Chapter 27
Sang Luo arrived very quickly, but unfortunately, there was a commotion next door and Shen Jin got beaten up and ran out to rest.
Sang Luo had no idea that the commotion was caused by a piece of lard, but even if she knew, she wouldn't care and would just listen to it for fun.
She took her registration book and half a bag of dried fish wrapped in leaves, and went to find the head of the village together with Mrs. Chen.
When Mrs. Chen saw her take the dried fish, she thought for a moment, then went to the kitchen and took out an egg from the jar where eggs were kept.
Oh, another penny.
But if you want to get this done quickly, you have to do it this way.
The head of Shili Village does not live in Shili Village.
In the Dagan Dynasty, one hundred households made up one li, and Shili Village had more than 20 households, which obviously did not reach one li.
Fortunately, it is not too far, just in Zhoujiagou, one mile away from Shili Village.
The head of the village was named Zhou. Mrs. Chen was not very familiar with his wife, but she knew her. When she stuffed Sang Luo's half bag of dried fish and the egg she brought into his wife's hands, the smile on her face immediately became much warmer.
After asking about the man's purpose, he led the man into the house and asked his son to call Zhou Lizheng's home.
Things went very smoothly. Li Zheng Zhou found out that the procedure required setting up a stall in the county town to sell food. He took out pen and ink, wrote the materials according to the register, collected ten cents from the two people, and promised to go to the county town the next day and pick it up tomorrow evening. The matter was then considered settled.
After returning to Shili Village, Sang Luo and Chen Po parted ways at the intersection. Sang Luo took the brother and sister to pick fairy leaves when they returned to their own homes to prepare for their trip to Sanli Village tomorrow.
That's right, before she could enter the county town, she had to go to Sanli Village to work as a peddler, carrying a load on her shoulder and hawking her wares. She had to earn the money for the procedure and the entrance fee, right?
With the extra time, she continued to reclaim land behind her house with her two children, and was busy without a moment's rest.
I only had pork liver soup at noon, and in the evening Sang Luo made a proper meal.
Well, it’s barely enough to eat.
After all, there was only a clay pot and no special steamer for steaming rice, so making dry rice was a really technical job. I could only cook it like porridge, just put less water and control the fire. This was all based on the experience I had gained in using the clay pot and the simple stove over the past few days.
When taking the rice, Shen An looked at the little rice left, and his thrifty spirit came back: "Sister-in-law, can we have some bean rice?"
Sang Luo smiled and said, "Eat peacefully. I won't let you go hungry later. I have another use for the soybeans."
When dividing the rice equally, use a large wooden spoon to serve soup, giving each person half a spoonful.
The quantity is not much, but it is white rice. Just eating the rice can taste sweetness and happiness, not to mention that there is also a dish of stewed eggplant seasoned with lard, minced meat, salt, sauce, mint, basil and wild onions.
As Shen An was eating, he suddenly started to cry, which confused Sang Luo and Shen Ning. He quickly wiped the tears from his eyelashes, crying and laughing: "Sister-in-law, this day seems like a dream."
As she wiped away the tears, more and more of them came: "It would be great if big brother came back too."
Just this one sentence made Shen Ning's eyes red, and tears began to swirl in her eye sockets until they could no longer be held back. Her eyelashes trembled, and tears fell in strings.
The little girl tilted her head and looked at her with tears in her eyes: "Sister-in-law, my brother will come back, right? The villagers said that the government office didn't even report the death, so my brother might still be alive. Sister-in-law, are they right?"
Sang Luo was silent.
In the original body's memory, Li was the most angry and often couldn't help cursing about the fact that even if he died in battle, his registration would not be removed.
Because if the soldiers' registration is not cancelled, the government does not need to pay pensions to the families of the fallen soldiers. If the soldiers' registration is not cancelled, the emperor issued an edict at the beginning of the year saying that the families of those who died on the battlefield will be exempted from taxes for two years, so this soldier does not need to be exempted.
There are people in the neighboring village who have been confirmed dead in the battle but have not yet been removed from the household register.
Therefore, the fact that their nationality was not revoked does not really mean anything. It has been nearly half a year since the people who were conscripted with Shen Lie returned. After half a year without any news, the possibility of them coming back is actually very small.
The more likely possibility is that he died on the battlefield, without a name or surname, and no one collected his body or buried his bones.
But facing the two pairs of tearful eyes, she couldn't bear to tell the truth. She couldn't bear to destroy the last glimmer of hope in the two children's hearts.
Sang Luo nodded: "Yes, if there is no definite bad news, then that is good news."
With just these words of comfort, the little faith in the two children's hearts seemed to be bolstered. They tried hard to force a smile at Sang Luo, and while wiping their tears, they ate the food in their bowls carefully, bit by bit, finishing it all.
It’s not that I have an appetite in this situation, but the white rice and the oily and meaty dishes in the bowl are too luxurious and too hard to come by, so I am reluctant and dare not waste even a bit of them.
The next day, they went to Sanli Village. Just as Sang Luo had expected, after two days of going there, the magic tofu was not selling as well as it had in the first two days.
Because she had borrowed a bucket from the Chen family, she made twenty-four pieces that day. She went around Sanli Village twice before selling fifteen of them. She sold the remaining nine pieces by shouting at the villages along the way on her way back.
These twenty-four pieces of magical tofu were worth thirty-two coins, which were then exchanged for three and a half liters of soybeans and two eggs.
