Li Xiaoxiao couldn’t understand their logic. She had paid for the steamed buns herself, so why should she share them with anyone else?
“I paid for the steamed buns myself. Why should I share them with you?”
The man who had spoken first darkened his expression and glared at Li Xiaoxiao. He did not believe she had failed to notice that they had left all their money with their families and did not have a single copper coin on them.
They were all about to sign deeds of sale and be forcibly separated from their families, so they were already in a foul mood. Even when they were in the wrong, they were determined to make themselves seem justified. He stepped forward. “We left all our money with our families and don’t have a single copper coin on us. There’s not much use in you keeping all that money anyway. Why don’t you buy us a few steamed buns to fill our stomachs? Maybe we’ll even end up being sold to the same master in the future, and we can help each other out.”
But Li Xiaoxiao was used to going it alone and had always been accustomed to keeping food to herself. She wasn’t buying any of this. When she saw the others taking this man as their leader and surrounding her in a semicircle, looking as though they were ready to make a move, she suddenly turned toward Wei Yingjie, who stood nearby with his arms folded, watching them make a scene.
“If you’re talking about helping each other out, shouldn’t you ask him? He’s the one buying you. Isn’t he going to feed you?”
The men, who had been so aggressive just moments ago, turned their heads and saw Wei Yingjie’s sinister expression. The courage they had painstakingly mustered immediately vanished without a trace. One by one, they lowered their voices and became submissive, not daring to meet his gaze.
Li Xiaoxiao stared blankly at their sudden change in attitude, unable to process it for a moment. Just now, they had looked like they were about to beat someone up. Why were they so frightened the moment they saw the slave broker? Was he really that good at fighting?
She looked Wei Yingjie up and down. His footsteps seemed unsteady, and he looked all appearance and no substance. He didn’t seem particularly formidable.
Wei Yingjie walked over with a dark expression. “Why have you stopped? Who’s making trouble?”
The others all lowered their heads, not daring to look directly at him. Wei Yingjie walked up to Li Xiaoxiao and gave her a sidelong glance. “You again. What are you doing?”
Li Xiaoxiao asked in surprise, “Didn’t you see what happened just now?”
Why was he still pretending not to know? The people of this world were so strange.
Wei Yingjie was so caught off guard by her reply that he nearly couldn’t catch his breath. Where had this refugee come from? Was there something wrong with her?
Remembering how effortlessly she had flipped him over just now, he still wasn’t sure of the extent of her strength, so he temporarily suppressed his anger and shouted furiously, “Get moving. If you delay us, I’ll deduct one hundred coins from each of you!”
As soon as he said this, the refugees immediately fell silent. They had not even received the rest of their money yet, so how could they afford to have so much deducted? They had no time to continue resenting Li Xiaoxiao and hurriedly followed Wei Yingjie in fear, afraid that being even one step too slow would cost them money.
Wei Yingjie led them through several twists and turns before entering a small courtyard. An old locust tree stood beside the courtyard gate. The center of the courtyard was spacious enough for dozens of people to stand there. Directly opposite were three main rooms, while several large rooms with rows of shared beds stood to the side.
When a woman saw him bringing several people back, she came out from the central hall. She was in her forties and wore blue-green clothing. “You’re back? What kind of goods did you pick?”
Wei Yingjie pointed at the four men and four women who had followed him inside. “Eight. All of them are under full deeds of sale. Ask them about their circumstances and get the documents signed. Then sort out what kind of places they can be sent to. I’m going to change my clothes.”
He glared at Li Xiaoxiao, who was walking at the very back. If she hadn’t caught him off guard and flipped him over, he wouldn’t have had to go through all this trouble!
Li Xiaoxiao was the last one to enter. She saw four characters written on the signboard outside the courtyard: X Family Brokerage House. Of the four characters, she recognized three. Using her meager knowledge to make sense of it, she figured this must be the place in this world where people were bought and sold.
She recognized some of the characters used in this world, but not others. In the post-apocalyptic world where she had lived from childhood, hardly anyone used ancient Chinese characters anymore. Her history teacher when she was young happened to be a lover of ancient Chinese and would secretly slip such material into his lessons, which was why she could recognize some of the simpler characters.
