A person emerged from the crowd and said, “Sister-in-law Song, let me hitch a ride with you back home.”
When the woman surnamed Song saw that it was a fellow villager, she was delighted. “That’s perfect, come here quickly.”
Seeing this, the slave trader forced Meng Wan onto the carriage and led the horse behind the woman surnamed Song.
The woman surnamed Song greeted the villagers, “Sixth brother’s wife, why did you buy so many things?”
The sixth brother’s wife was short and stout, but quick and agile. She placed the two heavy baskets she was carrying on the cart shaft. She spoke to the woman surnamed Song, saying, “The matchmaker is coming tomorrow with her entourage; we must buy some meat and vegetables to entertain them.”
Since the slave trader was a foreign man, the two women put their things on the cart and followed it on their own, chatting as they went. Rural women walk fast, so they wouldn’t be unable to walk such a short distance, but having a ready-made cart to put their things on made things easier.
Upon hearing this, the woman surnamed Song paused in her tracks. “A matchmaker for your eldest son? Which family’s daughter would you choose?”
The sixth son’s wife slapped her thigh and said loudly, “Hey, what girl would want our family? It’s a young man from Yangshu Village next door. Speaking of which, he’s Bao’s cousin, the son of his third aunt.”
The woman surnamed Song’s expression changed, and she quickened her pace. “Let’s hurry back, my family hasn’t started cooking yet.”
The sixth brother’s wife was outspoken and blurted out her words without thinking. She mentioned the Yang family in the next village, which immediately displeased Sister-in-law Song.
She hurriedly tried to salvage the situation, saying, “Sister-in-law, this young man you bought is really tall and slender, but his face is covered in mud. I wonder what he looks like?”
She had been watching the commotion in the crowd, and she didn’t approve of Sister-in-law Song spending so much money to buy a young man. She didn’t know his background, and if he ran away, all the money would be wasted. Eight taels of silver—wouldn’t it be better to find a girl in the village who would bear children? Young men are inherently difficult to conceive with. Look at that young man, so thin and tall, except for a little flesh on his buttocks, he was practically skin and bones. Would her proud and arrogant son even be interested in him?
Mentioning Meng Wan softened Sister Song’s expression somewhat. “I heard from the slave trader that he can read and write, and he can even talk to my son Tingzhou.”
Upon hearing this, the slave trader quickly interjected, “More than that! This young man is a second-class servant of a young lady from a wealthy family. He is not only literate, but also skilled in needlework and clothing making.”
After hearing this in the car, Meng Wan’s anxiety finally died.
Yes, go ahead and blow, blow as hard as you can. You’ll just run away after you’re done, and you won’t care whether I live or die, right?
The carriage used by human traffickers was different from ordinary carriages; it was sealed off on three sides with no windows, leaving only a small door facing the carriage shaft. Now, because it was too hot, the curtain was rolled up.
The woman surnamed Song would glance at Meng Wan every now and then, but Meng Wan was heartbroken and pretended not to see her. Other people who transmigrated were either generals, kings, noblemen, or even commoners!
Why was he the one who was betrayed at the beginning? Meng Wan lowered his head and cried bitterly, but he cried without making a sound; all that could be seen were large tears falling down his face.
The woman surnamed Song caught a glimpse of it and felt a pang of pity, but with outsiders present, she kept quiet and quickened her pace.
The two women covered an hour journey in about forty minutes because they were not carrying any weight.
The sixth brother’s wife lived near the village entrance. She took her things home first, and before entering, she exchanged a few pleasantries with the woman surnamed Song. “Sister-in-law Song, if my eldest son makes an appointment, I’d like to invite you over for a drink.”
The woman surnamed Song remained expressionless. “Of course, you must come to my Tingzhou’s wedding banquet too.”
”Hey!”
The carriage moved forward a few more steps before being stopped by a woman surnamed Song. She said to the slave trader, “You wait here. I’m going home to get the money. If anyone asks, just say it’s for a relative of mine.”
