Chapter 273: Strength but no patience
"I'll go scoop it." Gu Ping'an rushed to take the bowl, turned around and left the house.
Gu Tang didn't fight with him, but just asked her father: "Why did you come back so late? Is Xue Da trapped?"
"We are indeed trapped. Fortunately, we are not trapped outside, but trapped in the Wang family."
"Wang family?" Gu Tang paused, "Did you go to the Wang family to look for Gu Qing?"
Gu Lianshan nodded: "I went..."
"Did you find the person?" Gu Tang looked curious.
"Your aunt said that the girl Qing is not in the Wang family." Gu Lianshan curled his lips with a sarcastic look on his face.
"Your aunt is stupid. She doesn't dare to look at people when she lies. I told her she was lying, but she was stubborn and insisted that Qing girl was not here."
Hearing this, the Third Uncle looked puzzled: "Your sister is not a good person. How could she be so kind as to help Qing girl hide? What do the other people in the Wang family say?"
"No one else in the Wang family showed up, only Gu Zhier showed up. I shouted in the Wang family yard for a long time, but no one came out.
I guess they were deliberately trying to go against me. They knew I was looking for someone, so they just didn't want to let me get what I wanted."
Gu Lianshan is very self-aware. He knows how much the Wang family dislikes him. They helped Gu Zhier hide Gu Qing just to vent their anger.
"Have you told the clan leader?"
"I told you. I had to tell you. The people who followed her were not stupid. Just look at Gu Zhier's stupid look. Everyone can see that she is lying."
"That's fine. Let them go and ask Gu Zhier for the person themselves. We won't be involved in this matter anymore."
Third Uncle stood up with the help of his cane and said, "What do you want to eat? Dad will cook it for you."
Gu Lianshan's eyes lit up: "Mutton stew! It warms you up and keeps the cold away."
"Okay! I'll make mutton soup for you." Third uncle didn't mind the time and effort, and walked out of the house with a smile.
Gu Tang asked her father to lie down in bed for a while, and then took Gu Ping'an out to help.
The mutton was placed in the vat in the east wing, and my third uncle entered the east wing carrying a lantern.
The brother and sister went over to help, one holding up the lantern for lighting, and the other helping to pick out the mutton in the vat.
After choosing and picking, I finally picked a leg of lamb.
Gu Ping'an replaced the lid of the jar, took the lamb leg from the old man, and went to the kitchen first.
"Girl, go back to the house and rest. Ping'an can help light the fire. There's no need to stay here all the time. When the mutton soup is ready, I'll call you to get up and have a bowl."
"I'll listen to you. I'll go back to my room and sleep. As for the mutton soup, I won't eat it tonight. Please leave me a bowl of the soup and meat, and I'll eat it tomorrow morning."
"Okay, I'll leave some more for you." Third Uncle nodded with a smile, handed her the lantern and asked her to go back to the house.
There was a lantern under the corridor of the main hall, so Gu Tang could see the road clearly. He did not refuse. After taking the lantern, he quickly returned to the west wing.
There was a stove burning in the west wing, with warm water on it. After washing up, he quickly got into bed and fell into a deep sleep after a while.
In the middle of the night, I suddenly heard voices outside.
Gu Tang was sleeping soundly and didn't hear who was outside. He just subconsciously felt the noise. His little face wrinkled, he turned over and pulled the quilt over his head.
After a short while of silence, there was a knock on the door.
"Girl? Girl?"
Gu Tang crawled out from under the covers, his eyes still closed, and he unconsciously responded, "What?"
"It's getting colder again. Even with the stove on, it's not warm anymore. How's your room? Do you want Dad to light another stove for you?"
These words sobered Gu Tang up a little. He quickly sat up and felt the temperature outside the quilt. He was instantly frozen!
She lay back down, shivering, and hurriedly called up the system panel. The temperature displayed on it was: -20°
The bright red number made Gu Tang completely refreshed. His temperature dropped five degrees overnight!
"Girl? Why aren't you talking? Are you frozen?" Gu Lianshan asked anxiously outside the door.
Gu Tang came back to his senses and replied, "Dad, it's not cold in my room. I have a brazier in my room. If it gets cold, I can light it myself."
Gu Lianshan breathed a sigh of relief: "Okay, then you can continue sleeping."
There were footsteps outside the door, from near to far away. Was her father leaving?
Gu Tang endured the cold and put on a fur coat, then lit the oil lamp. Shivering, he walked to the window, opened it and looked out.
The moment the window opened, the cold wind mixed with snowflakes hit Gu Tang's face, and he soon became numb from the cold.
It was pitch black outside and I couldn't see anything.
Gu Tang couldn't hold on any longer, so he quickly closed the window and crawled back into bed, feeling cold all over.
