Seeing Gu Yanzhang's serious face, Gu Yu'an opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but the time was too short and he didn't know how to say it.

However, thinking of his daughter-in-law's mother and her brothers, who were all impetuous and not afraid of getting into trouble, Gu Yu'an finally shut his mouth wisely.

Their grandfather and grandson first went to a noodle shop and ordered three bowls of noodles and three meat buns. It cost him thirty cents in total.

While eating noodles, Gu Yanzhang even borrowed a knife from the shop owner. He chopped up the pickled vegetables, chili radishes, and sour beans he brought with him, and put them into their three large bowls.

The shopkeeper saw that Gu Yanzhang and his three companions were eating with gusto, and they even drank up the soup without much oil. The shrewd and capable shopkeeper thought about it and asked Gu Yanzhang for a piece of pickled cucumber to eat...

After trying several kinds of pickled vegetables from Gu Yanzhang, he finally gritted his teeth and bought almost 50 kilograms of food from Gu Yanzhang.

After Gu Yanzhang got 150 coins from him, he took the remaining kilograms of pickled vegetables and sold them on the streets of the county.

There was really no way to sell the last few dozen kilograms of kimchi at a good price, so Gu Yanzhang decided that his family had to sleep in the county town for one night.

They could only leave for home tomorrow morning.

After all, he had a lot of money on him.

He was worried about running into robbers who wanted to rob him if he hurried at night.

...

After walking for nearly half an hour in the complex terrain of the East City District, they finally slowed down on the road next to a stinky ditch.

This stinky ditch smelled extremely bad.

However, on both sides of the stinky ditch, as before, there were rows of houses that were arranged very closely.

All the houses built with wood are actually two-story. For living.

Gu Yanzhang, along with his father and Gu Dazhu, walked through the path and stepped onto a simple stone bridge.

After walking nearly two hundred meters along the winding path, Gu Yanzhang finally found Ma Ergou's home.

Ma Ergou's four generations of ancestors and grandchildren have a total of more than twenty people.

Ma Ergou is almost thirty years old this year. He has

a pair of parents and a grandmother to support. There were originally four brothers in the middle, but two of them died a few years ago. Now there are only three brothers left. There are also Ma Ergou's three brothers and a group of children.

Such a large family makes a living by doing odd jobs in the county. If they couldn't do the work of carrying bags on weekdays, the men in their family would go to the suburbs of the county town and do some odd jobs for the wealthy and powerful landlords and gentry. Although life was not easy and they could barely afford three meals a day, they had established themselves in this county town where every inch of land was worth a lot of money.

Ma Ergou would not say anything on weekdays that he had a good place to shelter from the wind and rain here at the East Pier, but he was still somewhat contented in his heart.

Gu Yanzhang was lucky.

When a few of them came over with their bags on their shoulders, Ma Ergou, who had been tired all day, had just returned home from the East Pier.

When Ma Ergou saw Gu Yanzhang coming over, he immediately greeted him enthusiastically.

"Brother, why are you here?"

"Come in quickly. Have you eaten? If not, let's go to a restaurant together!"

Seeing Ma Ergou's enthusiastic smile, Gu Yanzhang replied with a smile, "I have eaten. We had already eaten when we came here."

"I came here specially to see you."

Without waiting for Ma Ergou to ask, Gu Yanzhang handed over the small basket of sour cucumbers, sour beans and pickled vegetables that he had prepared earlier.

"This is a variety of pickled vegetables that I asked my wife to make. It's tasty and flavorful."

"Although we country people live a hard life, the vegetable garden has been full of vegetables during this period. I know you don't have to worry about vegetables, brother. But I think that buying vegetables in the county town still costs money. One cent today, two cents tomorrow. Over time, the money for buying vegetables is a lot..."

"Brother Ergou, I don't have any other skills. I can only reduce some of your burden. Don't waste money going to restaurants. We will sleep at your place for one night, and tomorrow morning, we will deliver some pickled vegetables to Captain Huang, and then we will have to hurry back." When

Ma Ergou heard this, he hurriedly welcomed them in.

Gu Yanzhang was quite generous.

The basket of vegetables sent to Ma Ergou won the hearts of the whole family.

Especially Ma Ergou's wife Huang.

When she took the heavy basket of vegetables weighing nearly ten kilograms from her husband, she looked at Gu Yanzhang with a satisfied smile.

Recently, she was worried about the money spent at home.

Drinking tasteless mixed grain porridge every day, the family had already had a lot of blisters. Especially her parents-in-law. They said all day long that she didn't know how to manage the family and how to live.

She wanted to live a good life, but they had no land, no fields, and had to spend money every day. She also thought that her sons would have to get married in a few years. The old lady was in poor health, and she would have to do funeral ceremonies, build a coffin, and find a good place to bury her when she died. She would have to save extra money to buy some land. So, how could she be willing to spend the money her husband had earned with great difficulty on those green vegetables that were not filling and had no oil?

She was thoughtful to let the children find a few wild vegetables to eat by the stinky ditch every day. Ma Ergou said that he was taking Gu Yanzhang and the others to a restaurant, but that was just a

pretense

.

Now, after seeing Gu Yanzhang and the others, they drank a cup of hot tea and then went to sleep in the cramped bedroom. He didn't say anything else.

The sun had completely set.

Ma Ergou's family of more than 20 people, as usual, gathered around the small stove in the main room and drank the steaming porridge. There

was chopped pickled cabbage mixed with the porridge. Even though the porridge in this bowl exuded a moldy smell, the people of the Ma family ate it very happily.

Ma Ergou's wife, Huang, chewed a piece of radish in her mouth carefully, and she immediately felt her mouth water and her appetite opened.

"Boss, the brother you know, his wife's cooking skills are amazing."

"I can't make pickled cabbage like this."