Chapter 177

I didn’t expect them to rush to the shore. Just as the sky was getting light, the NPCs on the island could no longer stay and surrounded the shore. The torches were lit. Qiao Sheng was awakened by the noisy noise. He climbed up from the bamboo bed and thought it was daybreak when he opened the wooden window. The people who

went down to negotiate were Li Mu, Shen Chen and Meng Nansen. Qiao Sheng asked Ah Dai and You Su to keep an eye on the bow of the boat and go directly up if there was any problem. She went to operate the catapult and started it immediately after hearing the prompt.

However, the negotiations under the boat seemed to go smoothly. Not long after, Li Mu came back and the islanders who were surrounding outside also dispersed.

Li Mu came back to tell Qiao Sheng to pack up and prepare to go to the island now, and go directly to find that Miss Jiang. Now she can’t call her Miss Jiang, she should be Miss Jiang.

Chi Jiu was left on the shore to guard the island. Although they had talked about it, they were still worried about the islanders.

Aunt Jiang's home was not far from the shore. Qiao Sheng and the other six people arrived quickly under the guidance of the island owner. Along the way, the island owner also told them about the situation of Aunt Jiang's family.

In general, they were poor and had a hard life. The reason was simple. The man in the family died. When Aunt Jiang first got married, her life was not bad. The couple lived in harmony and her parents-in-law loved her. Later, she gave birth to a son and a daughter, and her life became more and more prosperous.

The tragedy happened ten years after she got married. The eldest son was eight years old and the youngest daughter was three years old. First, there was a plague on the island. The old man in the family was in poor health and died. In order to treat them, a lot of money was spent. Later, her husband had an accident while he was at sea and became disabled. In order to treat the disease, all the family savings were emptied.

Even so, they didn't keep him. After two years, he died. At that time, the eldest son was ten years old and the youngest daughter was five years old. Since then, Aunt Jiang began to find ways to raise the two children.

Their life on this island depends on going out to sea to fish. This work is done by the men on the island. The women grow some vegetables at home. They are self-sufficient. Once the man in the family is gone, they rely on the little vegetable field at home. Three mouths are not enough to eat.

The family of three began to think about how to solve the problem of food and drink. During the day, the two children went up the mountain or into the forest to pick wild vegetables, fruits and firewood. They ate the wild vegetables and exchanged the fruits and firewood with other islanders.

Aunt Jiang went fishing on the shore. The living standard on the island was set here. Even if she wanted to work for others, no one could afford it. It was all barter, a self-sufficient farming era.

"If you hadn't come, I wouldn't have noticed. It seems that I haven't seen Aunt Jiang out for a long time. But her son has been going up the mountain recently and didn't bring his sister." The island owner walked to the door of Aunt Jiang's house. There was no one in the yard surrounded by fences and walls. He called a few times and no one opened the door, so he pushed open the half-closed door and went in directly.

When they went in, they saw that it was a mud-brick house with only three rooms. Standing in the yard, the island owner knocked on the door of the main house, but no one opened the door for a long time. He also asked the islanders who followed behind, and they all said that they had not seen Jiang Auntie and her family in the past two days.

Then he pushed open the door of the main house. It was very dark inside and the smell was not very good. There was a smell that had been stuffy for a long time without ventilation, and there was also a smell of Chinese medicine in the middle.

When Qiao Sheng entered, he was almost stung and fell down. Fortunately, Li Mu helped him from behind. When they saw the situation in the house clearly, everyone frowned.

They couldn't describe the situation in this room. There was no bedding on the bed, but thick straw, and the color of the straw looked dirty. There was a little girl lying on it, who looked about six or seven years old.

After confirmation by the island owner, this is the daughter of Aunt Jiang, who is ten years old this year. Qiao Sheng and Meng Nannan beside him exchanged some thoughts, and both felt that the little girl must have been malnourished for a long time and had not grown up.

Without seeing Aunt Jiang and her son, Li Mu and his friends walked around the three mud-brick houses, and found Aunt Jiang, who had fainted, in the so-called kitchen. They carried her to lie next to the daughter.

Shen Chen, who was in charge of carrying people, put Aunt Jiang down and whispered that she was too thin. He estimated that she was only about 70 or 80 kilograms, which was too light for an adult woman.

The island owner was very anxious, but every household on the island depended on the weather for food and drink, and there was not much food in stock, so he could only ask his wife to go back and make some porridge and bring it over.

Qiao Sheng also saw everyone's embarrassment, and told the island owner that they would take care of Aunt Jiang, so he didn't have to worry. This trip was entrusted by Aunt Jiang's father to pick up the three of them for a reunion.

After hearing her words, the island owner did not stop her. After all, he also knew the current situation of Aunt Jiang's family. If they really stayed on the island, they might not be able to survive for long.

It was unlikely that they were kidnapped. After all, there were old people and young children in this family, and there was only a half-grown boy who couldn't even get on the boat. Normal people wouldn't want anything.

After thinking this through, the island owner took most of the islanders back first, but when he left, he also asked Aunt Jiang's neighbors to help keep an eye on them and call them if there was anything wrong.

After no one was in the yard, Qiao Sheng and Li Mu went into the kitchen together. After a round of walking around the kitchen, except for some wilted wild vegetables and two dried fish, the kitchen was really clean. They

took brown rice, vegetables and fresh fish from the ring space. Li Mu took the fish, a kitchen knife and a wooden basin and went to the yard to kill the fish. Qiao Sheng washed the rice and cooked porridge in the kitchen.