This time, Sang Luo was reluctant to spend much money. She only spent three cents to buy an iron needle and weighed two cents of malt sugar. She brought the other twenty-seven cents back with her. She went to Chen's house, returned five cents to Old Mrs. Chen, and had twenty-two cents left.
This was the first time that the family had enough money to spend the night.
What Sang Luo didn't know was that she had to pay the money back so quickly, which made the Chen family, especially Qin Fangniang, who were about to set up a stall in the county to sell magic tofu, extremely excited, as if they could already see the scene of themselves making money.
That evening, without waiting for Sang Luo to come looking for her, Mrs. Chen ran to Zhoujiagou early, took back the couple's belongings, and asked her daughter-in-law to deliver them to Sang Luo personally.
The old lady was very particular. When Qin Fangniang took the pass and was about to go out, she told her to only stand far outside the door and call people, and not to step into other people's houses.
Sang Luo's skill of making magical tofu is now a specialty for eating. Mrs. Chen is afraid that her daughter-in-law will accidentally walk in and see something she shouldn't see, which would cause a rift and that would be bad.
…
On the sixth day of traveling to this time and space, Sang Luo is about to go into the city.
On the first day Qin Fangniang set up her stall, she was so excited that she didn't sleep well the whole night. She got up very early that day, and when it was still dark, Chen Youtian sent her to Sang Luo's residence.
Sang Luo also calculated the time, and when Qin Fangniang arrived, she was already prepared.
The lotus leaves used for selling things and the bowls, sugar water, wooden spoons and other things used for tasting were all stuffed into the basket, as well as the six bunches of purslane that Sang Luo and her two children had picked the previous evening. The dried fish that had been dried in the past few days were also brought by Sang Luo, ready to exchange them for some money.
Thinking that he would buy household items today, he put the twenty-two coins he had saved yesterday in his sleeve pocket and took them with him.
Chen An and Shen Ning followed eagerly, obviously wanting to go too, but Sang Luo had no choice this time: "It's too expensive to go to the county, so I can't take you with me. Don't worry, when I have money in the future, I will definitely take you to the county to have some fun."
After coaxing the two children for a while and learning that the two younger ones learned how to make a fire and cook, Sang Luo felt at ease leaving them at home to look after the house while she called Qin Fangniang and set off.
After Chen Youtian sent his wife over, he did not leave. Instead, he took the initiative to help carry the two heaviest buckets. Qin Fangniang had nothing to do, so she took Sang Luo's two baskets and carried them herself.
When the last group of three people went out of the village, only Sang Luo was left empty-handed.
Chen Youtian walked for about three or four miles. When it was getting light, he stopped, gave the burden to Qin Fangniang, and went back.
Sang Luo, who had been fed with dog food all the way, finally took back her burden, thanked Chen Youtian, and smiled to Qin Fangniang after the people left: "Aunt, Uncle Youtian treats you so well."
Qin Fangniang was a little embarrassed: "It's just my brute strength."
Both husband and wife are introverted and shy.
Seeing Sang Luo's frail appearance, he asked again, "Can you lift it?"
Sang Luo smiled and said, "It's OK. It's much lighter than the bucket I carried the first time. I've been carrying things these days, so I've gained some strength. Has Auntie been to the county town?"
"I've been there." Qin Fangniang replied, but she was a little hesitant: "But I'm not very familiar with it. It was many years ago."
In fact, they were very unfamiliar with the place. The first time they went back to the county town was the year they had just fled famine. Right at the gate of the county town, there were rich families giving out porridge. They, the refugees, were just outside the city gate and had never even touched the gate.
The second time, she was going to settle down in Shili Village and follow her mother-in-law to the county to pawn some things and do some shopping. That time, her mother-in-law went in, and she was waiting outside the city. After all, those who lived outside the city had to have a residence to enter the city. Wouldn't it cost money to do this? Five cents, who would be willing to spend this money just to go to the county town for no reason?
In the following years, the only people in the family who went to the county town were the men who did odd jobs during the slack season, and she had never been there.
Thinking of this, I started to feel nervous.
Sang Luo noticed Qin Fangniang's nervousness, so she changed the topic to farming and asked Qin Fangniang what else could be planted in the fields at this time.
When Qin Fangniang went to deliver the message yesterday, she saw that a small piece of land behind Sang Luo's house had been turned over, and it was planted with mint and basil transplanted from the wild. She knew that she was going to grow vegetables.
This was something Qin Fangniang was good at, and her expression gradually relaxed.
"We have a good climate here, and we can grow a lot of things now, including radish, sunflower, turnip, cabbage, mustard greens, cucumber, onion, garlic, and scallion. If you want to plant some, I'll pack some seeds for you when we go back today."
"That's great, but I'm not very good at planting."
Qin Fangniang smiled: "It's not difficult, I'll teach you when the time comes."
Qin Fangniang was honest and enthusiastic. She said she would teach when the time came, and all the way she continued to tell Sang Luo some common sense about farming.
In fact, Sang Luo also cultivated vegetables during the years she lived in the mountains, but she didn't know how to do it. If she wanted to grow vegetables properly, she really needed a master. Moreover, at that time, she didn't know what many vegetables looked like when they grew in the fields, let alone how to plant them. So she listened very carefully at this moment.
One was teaching and the other was learning, and before they knew it, they had passed Sanli Village. After walking for a while, they finally got out of the mountain road. The view became wider, and they could see the ochre-colored city wall in the distance.
"The county town is just ahead."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
