Chapter 277: Stingy
Li Shunzi felt his face swelling. He didn't expect that Gu Lianshan was really so heartless.
"It's getting late, and the roads are difficult to walk on in the heavy snow. I won't keep you here. We can talk later."
Gu Lianshan had been holding back his anger, and he was already giving the guest face by not getting angry and cursing on the spot. Now he just wanted to get the guest away.
When Li Shunzi heard these words, he felt that he looked down on him and was about to tear off his face and step on it!
He stood up stiffly, his face unconsciously darkening.
Gu Lianshan ignored him and got up and went back to the west room.
The host family has all fled, and it would be shameless to stay here.
Li Shunzi's face was gloomy and he walked out.
After everyone left the house, Gu Tang suddenly said, "I'll go see you off. I have to close the gate later."
Third Uncle waved at her, signaling her to just go.
Lifting the curtain, Gu Tang followed eagerly.
Li Shunzi was walking very fast, obviously very angry. In order to catch up with him, Gu Tang ran.
When the gate was opened, they finally caught up with the man.
"Uncle, don't be angry. You know my father has this kind of temper. If you get angry with him, I'm afraid you will be angry forever."
Hearing Gu Tang's words, Li Shunzi stopped and said, "Your father seemed fine before, but he has become a completely different person since he was adopted!
It's fine that you've completely forgotten your grandparents, but you've even turned against your brother who's studying for the imperial examinations!"
Gu Tang rolled his eyes secretly and said, "I said you were fat and you're out of breath?"
"Uncle, let's put my father's affairs aside for now. I want to ask you something else..."
At this point, her voice suddenly dropped. "Just now you said... you could take me to find my mother. Is that true?"
Li Shunzi paused, his mind moved, and he looked aside with a flickering look in his eyes: "If you want to go, then I have to talk to your mother in advance. Your mother is heartbroken by you. Although she misses you terribly, she is still angry with you. She wants to see you but doesn't want to see you..."
Gu Tang nodded obediently: "I can understand that. Please take some time to ask for me."
"When I go to pick up the bride tomorrow, I'll find a chance to go to Bei'an City and ask for you."
"Oh! Then I'd like to thank you in advance, uncle! By the way, where does my mother live now? Is she doing well?"
Li Shunzi misunderstood Gu Tang's words again. He thought Gu Tang was worried about Zhang and couldn't help feeling happy.
He said, "Your mother now lives in Mao'er Hutong, West Street, Bei'an City. The old lady of the Lin family died of illness, and the people of Linjia Village have always wanted to occupy your mother's house.
Your mother was forced into a corner and had no choice but to take your elder brother and sister to hide in Bei'an City, hoping to wait until your elder brother became a scholar before returning to the village."
High school scholar?
Another person who wants to make a comeback through the imperial examination.
Gu Tang laughed: "The Lin family has produced a scholar before, so it's no problem to produce another one."
"That's right, the three of them, mother and son, are living such a hard life!"
Li Shunzi sighed repeatedly, looking distressed on the surface, but secretly glanced at Gu Tang, wanting to see how Gu Tang would react.
"Your mother is having a hard time, I'm sure you feel bad for her too..."
Feeling distressed?
Gu Tang blinked. Yes, she was so heartbroken. She felt sorry that Zhang was still alive!
"Uncle knows that you have the ability to earn money. Now your mother is in need of money. Please give me the money you have saved. I will take the money and then give it to your mother."
Gu Tang was silent for a while. Did this person think she was stupid?
Can you make money by just saying some nice words?
"Uncle, didn't my mother tell you the truth? All the money I saved was stolen by my mother and my aunt! In winter, we can't go up the mountain, so my income has long been cut off. Now all I spend is the money saved by my old man."
"It doesn't matter if you don't have money. You can just give her food and clothes. Take the nice clothes in your house, the grain, oil, salt, and the chickens and ducks in your backyard, and give them to your mother."
Gu Tang: ...She seriously suspected that what Li Shunzi said was not what Zhang wanted, but what he wanted himself!
Is this taking advantage of the situation to make a quick buck?
Gu Tang calmly refused again: "Uncle, the chickens and ducks at home are all limited. I dare not take them. Clothes are also not an option. I only have two new clothes in total. They are all in my father's honor. I can't give them away easily!"
She knew exactly where Zhang lived, so Li Shunzi was useless. Did he want to gain benefits from her?
Bah! You can't even dream of it!
I said so much, but this damn girl didn't agree to a single thing!
Li Shunzi was so angry that his liver hurt!