Those in this line of work are all shrewd. The broker understood immediately upon hearing this: the buyer didn’t want people to know that the young man had been bought, fearing gossip and trouble from the villagers.
After giving her instructions, the woman surnamed Song went home. She took out eight taels of silver from the hidden money box, carefully weighed it three times with the small scale at home, and then put it in a piece of cloth and tucked it into her bosom.
When the slave trader saw her return from afar, he knew she had collected the money. He immediately urged Meng Wan to get off the carriage, took out the indenture from his pocket, and handed it over to the woman surnamed Song after receiving the money. Before leaving, he said, “Young man, this is your master’s house from now on. Go and live a good life with them.”
Meng Wan lowered his head. In ancient times, villages were very united. If someone was bought and ran away, the whole village would mobilize to catch him. Even if he ran away, he had no household registration and could only be considered a vagrant, which was even lower than a slave.
The world is vast, and this small mountain village seems to be the best place for me to stay right now. I wonder if this family is easy to get along with.
”My surname is Chang, and my given name is Jinhua, but my husband’s surname is Song. You’ll call me Aunt Song now, but in a few days you’ll have to call me Mother.” Chang Jinhua looked to be in her forties or fifties, not very tall, and rather thin. She wore a dark blue coarse cloth dress, without patches, but faded from washing. She had an oval face, a sallow complexion, and her hair was neatly combed, seemingly oiled, shiny black. Deep furrows were between her brows, and the corners of her mouth drooped down, as if she rarely joked.
She didn’t mince words; some things needed to be made clear now. She couldn’t possibly not feel the pinch after spending eight taels of silver, especially if she really married someone who couldn’t see the bigger picture…
As if recalling something upsetting, Chang Jinhua’s face darkened. She pulled Meng Wan away, eager to go home. Her grip was strong, perhaps unconsciously, but it still made Meng Wan’s wrist ache.
The more they tried to hide it from others, the more likely they were to run into fellow villagers on the road.
”Sister-in-law Song, where did you come from? And why are you dragging a young man along?”
She bumped into a young man wearing a coarse old shirt and struck up a conversation with Chang Jinhua.
Meng Wan can now distinguish between men and “ge’er” (a term for male carriers). Most “ge’er” are more delicate and slender than men, though there are exceptions. Similarly, some women are rough-looking, but these are very few.
Of course, this difference is not enough to distinguish between men and ge’er. After all, there are also men who are sickly but beautiful. The reason why ge’er can conceive is that they have pregnancy moles in obvious places on their bodies. Most of the pregnancy moles of ge’er are on their faces, and they are bright red, varying in size and depth.
The young man in front of me was around twenty years old. He had a birthmark on his chin, a dark red one, about the size of a grain of rice, and slightly shriveled.
Meng Wan had never looked in a mirror and didn’t know where his pregnancy mole was. Despite his disheveled appearance, others could see it at a glance.
Even when Chang Jinhua greets people, she has a stern face. “My second brother’s wife, I’m back from town and heading home to cook.”
The spouse of the second brother is a member of the Song clan—specifically, the spouse of Chang Jinhua’s late husband’s male cousin. The Song family was a prominent family in Sanquan Village, not in the sense of being wealthy, but in the sense of having many branches of the family. In addition to the Song family, there were also many people with the surname Tian in Sanquan Village, as well as a few people with other surnames who were often ostracized.
In this era, the more male members a family had, the more prosperous it was considered; if there were few male members, the family would be bullied and humiliated at will. The clan chief had great power, even surpassing that of the village chief.
The clan leader can command all the men in the clan with a single call.
However, not everyone in the clan was wealthy. Except for landlords, everyone in the village worked very hard, relying on the heavens for their livelihood. Moreover, the climate in the north was not as good as in the south, and only one crop of grain could be grown each year, making it even more barren. The towns were visibly less prosperous than those in the south.