This was the first time that Gu Tang had experienced such low temperatures. In her previous life, the city where she lived, the lowest temperature in winter was only nine degrees!
Now it has dropped to 20 degrees!
It's a blessing that she didn't freeze to death!
Fortunately, the bedding rewarded by the system is still strong, and the bed is still warm without a trace of coldness.
Gu Tang sighed, blew out the oil lamp, and soon fell asleep again.
When it was daybreak, Gu Lianshan came again to ask if Gu Tang's room was warm, fearing that Gu Tang was too sleepy to light the brazier.
Gu Tang didn't say it was warm this time, and the temperature dropped again, to 22°.
There was still no change in the quilt, but the room was definitely not warm anymore.
Of course, this is compared with before, not compared with the outside.
Gu Tang replied to her father and said that she had already lit the brazier.
She was not trying to fool anyone. After she finished speaking, she put on her clothes, stood up and lit the brazier.
Then he placed the brazier and stove three feet away from the bed to ensure that the heat they released could surround the bed as soon as possible.
After waking up this time, Gu Tang did not fall asleep again. It was already the end of the morning hour. Yesterday, she had agreed with Luo's daughter-in-law that they would come home at the morning hour to continue working.
Before this, she only had one hour to get dressed, wash, and have breakfast.
After lingering in bed for a while, Gu Tang reluctantly got up and put on his clothes.
She changed into a sheepskin fur coat today.
The hair on sheepskin is longer than that on rabbit skin. Gu Tang thinks that it should be better at keeping out the cold than rabbit skin.
The long coat she was wearing reached her calves. She had previously paired it with cotton trousers made of kapok batting, but at this temperature, the kapok batting was not warm at all.
She picked and chose in the closet and picked out a pair of cotton trousers made of deerskin.
The inside and outside of the cotton pants are wrapped with fine cloth, and deerskin is sewn inside. If the cotton pants are dirty, just remove the cloth on the surface to wash them.
In addition to changing her cotton pants to leather ones, she also changed her shoes to rabbit fur.
He didn't forget his head and put on a gray rabbit fur hat.
After getting dressed like this, I was wrapped in leather from head to toe, which made me very warm.
Wash your face with hot water in the house and apply skin care lotion carefully to prevent your face from getting frozen.
The same goes for my hands. I applied more than usual and massaged it in carefully to absorb it. Then I opened the door and left the house.
As soon as I opened the door, the heavy snow outside came into view. The snow on the ground was so thick that it seemed like it had not stopped snowing all night.
On the east wing, her father was wearing a straw hat and a raincoat, stepping deep and shallow on the snow in the yard, holding a rake high in both hands, clearing the snow on the roof back and forth.
Her father didn't know how long he had been cleaning, and there was not much snow left on the roof of the east wing. Gu Tang put her hands in her sleeves and walked slowly towards the east wing.
When she arrived at the east wing corridor, Gu Lianshan had already cleaned the roof of the east wing. He turned around and saw Gu Tang.
Back to the corridor, while brushing off the snow on his body, he asked Gu Tang curiously: "The sun rose from the west today, and you got up so early."
Gu Tang rolled his eyes at him. "How can you see the sun in this heavy snow? If you can't see it, how do you know it rises from the west?"
Maybe it rises from the south, or maybe it rises from the north, no one can tell for sure, don’t you think?”
Gu Lianshan: ...This is pure arguing!
"Enough of the jokes. What's the matter with you getting up so early today?"
"Of course I have something to do." Gu Tang raised his hand and pointed to the south. "Yesterday, I invited the four daughters-in-law of the Luo family to come to my house to help grind the incense materials. They came on time at 9:00. As the host, I have to get up early and wait for them. Do you want them to block me in bed?"
"Hire someone to grind the incense?" Gu Lianshan said with a distressed look on his face. "Why would I need to hire someone? Dad has nothing to do today, so I'll help you!"
Gu Tang raised his chin towards the west wing and said, "The millstone and incense materials are in my room. You can just give it a try."
"Do I even need to try?" Gu Lianshan untied the rope at his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, and said confidently, "Wait, Dad will show you his skills!"
After saying this, he strode towards the west wing.
Gu Tang followed behind and entered the house at the same time as her father.
The mill was still on the table. Gu Tang grabbed a few handfuls of incense and put them into the mill, and asked her father to start grinding.
Gu Lianshan was very confident and started grinding immediately.
"This is a piece of cake!"
Gu Tang said nothing, just watched quietly.
If you want to grind the incense into powder, you must first crush the whole incense, and then grind it slowly until it becomes powder.
Although it sounds simple, in fact, it requires strength and patience.
