Chapter 4
IOU?
Gu Ran was startled and looked up at Mrs. Dou in disbelief.
"What IOU?"
"Didn't you just say that if I send you a letter, your family will reward me handsomely? Words aren't enough. Write me an IOU. When you get divorced, you can send me a reward or I can come to you. With this IOU as proof, I'll feel at ease."
Mrs. Dou looked at Gu Ran and snorted in her heart.
Haha, although she has never seen the world, she has suffered much more than Grandma Qin Si.
Seeing her talk so much, who knows if she is just kidding?
Want to cheat on her? It's still too early.
Ask her to write a handwritten IOU, and then go to her house to ask for the money. Are you still afraid that she will go back on her word?
Gu Ran's mouth twitched.
I didn't expect that this Mrs. Dou is so smart. It seems that I can't deal with her casually in the future.
OK, a blank check, right? She wrote.
"Then, Grandma Dou, how much silver do you think I should give you?"
"I'm not greedy, and I don't want much," said Mrs. Dou. "Give Mr. Liu ten taels of silver, and give me twenty taels."
Oh, not greedy.
Gu Ran remained expressionless, smiled faintly, and wrote an IOU to Mrs. Dou as she said.
As she wrote, Mrs. Dou told her her household registration and name, and kindly reminded her, "Please write well. Although I can't read, when I return the writing brush to Master Tao later, I'll have him check it to see if it's correct. I can also ask him to be a witness and affix the official seal of our Qingyi."
Gu Ran paused.
This is a warning to myself not to write nonsense, and don't think that I, Dou Pozi, can fool people just because I can't read.
"Of course, of course."
Gu Ran forced a smile and honestly wrote down the IOU he owed Mrs. Dou twenty taels as a reward for Yunyun. After he finished writing, he was about to put it aside when Mrs. Dou yelled again, "Hey, your name is on it?"
"I wrote it, Grandma Dou, here it is!"
"Sign your name on the side." Mrs. Dou pointed at the IOU and said.
"Huh?" Gu Ran was stunned.
"Just, put your finger here, then press it up. Our Chief Clerk Tao said this is irrefutable evidence."
Tsk, I didn’t realize that Mrs. Dou is really good at this. She must have learned it by osmosis at the post station!
For the sake of his own personal safety and to dissuade Mrs. Dou from killing him, Gu Ran used his index finger to dip in ink and pressed his fingerprint on the IOU.
"Is it all right, Grandma Dou?"
"This IOU is usually made in two copies. You write another one and I will take them back to have Master Tao notarize and stamp them." Grandma Dou was giving instructions from the side and was very familiar with this process.
Okay!
After receiving the two IOUs, Mrs. Dou left satisfied.
Gu Ran looked a little confused.
On the first day after traveling through time, not only did I become an exile, but I also owed such a huge sum of money. What kind of unlucky start is this?
Fortunately, the huge debt had a huge impact, and it finally stopped Grandma Dou from wanting to kill him. He also gained a lot.
First, Grandma Dou's attitude improved.
She took the initiative to find the merchants who had left the post station and returned to the town to find a doctor to treat her. Unfortunately, the post station was too far away from the nearest Sui County, and it was said that the mountains were blocked due to heavy snow, and many parts of the official road were blocked, making it impossible to enter or exit. Even the merchants' journeys were delayed, so Gu Ran could only settle for the second best and ask Mrs. Dou to send her more hot water, hoping to rely on her body's self-healing ability to slowly get through it.
The second is a thin quilt.
Seeing that she had no quilt, Mrs. Dou moved a thin quilt from the empty cell opposite, which came in handy.
Three is a cotton coat.
A cotton coat with the word "prisoner" on it kept her warm.
That cotton coat was probably for gentlemen to wear. It was the smallest size, but it was still loose on Gu Ran.
Four is a fire basket.
It was freezing outside, and the prison was just as dry and cold.
Gu Ran thought of his hands and feet that had frostbite, so he simply asked Mrs. Dou for a fire basket and some charcoal, explaining that he would use it to warm himself by the fire at night to ward off the cold. After all, the heat patch only had a warming effect for eight hours.
While Mrs. Dou went to prepare the fire basket for her, Gu Ran lay on the straw bed and began to write the so-called letter home.
Fortunately, in her previous life, she was a girl from a family of cultivators who lived in the same city as mortals. She also learned to write in the government school since she was a child. Now it is not difficult for her to imitate the original owner's handwriting.
In the letter, she cried about the hardships of her exile, and cursed Qin Silang's indifference and cruelty. She despised the Qin family for abandoning her at the post station, and described how miserable she was. She prayed for mercy from her father and mother and asked them to help her divorce Qin Silang. At the end, she talked about how she had survived the disaster, and she also mentioned how much she had been taken care of by Dou Pozi at the post station, and expressed her gratitude.
