Chapter 11 Robbery (1)
Neither Doctor Xie nor Manager Tong dared to prescribe medicine for Li Xiaoxiao. Li Xiaoxiao refused to leave: "Aunt Mao said that Doctor Xie cured the magistrate's illness and insisted that I come here. Even if you think my illness is difficult to treat, you should still try to treat it. You can't just kick me out like this."
Doctor Xie was taken aback: "Are you from the county magistrate's residence?"
Li smiled and said, "Yes, I am a kitchen maid in the county magistrate's house. I heard that the doctors at Huichuntang have excellent medical skills, so Mama Mao recommended me here."
Doctor Xie and Manager Tong exchanged a troubled glance. When Magistrate Meng first arrived in Biyang County to take up his post, he was quite ill. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they, Huichuntang, had saved him. After the magistrate recovered, he even sent over a plaque that read "Miraculous Healing Hands". Now that his maid is sick and has come to visit, are they really going to kick her out and offend Magistrate Meng?
Shopkeeper Tong pulled Doctor Xie aside and discussed the matter at length. She asked Li Xiaoxiao about her symptoms again and confirmed that she only had chest pain when she exerted herself and drowsiness, with no other symptoms. She decided to prescribe a mild tonic for her, which might not be very effective in treating internal injuries. It wouldn't be good for her, but it wouldn't hurt her either.
The prescription contained tonics such as red dates, ginseng, astragalus, atractylodes, and angelica, costing forty-five coins per dose. With the consultation fee, Li Xiaoxiao spent three hundred and fifty coins in one go. Adding the spare change she had accumulated along the way, she was now nearly five hundred coins gone.
Dr. Xie said, "Come back for a follow-up visit after you finish taking these medicines. If there is a significant improvement, I will change to other prescriptions."
Li Xiaoxiao, satisfied, carried a large bag of medicine and nodded emphatically: "Doctor, besides taking medicine, is there anything else I can eat to help me recover faster?"
Dr. Xie's gaze was complicated: "If you can eat, you can eat anything, but if you have some meat to nourish yourself, it will be even more effective."
Li Xiaoxiao said "Oh," and then turned and left with the medicine on her back. "So it's about eating more meat. I understand. Thank you, doctor."
Liu Zhi hadn't returned yet, probably because she hadn't finished buying the medicine. Li Xiaoxiao took the medicine and headed towards the shop called "Jinxiu Pavilion". Coincidentally, she had just learned the character "Jin" from "Jinji Yaxing" a few days ago, so she recognized all three characters.
Before I even reached the shop, I saw a group of people pointing and whispering, with Liu Zhi's faint sobs mingling among them.
Li Xiaoxiao frowned and stepped forward.
A burly man gripped Liu Zhi's small hand tightly, his face full of anger: "Your mother only said a few words to you, and you stole money from home to buy things. Is this a shop for poor people like us? Come with me!"
Liu Zhi was terrified, but being small and weak, she couldn't break free from the man's grasp. She could only cry out, "Who are you? What are you doing? I don't know you..."
But the man grew angrier the more he listened: "Er Ya! Don't think I won't punish you just because you pretend you don't know me. The land at home hasn't been tilled yet, and we haven't chopped enough firewood. Mother is so worried that she can't eat, which is why she sent me to the county town to find you. Come home with me right now!"
He talked as he pulled her along.
Liu Zhi struggled desperately: "No, no! I really don't know you!"
A passerby frowned slightly upon seeing this: "Is this her brother?"
Another person said, "That's her brother, from Taoye Village, the same village as my uncle. I even saw her when she came back to my maternal grandmother's house for the Dragon Boat Festival."
At this moment, a man in a short brown shirt standing behind the man nodded: "Her father is the butcher in Peach Leaf Village. He usually makes extra money from selling meat. She probably saw it and stole it."
With both men testifying for the man, it seemed like just a common family dispute, and the onlookers weren't very interested. One of the passersby sighed, "She stole money to buy things in the store and then pretended not to know her brother. This girl is really immature."
The man said, "She came to the county town a few times with her mother and then didn't want to go back. She always wanted to come to the shop to buy things. What use are those colorful handkerchiefs to us farmers? It's just a waste of money."
The passerby looked at the handkerchief and colorful threads that had fallen to the ground from the willow branch as it struggled, nodded, and thought it made perfect sense.
Liu Zhi trembled with fear and screamed, "Help—" but the man covered her mouth tightly before lifting her up: "If you scream again, your mother will beat you to death when we get home. Come with me now!"
He winked at the other two, who discreetly picked up the handkerchief and thread that had fallen to the ground: "Hey, Qiangzi, your sister dropped something, why are you walking so fast..."
Passersby assumed it was just a quarrel between the two siblings, and that the older brother had taken his younger sister home to discipline her. No one cast another glance at Liu Zhi.
Seeing that no one was paying attention to Liu Zhi anymore, the man's eyes flashed with a fierce light, and he chopped Liu Zhi's neck with a hand chop. Liu Zhi's eyes rolled back, and she fainted on the spot.
The man changed from carrying the willow branch to carrying it on his back. After walking a short distance, he quickly turned into a secluded alley, and the two men who had spoken up for him slowly followed.
Li Xiaoxiao followed them at a leisurely pace, watching the three of them turn and circle around, finally stopping on an oxcart loaded with straw. They parted the straw, placed willow branches on it, and then loosely covered it with another layer of straw, so that from the outside, it was impossible to see that there were people hiding on it.
