Chapter Two: The Silent Lesson
For Liu Bao'er, the Dou family after the ghost marriage was a magnificent tomb built with brocade.
She was placed in the most secluded little house in the backyard, maintaining a perfect distance from the main house. The mistress—the old grandmother who had sat at the head of the table at her ghost marriage—occasionally cast her glances, as if assessing the authenticity of an antique, calm and detached. The servants responsible for taking care of her daily needs were respectful but exuded an inherent aloofness, as if she were an ominous object to be handled with care and not to be touched.
She was acutely aware of her place—a symbol used to comfort the dead and maintain a certain dignity, a tool.
Every morning, it was always that mute old servant who brought her coarse meals. He was hunched over, his face deeply lined, as if sculpted repeatedly by the dull knife of time. He was as silent as the ancient well covered in moss in the backyard of the Dou family, coming without a sound and leaving without a trace.
At first, Liu Bao'er regarded him merely as a moving backdrop, a constant that didn't need to be considered. She devoted all her energy to eagerly absorbing everything about this era. Like a greedy sponge, she desperately pieced together the rules of this unfamiliar world by eavesdropping on the servants' gossip and observing the words and actions of various people from the Dou family, while repeatedly calculating her seemingly distant dream of amassing "ten thousand taels of silver" in her mind.
One afternoon with continuous autumn rain.
Liu Bao'er hid in a corner of the corridor connecting the front and back courtyards, where she could overhear the occasional conversations of the shopkeepers in the front courtyard. She held her breath, trying to piece together the Dou family's business empire from their snippets of conversation about "flowing water" and "silk exchange rates." She listened so intently that she didn't realize the chill had seeped into her bones until the rain stopped and the people dispersed, and a cold wind blew through the corridor. She couldn't help but sneeze loudly.
Turning around, she saw the mute old servant standing not far away, like a ghost. His cloudy eyes glanced at her, his gaze devoid of scrutiny, pity, or even emotion, as if he were looking at a blade of grass or a stone under the eaves. Then, he silently turned away, his hunched figure disappearing at the end of the winding corridor.
Liu Bao'er's heart tightened. Had he gone to inform on her? In this strictly regulated mansion, eavesdropping on the master's affairs was a grave taboo. She quickly calculated various possibilities and countermeasures, her small body trembling slightly from the cold and a hint of tension.
However, less than a quarter of an hour later, the old servant returned. In his hands was a rough earthenware bowl, from which a faint but real steam rose. It was a bowl of ginger soup. There was also an inconspicuous chip on the rim of the bowl.
Liu Bao'er was stunned.
In her core logic, "uselessness is abandonment" is an ironclad rule. She is of no value to this old servant, and cannot even bring him any potential benefit. Why should he risk doing this unnecessary thing? To please? The cost and benefit are completely disproportionate. Pity? Such an emotion is considered inefficient and redundant code in her database.
The old servant simply placed the bowl gently on the cool stone railing of the corridor, then stepped back a few paces, reverting to his silent shadow, looking down at his worn-out, mud-stained straw sandals, as if trying to diminish his presence.
Liu Bao'er hesitated before stepping forward. The warmth emanating from the rough earthenware quickly dispelled the chill from her fingertips. She carefully picked up the bowl and sipped. A warm current, spicy yet slightly sweet, flowed into her throat, then spread like countless warm little snakes throughout her body, gradually pushing back the bone-chilling cold.
A strange feeling, one that couldn't be quantified by data, left her momentarily disoriented. It wasn't just about physical warmth; it was more like... an experience of being silently cared for.
"The cost is almost zero; the profit is negligible. Why do it?" She finally couldn't help but ask the question that had been bothering her, in a voice that was still somewhat childish yet unusually calm. She hoped for a reasonable explanation, even if it was just a selfish logic like "I'm afraid you'll get sick and infect others."
The old servant looked up, seemingly surprised by her question. He opened his mouth, producing a few muffled, hoarse, incoherent "hoarse" sounds, which naturally failed to form an answer. He could only raise his withered hand, like an old tree root, first pointing to the bowl in her hand, then gently patting his thin chest. Finally, the deep wrinkles on his face strained together to reveal an extremely difficult, distorted, yet incredibly genuine, almost benevolent smile.
At that moment, Liu Bao'er's powerful data analysis skills encountered an intractable problem for the first time. There was no logical chain, no profit motive, only a pure, heartfelt action.
This was beyond her comprehension.
She silently finished the ginger soup and handed the empty bowl back. The old servant took it and, just as he had come, vanished silently into the depths of the corridor, as if everything that had just happened was merely a hallucination caused by her extreme cold.
But from that day on, Liu Bao'er began to truly "observe" him, as if studying a completely new subject called "irrational behavior".
She discovered that the old servant would secretly save half of his own dry, hard flatbread and toss it to the guard dog in the backyard; when the young maid was scolded by the steward and hid in a corner crying, he would silently hand her a fragrant leaf that he had picked from somewhere; he would even clumsily kowtow a few times to the western sky on the first and fifteenth of each month, his mouth moving silently, his cloudy old eyes flashing with an indescribable sorrow, as if he were mourning someone who would never return.
In her model, these behaviors are all categorized as "irrational and inefficient behaviors," which are the objects that should be optimized.
But for some reason, when she held that cold memorial tablet late at night, calculating the uncertain future in her mind, the warmth of that bowl of ginger soup and the old servant's clumsy smile would occasionally flash through her mind. It felt like a drop of warm, strange liquid called "humanity" had suddenly been injected into a cold data stream.
She began to try to imitate. Once, when she witnessed a maid accidentally break a teacup, and the maid was so frightened that she turned pale and trembled all over, Liu Bao'er spoke up for the first time, saying to the steward who came after hearing the noise in her unique, calm and even tone, "I knocked it over."
The steward was skeptical, but given her identity as "Dou Liu Shi," he didn't dare to investigate further and could only mutter as he gathered up the broken pieces and left. The little maid, having survived the ordeal, looked at Liu Bao'er with eyes full of unbelievable gratitude.
Afterwards, Liu Bao'er calmly analyzed her actions: "Taking a small risk (a lie) to gain potential benefits (a potentially more favorable 'environmental variable,' or a 'favor' that can be used in the future)." She tried to reintegrate this act of "helping" into her understandable framework of "investment."
But when she saw the maid secretly slip her a piece of maltose wrapped in a clean handkerchief the next day—clearly something she couldn't bear to eat—the overly sweet taste that melted in her mouth puzzled her again. This "reward" wasn't something she had calculated, yet it brought a strange, satisfying feedback. This feedback couldn't be quantified.
One moonlit night, she held the memorial tablet, facing the cold moonlight outside the window, and murmured to herself, as if reporting to this silent "ally":
"Xiao Bao, I observed three more 'irrational' cases today. They can't be quantified or modeled. But... it seems they're not all bad."
The moonlight shone on the cold memorial tablet, and the three characters "Dou Xiaobao" on it seemed to lose some of their gloom and gain a sense of companionship.
This path of humanity, which began with a bowl of ginger soup, quietly took root in her heart.
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