death, their village wouldn't be growing. He even treated these words as music, showing off Xiao Bainiao's good voice to others.
"The little bird sings beautifully."
Xiao Bainiao's belly grew quickly, and the man unlocked her chains so she could work in the fields. She gradually interacted more with the other women and learned that all the wives in the households had been abducted. She was lucky to have only one man, as many women were forced to share wives.
As Xiao Bainiao's belly grew larger, the man gradually lowered his guard, and Xiao Bainiao took advantage of this opportunity to run away. However, she made a fatal mistake—she tried to run away with the women of the village.
The decision was good, but those women were all accomplices. Xiao Bainiao was captured and taken back. The old bachelor felt very embarrassed and punched and kicked her. Xiao Bainiao's legs were broken, but her screams seemed to excite the man even more until he kicked her in the stomach.
As dawn broke, Xiao Bainiao gave birth to the bastard child on the ground. The child seemed to know that it shouldn't have come into this world, and died as soon as it was born. The man outside was still babbling incessantly. Xiao Bainiao was going crazy, saying that he would have to return the money when the human traffickers came next time. Thinking about her own cries and pleas, and looking at the dead baby and injured leg on the ground, Xiao Bainiao finally realized that she had used the wrong way to communicate.
She treats animals the way she treats humans. How could animals possibly understand? No wonder everyone says she's crazy—speaking human language to animals, if she's not crazy, then who is?!
Animals must be fought like animals. Killing one is useless; you must teach them a lesson from top to bottom, from the old to the young, before they will understand and be afraid!
Having figured things out, Xiao Bainiao suddenly broke free of the golden rope and shattered the jade lock. Because of her leg injury, she couldn't get out of bed, so she started a small business selling cold noodles in the village. She was hardworking and her prices were affordable, making her very popular. Even the village chief would bring his grandson to buy some to eat—only the men in the village had the right to spend money.
Xiao Bainiao didn't care who the customers were; he simply sold in limited quantities. The old bachelor was very envious of the extra money he could earn but couldn't actually get his hands on. However, Xiao Bainiao kept the secret recipe for the cold noodles very tightly, so he didn't dare to overdo it. By the time everyone in the village had tried it and recognized the taste of the cold noodles, the weather had already become very hot.
Xiao Bainiao was finally persuaded by the old bachelor and made a lot of cold noodles in preparation for making a fortune. However, on the day of the large-scale production, the village chief of another mountain was having a wedding. The men took their sons to the wedding banquet, which had nothing to do with each family having to give a gift.
Only the women who were working remained in the village. They dared not and could not spend money. The dumbfounded old bachelors couldn't bear to waste the cold noodles, so they took a chance and sold them the next day. Because the price was lower, almost every man who came back from the mountain path with his children had a bowl.
Then they became spray warriors, but nobody noticed anything wrong—the village over there had gone to great lengths, and people who couldn't afford meat suddenly ate too much of it, so vomiting and diarrhea were normal. What did that have to do with the colorless and odorless bongkrekic acid produced by leftover cold noodles? [1]
Xiao Bainiao waited patiently until the first family put on burlap. He then went over to help, but his hand slipped and he accidentally added sleeping potion. As everyone ate, they fell into a deep sleep like babies. A few who weren't affected were also knocked out by physical means, commonly known as being slapped. When they woke up, they were all gagged and tied up tightly with hemp rope.
No one, young or old, was spared. After all, when she was brought back, not a single person, from the old to the young, said a word to her. The village had become a complete den of beasts, rotten to the core.
"Will you tell or not?"
Xiao Bainiao killed a chicken, cooked a large bowl of rice to fill her stomach, and then took a knife and began to question people. She would randomly pick a man and sever his Achilles tendon after each question. However, she did not expect that these people were all tough. Even after the tendons in everyone's legs were cut, not one of them opened their mouth.
"So united?"
Xiao Bainiao looked at the crowd, who usually argued and even fought over a handful of millet or a few vegetables, and was quite surprised. In the corner, a man, with the help of others, spat out the rag stuffed in his mouth and cried out in despair:
"You want us to talk? Then take the stuff out of our mouths!"
They kept asking if I would tell them, but they just kept me talking like that while my mouth was covered!
After calling out, the man started vomiting violently—what had just stuffed into his mouth was his wife's foot binding cloth. He had always thought that being unclean and binding one's feet wouldn't cause illness, and that washing it would delay the woman's work. He couldn't remember how long it had been since this cloth had been washed, but he remembered that it was originally white.
"oh--"
Xiao Bainiao suddenly realized what was going on. Amidst the expectant gazes of the crowd, she casually picked up the cloth covered in dirt with a twig and stuffed it back into the man's mouth. When the man refused to cooperate, she grabbed a nearby wooden board and started slapping him across the face.
"Am I crazy? Don't I know that it's normal to be unable to speak when your mouth is covered?"
Seeing the man who had eight teeth knocked out obediently put the cloth in his mouth, Xiao Bainiao explained with a grin. Unfortunately, no one at the scene understood her humor, and not a single person laughed.