But when there were too many strokes, she couldn’t recognize them. The two pairs of antithetical couplets posted beside the door were a good example. She could barely make out what was written on them.
The woman in blue-green clothes came out carrying a register and a pen. She sat at the table in front of the courtyard and had the refugees line up to register their information one by one.
“What’s your name?”
“Wang Dazhuang.”
“Where are you from?”
“Hefeng Village, Huangshiling, Yizhou.”
“How old are you this year?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Why did you flee to Miyang County?”
A look of misery immediately spread across Wang Dazhuang’s face. He wiped away his tears. “From last year until this spring, there was a drought. It didn’t rain a single drop. The wheat and rice in the fields all died from the drought, and we couldn’t even harvest enough seed to plant again. Quite a few old people and children in our village starved to death. We finally made it to around the Qingming Festival, and then it finally rained. We thought the drought was finally easing, but who would’ve thought it would rain heavily for three whole months? The houses and fields were all flooded, and the entire Huangshiling turned into a vast sea. It was my father who felt something was wrong and desperately dragged our whole family out. That’s the only reason we didn’t drown. Everyone in our village who stayed behind to guard their houses and fields and refused to evacuate is gone.”
As soon as he finished speaking, everyone except Li Xiaoxiao immediately burst into tears.
They were lucky to have escaped, but which family hadn’t lost several relatives or friends in the flood? Among those relatives and friends who had been fortunate enough to escape with them, quite a few had fallen ill from the lack of food and clothing and collapsed along the road. They had clearly already escaped the flood, yet they had not been able to hold on until reaching this place. Thinking of this, they cried even harder.
Their cries were heart-rending and miserable, enough to bring tears to anyone who heard them.
But the woman in blue-green clothes had been in the business of buying and selling people for many years and had long since grown accustomed to such situations. Without hesitation, she interrupted their crying and quickly wrote out the deeds of sale.
“Put your fingerprints here.”
Most of the refugees were illiterate and could not sign their names, so she simply drew a circle where the signature was supposed to go and had them press their fingerprints onto it. That completed the deed of sale.
Once the deed of sale was signed, fingerprinted, and filed with the authorities, it would officially take effect. The person selling themselves would also go from being a commoner to becoming a slave and could officially be put up for sale. If they ever wanted to regain their status as a free person, they would have to pay the master the agreed-upon sum to retrieve the deed of sale and obtain a release document, then have their slave registration canceled at the authorities and establish a new household registration before they could regain their status as a commoner.
The woman in blue-green clothes had been a slave broker for more than twenty years. Among those who had gone from being slaves back to commoners, fewer than one in a hundred succeeded. So after explaining all this to everyone present with an expressionless face, she simply told them to stand off to one side.
When it was Li Xiaoxiao’s turn, the woman took another look at her. Although she had remained unmoved by the refugees’ crying the entire time, her eyes were sharp, and Li Xiaoxiao was the only person there who had not shed a single tear.
This girl was probably cold-hearted and unemotional.
The woman spoke coldly. “Name?”
“Li Xiaoxiao.”
Her pen paused, and she looked at her again. The refugees before her were either Dazhuang, Er Niu, Dani, or Er’nü, all names commonly given to country folk. Yet this cold and heartless girl had a name unlike everyone else’s. Xiaoxiao?
She paused, then wrote down her name. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Can you read?” the woman suddenly asked. She had noticed that Li Xiaoxiao had been watching her write the entire time.
Li Xiaoxiao looked at her again. “I recognize a few.”
The woman held the deed of sale out in front of her. “Which ones do you recognize?”
Li Xiaoxiao read through it from beginning to end and pointed out a few characters with fewer strokes. She could not really recognize the ones with many strokes.
The woman took the document back and used cinnabar to place a red dot on Li Xiaoxiao’s deed of sale. “Where are you from?”
“Niutou’ao Village.”
“What family members do you have left?”
Li Xiaoxiao remained expressionless. “None.”
The woman did not ask any more questions. She handed the pen to her. “Since you can read, you can write your own name, right? Sign it yourself.”