The man in the short brown robe chuckled and said, "We're in luck today. This little girl is quite pretty. When we get to the prefectural city, she'll definitely fetch a good price."
Qiangzi said, "Of course, Biyang County is really poor. The three of us brothers have been here for several days, and this little girl is the only one we can sell for a decent price. Let's hurry up, or we'll run into the porridge distribution time if we leave the city too late. The officials will be there by then, so let's not be so unlucky as to run into them."
The other two nodded. One went to fetch the ox pulling the cart, and the other sat on the other side of the cart. They turned around and were about to walk forward when they spotted Li Xiaoxiao standing in the middle of the alley.
The three of them were startled at the same time. Who was this person? When did she arrive? How come they hadn't heard a sound?
Qiangzi jumped off the oxcart and stood up, asking, "Who are you?"
Li Xiaoxiao gave a forced smile: "I am your father."
Qiangzi's expression changed. He looked Li Xiaoxiao up and down, then glanced at the willow branches covered by straw, and immediately noticed that they were wearing the same clothes.
It seems they are servants from the same household; she managed to catch up with them without them noticing.
Qiangzi looked around at his surroundings. Since the three of them were avoiding people and heading towards a secluded place, there wasn't a soul in sight in the alleys. A smug yet sinister smile appeared on his face: "You alone?"
He walked towards Li Xiaoxiao step by step, looking her over as he went. The girl in front of him was about fourteen or fifteen years old, tall and slender with narrow shoulders and a slim waist. Although her skin was slightly dark, her features were very regular, and her eyes were as black as lacquer. If she could be covered up for a while and her skin would turn white, she would definitely be a beauty in the making.
This kind of thing is even more valuable than that little girl, so he might as well take it with him.
He winked at the two men behind him, and they immediately understood. They came over, and the three of them surrounded Li Xiaoxiao.
Li Xiaoxiao slung the medicine packet over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow: "What? Planning to take on one out of three?"
Qiangzi said, "Little girl, shall we take you to a fun place?"
Li Xiaoxiao pointed to the willow branches in the haystack: "Are you planning to take me there like this too?"
Qiangzi took two steps closer: "Of course not, as long as you behave..."
He suddenly reached out and attacked the back of Li Xiaoxiao's neck. Li Xiaoxiao leaned forward slightly to dodge his attack, then grabbed his arm and threw him over her shoulder. Qiangzi was thrown high into the air as if he had lost his weight, and then slammed to the ground like a dead pig with a loud thud.
Qiangzi let out a scream of "Ah—", his limbs convulsed, tears and snot streamed down his face, and he felt as if his limbs were useless, unable to even crawl.
The remaining two were startled. One stepped forward to help Qiangzi up, while the other looked around, pulled a piece of firewood as thick as an arm from the low wall on one side, and swung it hard at Li Xiaoxiao.
Li Xiaoxiao turned to the side, grabbed his right wrist, and with a slight force, a "crack" was heard as the man's wrist was snapped at a right angle. He let out a scream even louder than Qiangzi's: "Ah~!"
The remaining man, who had been about to help Qiangzi up, was horrified at the sight. His limbs went limp, and his legs trembled like sugar being sifted: "No, no, no, don't come any closer..."
He could no longer care about Qiangzi and the man in short brown clothes. He retreated step by step, and after retreating three or four meters, he turned around and desperately fled forward.
Li Xiaoxiao clicked her tongue twice, picked up the firewood from the ground, and threw it at the back of the man's head. The firewood tumbled in the air a few times and hit the fleeing man on the head with a "thud." The man lunged forward and fell to the ground, motionless.
Qiangzi and the man in the brown robe, who had recovered a little, looked at Li Xiaoxiao as if she were a demon from hell. They were sweating profusely and crawled to their knees, kowtowing desperately: "Spare us, heroine, spare us, heroine, spare us!"
Li Xiaoxiao circled the two of them a few times: "If you want me to spare you, tell me, what do you have to offer to save your lives?"
Qiangzi and the man in the short brown robe's eyes lit up, and they immediately took out all the money they had and offered it to him with both hands: "Heroine, this is all our wealth, please spare us."
Li Xiaoxiao took their money bags, emptied them out, and weighed them in her hands: "How much money is in total?"
Qiangzi looked at the silver in her hand with trepidation: "A total of ten, eighteen taels, and more than a hundred copper coins."
Li Xiaoxiao sighed, "Only eighteen taels? Where?" She pointed to the willow branches on the oxcart, "If she sold them, how much silver could she get?"
Qiangzi exchanged a glance with the man in the short brown robe and immediately sensed an opportunity. He quickly said, "If such beauties could be sold to the brothels of Huaiyang and raised as young prostitutes, they could fetch several hundred taels of silver! Heroine, as long as you don't kill us, we can cooperate and split the money from selling the girls in half! No, no, no, we'll split it 40/60, 40/60, we get 40, and you get 60."
The man in the short brown coat nodded vigorously.
Li Xiaoxiao was shocked: "Several hundred taels?! That's so expensive! How many did you sell before?"
Seeing that Qiangzi was the one answering the questions, the man in the short brown robe assumed that Li Xiaoxiao was interested in the business and was afraid that he would steal his thunder, so he quickly spoke up in front of Qiangzi: "We've only sold five or six. Firstly, it's not easy to find pretty young girls, and secondly, we haven't been doing this for very long. Before, we were just trafficking young women."
A note from the author:
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My lovely readers, could you please lend me a hand and add this to your favorites? [Hands clasped in prayer]
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