Gu Tang ignored all this and immediately went ahead and said, "Look at me, I was so busy talking to you that I didn't notice it was getting dark. Uncle, I won't see you off. Take care."
Before he finished speaking, there was a "bang" and Gu Tang closed the gate neatly.
Li Shunzi's face darkened instantly, and he almost burst into a curse!
After a long while, he suppressed his anger and walked towards the end of the village with one step deep and one step shallow.
The Gu family at the end of the village was unusually lively at this moment. A dozen women and men were eating around the stove in the porch. The pot on the stove was bubbling with white steam, and the pot contained pickled vegetables and stewed pork.
It is said to be stewed pork with pickled vegetables, but in fact there are only five or six slices of meat in the pot, and the rest are all pickled vegetables that are fishy, bitter and salty.
These pickled vegetables were stewed in water for a long time. They were soft and rotten like rotten persimmons in the mouth, making them even more difficult to swallow.
As for the five or six slices of pork, they were almost cooked and then picked up by someone with quick hands.
There were ten people in total, including women and men, and only half of them tasted the meat. The others could only satisfy their cravings by boiling pickled vegetables, which were boiled with the meat for quite a while after all.
When Li Shunzi came over, everyone was shocked. Another person came to steal the food!
The Gu family is so stingy. They only gave each of the ten of them a whole-grain pancake, and there was only one pot of stewed pickles for them to share.
It’s just a small amount, not even enough to fill me half full.
Li Shunzi came here at this moment, which meant he had not eaten yet. There was no doubt that he came to share the food in their bowls.
Sure enough, Mr. Gu, who heard the noise, came out from the east wing. After seeing Li Shunzi, he subconsciously said a few polite words.
"Shunzi! Have you eaten yet? If not, go to the kitchen and get yourself some bowls and chopsticks. There's pickled vegetables and pork stew on the stove! It smells so good!"
Everyone who heard this secretly rolled their eyes!
Looking at Li Shunzi, everyone was picking up food with chopsticks faster than each other.
Li Shunzi was completely unaware and thought that the pork stewed with pickled vegetables was actually a pot of pork stewed in it, and his mouth immediately started watering.
He smiled and replied, "Okay! I'll get the dishes and chopsticks right away!"
He squeezed through the crowd to the kitchen, took a set of bowls and chopsticks, and then squeezed out again.
He wanted to squeeze over to the stove to eat, and thought it would be difficult to squeeze through. Unexpectedly, when he tried to move over, the women and men who were gathered together immediately made way for him.
Li Shunzi was confused: "Are you all full?"
"I'm full, I'm full..." Everyone had a wooden face, and they kept regretting in their hearts.
During the day, they shouldn't have agreed to come to the Gu family to help just for a few free meals.
The women came to help prepare the food for tomorrow's banquet, while the men went to pick up the bride.
The road is long and it is snowing. Tomorrow they have to propose marriage and pick up the new bride. Finally, they have to bring back the betrothal gifts and the new bride's dowry. These people plus Li Shunzi will just be enough.
Before they came, they also knew that the old couple of the Gu family were not generous and were rather stingy in their behavior. They originally thought that since this was Master Tongsheng's marriage, they couldn't be as stingy as before, right?
But I didn't expect that the Gu family is still as stingy as ever!
Li Shunzi blew away the white steam on the pot, and was about to pick up the meat with his chopsticks with a smile on his face, but he found that there were only a few pickled vegetables left in the pot that had not been cooked yet!
The smile froze on his face, and he held out his half-extended chopsticks, not knowing whether to put them down or not.
He stared blankly at the few pickled vegetables in the pot, completely confused as to what was going on.
Where's the meat?!
Mr. Gu just mentioned that pickled vegetables were stewed with pork, but now he saw neither pork nor much pickled vegetables.
Could it have been eaten up by these people in front of me?
Li Shunzi was very dissatisfied and glared at them.
Before he could open his mouth to question her, one of the women suddenly stepped forward and whispered, "We didn't eat much! There are only five slices of meat in this pot! The rest are all pickled vegetables. Even with that, we're not full. There are about ten of us, and each of us has a palm-sized pancake to eat with this pot of pickled vegetables. We're not even half full..."
Li Shunzi: "...Since you can't even eat enough, why don't you talk to Mr. Gu about it?"
"I said it, but it's no use. They just pretended not to listen and kept doing what they were supposed to do."
Li Shunzi: ...???
The woman continued, "We were discussing what dishes to serve for tomorrow's banquet, as the Gu family has nothing. What do you think they would say?"
“…How do you mean?”
