My grandparents are both alive.
A few years ago, my grandfather's health was not good. The wounds and hidden injuries he had suffered on the battlefield flared up. He was saved by Master Duji, who brought him a pill made from a 500-year-old ginseng and a 500-year-old lingzhi mushroom. These ginseng and lingzhi mushrooms were used to make ten pills in total.
Before leaving, Master Duji left behind an extra pill and two hundred-year-old Ganoderma lucidum plants, which were no longer needed. (The five-hundred-year-old ginseng and Ganoderma lucidum were brought back by someone entrusted by the senior monk. I cultivated them in the deep mountains, as mentioned earlier.) The rest were all kept by the monk Duji. Fortunately, he had some conscience and left one and gave me two Ganoderma lucidum plants as a bonus.
Because my grandparents are both alive, the whole family still lives together. My grandfather had four sons and three daughters in total. Except for one illegitimate daughter who died young, the rest are all healthy.
Amma was the eldest son of his grandfather, with two older sisters, both born to his grandmother. He had three younger brothers. His second uncle was born to one of his grandmother's maids and had served his grandmother since childhood on the grasslands. He grew up under his grandmother's care.
My third uncle was born to a peasant woman, whom my grandfather met and brought home during a war. My fourth uncle's aunt was a bondservant named Luo.
In our family, my father's brothers are all ranked separately, and only during important events such as ancestral worship are my grandfather's branch of the family ranked together.
My second uncle showed a talent for studying from a young age. In the ninth year of the Kangxi Emperor's reign, he passed the provincial examination and became a Juren (a successful candidate in the provincial examinations). He was only 24 years old at the time. However, although he loved reading, he did not like being an official. After passing the provincial examination, he went on a study tour under the pretext of studying abroad. My grandfather knew that his second son did not like being an official. He beat him and scolded him, but in the end, he went on a study tour under the pretext of taking the imperial examination.
My second uncle and aunt had difficulty conceiving, and after many years they only managed to have two daughters. The older one was born to my second aunt, Borjigit, and is the same age as my fourth sister. She is 14 years old this year, and her name is Genggen, which means gentle and quiet in Manchu. She just participated in the imperial concubine selection this year and got married on her own.
So my second uncle and aunt have been staying at home all year. Their youngest daughter is eight years older than me, and her name is Bojili Yierha, which means chrysanthemum in Manchu. She was born to my aunt's concubine, who was originally my second aunt's maid but was elevated to concubine after giving birth to the daughter. My grandparents, worried about his lack of an heir, arranged for him to take a concubine, but nothing has happened.
Among the gifts my second uncle gave me this time were two paintings he had done himself. One depicted willow trees by a river in Jiangnan, with a very poetic feel. The other was "Blooming Flowers of Wealth," a painting of hydrangeas with layers upon layers of blossoms that seemed to leap off the page. It's clear that my second uncle's reputation as a talented scholar is well-deserved.
The third uncle's family was the least popular in the family. The sons of the Irgen Gioro family were all raised together, so they all had a good relationship.
Besides the third uncle, although the third uncle was not raised by his grandmother in his childhood, he lived with his brothers. However, his father and second uncle were already grown up and, in order to show off their abilities as older children, they were impatient with taking care of the snotty-nosed third uncle.
At that time, my grandmother was busy preparing for my eldest aunt's wedding, raising my second aunt, father, and second uncle, so she only asked my third uncle a few questions every day and neglected him. I never expected that my third uncle's birth mother, a peasant woman, would be so easily fooled.
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