ebookland Chapter 395
Chapter 395
"Okay! We're here at Niujiao Village. You walk in front and lead the way for us!" Zhong Laosan pushed the woman rudely, motioning her to walk in front of him.
The woman walked forward with her head down in silence. She had not eaten a grain of rice or drunk a drop of water since yesterday noon. It was not easy for her to walk such a long distance.
When they reached a somewhat dilapidated mud house, the woman stopped and did not move forward.
Boss Zhong asked, "Is this your home?"
Just as he finished speaking, the door of the mud house was suddenly pushed open, and an excited man came out.
"Xiaoqiu!"
The woman looked up at him, but was quickly pulled away by Zhong Laosan and others.
The three Zhong brothers, Zhao Ganwei, and the villagers all came over and asked, "Are you this woman's husband?"
The man nodded honestly, "Yes, I am." He wanted to help the woman up, but was stopped.
"It's good that it's yours." Zhao Ganwei came forward and asked, "Do you know why your wife ran to our village?"
He seemed a little ashamed and a little distressed, "He stole the child."
When she mentioned the child, two lines of tears suddenly fell from the woman's expressionless face, and she sobbed, "Niuniu, my Niuniu."
Everyone present looked at each other and fell silent, waiting to see how they would explain.
Before the man could speak, the people in Niujiao Village saw so many strangers suddenly coming to the village and had already notified the village chief, who had just arrived.
"Village Chief Zhao! What are you doing?" He looked at the group of people following Zhao Ganwei and his heart was beating fast. He knew that Xinghua Village had received rewards from the county magistrate some time ago, and he even went to the banquet. Why did they come here in such a threatening manner now?
When he learned that people from his own village had come to Xinghua Village to steal children, he couldn't stop sweating and said with a wry smile:
"This woman is indeed wrong, she deserves to be beaten! I will let her husband teach her a lesson later, but since this incident has already happened today, although the child is fine, it is indeed frightened. How about asking her husband to pay a few taels of silver to nourish the child? Everyone, do you think this is okay?"
Zhong Laoer whispered something to Zhao Ganwei, and finally the two sides reached an agreement. The woman's family had to pay five taels of silver as compensation and was not allowed to go to Xinghua Village again. They were asked to keep an eye on their crazy woman.
Perhaps she didn't expect the matter to be resolved so easily. She felt unbelievable when the man gave her the money. Is that all? Didn't he ask for too much?
When everyone came back and told the Zhong family what they had just heard in Niujiao Village, they all fell silent.
"I just asked secretly. The woman was not crazy a few years ago. She gave birth to a daughter. Her parents-in-law and husband are all good to her. Her husband was a hunter at first, but later he changed his profession and became a butcher because of something wrong."
The person who was speaking was my aunt. She also went to Niujiao Village this morning and asked around.
My cousin's wife sighed, "The incident happened because her husband killed a lone wolf cub in the winter, and used the fur to make a scarf for his one-year-old child. As a result, the wolf came to the house to take revenge, and took the child away when no one was home. When they found him, they said that only the head was left, and there were wolf footprints all around."
This is really...
Everyone was silent. It was right that the hunter loved his daughter, so he killed the lone wolf cub and skinned her to keep her warm. But how could the wolf let it go after its cub was killed?
If you kill my child, I will kill yours too!
It's just a pity for the child and the woman. The dead one has no consciousness anymore, and the living one is crazy all day long, and says that any child she sees is her daughter.
Everyone present sighed. After hearing this, Liu Yu Niang hugged her daughter even tighter, feeling a little sad for the child.
After this incident, Zhao Ganwei spread the word that no one who came to see the plaque would be allowed in, and he also asked several children to watch out at the entrance of the village and tell them to tell anyone who came in.
The construction of the ancestral hall has begun on a certain day. This will benefit the entire village, and even though there will be no wages, everyone will come to help.
But two meals a day were provided, so most of the villagers who could come came. Those who could not come were those whose families could not do without their farmland. After all, there were still several agricultural officials. We couldn't just let them come and watch the villagers build houses, right?
Zhao Ganwei felt that it was not good to have too many people coming in one day, so he drew up a list. Whoever's turn it was would come today, except for a few necessary people who could not be replaced, such as those who built walls and moved bricks, who could take a turn once a day.
In this way, the ancestral hall began to take shape day by day.
Chen Dongzhi is the only middle-aged man in the Chen family, and he happens to have to go out to run a business for the escort agency.
"Go ahead, go ahead. Don't delay. We still have things to do at home." Zhong's father waved his hand. His son-in-law still had to work in the escort agency. He couldn't stay in the village forever. Anyway, whichever family had problems would take over. Even if he couldn't do it, he still had three sons to do it!
His family members also told him to go without worry, saying it was not a big deal, and the ancestral hall would still have to be rebuilt without him.
Chen Dongzhi left early the next morning. This time he had to go to Jinzhou to deliver silk. Fortunately, the weather was good recently. If it had rained, he might not be able to get this order.
No one knows what the two agricultural officials in the orchard have been doing recently. They are mysterious and won't tell me when asked.
One time, when Zhong Ruyi went to the orchard to secretly water the fruit trees, she accidentally discovered that there were about ten apple trees tied with cloth strips. When she got closer, she found that the cloth strips tightly bound the gaps between the peach trees and the apple trees together.
"What are you doing?" she asked curiously.
Yu Wei had changed into a coarse cloth shirt. She was holding a bucket of manure in her hand and pouring it under the fruit tree with a cloth strip tied under her nose.
"..."
Zhong Ruyi could hardly remember what it was like when these agricultural officials first arrived. It seemed to her that these people were sent down by their superiors to farm the land.
For example, Mr. Huang has leased ten acres of land and is betting with several old masters in the village whether the crops grown on these ten acres of land can double when he leaves next year.
"If what you say is true, then why doesn't the emperor allow us to plant this way?" Sixth Uncle was the first to jump out to object. In his mind, it was completely impossible to say that these powerless agricultural officials were more capable than them, who had been farming for their entire lives, and that they grew better crops.
Mr. Huang raised his chin high, "To be honest, I also worked in the fields to make a living before I became an official! So I think that applying fertilizer like this can double the crop yield!"
"This?" Yu Wei looked up and saw Zhong Ruyi pointing at the cloth strip that she, Zheng Shu, Ji Jiang and the others had just tied yesterday.
"Didn't we say a while ago that we wanted to try to exchange and graft fruit trees? So we selected ten fruit trees and peach, apricot and grape trees to see if it would work."
Zhong Ruyi's mouth twitched. How dare you think! If the grafting is successful, who knows what kind of fruit will grow.