Chapter 107 The Bed Legs Broken from Exhaustion
After the banquet, Du Min saw Magistrate Sun and the clerks off. Meng Qing and Du Li stayed behind to clean up the mess. She let Gu Wudong's family and her parents stay, saying, "It's late. You're old and young. If something happens on the road, you won't be able to escape."
“Alright, we’ll stay here tonight.” Father Meng nodded. “Luckily, I prepared extra food for the four geese when I went out this afternoon, so we don’t have to rush back to feed them tonight.”
Gu Wudong's residence was only two alleys away from the county government office, a short walk away, but after looking at his wife and two children, he didn't dare to take the risk and decided to stay at the government office for the night.
A moment later, Du Min returned. Seeing that the rest of the people hadn't left, he asked, "Did you all have a good time tonight? Shall we have another round?"
"No more drinking, we've had our fill," Du Li said impatiently. "Let's wash up and go to bed early, it's late."
"My lord, haven't you had your fill of drinking yet?" Gu Wudong asked tactfully. "Shall I have a couple more cups with you?"
Du Min looked at Meng's parents and said, "Uncle Meng, Aunt Pan, I didn't have time to entertain you at the banquet tonight. Shall we have some more drinks?"
"Third brother, don't get drunk again," Du Li said again, trying to stop him. "You can drink next time, but not tonight."
Du Min glared at him. "Why are you such a spoilsport?"
Meng's father could tell that Du Min hadn't had enough to drink, so he smiled and said, "Alright, let's have another meal together, and we'll drink some more with you."
"I'll ask the cook to prepare a few more side dishes," Meng Qing said. "You guys go wash up first, and if you get drunk later, just go back to your rooms and sleep."
Du Li glared at Du Min, thinking, "This bastard is up to no good."
Half an hour later, the three families gathered at the same table again. Du Min drank freely this time, without worrying about getting drunk and embarrassing himself in front of his subordinates.
*
Twenty miles away in the southern city, General Lu was also drinking. The two men accompanying him, seeing his frosty face, dared not utter a word.
Suddenly, Lu Zhen grabbed a wine jar from the table and smashed it to pieces, spilling the remaining wine all over the floor.
Master Lu hadn't expected him to be so angry about this. After thinking for a moment, he said, "Cousin, what are you thinking? The court is cracking down on lavish funerals, and simplified funerals are the general trend. You have an official position, so it's even less likely you'd violate the rules. Now that Magistrate Du is taking the lead, if we cooperate and pull some strings, we can gain a good reputation. Why are you so angry? Didn't you praise Magistrate Du for his backbone? I thought you thought he was quite good."
"When he's causing trouble for others, I can just watch the show. But now that he's plotting against me, you expect me to happily cooperate with him?" Lu Zhenjiang retorted.
"Then what do you suggest we do?" Master Lu asked. "We can't let him arrest our uncle and lock him up in jail, and we certainly can't let him use that as an excuse to dig up graves and dismantle the tomb guardian beasts on the clan's land in Beiman Mountain."
If Lu Zhen had a solution, he wouldn't be here drinking alone and smashing wine jars.
"Is your father's health not good?" Lu Wensi guessed a hint of something was wrong. "Why don't you take this opportunity to talk to Magistrate Du? If you stand up for him today, he might turn a blind eye at your father's funeral."
"Do you think he's the kind of person who turns a blind eye?" Lu Zhen shook his head. "If he were willing to turn a blind eye, would Wang Kunlun of the Wang family still be locked up in jail?"
Master Lu realized that the main reason Lu Zhen was angry wasn't because Du Min had used him as a scapegoat, but because he worried that if Lu Zhen made a statement, his father wouldn't be able to have a proper burial. If he were, he would become an enemy of the powerful families. Their Lu family's defection this time to promote paper effigies was somewhat understandable, but if they violated the regulations and had a proper burial in the future, Du Min would see it as the Lu family conspiring with Du Min to scheme against them; if Du Min refused, they would offend both sides. The only solution was to obediently follow the law and bury the child according to the prescribed specifications.
“If you don’t cooperate, he will cause you more trouble in the future. It’s better to take this opportunity to build a good relationship. If that day ever comes, we can sit down and discuss it properly. He will have to give us some face.” Master Lu thought that he should solve the problem at hand first.