Of course, this is all just for face.
This would prevent Dou Pozi from having unnecessary suspicions when she had someone open the letter and read it when she took it to mail it (letters sent by prisoners usually had to be examined by officials). As for what to do after the people in Ningyuan Marquis' Mansion received the letter when it was delivered to the capital, that was no longer a problem.
I guess she would have left Qingyi by then and no longer had to deal with Dou Po and others.
As for the IOU, she just walked away. Who knows what will happen in the future?
Gu Ran didn't care as he held the stamped IOU in his pocket.
After the letter was written, Gu Ran put it into the Shuangli, which was a letter envelope. He wrote "From Ningyuan Hou himself" on the front of the Shuangli, and then signed it to Mrs. Gu Er. He also paid the fee before handing the Shuangli back to Mrs. Dou.
Mrs. Dou took the letter written by Gu Ran with a smile, and took away the remaining paper and ink.
She did not buy these things, but borrowed them from the clerk in the post station. She only gave him one hundred coins and kept the remaining nine hundred coins for herself.
After Mrs. Dou left, Gu Ran saw a small fire basket that she had just brought in. The charcoal fire was already lit inside, and some broken charcoal was also added. It was not much, probably only enough to burn for two or three days.
Gu Ran carried the fire basket and lay back in his original corner, then immediately went into the workshop.
After placing the fire basket on the table, Gu Ran rummaged through the drawers and searched the other side of the cupboard. He found the small bowl and pestle that he usually used to crush the talisman sand, and then he picked up the orange peel that was placed aside.
In his first life, Gu Ran often suffered from frostbite due to not keeping warm enough in the winter, so he learned a folk remedy for quickly treating frostbite. The main ingredient was orange peel, which is widely available in the south.
Gu Ran picked up the peeled orange peel, put it on a small bowl and squeezed it. There was juice, but not much. When there was no more juice, he opened the lid of the fire basket, picked up a piece of charcoal that was not burning on the edge, picked it apart, revealing the most vigorously burning circle of red charcoal inside, and then covered it with the outer layer of orange peel and roasted it.
The smell of oranges soon emerged, and the workshop was filled with this sweet smell.
When the food was roasted and oozing with oil, Gu Ran changed hands several times and wiped the oil onto the exposed skin without wasting it.
Orange oil can lubricate and moisturize, so don't waste it.
When the orange peel stopped producing oil and was roasted until it was hard, Gu Ran tore the orange peel into pieces, put it into a small bowl, and then slowly crushed it with a small pestle.
After grinding it into powder, I originally wanted to add some castor oil or olive oil, but I didn’t have any at the moment, so I had to make do with it. So I picked a few orange leaves and mashed them into a paste, which I could barely use for the application.
Gu Ran looked at his hands, then felt the pain and itchiness coming from his feet. Without hesitation, he decided to apply a foot mask first.
The shoes she was wearing now were the only pair of cotton shoes that the original owner had put away in her bag at the beginning of autumn.
Although the people in Ningyuan Marquis' Mansion were not kind, there was only one person who treated the original owner sincerely, and that was Gu Sanniang.
Gu Sanniang was the original owner's illegitimate sister - no, it should not be called a illegitimate sister. The original owner was not even a illegitimate wife of the Ningyuan Marquis's Mansion. That Sanniang of the Gu family was a illegitimate wife, and she was truly the bloodline of the Ningyuan Marquis's Mansion.
Before the incident of the real and fake daughter, when the original owner was still the legitimate daughter of Ningyuan Marquis Mansion, she had a good relationship with Gu Sanniang. After Gu Sanniang lost her concubine, she was protected by the original owner for a period of time.
Perhaps out of gratitude for this, everyone in the Ningyuan Marquis' Mansion avoided her, and no one even packed her luggage on the day of her exile. Only Gu Sanniang, although it was inconvenient for her to come forward, secretly called her aunt's family to pack a bag for her.
Inside were a few sets of simple clothes for changing, needlework, medicine bags and other common items. Of course, when the Qin family abandoned her today, they took away everything in the bag. Now she had nothing else except what she was wearing.
Fortunately, it is not customary to take off shoes before sleeping in the cell, otherwise this pair of cotton shoes would have been looted.
After taking off the cotton shoes and socks, one could see a pair of feet that had been hiking for a long time. The soles were covered with thick calluses, and the toes, three or four of which on each foot were red, swollen, and hard. There were also a few places where the skin was broken because the original owner couldn't resist the itch.
Gu Ran had no choice but to pick up the orange peel paste and apply it on each of his slender toes.
Sometimes the broken skin is irritated and it hurts so much that I grit my teeth and cry.
After the application, put your feet on the fire basket to dry them, then put on socks and cotton shoes. Then, continue to roast the second orange peel and use it to apply to the fingers and palms of your hands that have frostbite.
According to her experience, it will take about four or five days to be cured.
