Chapter 110, "Zhang Erya Changes Her Name to 'Back to the Ming Dynasty'," is written with great enthusiasm...
When the plague was completely over, winter had already arrived in Shanghai. Some familiar faces had disappeared from the streets, but the number of people did not decrease. People who had no way out in places like Yaoshui Lane quickly filled the void, and it was once again a bustling and peaceful scene.
Thanks to Zhou Chunhua's rich experience, Yao Xiaoyu's financial support, the obedient cooperation of the rest of the family, and a bit of good luck that might not have been contagious, the Yao family never contracted the plague. However, they did attend several funerals after the plague, and the condolence money they gave Zhou Chunhua was heartbroken.
However, not participating is not an option. If Yao Tianrui is successful, he will inevitably have to deal with these big shots in the future. Saving money now may seem convenient, but it will only lead to greater difficulties later. If, by any chance, there is only a possibility, Yao Tianrui is not successful. The relationship he maintains now is just a token gesture. It may not be obvious in normal times, but if something really happens, it will be a matter of life and death.
Yao Xiaoyu munched on a steamed bun, watching the people come and go in the rickshaw. She was on her way to deliver a manuscript to the Novel Daily. Her seclusion at home had lasted longer than she had imagined. Zhang Xiu in "Back to the Ming Dynasty" had already passed the first half of the farming plot, the middle part of the domestic power struggle, and started the final part of the chaotic struggle for hegemony. She was no longer called Er Ya or Nian En, but had changed back to her name from her previous life, Zhang Xiu.
Unlike the typical path of rising to power through the influence of the seventh prince with royal blood and eventually becoming empress, Zhang Xiu's path to power began with fleeing famine. And the day before fleeing famine, Zhang Xiu was living a perfect life in the conventional sense—
After meeting the Seventh Prince, Zhang Erya naturally fell in love. The restaurant started by selling desserts and gradually gained a foothold, eventually becoming very wealthy. After a series of difficult situations caused by rivals, Zhang Erya cleverly resolved them; the Seventh Prince quietly dealt with shameless people who used underhanded tricks; and Erya confronted the prince when a female supporting character came to provoke her. In the end, at the age of eighteen, Erya married the Seventh Prince and became his principal wife.
A phoenix coronet and embroidered robes, a ten-mile-long red bridal procession—marriage is not the beginning of a wonderful life, but the start of a new battle. Zhang Erya's dowry was because her parents gritted their teeth and used their family fortune to send her younger brother to a good school through connections; they even changed Zhang Erya's name because of it.
"These things originally belonged to your younger brother, but now they're all given to you. You must remember the kindness of your parents and brother."
Zhang Erya didn't ask why what she had worked so hard for belonged to her younger brother, nor did she ask why the restaurant wasn't included in her dowry. She changed her name to Zhang Nian'en, smiled sweetly and gently in her mother's arms, and on the second day after her marriage, she changed the labels on herself that were related to food and farming to those of domestic strife.
As the saying goes, "Fighting against heaven, fighting against earth, fighting against man, fighting is endless fun." Zhang Nian'en beat up the old and then the young came; after teaching the old a lesson, the new came. The Seventh Prince sometimes had someone he was really attracted to, but he always kept his purity in his heart. After several busy years, Zhang Nian'en even took the time to give birth to a pair of standard and classic twins during the intervals between battles.
Her story of being devoted to the Seventh Prince for life was sung throughout the world. Women envied the Seventh Prince's deep affection, and men admired his methods. With a virtuous wife, Zhang Nian'en held the reins of the household, had the imperial decree to grant her a great mandate, had a son with a photographic memory, a beautiful and considerate daughter, and a younger brother from her maternal family who was also successful in his studies and passed the imperial examination at a young age, she was indeed the happiest woman.
Zhang Nian'en, who went from fighting with her cousin to childhood sweetheart, felt the same way. She became more and more integrated into this era every day and had almost forgotten her past self. The girl who got into university with a lot of hard work, dreamed of becoming a weapons researcher, didn't think marriage and children were important, and believed that women could hold up half the sky, had become a misty fog.
Until Zhang Nian'en began to flee the famine.
This sudden plot twist startled many people. Surprisingly, the old scholars did not nitpick at Zhang Nian'en from any angle. Letters of incomprehension poured in like snowflakes, but Yao Xiaoyu just kept writing with determination. When people recovered from their shock, they finally realized that in the world of the Ming Dynasty, civil unrest was an inevitable event.
The emperors of the Zhu family hoped that their descendants would all have food to eat, and their descendants really did raise themselves like pigs, having children one after another. Over several generations, the imperial relatives directly ate up the national treasury. What would they do when they needed money?
The officials couldn't bleed themselves dry, and the court officials wouldn't betray their colleagues, so the solution was obvious—let the common people suffer.
With each additional tax levied at the top, the lower levels have to pay three more layers of taxes. As the burden mounts, ordinary people, already burdened, find it increasingly difficult to stand up straight. What was once just a matter of gritting their teeth and living beyond their means has now led them to sell their children, themselves, and even their own bodies.
There was no other way. They had to pay their own taxes, help pay the taxes of the wealthy, and deal with the unexpected schemes of the local officials. Even the toughest men were useless if they couldn't earn money. It was better to become slaves or tenant farmers; at least their lives would be better.
Back in the rural town, Zhang Nian'en was good at bookkeeping, so people didn't bother with such small amounts. But after arriving in the prefectural city, some people eyed their daily earnings. However, the Seventh Prince wasn't one to be trifled with. He wouldn't charge a penny for things he shouldn't have, and for things he should have paid, a glare from the Seventh Prince would reduce many of them.
