Dalang took out a silver longevity locket made for his daughter when she was one year old from the cabinet. It was the only remaining money in the family, the other being a silver bracelet given as a dowry by his wife.
"My dear, please take care of the house. I'll go buy some food and will be back soon."
The woman struggled for a long time and got off the bed, but she fell to the ground. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stand up. She muttered, "I can't go, I can't go. There's no such good thing in the world. Who knows what's waiting for you there. My husband can't go!"
Dalang took a deep breath and tried to force a smile. After struggling for a long time, he finally managed a dry, bitter smile on his skeleton-like face: "Look, Dad and Mom are already starving. I have to give it a try, otherwise our whole family will be gone."
After saying that, he opened the door and walked towards the street unsteadily. Halfway through, he could not move anymore. A woman selling cakes gave Dalang a cake the size of a palm. Dalang took the cake and gobbled it up. He choked on the dry cake and rolled his eyes but he refused to spit it out.
After finishing the meal, he hurriedly thanked the old woman who was selling the cakes. The old woman waved her hand and said, "My cakes are not for you to eat. It seems that you want to go to the palace to buy food." The old woman pointed to the palace and said, "I don't need your thanks. Just come out and tell me what's inside."
After eating the pancake, Dalang slowed down and waited for his legs to regain strength before continuing to walk forward.
"So bright, so clean." Dalang stopped at the entrance of the supermarket and didn't dare to move.
At this time, a woman in a red vest came up to us and asked, "Welcome, what can I do for you?"
Dalang was greeted so kindly by someone before, and after a long pause, he said, "I... I want to buy some food."
The woman smiled and said, "Yes, if you don't have enough money, you can take your things there to exchange for money, and then buy food.
Dalang followed the woman to the counter in a daze and handed over the longevity lock in his hand.
The man in charge of the counter was Zhao Siqi. He took the longevity lock and placed it on the scale. "50 grams of silver, 10 coins per gram, a total of 500 coins."
Silver wasn't actually that valuable, and the purity of ancient silver wasn't high. But Emperor Wu had given Tang Qingxi a vast storehouse of embroidery pieces, accumulated from the previous dynasty, embroidered by the finest embroiderers, each one exquisite. This was meant to subsidize the poor, and the rich should just give up, as they were all richer than him.
Zhao Siqi printed out a piece of paper and handed it to Dalang, asking him to buy food. The note contained the amount of money he had exchanged for the longevity lock.
He exchanged his longevity lock for 500 coins, while he only spent 200 coins when he bought it. Dalang was taken to the grain and oil area in a daze.
The rice and flour of Huahuahua were piled up into mountains. It was so abundant that Dalang had never seen such abundant food in his life.
In ancient times, due to technical problems, rice was not refined and was brown rice. It was yellow in color and not durable in storage. Stones and bran could be found in it from time to time.
As for flour, I heard that at the beginning of the previous dynasty, people ate wheat rice, which was wheat harvested from the fields, cooked without husking, and eaten. Every time I swallowed it, my throat would hurt.
Dalang had also heard that milled wheat tasted good, but he had never seen it before.
Recovering from his shock, Dalang asked in a trembling voice, "How much is two cents a pound for such good food?"
The woman nodded and told him, "There are bags of oil nearby. Each bag weighs 50 jin and costs 100 coins. There's also oil. A bucket weighs 10 jin and costs 70 coins. You can eat it or use it as lamp oil."
The woman turned around and pointed to the following: salt was two cents a bag, each weighing one jin, sugar was four cents a bag, each weighing one jin, and there was also soy sauce, vinegar, and MSG...
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