New Year
The letter was addressed to the Clothing Group, and the recipient was Chu Ming. The letter contained New Year's greetings, praised their outstanding talent in clothing, thanked them for their help throughout the year, and ended with another blessing, with a message expressing hope for continued interaction in the coming year.
He quickly scanned the letter, finding nothing amiss, and Meng Yan felt relieved as he took the thick stack of letters. But as he opened it, he suddenly felt uneasy.
"It's okay, Sister Yan." Chu Ming patted her back to encourage her. "If you see anyone talking nonsense, I'll throw them out of the valley for you. Just pretend you didn't see them."
No wonder they're such good sisters!
Meng Yan opened the letter that was placed on top, which was unusual in terms of paper quality alone. To his surprise, the sender was the wealthy man.
"I should have realized it sooner if I had touched the paper, but I just can't quite understand it." She and Chu Ming touched the gold dust off the letter from the wealthy man, smeared it on their hands, and then rubbed it on each other's noses.
The content of the letter was similar to that of Chu Ming's, containing greetings and blessings, a summary of the year, and a look forward to the coming year.
Although the words carried no emotion, the appearance of the letter was enough to delight the two girls. Each clutching their own letter, the two girls happily went back to call for help.
.
"Junior Sister Yan, why did you summon us here in such a hurry?"
"I don't know, the mechanical sparrow scurried over with a creak, and I arrived in a flash."
"Senior sister, didn't Junior Sister Yan tell you beforehand?"
"No, I also came here after receiving the order from the government agency."
Meng Yan entered the room with her head held high, handing out letters to everyone one by one. When one round wasn't enough, she went back and handed them out a second time. Everyone held two or three sheets of paper, stunned, anxious yet afraid to open them.
"Open them with confidence, and have a happy New Year after reading them!" Meng Yan waved his hand and took the lead in opening the letters.
Upon seeing the signature on the letter, she was taken aback, which made her senior brothers and sisters feel uneasy. They pointed to the character "翁" and asked her which enemy she was.
“He’s not an enemy.” She looked at everyone in surprise, wondering what kind of person she was in their eyes. “He taught me how to weave fishing nets, and I consulted him several times when I was making improvements. He was an approachable old gentleman.”
"Why did you react so strongly? You scared us. We thought our enemy had sent a challenge to our doorstep."
Meng Yan rolled her eyes at her senior brother who had spoken, and said, "Read less idle articles, and I hope everyone will give me some good feedback."
She spread the letter in the center of the crowd, making ripples on the water, and passed around the seashells she had brought with her. After the colorful shells were returned to her hand, she gently stroked them once before saying, "Because Old Man Weng lives by the sea, even if he flew there in a kite, it would take him one or two hours to fly there."
Wouldn't that take several days to travel? In addition, there are mountains and forests in between, so even a familiar messenger would probably have to travel for ten days or half a month.
Considering all this, this letter must have been prepared well in advance, and the round trip must have cost quite a bit of money. It really took a lot of effort.
The others were also stirred, and they followed suit, opening the letter to read it.
As expected, they were all new friends I had made this year, some near and some far, some difficult and some prestigious. I put my thoughts into the letters and delivered them to them at the beginning of the new year.
"My eyes are so sore," Senior Brother Hao said hoarsely.
Meng Yan pulled out a few pens and rolled them down the table into their hands: "Don't get tired of them yet, get tired of your hands first."
The group, who had been temporarily gathered in the courtyard, were unable to leave for half a day. Only when the dim sunset shone on the pages of paper did they relax and hand over the letters with their addresses written on them to Meng Yan.
During the brief respite of grabbing a bite to eat in the kitchen, Meng Yan collected several stacks of letters from the other courtyard, sorted them according to their different directions, and then, along with the others who had volunteered to go out, each received their orders and headed off into the distance under the cover of night.
.
After dinner, the small courtyard of the government office was bustling with people whispering among themselves. Everyone complained about the trouble of writing and replying to letters, but their hands never stopped changing the paper they were writing.
"Speaking of which, why haven't we heard from our partners? This is the biggest order of the year, and they haven't even bothered to send a greeting," Senior Brother Hao criticized, pouting as he was the first to read all the letters.
“You’ve received some letters, that’s all you can do.” Li Li looked up from the paper, retorted, and then found it amusing. “If it weren’t for them, would we have known there were these steps before the festival? Looking at how deserted we were in the past, I imagine they were in the same situation when they couldn’t sell their talismans. Since this is their first time, how would they know they would have to exchange letters?”
Senior Brother Hao was shaking his head and not listening to the lecture. After he finished speaking, he slapped his thigh and said anxiously, "Oh no, I was just talking about it and forgot to write to them."
The other senior students paused, their faces showing the same helplessness: "I forgot too."
Li Li quickly calmed everyone down: "Don't panic, don't panic. Junior Sister Yan wrote it. She's not like us rough guys who only know how to answer questions. With her here, you can rest assured."
Meng Yan sneezed while sitting in the warm mechanical kite, rubbed his nose and patted his face, checked that the fire talisman mechanism inside the cabin was still working, and continued delivering the letter with a puzzled look.
.
A deafening explosion rang out from the sky, startling the chickens on the hilltop, making the geese in the stream choke on their saliva, and causing crackling sounds everywhere. Children ran around laughing, spreading the smell of gunpowder throughout the valley.
During holidays and festivals, the kitchen staff would work themselves to the bone, their eyes heavy with fatigue and dark circles, standing there all day long, turning the spatula and ladle, turning the wok, turning around people who came to sneak a bite or help out, and getting dizzy from not moving themselves.