“I’ll go and talk to him then. I’m going to teach his nephew, so we’ll have more opportunities to interact in the future and our friendship will grow stronger,” Lu Wensi advised. He didn’t want to be arrested and imprisoned by Du Min.
With Lu Zhen facing obstacles from both sides, he thought it over and over again, but still agreed.
“I’ll give you my calling card; you two are responsible for resolving this,” he said.
Lu Wensi breathed a sigh of relief.
But the more Lu Zhen thought about it, the more aggrieved he felt. After returning to his room, he summoned his subordinates and asked them to arrange for two people to find an opportunity to beat up Du Min.
*
"Huh? My lord!" Gu Wudong suddenly stood up.
"It's alright, it's alright." Du Li grabbed Du Laosan, who was about to slide under the table, and carried him up with practiced ease, saying, "He's drunk, I'll carry him back to the house. You guys shouldn't drink anymore, go back to your rooms and sleep."
Meng's father laughed, "His third uncle still can't hold his liquor; he got him drunk to sleep again."
Meng Qing looked at Gu Wudong and said, "Don't be surprised, this is how he is when he's drunk. He just falls asleep as soon as he gets drunk."
Gu Wudong smiled and said, "I've got it."
"Let's go back inside and sleep; it's getting colder," said Meng's mother.
Meng Qing pretended to yawn and said sleepily, "I'm going back to my room too."
“I’m sleeping with Wang Zhou tonight.” Meng Chun got up and walked out the door with Meng Qing.
Meng Qing had just lain down in her room when the door was pushed open from the outside. Her heart pounded as she watched the man stride in.
Du Li bolted the door, then walked to the wall and pressed his ear against it, listening intently. He heard no sound, and called Meng Chun's name twice more, but there was still no response.
There was no sound from next door, nor from inside the house. With a worried heart, he asked, "Qingniang? Are you asleep?"
Meng Qing closed her eyes and ignored her.
"Really asleep?" Du Li asked in disappointment. "Qingniang? Fine... Damn Du Laosan! What are you drinking for!"
Meng Qing bit her lip to suppress a laugh, and the next moment, a heavy person suddenly pressed down on her, cupping her face.
"Pretending to be asleep?" Du Li grinned mischievously. "I knew you couldn't sleep."
Meng Qing pretended not to understand, "I was already asleep and you woke me up, so I can't be bothered to talk to you."
Du Li pretended to believe him. He silently crawled into the quilt, slid down, and then crawled up from under Meng Qing's inner garment.
Meng Qing gritted her teeth to suppress a sound, her eyes welling up with tears.
One by one, undergarments were thrown out of the bedding; on this cold winter night, the bed was damp and warm as in summer.
...
“I think I heard a rooster crowing…” Meng Qing hugged his neck, which was suspended above her. She brushed away his wet hair and coaxed him, “It’s time to sleep. If you don’t sleep now, it will be dawn.”
"You go to sleep first," Du Li said.
Meng Qing: "...How am I supposed to sleep?"
Du Li ignored him, his energy focused on his work, like a mad bull running around tirelessly. His once gentle eyes became glazed over, and he gripped the woman beneath him with an aggressive intensity.
Meng Qing couldn't take it anymore. She pulled hard with both hands and strained her legs, and the two of them immediately switched positions.
The next instant, the wooden bed crashed down, and Meng Qing, who had just sat up, fell back down, piercing through her body. She immediately went limp, and two tears slid down her cheeks.
Du Li held her tightly, unable to utter a sound for a moment.
After a while, the couple sat up and looked at the wooden bed with one leg broken. Meng Qing punched him, saying, "It's all your fault."
Du Li laughed out loud, and Meng Qing laughed along with her.
"How are we supposed to sleep here? Sleep on the floor?" Meng Qing asked.
"The ground is cold, I can't sleep here." Du Li got off the crooked bed, put on his winter clothes, removed all four bed legs, leaving only a bed board on the ground.
The two spent the rest of the night lying in a pile of rotten wood.
*
After daybreak, while having breakfast, Du Li said without changing his expression, "Lord Du, your government office needs some maintenance. The furniture has been owned by many people and is no longer durable."
Du Min found him baffling. "What do you mean it's not durable?"