Zhang Nian'en was unaware of these things. She was used to the relatively clean business environment of her previous life and felt that although the amount of money she had to pay was a bit high, it was generally reasonable.
However, after Zhang's parents started managing the restaurant themselves, they caused a lot of trouble because of their greed for cheap prices, and the restaurant's business declined day by day. After a few years of struggling, they closed the restaurant on the advice of Zhang Nian'en's younger brother, used the money to buy land, and became a so-called family of farmers and scholars.
Of course, it's the kind that doesn't pay taxes. After all, both outsiders and local bullies need to be watched out for. The Seventh Prince is both a county magistrate and a local official. As long as Zhang Nian'en is in the position of the Seventh Prince's wife, she doesn't even need to do one more thing or say one more word. Her parents' influence will be perfectly secure.
Originally, if it were only man-made disasters, the turmoil might have been delayed for a few more years. After all, the people of China have always been good at enduring hardship. Unless they are desperate, they will never raise the banner of rebellion. However, one of the important elements that led to the downfall of the Ming Dynasty was natural disasters—the Little Ice Age, which reduced grain production and even caused near-total crop failure, while taxes only became increasingly burdensome.
Everyone harbors a fire within them, ready to erupt at any moment. The prefectural city was both fortunate and unfortunate to become the place where the first sound of a musket rang out.
Yao Xiaoyu devoted a great deal of space to describing the fuse that ignited the turmoil, but it can be summarized in just a few sentences: the soldiers guarding the city gates demanded bribes from an old woman selling vegetables. When the old woman had no money, her vegetable basket was kicked over, and the vegetables inside were crushed into mud. When the old woman tried to argue, a stray gun shot her in the chest, causing her to bleed profusely and die on the spot.
The granddaughter, who had been holding her grandmother's hand, screamed in terror at the sudden turn of events, crying that she wouldn't get treatment anymore. Only then did everyone realize that only the grandmother and granddaughter remained alive in their entire family. The old woman had never been to the prefectural city before; she had brought vegetables with her on her back to sell for her granddaughter's medical expenses, but instead, it had cost them both their lives.
The granddaughter was probably traumatized by her grandmother's death. I don't know where she got the strength, but she jumped up and bit the soldier's nose. After being kicked away by the other soldiers, she started vomiting blood and died shortly afterward. The soldier's nose was separated from her body.
The stench of blood and the loss of life irritated the onlookers. No one knew who had struck first, but when the crowd dispersed, the soldiers guarding the city were lying naked on the ground—clothes were very valuable.
This turmoil was just the beginning. No one knows who grasped the essence of blitzkrieg and spread it, but the city was thrown into chaos in a single day. The soldiers, who had long been spoiled and had become spineless, and those burly lackeys were no match for the rioting crowd. The people carrying knives, guns, and clubs also discovered that the so-called nobles were just like them, that they could get hurt, bleed, and die if their heads were chopped off.
So the heads of those adults who viewed the common people as worthless mud were also casually thrown into the mud.
Suddenly a madman sharpened his knife in the night, the imperial star swayed and Mars rose high; the imperial treasury was burned to ashes, and the bones of officials were trampled on the streets.
Zhang Nian'en was checking accounts at the shop that day when chaos broke out in the city. She was lucky; apart from being frightened, she wasn't injured anywhere. However, when she hurriedly returned to the Prince's mansion, it was already empty.
An old woman who hadn't left yet told her that the Seventh Prince had taken his children and left as soon as chaos broke out. So Zhang Nian'en went to look for her parents, but it was all in vain—her younger brother, who was on leave, had already taken their parents and left with the Seventh Prince.
Undeterred, Zhang Nian'en searched her way from her parents' house to the Prince's Mansion. There was no gold, silver, or valuables left behind, nor any written or verbal note. Looking at the bright moon and stars, she finally accepted the fact that she had been abandoned.
The Seventh Prince didn't say which direction they were going, but Zhang Nian'en actually knew—the area around the capital was the safest place, where the emperor's bloodline still held ties. However, Zhang Nian'en didn't chase after him. She unscrewed the hairpin she always carried, took out a silver note, exchanged it for silver to buy things, and hurriedly left the city, starting her journey south.
She re-registered her household registration, established a female household, and changed her name back to Zhang Xiu from her previous life. She spent the rest of her life practicing a somewhat hellish, and perhaps laughable, principle: it was much easier to break into Beiping than to pass the imperial examination!
With a good mood, Yao Xiaoyu hummed a song and started writing her novel, a story of fleeing famine and fighting for supremacy. She wrote with great enthusiasm and ease. She had thought that the difficulty she had encountered before was due to a decline in her writing skills. However, she found that the lack of inspiration was because she had gone against her own heart and was putting in the effort in the opposite direction. It would be strange if she could write smoothly.
"Are you saying the readers aren't making enough noise?"
After reading the newly delivered manuscript, Pi Xiukang said with some emotion, while Yao Xiaoyu, who was used to hearing such words, simply shrugged.
Her readers are all very good at arguing. They used to fight tooth and nail over a meat bun with tomato and egg filling, but now it's nothing.
Get the manuscript approved, get paid, and leave.
Having been cooped up at home for a long time, Yao Xiaoyu went to a restaurant and had a great meal. Not wanting to go home so soon, she and Tao Xiaoxiao took a rickshaw and drove around. When they arrived at the hospital, just as they were about to greet Maria, they ran into Aunt Taohua, who had been hired to take care of Shulan and was out fetching water. As soon as Aunt Taohua recognized Yao Xiaoyu, she was about to kneel down and kowtow, but Yao Xiaoyu nimbly dodged her.
"You want to talk this out?!"
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