"I think there's still a lot of room for the organization to put their ideas into practice," my senior colleague blurted out out of nowhere while chopping vegetables.
"Are you planning to run off to the neighborhood and start from scratch?"
"No, I think they could fix up some of the kitchen equipment for chopping vegetables and cooking, so that we can get rid of our hard times sooner."
With a sigh, the daytime was over, and the snow wisely stopped falling, saving everyone the trouble of cleaning the tables and chairs.
At the dining table, plates were piled up seamlessly, steam rising and billowing, outlining smiling faces in the hazy light. People toasted each other, clinking glasses and enjoying themselves immensely.
"Come on! Drink!"
Meng Yan doesn't drink alcohol, and she had planned to pull Chu Ming and Senior Sister Zhang away to a table with the children. Looking at the bland and tasteless soup, the light in her eyes dimmed a bit.
"Sister Yan Yan!" Chu Ming called softly, handing her something in her hand.
Looking down, I saw a plate of stir-fried chili peppers, glistening with oil, the rim of the plate still warm, indicating it had just been cooked.
"Where did these good things come from? I'll go steal a few more and bring them back," Meng Yan said, gesturing restrainedly.
As the two talked, they lowered themselves further and further down, and soon they would be hiding under the table. Senior Sister Zhang couldn't keep up the act any longer, so she rescued them from the man-eating chairs and brought them back to the table. When she saw the red vegetables they were holding, her eyebrows twitched.
Meng Yan reacted quickly: "The table next door couldn't finish their food and sent it over. We didn't intend to accept it. We just looked at it, smelled it, and returned it."
Senior Sister Zhang pressed her active brow and waved her hand, indicating that they shouldn't return it and should keep it for themselves.
Amidst the constant sounds of drinking games, the three men and the children raised their porcelain bowls and celebrated the New Year with clear soup.
"Ding-dong!"
Yue Lang withdrew his hand, picked up the wine cup and drank it all in one gulp. He then shook the empty cup at his junior brothers and refilled it amidst their shouts.
"Senior Brother Yue is so magnanimous!"
"Brother Yue has such great courage!"
"Senior Brother Yue is one in a million!"
He flattened his praise, pretended to slip while holding the wine cup, and cleaned it again, saying casually, "It's just so-so. As the senior brother, that's how it should be."
Three or five feet away, Li Li, who was also a senior brother, had already collapsed, his eyelids seemingly sewn shut, drunk and oblivious to the world, having spent several years in his dreams.
"Senior Brother Li? Senior Brother Li! Li Li!"
Yue Lang shook his senior brother's neck, gradually increasing the speed of his movements, from a few pokes to two slaps, finally pulling him back from his slumber.
"Hmm... ah?"
Even replying to half of them is excellent.
He dragged and pulled Li Li up on his back, carrying him towards the ancestral hall while explaining what they were going to do.
"Huh? Praying for blessings? Who? Me?"
Yue Lang stumbled, nearly plunging into a snowdrift, which inadvertently brought back some of the other person's senses.
"Is it my turn to pray for blessings this year?" Li Li raised his head slightly, only to feel a sharp pain, and then slumped back down. "Oh no, I'm afraid the ancestral master will show his power."
"What can a miracle do? Set your bones? Or wake you up?"
"They can scold me, right? At worst, I'll complain to my master. A bunch of old men will give me a lecture, what else can they do to me?"
Yue Lang said "Oh," and asked him, "Then what are you afraid of?"
"Then what am I afraid of?" he murmured to himself, and after thinking for a long time, he came to an answer: "Out of respect for my predecessors and the mental pressure my master exerts on his disciples."
Yue Lang: "..." I shouldn't have tried to communicate with a drunk person.
Seeing the ancestral hall standing brightly in front of him, Yue Lang patted Li Li on the shoulder to chase away his sleepiness and said in a kind voice, "I have a favor to ask of you, will you do it?"
"You go first."
"You answer first."
"Go on, say it." Li Li helped him straighten his clothes, making himself look a bit like the senior brother.
Yue Lang straightened his clothes and tidied him up until he looked presentable. Seeing that he was mostly awake, he said, "When we're praying for blessings, besides our own people, could you help me send someone else along?"
Li Li pointed to his index finger, suddenly understanding: "I understand, Miss Meng Yan, right? It's nothing, leave it to your senior brother!"
Can you add more?
"Anything else?" Li Li's lips twitched, unable to decipher his junior brother's meaning, but he still wanted to steer him back on track: "Feelings are never something to be taken lightly, Yue Lang! To be of one heart with one person is fate, to be with many people is..."
Yue Lang pinched his mouth to forcefully interrupt him: "Add an old man, whose wife and children died early, leaving him all alone to guard the house. At night, he can hear the wind and rain, but he can't hear any human voices."
Li Li, having returned to a serious demeanor from the lecture, nodded in agreement and limped into the ancestral hall, leaving Yue Lang and Banshan Fengxue outside the wall.
The candles in the ancestral hall were suddenly lit, and the prayers began. At the same time, snowflakes began to fall gently.
Yue Lang seemed oblivious, standing solemnly like a mountain, intently gazing at the ancestral hall. The sting of the wine quickly wore off, and his hands and feet gradually lost warmth from the wind. Snowflakes landed on his eyebrows and hair, instantly turning into water droplets that disappeared under the cover of those behind him.
He stood there for as long as the fire burned, and only when the light in the ancestral hall dimmed slightly did he move his stiff limbs and, with his body covered in white smoke, return to the house.
If it is something one should do oneself, how can one entrust it to someone else? Only by doing one's best can one be without shame.
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