"People say that we should serve whatever dishes are available tomorrow. Since it's snowing heavily outside, we won't invite relatives from other villages. We can only entertain relatives and friends from our own village.
He said everyone in the village knew his family was having a hard time, that they had two scholars at home, and that their lives were much harder than those of outsiders... In short, he was shameless!
The other woman spat on the ground. "If I had known it would be like this, I would never have come today! I'll be away tomorrow for something! If you care about your reputation, come by yourselves. I'm not coming anyway!"
After saying this, the woman actually picked up the bamboo hat hanging on the wall, put it on, and went home without looking back.
Everyone had different expressions, but no one spoke to stop her and let the woman leave.
Li Shunzi was already full of anger, and now seeing Mr. Gu and Gu Liansheng acting like this, he threw down his bowl and chopsticks and advised everyone to go back first.
"Let's all go back and see what they say tomorrow."
With a leader, everyone quickly dispersed.
Li Shunzi also returned home, but he was hungry.
Mr. Gu and Gu Liansheng in the east wing didn't know that all the people they had asked for help had run away.
The father and son locked the door and there was a large plate of braised meat on the table inside.
These were bought from Beian City before, and now these are all that are left.
Gu Liansheng had been craving for food recently, so he simply asked his father to cut it all up, and then brought it all to his room. He also brought in a jar of wine, and the father and son locked the door and sat together to drink.
Perhaps because they were so happy, the father and son drank up the entire jar of wine.
Neither the father nor the son could drink much. After drinking a jar of wine, they both fell drunk on the bed.
Fortunately, Gu Liansheng’s bed was spacious enough to accommodate both father and son.
It was just that Feng had been starving all night.
No matter how she shouted, the father and son in the east wing were like dead pigs, and neither of them woke up.
…
Gu Lianshan and his son Gu Ping'an, who were obsessed with making incense, woke Gu Tang up early in the morning and asked her to continue teaching them how to make incense.
Gu Tang was so annoyed by them that he had no choice but to start teaching them again while breathing heavily.
After teaching for about an hour, Gu Tang let them practice slowly on their own while she went back to the house to clean up the ash.
The stove had not been cleaned for several days. When she got up in the morning, she deliberately turned off the stove and waited until the temperature inside the stove dropped before cleaning it.
There was a small broom at home specifically for cleaning the ash. Gu Tang put on an apron, took out a homemade sleeve and put it on his arms, then began to clean the ash.
All the ashes swept out are placed in a basket. After the stove is cleaned, the ashes are taken out of the yard and dumped out.
The snow was much lighter today, so there was no need to wear a hat. Gu Tang carried the basket, opened the gate and walked out.
Probably because the snow was light at the moment, many families opened their doors, and everyone was dumping ashes outside. A few families even cleared a narrow walkway in their own yards.
After Gu Tang poured out the ashes, she did not go back. After all, she was dressed warmly and wore a rabbit fur hat on her head. She stood at the gate of the yard, watching her neighbors busying themselves with relish, and found that several families were clearing snow from their roofs.
She looked back at her roof, which her father had cleaned in the morning.
"Tang girl."
A familiar woman's voice came from the east.
Gu Tang turned his head and saw that it was the clan leader's wife, Yang.
She hurried to greet him: "Grandma, where are you going in such a cold day?"
Yang pointed to the end of the village and said, "Something happened to your grandparents up ahead. Your uncles and aunts have gone there. I was worried, so I decided to go over and take a look."
"Something happened?" Gu Tang was shocked. "What happened? Didn't my cousin say he was going to pick up his new wife today? How could something go wrong?"
"I don't know much about this either. This morning, a clan member came home and said something happened to the Gu family at the end of the village. Your uncle didn't ask any further questions, but hurriedly took people to the end of the village..."
"In that case, I won't invite you to tea. I'll wait until you come back from the village and then have a few more cups of tea."
"Okay, okay! When I get back from the end of the village, I'll definitely come to you for tea!"
Yang laughed and continued walking towards the end of the village.
Gu Tang stared at her back for a while, then returned to the yard and went to the main hall to tell the old man and his third uncle what Yang had said.
After hearing this, Gu Lianshan didn't take it to heart at all: "With a family of old, weak, and disabled people, what could possibly happen?"
"The clan leader and the others have gone. Logically, we are real relatives there. If we didn't know about it, it would be fine. But now that we know about it, if we don't show up and take a look, will people say anything?"
Gu Tang wanted to join in the fun. It was too boring at home. It was rare to have something fun to watch, so she wanted to go and take a look.
Gu Lianshan shook his head: "Dad is busy and has no time. Whoever wants to talk can talk!"
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