Because she was worried about people from other villages coming, or about human traffickers suddenly appearing, Xiao Bainiao didn't let these people live for too long. Fortunately, three days was enough for her to find out the color of their underwear, and she finally understood why they laughed when she was being tortured—when they were in an absolutely dominant position, their screams and wails sounded really good.
What bothered her most was that they always said Xiao Bainiao wasn't crazy: everyone clearly said she was crazy, so why wasn't she now? Even if she used the methods she learned from them to teach them a lesson, they couldn't take back what they said!
When she wasn't crazy, everyone said she was; now that she really is crazy, they keep trying to prove she's not. So whether she's crazy or not is just a matter of their opinions, which makes no sense.
Xiao Bainiao felt wronged, but as a person of good character, she still dug out the firebreak when sending them off on their final journey—setting fire to the mountain would land her in jail for life.
The fire burned from dawn until sunset, it was beautiful, just like the blood-red sunset she saw when she was sold into this place.
Xiao Bainiao wasn't in a hurry to leave. She stayed in the village until the traffickers came again. She dealt with them one by one, stuffed the traffickers' information into the girl's hands, sent the girl down the mountain, and then followed the information provided by the traffickers into the mountain path—the village where the men had attended the wedding last time was in the same boat as this one.
She's crazy, and crazy people can't live without men, so she had to take the initiative to go and find them. As for picking, drying, and grinding the white poisonous amanita mushroom along the way... she already has a wife, why bother with so much?
Besides, she's crazy, a crazy person who does everything normally!
Xiao Bai Niao hummed a song, like a truly nimble bird, and disappeared into the depths of the road.
...
Yao Xiaoyu put the manuscript aside, rubbed her sore arms, glanced at the calendar out of the corner of her eye, then quickly turned her head back. After confirming that she hadn't misread it, she stood up abruptly, quickly opened the drawer, stuffed the manuscript into the box, and ran out.
"Go to the editorial office of the Novel Daily."
Yao Xiaoyu waved at the rickshaw. She had been so busy lately that she had forgotten that today was the day to submit Zhang Xiu's manuscript!
The driver was fast, but because they set off late, by the time they arrived at their destination, the sun was about to set. Yao Xiaoyu casually tossed down a silver coin and stomped upstairs, with Tao Xiaoxiao following closely behind. Halfway up the stairs, they bumped into Pi Kangxiu, who was about to leave.
"Here to submit the manuscript?"
Pi Kangxiu, who was about to come to her door to ask for the manuscript, showed no sign of anxiety. He asked with a smile, and Yao Xiaoyu nodded somewhat shyly.
"We only have Eight Treasures Cake left today, so we'll have to make do with this."
Pi Kangxiu pointed to the plate on the table and quickly started reading the manuscript. He didn't know why, but even though the book about the Ming Dynasty had the most common-sense errors, he read it with more enthusiasm than before.
While writing several short stories, Yao Xiaoyu had already submitted one manuscript. The plot had progressed from the time Zhang Xiu's family signed a letter of severance and left almost empty-handed to live in a thatched hut, to the point where their lives had temporarily stabilized and Zhang Xiu was preparing to start a small business to have a legitimate income and gradually furnish the house.
Of course, adhering to her persona of being utterly ignorant, Yao Xiaoyu didn't hold back in the previous 10,000-word article. The most classic example was the snow lotus that Zhang Erya picked on the mountain, which directly lifted her family out of poverty. This plant only grows at an altitude of over 4,300 meters, also known as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but it just happened to appear so beautifully in the back mountains.
A tiny snow lotus brought the family a hundred taels of silver. In order to clean up this money... oops, in order to allow the Zhang family to use this income legally and legitimately, the Zhang family parents finally agreed to set up a small stall.
As for what kind of business to do—
"Is this kind of transparent jelly the same as Shanghai's magnolia cake?"
Pi Kangxiu looked up and asked, "At this time, there is jelly for sale. There are white, black and green ones, but they are called by different names and the method of making it is considered a secret recipe. The transparent jelly that Yao Xiaoyu wrote about is commonly known as Mulian cake or Ficus pumila jelly in Shanghai."
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The author says: If you take the bird's squabbles, cries, curses, sobs, pleas, and groans as singing, then when it pecks out your eyes and scratches your throat, you should also take it as the bird's unique melody.
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[1] Bongkrekic acid: Colorless and odorless, the mortality rate of poisoning exceeds 40%, and can even reach 100%. There is currently no specific antidote. The incubation period is usually 0.5-12 hours, but can be as long as 3 days. There is no specific antidote, so the mortality rate after poisoning is extremely high. The main symptoms are upper abdominal discomfort, nausea, vomiting, mild diarrhea, dizziness, and general weakness.
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After thinking about it, I decided not to write down the recipe for liangfen (cold mung bean jelly). Back then, street vendors relied on the recipes they had to make a living, and it wasn't easy to do business.
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