The refugees nearby looked at her in surprise, their eyes filled with envy.
This girl could actually read? And she could even write her own name? Didn’t that mean she might be sold to a better family?
Thanks to that history teacher, Li Xiaoxiao really could write her Chinese name, but she had no idea how to use a brush. The character “Li” in her name had especially many strokes, and by the time she finished writing all three characters, they took up a huge amount of space and had blurred into one messy mass.
The woman did not mind. Once the ink had dried, she likewise had Li Xiaoxiao press her fingerprint onto it.
There were occasionally literate people among those who sold themselves. People like her were not unheard of. They might not recognize many characters or write very well, but even this small distinction was already enough.
She put away the eight deeds of sale, and Wei Yingjie happened to return after changing his clothes. She handed the documents to him. “They’re all here. Nothing else of note. That girl recognizes a few characters.” She pointed at Li Xiaoxiao.
Wei Yingjie widened his eyes in surprise. “I thought you were a miner’s daughter. How did you get the chance to learn to read?”
Li Xiaoxiao improvised an explanation. “My father taught me. His employer is a bookkeeper.”
Wei Yingjie understood and placed her deed of sale on top. He immediately put on a stern expression again. “Stand in order of height, from tallest to shortest!”
The refugees hurriedly looked at one another and formed a line.
Wei Yingjie stood in front of them with a stiff expression, looking them over one by one, then giving them another once-over. “From today onward, you are servants. What kind of family you can be sold to will depend on your luck, but there is also a shortcut you can take.”
Hearing that there was a shortcut, the refugees’ eyes lit up.
Wei Yingjie clasped his hands behind his back, his face full of pride. “Who among those serving as servants doesn’t want to find a good master? The wives in the rear courtyards of those high officials and noblemen wear fine silk and brocade and eat delicacies from land and sea. If you catch their eye, then aside from your monthly wages, just the clothes and shoes for all four seasons, seasonal festival gifts, and reward money would already amount to quite a sum. And for those truly blessed by fate, the men can become a master’s personal attendants, while the women can become a young lady’s dowry maids. Their food and clothing would be little different from those of their masters. For especially wealthy families, you might even have maids of your own to wait on you. Don’t you want to go to a family like that?”
The refugees’ eyes shone, and they answered in unison, “We do.”
Wei Yingjie nodded in satisfaction and leaned closer, only to cover his nose with his hand and fan it, his face full of disgust. “But look at yourselves now! Your clothes are filthy and torn, and you stink to high heaven. If you go looking for a master like this, they’ll be overcome by the stench before you even reach them. How could they possibly choose you? If they don’t simply have their people throw you out, that’ll already be kindness!”
Wang Dazhuang said anxiously, “Sir, but we came here fleeing the famine. Everything in our homes was washed away by the flood, and this is the only tattered clothing we have left. It’s not that we don’t want to dress better. We simply have no way to!”
The others hurriedly echoed him. They knew they were disheveled, too, but they had been fleeing the famine for more than a month and had not taken a single bath. Of course they smelled bad. They didn’t want to be like this either~
Wei Yingjie coughed. “Don’t worry. Since I’ve already bought you, of course I’ll find a way to solve this problem for you. How about this? Someone come here!”
The two middle-aged women who had followed him to buy the people appeared. Each held a set of clothes. The woman on the left held a set of light blue-green ramie women’s clothing, while the woman on the right held a set of light yellow linen short tunics.
Wei Yingjie walked over to the two sets of clothes. “These are the clothes most commonly worn by servants in Miyang County. They were newly made this year. The maid’s outfit is only two hundred and fifty coins per set, and plain cloth shoes are fifty coins a pair. The male servants’ short tunics are only two hundred coins per set, and the plain cloth shoes cost the same as the women’s shoes. As long as you buy your clothes from me, our brokerage house will provide you with washing and grooming free of charge. We’ll even lend you scissors to trim your hair and shave your faces. Whether you can find a good master depends on whether you’re willing to spend this money.”
With that, he raised his head proudly, as though he had performed some great act of charity, while taking great care to keep his contribution hidden.
…
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