Her father has plenty of strength, but he lacks patience.
Sure enough, after grinding it for a while, her father became furious: "What kind of shape will this become?"
What does it look like?
Gu Tang took out the incense powder she had ground yesterday and showed it to her father: "Look, it's done just by grinding it into this shape!"
Gu Lianshan: ...This is too fine! How long will it take to grind out such a fine powder?!
He narrowed his eyes, not quite believing it: "Are you sure this was caused by the four daughters-in-law of the Luo family?"
"I saw it with my own eyes, how could it be fake?" Gu Tang pouted at him, "Don't stop, you're far from it, keep crushing!"
Gu Lianshan was not stupid, he knew that his daughter was waiting to see him make a fool of himself.
Fortunately, he was thick-skinned enough and didn't care: "Since you've hired someone, then Dad won't interfere. Let's leave these jobs to the Luo family!"
He lowered his sleeves, tied the cuffs with rope again, and said, "Dad, go back to cleaning the roof."
As he spoke, he had already walked to the door, the curtain was half opened, and one foot had already stepped out.
At this moment, he suddenly remembered something and stopped. "The yard you bought is now uninhabited, and no one cleans the snow off the roof. I don't know if it can last until winter."
That yard...
Gu Tang shook his head: "I don't know. I hope that the materials used in that yard are all real. I'll leave it to fate."
That's all we can do.
Gu Lianshan sighed and went out to continue clearing the snow off the roof.
Gu Tang didn't stay in the house for long. When he saw smoke coming out of the chimney, he went to the kitchen.
Today's breakfast was cooked by Gu Ping'an, and his third uncle helped him light the fire. The grandfather and grandson prepared scrambled eggs, mutton soup, rice porridge and steamed buns.
When Gu Tang came in, the food was already out of the pot. She went forward to help carry the food to the main room and shouted into the yard, asking her father to go inside and eat first.
The family of four sat together, chatting with each other, and the atmosphere was very harmonious.
After dinner, Gu Lianshan continued to clean the roof, and Gu Ping'an helped and learned to do these things.
Third Uncle and Gu Tang were sitting in the main room, warming themselves by the fire, waiting for the daughters-in-law of the Luo family to arrive.
A quarter before the hour of Si, someone knocked on the gate.
Gu Ping'an in the yard ran to open the door, and outside the door were the four daughters-in-law of the Luo family.
He shouted towards the main room, and Gu Tang quickly lifted the curtain and came out, smiling as he led his four sisters-in-law to the west wing.
After entering the house, they chatted for a while, then each of them drank a bowl of sugar water, and then started to work.
Gu Tang didn't leave. She wanted to make sure that the incense materials would not be mixed up.
Compared to yesterday, the two sides are much more familiar with each other today. Luo family's eldest daughter-in-law, Mrs. Hu, couldn't help but ask.
"Tang girl, why are you grinding these things? Did you grind them up like this when you were selling medicine?"
"Medicine? Auntie, this isn't medicine." Gu Tang pointed at the incense and introduced them one by one: "This is clove, this is spikenard, this is sandalwood... These are all used to make incense."
Mrs. Hu was confused: "Fragrant? What kind of fragrance?"
"We have all kinds of incense. There's incense that helps scholars clear their minds, incense that helps people sleep peacefully, and even the incense we burn during Chinese New Year to pray to the gods and Buddhas, and to offer sacrifices to our ancestors. We have everything!"
"Oh! It turns out to be this 'fragrance'!" Mrs. Hu understood and looked at these things with curiosity.
He exclaimed, "The incense we light during the New Year is made of these sticks and hay!"
Sticks and liquorice?
Gu Tang twitched his lips. These things weren't just sticks and licorice...
The other three daughters-in-law of the Luo family were also amazed and praised him one after another.
"Tang girl is a capable girl! She can go into the mountains to collect herbs and make incense. She is better than men!"
"That's right! The heavy snow is blocking the road now. Once it melts, those matchmakers will be able to trample down the threshold of the Gu family!"
"This girl's ability is truly enviable! I wonder who will say that women like us are incompetent in the future! With girl Tang here to support us, we will be proud of it!"
"That's right! That hits the nail on the head!"
…
Gu Tang was a shameless person. She was delighted to receive these compliments and talked to them about making incense in a very good mood.
"Once I've made the incense, ladies and aunts, just come over and take a look. It's definitely better than what's sold outside. Once it's lit, the whole house will be filled with fragrance. If you like any, just take it home!"
These words made the four sisters-in-law smile happily, and they agreed to come and see it when the time comes.
While they were chatting and laughing, the four millstones kept making noise until noon, and they never stopped during that time. The four sisters-in-law worked very diligently.
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