“The bed, the bed in our room has been eaten by insects. The bed legs are all hollowed out. Last night, in the middle of the night, the bed leg broke,” Du Li said. “Find a carpenter and have him check if the furniture in the other rooms has been infested with insects.”
Meng Qing nodded, "We removed the four bed legs last night and slept in a pile of rotten wood."
"Were you bitten by insects?" Meng's mother asked hurriedly.
"Probably not," Meng Qing shook her head. "It's cold; the insects in the wood probably froze to death."
"You can sleep in a different room. If you're still worried, you can go to the carpenter and buy a new bed." Du Min thought these were minor matters and there was no need to make a big fuss about asking the carpenter to come and repair it. He put down his chopsticks and said, "I have something to do today, so I'll be leaving now."
Gu Wudong hurriedly put down his chopsticks and followed.
Du Li and Meng Qing glanced around discreetly, and seeing that no one else seemed suspicious, they breathed a sigh of relief.
After dinner, Meng's parents went home to feed the geese. During this break, Meng Qing and Du Li tidied up the house and moved their belongings to another place to live.
After Mencius' parents finished feeding the geese, the family, along with their little tail Wangzhou, boarded a donkey cart and headed to the private school and the paper horse shop.
There were always people at the charity school and the paper shop. The remaining thirty apprentices spent their days splitting bamboo strips, making bamboo rings, dyeing paper, and drying paper. The materials were piling up.
When Meng Qing and his group arrived, they immediately led the apprentices to begin making paper-mache funerary objects.
"Master Meng, is there going to be business?" the apprentice inquired.
"Yes, business is on the horizon." Meng Qing nodded.
An hour later, business came knocking. Lu Wensi and his servants brought fifty strings of cash to donate to the charity school. Meng Qing wrote him a receipt, promising to give him a pair of brass paper oxen and a paper house before the end of the year.
In the afternoon, the Lu family began to exert their efforts, and the charity school received ten more donations, while the paper horse shop also received three orders.
For the next three days, the charity school and the paper horse shop were packed with customers. The largest single order came from a wealthy merchant surnamed An, who generously donated 200 strings of cash to the charity school and placed an order for a complete set of paper funerary objects at the paper horse shop, requesting delivery in five days.
The people of Heqing County, who had shared the same hatred with the powerful families and gentry, were dumbfounded. Hadn't they all agreed to boycott paper effigies together?
At the funeral of the wealthy merchant surnamed An, brass paper horses, paper houses with glazed tile roofs, paper sedan chairs with glazed tile roofs, paper figures taller than terracotta figurines, black lacquered paper pigs, brass paper sheep, and brightly colored wreaths made their first appearance in Heqing County.
The funeral procession headed towards Beiman Mountain, and onlookers followed it all the way to Heyang Bridge.
The school and the paper horse shop were crowded with onlookers. Meng Qing immediately ordered all the completed paper effigies to be moved out. At the peak of the crowd, she even lit a Buddhist bronze paper ox to attract the Buddhist worshippers again.
The paper-made funerary objects have become a big hit in Heqing County.
By the end of the year, Meng Qing took stock of the accounts and found that the school had earned 11,230 strings of cash in just one month, of which 4,000 strings came from 60 repeat customers. The paper offerings for the Qingming Festival after the New Year had already been pre-ordered.
"Sir, my father has sent a letter." Gu Wudong arrived at the county government office with a letter in his hand.
Du Min was reading the memorial that Minister Zheng had approved. Hearing this, he looked up and hesitated for a moment before realizing what was going on. "It concerns Chen Mingzhang? What did the letter say?"
"After we left Wu County, my father instructed Wu Xia to get into a fight with Lord Chen's cousin over the land issue. After that, he made up a few more excuses. Now, in the eyes of the people in Wu County, the Chen and Gu families are enemies." Gu Wudong recounted the situation in the letter. "My father said in the letter that Lord Chen would be back for the New Year this year, and he would go to his house to cause trouble again, making the two families enemies completely, so that Wu Xia would have a reason to go to the capital to file a complaint after the New Year. In this way, after the incident, Lord Chen would not think that you were the one who instigated it."
Du Min handed him the memorial in his hand, saying, "I'll use Minister Zheng's connections to get you on the list of successful candidates in the provincial examination."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com