Getting back to the main point, this cousin’s husband is named Zhang Xiaoyu. He married into the Song family from another village five years ago but hasn’t given birth to a child. Everyone knows that it’s difficult for a young man to have children, so there wasn’t much gossip. Instead, he was quite upset with himself. He usually loves to chat with the villagers, talking about this husband and that husband, as if he finds himself better off than others.
Zhang Xiaoyu pinched his nose and said, “Where did you bring this young man from, sister-in-law? Did he fall into a latrine or something? He’s so rude.”
Chang Jinhua’s expression didn’t change, but Meng Wan sensed that she seemed a little angry.
“This is a distant relative from my maternal side. Their family suffered a disaster, and they traveled a long way to come to me for help.”
”Oh dear, that’s really pitiful. How old is this child? Was a marriage already arranged back home? He came all alone to seek refuge with relatives. He didn’t run into any troublemakers along the way, did he?”
Meng Wan thought to himself, “No one is more clueless than you—can’t you see Aunt Song’s face is practically hitting the floor?”
Chang Jinhua snorted coldly, rolled up Meng Wan’s sleeve, and held up the virginity mark on his arm to Zhang Xiaoyu’s eyes.
“My nephew is an innocent young man. If anyone dares to spread any rumors, I will drag him to your house and have a word with Erlang. I will make him divorce you, you good-for-nothing who only talks nonsense!”
Zhang Xiaoyu’s face turned pale. “You!”
”What do you mean, ‘you’? Get out of the way—and make it quick!” Chang Jinhua grabbed Meng Wan and shoved him so hard he stumbled. She stormed off into her own yard, leaving Zhang Xiaoyu fuming and jumping up and down, but not yelling at Chang Jinhua.
”You just ran into that guy you called Second Aunt. In the future, don’t pay him any attention when you’re out in the village.”
Chang Jinhua pushed open the gate to her own courtyard and lectured Meng Wan as she walked. She had been widowed at a young age, and if she hadn’t been so ruthless, she and her child would have been devoured long ago.
Meng Wan, on the other hand, followed her around like a mentally challenged person. He had no choice but to play the innocent for now, as he was new to the place and didn’t know anything about it.
The courtyard was quite large and kept very tidy. Near the door grew a jujube tree with lush branches and leaves, and small, round, green jujubes hung all over its branches.
The main house for living has only four rooms. On the left is a large bedroom that occupies two rooms, in the middle is a kitchen and dining room, and the door on the right is closed, which should be a small bedroom.
The houses in the north of this world are different from those in the south. The kitchen is right inside the door, and there is no main room. The large bedroom on the left is a kang (heated brick bed) with a row of wooden cabinets on the floor. Several pieces of the cabinets are chipped off, so they must be quite old, but they are wiped clean and spotless.
There was only one set of bedding on the long kang (heated brick bed). Chang Jinhua took out another set of bedding from the cabinet. “Do you know how to start a fire? You can boil some bath water yourself later. There are wooden tubs and firewood in the yard.”
Meng Wan stared at her blankly. This time he wasn’t faking it. He grew up in a small county town and had never actually used a traditional earthen stove before.
Chang Jinhua placed the bedding on the kang (a heated brick bed), frowned at him, and said, “You don’t even know this? Come and learn.”
The thatched shed on the left side of the yard served as a woodshed, where dry firewood was usually stored. No matter how capable Chang Jinhua was, she was still just a woman, and chopping and cutting firewood was too strenuous for her. Therefore, she would cut some thin branches and gather them at home, which also made a small stack of firewood.
She pulled out a bundle of firewood, and this time Meng Wan took the firewood and carried it to the kitchen floor.
