After that, Song Tantan really didn't say another word. As she walked, she rubbed the snowflake dumplings in her cloth bag with one hand.
She was just bored and wanted to talk to someone, but it seems she touched a nerve, which was really awkward.
Walking alone is really tiring. He should have hired a carriage. His horse is still at the inn in Long Night City, and he doesn't know if it has been taken away.
After wandering off in their own world for a while, they arrived at Huaming County. Huaming County was fairly well-managed; the gatekeepers didn't give them any trouble and just did a routine check before letting them in.
The city is similar to Changye City; the public security is quite good. There are no cases of officials bullying the people, nor are there any thugs causing trouble. It feels even better than the environment in Changye City. It seems that the magistrate of Huaming County is quite capable and not the kind of corrupt official he is.
As they passed a restaurant, the beggar with the pointed chin grabbed Song Tantan and pointed to the restaurant, indicating that she should go in and buy wine. Although this restaurant was not the largest in Minghua County, the wine it sold was the best in the entire county, and the beggar with the pointed chin had been craving the wine there for a long time.
Having made the promise, there was no reason to go back on it. Song Tantan said she understood, "I'll go in and buy it. You guys wait here."
She soon came out of the restaurant with two jars of wine in her hands, each jar holding three catties, a total of six catties, which cost her six taels of silver.
This wine is too expensive. It only cost half a tael of silver per catty in the best restaurant in Fengcheng before, but it's half the price here. Since the wine sells so well, can she also sell the white wine in her supermarket for a good price?
The beggar with the pointed chin eagerly took the wine from her hand, shouting, "You little rascal, you're really something, buying wine for this old beggar! Hehe, can I talk now?"
"You've already said so much, and now you're asking me if I can? That's pointless." Song Tantan pouted and handed another jar of wine to the round-faced beggar.
After taking a few sips of wine, the beggar with the pointed chin laughed loudly, the sound so jarring that passersby covered their ears.
Zhang Jiafei rubbed his ears uncomfortably and asked, "How do you manage to make that 'scratching' sound, like fingernails scraping against stone?"
I thought the guy with the pointed chin would be angry, but he just drank a few more sips of wine, laughed even louder, and acted as if he didn't care at all, talking about the past as if he were talking about someone else.
“My voice wasn’t born like this; it was poisoned and made mute. At that time, Round Face and I were only twelve years old. Our parents had died, and we had no other relatives. We were refugees from the same village and have been together ever since.”
This was the case in ancient times; whenever natural disasters or wars struck, the people suffered and had to constantly flee.
To survive, he and Round Face did many petty thefts, until three years later, when they were fifteen, they were caught red-handed for stealing a sheep from a wealthy family.
That's the simple story. The family wasn't kind-hearted. He was held down by several servants and forced to drink poison, nearly dying on the spot.
The round-faced one fared even worse. Because she was gossipy and said some nasty things, and even spat at the host, her tongue was cut out and thrown to the dogs right in front of him.
Later, the family threw the two dying people into a mass grave, thinking they were sure to die. Who would have thought that the two were so resilient that they survived without any medical treatment.
One lost his voice due to poisoning, and the other could no longer speak. They have been begging for a living ever since. The two old beggars look like they are in their seventies or eighties, but they are actually only forty-seven years old this year, not even fifty.
"Although I survived, my health has been poor all these years because of the severe poisoning I suffered back then. I often suffer from pain and illness. Sometimes I really want to end it all, but I'm afraid that if I die, this round-faced brother will be too lonely. So I have to force myself to stay alive with him."
Alas, they were just two unfortunate people.
Song Tantan listened with a heavy heart, her eyes red. She sniffed and said, "Don't you have names? Why do you call him Round Face? Is your name Pointed Face?"
"Hey, little kid, I used to have a round face too. It was only because I was tormented by illness that I became like this. We've long forgotten our names. People just call us beggars. Who knows what our names were back then?"
Because Song Tantan called him "Point-Face Grandpa" and another person "Round Face," Point-Face thought it sounded quite fitting and casually accepted it.
"Didn't you think about revenge?" After being treated so viciously, and since you didn't die and came back alive, most people would think about revenge, right?
"It's not that I haven't thought about it, but I've never found the opportunity. When I was young, Round Face and I captured that family's grandson and wanted him to experience the pain of having his tongue cut out. But after we captured him, we couldn't bring ourselves to do it and eventually released him."
Later, they never found an opportunity to strike. Then came the natural disaster. They were originally from the south, but because of the flood, they fled to the north with others and never returned.
"I will never complain about your voice again. I'm sorry, Pointy Face, I didn't know you had suffered like that."
Song Tantan felt somewhat frustrated. The poor in ancient times really had no human rights at all. They were subjected to private torture and had no way to report it to the authorities.
The phenomenon of officials protecting each other is too serious. Poor people have no human rights to speak of. When they die, no one cares. Their lives are just wrapped in a tattered straw mat and buried.
"Oh well, it doesn't matter. It's been decades. That family didn't have a good ending either. Their descendants were poor and destitute, not much better off than us old beggars."
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