Fortunately, she is now the only sick female prisoner in Qingyi. She is locked up in the cell and is not allowed to go anywhere or do any work.
So, apart from Dou Pozi bringing her breakfast and dinner every day and talking to her, she would spend the rest of her time lying by the fire. During these days of recuperation, in addition to applying orange peel paste to herself three times a day to treat frostbite, she was also thinking about her space system.
In fact, for Gu Ran at this time, this space system is a bit useless.
The biggest function of the space system is storage. If she had obtained this system knowing that she would be struck to death and travel through time again, she could have immediately stored up enough money and supplies.
But she didn't know about it in advance, so there was space but not many emergency items.
In addition, she was a prisoner. Judging from the circumstances of the original owner's exile, she had always been under the supervision of the officials and had no personal freedom. Naturally, it was impossible for her to find a place to purchase supplies, and this space was of no use.
Use it to store valuables?
It wasn't the time when the incident just happened. He could have taken the opportunity to hide more gold, silver and treasures by coming through before the house was searched. There was not a penny in the bag prepared by Gu Sanniang. Even if there was, it was probably looted when the official checked his luggage before he set off. Now, he is worthless and has no money or conditions to stockpile supplies.
So, what's the point of giving her sick prisoner a space system?
It would be better to provide a medical or food system as an emergency measure.
Gu Ran could only comfort herself that just because it was useless now, it didn't mean it would be useless in the future. Moreover, she thought that the system that matched her with it might be related to the warming talisman that she had taken out in a foul.
After trying all the talismans and finding no use in this world, Gu Ran originally wanted to try another warming talisman, but there were so many talismans in the workshop that he couldn't find a second warming talisman.
Then Gu Ran remembered that she herself was a cultivator and had no need for this warming talisman. She had originally drawn them for her parents to use, and sold them to mortals to keep warm in winter, so the one in the workshop should be the one she had left over from selling.
Although she was the daughter of a family of immortal cultivators, she was from a branch of the family. She was not very talented, and her family was a branch of the talisman cultivation family where it was extremely difficult for them to produce powerful people. She had no way of getting special care to fight for the Gu family's large amounts of resources. In addition to getting her share from the family, she could only rely on herself to go to secret realms or sects to get spiritual energy and look for opportunities. The money she saved for this purpose was earned by selling the various talismans she drew to mortals or cultivators in the city.
Although Gu Ran had no talent, she learned talismans very quickly. In her first life, she majored in painting, and her job after graduation was an assistant to a cartoonist in a studio in Hong Kong City.
This studio was out of tune with the new trend of computer-based painting at the time, and still followed the practices of a traditional studio in a certain island country. Cartoonists designed the storyboards, character designs, plots, and storyboards, and then the painter's assistant was responsible for finishing the draft and putting it online. Then other assistants were responsible for drawing the background, repairing the costumes, and adding dots. If the comic had to be submitted in color, the last step was to color it and finalize it.
After completing all the steps, I can complete the monthly serialization by drawing about 20 to 30 drawings in a month.
Unlike comic strips that can be completed quickly and efficiently by scribbling on a computer, this method of drawing is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive. However, there are still many cartoonists who prefer this drawing mode, and there are also a large number of fans who like such detailed comic stories.
Gu Ran is one of the painter assistants in this link, responsible for the final draft that goes online.
Her job is to find the key lines in the painter's messy sketch, remove unnecessary patterns and lines, which is called the clean draft, and then draw the key lines clearly to form a composition, which is called the online drawing. Finally, the concise and neat drawing is called the line drawing.
If you encounter a talented but lazy painter, the assistant's job is not just to clean up the draft and put it online. For example, the rough draft of Rich X Lao Zei is just a stick figure and dialogue, but most of the time the painter's assistant still has to add storyboards according to the painter's fixed style to enrich the composition and form a line drawing, while the other assistants continue to work to finalize it.
In short, finishing the draft and putting it online is the most important task after the cartoonist has drawn up the sketch. All the work of the assistant who takes over afterwards is based on the line drawing she has completed.
Therefore, the painter's assistant who is generally responsible for finishing the manuscript and putting it online is equivalent to the painter's right-hand man. He has the highest salary and is most likely to start his own business after learning. Many rookie cartoonists make their debut after accumulating experience in this way. For example, the cartoonist of Hell X was once the assistant of the master of Chainsaw R.
Because she had to do more work to finish drafts and put them online, she naturally became quite sensitive to lines. Not to mention, before officially taking on this job, she had spent more than ten years practicing line drawing, so that she could draw smooth and flowing lines no matter how she drew, at what angle she started, or how complicated the pattern was.
When I feel bored, I can only encourage myself by taking the eggs that Leonardo da Vinci had to practice hard for many years.
Of course, she did not become a famous painter like Leonardo da Vinci, but died in a car accident.
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