Chang Jinhua patted the ash off her clothes with satisfaction, went to her room, found a patched short jacket and cloth skirt to change into, and put the long skirt she had taken off into a wooden basin under the eaves. This coarse cloth skirt was her only decent piece of clothing. She usually wore it when going to town or visiting relatives during the New Year to make a good impression. She would wash it with clean water later and put it away at the bottom of the closet.
Squatting beside the earthen stove, she took a handful of dry pine branches and stuffed them into the firebox, lit them with a flint, and then threw in a few pieces of firewood to burn slowly. “Just add firewood little by little, don’t put too much in at once.”
Meng Wan understood it; it wasn’t difficult.
There are two stoves in the kitchen, one large and one small. The large stove is connected to the large dormitory bed in the master bedroom, and the small stove is connected to the small bedroom on the right.
”The small pot is used for cooking, the big pot is cleaned and used for boiling water, and there is water in the water tank at the door. You can scoop it out and add it to the pot yourself.”
Chang Jinhua took a large wooden bucket from the main house, opened the door of the small house, and put the bucket inside. “In a little while, boil some water, close the door, and wash yourself properly inside. Throw the dirty water into the ditch in the backyard.”
Meng Wan quickly agreed this time; he had long been fed up with the sour smell on his body!
After giving her instructions, Chang Jinhua sat on a large rock in the courtyard and carefully washed the clothes, then ignored him.
Meng Wan just wanted to take a shower as soon as possible. He quickly washed the pot, scooped water, and started the fire. Once the water boiled, he poured it into a wooden bucket and mixed it with cold water. He knew how dirty he was, so he used up all the hot water in no time. He even pretended to be timid and scooped half a spoonful into the wooden basin where Chang Jinhua was washing clothes.
”Why are you doing that for me? Go wash yourself.” Despite her words, the lines of Chang Jinhua’s face softened considerably; the reason she had spent the money to buy this young man was, after all, because she was nursing a deep-seated grievance.
Her eldest son preferred a boy, and they arranged a marriage when he was sixteen. The match was with Yangshu Village, which was very close to their Sanquan Village. The Yang family in Yangshu Village was also a prominent family. There was a son named Yang Bao’er, who was well-known in the surrounding area for his virtue and understanding. Most importantly, he was good-looking. He had also studied at his maternal grandparents’ house for two years when he was young, so he could read and embroider.
Song Tingzhou originally wanted to marry his husband after passing the imperial examination, but he failed the exam three times. As a result, the Yang family’s originally warm attitude became increasingly indifferent.
This year, Dalang finally agreed to the marriage, but the Yang family started making excuses again. Chang Jinhua felt something was wrong, and sure enough, two days later she heard that the Yang family’s son had gone to his maternal grandparents’ home in Guyang County.
At this critical moment, where did the young man her son was to marry go to? Chang Jinhua kept this in mind and asked around. Sure enough, she heard that Yang Bao’er had married into his cousin’s family.
Chang Jinhua was furious. Ever since her eldest son passed the imperial examination at the age of ten, countless families from all around wanted to marry into her family. After much deliberation, they chose Yang Bao’er—only for that family to turn around and promise the same boy in marriage to another man at this critical juncture!
She immediately wanted to confront the Yang family, but her son Song Tingzhou stopped her, saying, “It was indeed my fault for delaying him by waiting for me for three years. Now that I haven’t even passed the imperial examination, I have no face to mention marriage again. Let it go, Mother.”
Seeing her son’s gloomy face, Chang Jinhua was afraid to make a fuss, lest she hurt his feelings. Since failing the exam, Song Tingzhou seemed even more heartbroken.
Chang Jinhua believed that her son was heartbroken because Yang Bao’er had remarried. She mustered all her strength to find him a better match, but all the eligible young men in the nearby villages were already engaged, and she didn’t like the unmarried ones. Just when she was feeling down, she saw Meng Wan being sold by a slave trader in town. Putting everything else aside, the fact that she could read struck her hard, letting people know that there were other young men besides Yang Bao’er who could also read!