It was not that she was sorry for the meat, but the mother and daughter in the house were in such a bad condition that their stomachs could not bear it. In order to make the porridge more nutritious, Qiao Sheng also put fish slices and vegetable leaves in it.

The remaining brown rice was stewed into rice, and some vegetable core was fried. The remaining fish was boiled into fish soup. These were kept for Aunt Jiang's son to eat when he came back.

The porridge was ready here. Meng Nannan, who was watching the mother and daughter in the house, came over and said that Aunt Jiang had woken up.

After Qiao Sheng and I filled two bowls of fish and vegetable porridge and went into the house, we saw Aunt Jiang looking at them with suspicion. After all, they were all strangers. The family was really poor and had long been unable to afford to eat. Apart from the three of them, the other party had nothing to gain.

Because she was weak, Aunt Jiang didn't even have the strength to hold the bowl. Qiao Sheng fed her the porridge one spoonful at a time. Meng Nannan took this opportunity to tell her about Master Jiang and his wife.

I didn't expect that Aunt Jiang, who was sent away early in the morning, still had memories of her own parents!

"Wuwuwu, those were the only good days before I got married. I still remember that I was on an island with only a big mountain. My father would make me a fish skin skirt and my mother would grow small flowers for me to take care of. Later, I was sent to another island. Every day, there was endless work to do, and I didn't have enough food or warm clothes. Until I got married here, the days were good at the beginning, but they changed again after a few years. I thought again, is it because I am unlucky that God punished me to suffer for the past forty years?" Aunt Jiang cried so hard that she couldn't eat anything.

She ate less than half a bowl of porridge and stopped eating. She wanted to feed her daughter. Fortunately, Qiao Sheng brought in two bowls just now. Then he waited for her to calm down and continued to feed her.

"What kind of person is unlucky? It's just that you were caught up in it. You were taken away and abused when you were a child. That's a family problem. If your parents knew that you had lived such a life when you were taken away, they would definitely not let anyone take you away! And your parents-in-law and husband, their death was a natural disaster. What does it have to do with you? Don't take everything on yourself!" Meng Nannan got angry when she saw her self-pitying look. She was too self-deprecating.

Qiao Sheng patted Aunt Jiang soothingly and finally finished feeding her the porridge in his hand. The girl lying on the bed was Aunt Jiang's daughter, Wang Xiaohua, who was still running a fever. Qiao Sheng looked at the debuff and found that she was just hungry and had a cold, so it was not a big deal.

He asked Li Mu to contact the old Chinese doctor in Pei Hong's fleet and asked for a prescription for treating the cold. He went back to the ship to prepare the medicine and boiled a large bowl of medicine for Wang Xiaohua to drink. At noon, the little girl woke up.

"Isn't it said that Chinese medicine takes a long time to take effect? ​​Is the effect so good? The person is awake in just a few hours?" Meng Nannan began to doubt her own cognition.

"We don't have Western medicine if you want to. Now you have discovered the benefits of Chinese medicine. As long as you gather all the medicines, you can cure the disease!" Qiao Sheng shrugged, indicating that now he had to bow to reality.

Meng Nannan also said that he would pick up some herbs in the future, just in case they are useful. Qiao Sheng said that it was okay to save them, but not to eat them randomly, after all, she was not Shennong.

Wang Xiaohu came back in the afternoon when the sun was setting. When he entered the door, he saw four big men sitting in the yard, and he immediately took out the sickle from the basket behind him.

Li Mu explained it quickly, and he and Shen Chen moved to the fence. Wang Xiaohu entered the room suspiciously holding the sickle, and saw that the straw on the bed had been cleaned up and replaced with clean bedding. His mother and sister were sitting in the new bedding. When he

went out in the morning, his sister was still feverish and unconscious, but now she has sat up and is eating porridge fed by a woman next to her.

"Xiaohu, don't be nervous. This is someone arranged by your grandparents. They want to take us over for a reunion." Aunt Jiang has accepted this setting, mainly thinking about her childhood and longing to return to her parents.

Wang Xiaohu frowned, not knowing what he was thinking, and looked at Qiao Sheng and Meng Nannan with scrutiny.

After letting him look around for a while, Qiao Sheng told him that there was a prepared meal in the kitchen and he could go eat some first.

I had just learned from Aunt Jiang that Wang Xiaohua was already ten years old this year, but when she sat up, she was not as big as a normal six or seven-year-old child. Now I looked at Wang Xiaohu, and he was about the same age, fifteen years old, very thin, and looked only eleven or twelve years old. The basket was seriously incompatible with his body shape.

The child was very suspicious and did not move after hearing what she said. It was Meng Nansen who heated up the food and came in to drag the boy to the kitchen to eat.

Aunt Jiang said that since the child's father passed away, the child felt that he should support the family, so he was more thoughtful.

Meng Nannan whispered in a low voice that it was no wonder that he did not grow taller, because his heart was suppressed.

Meng Nansen prepared dinner, and he cooked according to Qiao Sheng's standards during the day. He arranged everything for the mother and three daughters, and even left food for the next day's breakfast. The six of them returned to the boat to rest.

The next day, they had breakfast on the boat, and then went to Aunt Jiang's house with the Chinese medicine boiled for Wang Xiaohua. She was going to help them pack up today, and it would be best if they could leave here together for Master Jiang's island in the next two days.

I never thought that when I went to Aunt Jiang's house, fed Wang Xiaohua the medicine, and discussed with Aunt Jiang when to leave, her attitude changed from yesterday's yearning to a refusal to leave.