From Chief to Ball

Before Chen Jian came back, Yuqian asked the messenger to bring back a foot of silk with a picture of a millet on it, a sickle and an ear of wheat on the bottom.

She was telling Chen Jian that the corn planted by the Eyue tribe had been harvested, and the time after the harvest was just right for wheat to be planted. She remembered that when the autumn wheat was planted last year, it was already the time when the dew turned into frost.

This silk painting was painted when the moon was full in August, and there are two simple small people holding hands on it, looking at the moon together, because Chen Jian asked Yuqian'er how long it takes for the moon to become full, and eight Yue's moon is the roundest and brightest. Maybe Yu Qian'er remembered what happened on Luodao that day when she saw the moon.

She has been a hostage in E City for more than a month, and a few houses in the north of E City have become the place where she and her tribe live temporarily.

At first, the people in the city were a little curious. Although they were used to seeing businessmen coming and going, they had never seen them living here like Yu Qianer.

I just knew that there was a small girl who was Jixia's younger sister, and I didn't have much impression of the rest. After two days of telling it as a story, it faded away, thinking that the next time we discussed this woman, the hostages on both sides would come back. It's time.

But after a few days of silence, Yuqian'er's name became popular in E City again, because Yuqian'er opened a simple small restaurant in the place where she lived, as Chen Jian said.

There is wine in E City, but there is no story that people in the same city don't know, so at first some people walked into the wine shop out of curiosity, chatted with people in Xia City, listened to their stories, and drank their own corn wine.

Some flowers dug from the outside were planted in front of the hut, and a flag was flying. On it was written a word that the people of Echeng did not know. Yu Qianer said that the word was wine.

People in the city will ask, "You don't have wine here."

But they didn't ask any more questions the next day. Except that there was no wine in this small restaurant, there were a lot of things related to wine.

People in Echeng, who are accustomed to eating 醢 sauce and corn, saw many novel foods, such as yellow noodles, white dumplings floating in the water like white geese, fish sauce mixed with vinegar and mustard seeds, pea flour and honey. The soft pastries made...

In addition, there are stories from three hundred miles away, so people gradually came here to sit and sit with their own wine after work break in the evening.

Wealthy families come more, and poor families hardly come, but sometimes they catch rabbits, and the women in the wine shop will make the rabbits different flavors, just a piece of rabbit skin.

And these distinctive flavors come from something similar to pottery but different called a pot. It is made of copper, which their tribes cannot make, and it is impossible to have this kind of pot called "pot". "stir fry" cooking method.

People in Echeng asked a few women who cook, and the women said that Jixia taught them.

The reason why Chen Jian didn't go out until the end of July in Xia City was that he spent a lot of time preparing for these things. In the eyes of the tribe, these were just small things for his brother to give his sister some toys, and maybe it was just so that his sister could eat better in E City.

A few days later, even Shu Jiu, who had been busy all along, came to this small restaurant in the early morning, not for drinking, of course, but for breakfast.

A bowl of sour soup thickened with starch, with daylily and shredded gourds floating in it, this is something that the people of Echeng are also very envious of. They don't have the kind of kitchen knife called iron, so naturally they can't cut it so finely. , although these people call this kind of kitchen knife fish intestines, it is actually a kitchen knife.

A copper-coloured flatbread, cooked in a copper pan, sits in a small wicker basket lined with lotus leaves and contains chopped vegetables called chives.

Hu spicy soup without pepper and leek box without eggs, but Shujiu is full of praise.

After eating, he pretended to ask Yu Qianer unintentionally, what is he going to exchange for it?Yu Qian'er said that she just wanted to change her thoughts about the city and do something to pass the time.Changing is a changing, but it has different meanings.

After several days of observation, Shujiu found that Yu Qian'er did not plan to change the method of burning black pottery from her own tribe, because she asked the people who burned black pottery to eat it several times, and Yu Qian'er didn't even look at them.

"Maybe she is really just homesick and wants to pass the time?"

Now that there is less hostility and the food is so exquisite and delicious, you might as well eat it a few more times. Anyway, it's just a little exchange of corn, and the asking price for yuqian is not high.

The adults in E City gradually came more and more, because the children in the family were always clamoring for sweet and glutinous pea cakes and Qiqiao cakes—flour cakes printed on wooden cards and filled with sweet fillings.Occasionally, a wealthy family will exchange a few grouse, and they will also take them over and let these people "fry them". The taste is indeed different.

A few days later, a few dumb people from Xiacheng came to the restaurant. It is said that they have not been able to speak or hear others since they were young, so they might as well do more things here.

Several people in the wine shop were sick, so the dumb man held some small wooden boards and asked these people what they wanted to change.

All of them are distorted symbols, nothing more than a few things, but it is always very long to write these kinds of things in the words of this era.Words such as wheat, bread, fish, deer, and rabbit are written on wooden signs, which are hung in the room of the wine shop every day.

After the original women recovered from their illnesses, the children in E City could already recognize the characters such as pea cakes, wheat flour cakes, one, two, three, four, five, etc. clearly.Sometimes grown-ups would look at those wooden signs they didn't recognize a few days ago and sigh, "Today's bread is gone again."

It's time to see a lot, and those complicated symbols are gradually able to recognize what it is, at least the words deer and fish, they know what it is at a glance.

Later, several disabled soldiers from the war who came by boat to deliver flour and food also stayed here, and there were more things in the wine shop.

Each of them has a story they heard from Chen Jian. Since there are only so many stories in the city, let’s tell some stories whose imagination breaks through the sky—myths about ancestors, or some stories that will make people think after hearing it. Rumors of wanting to cry or laugh.

The hand of the girl named Front Ya peeling nettles, the pain of the ancestors who tasted all the plants and trees on the earth in order to find edible fruits, the smiles of the ancestors after tasting the food roasted in the wildfire, the ancestors migrated from distant places to Finally, there is a long road between Chang'e and Xia...

When I first listened to it, I thought it sounded good, and after listening to it a lot, I found it very reasonable, and then the story spread and became true.

A man with a scar on his face swears that this is a story his grandmother told him: There was a drought a long time ago, locusts were everywhere, the land was dry, and the tribe could not survive in place, so the two most prestigious brothers in the tribe brought As the tribes migrated separately, they found a big river with abundant water and grass.The elder brother wanted to stay, but the younger brother said that there would be water here, so the two brothers separated, one went east along the big river, and the other crossed the big river to the northwest...

Speaking of this, the people who listened to the story faintly felt that they were the descendants of that elder brother, and these people were the descendants of that younger brother, but was that river the big river in their own homeland?

The storyteller recalled what Chen Jian taught him, and added at the end of the story that a younger brother dreamed about the guidance of his ancestors. The scene in the dream was a wide river with no shore that could not be seen. It is turbid, and the land on both sides of the bank is often flooded, but after being flooded, corn seeds are sprinkled there, but it grows extremely vigorously, which is far higher than the yield of planting after burning...

The people who heard the story opened their mouths. They had heard the elders in the clan talk about these things, but the people in Xiacheng had never seen a big river. They knew this, so it must have been told by their ancestors in a dream... So, in fact, the two clans were actually brothers a long, long time ago?Even though there were no people from Xiacheng in Huacheng back then, they were still brothers and relatives?

Many trivial stories are connected together, after all, they are no longer stories, but a dusty and true past...

After a month like this, there are more and more stories in the restaurant, and it has gradually become the most lively place in E City.

Yuqian'er sat in the restaurant every day, sometimes chatting with people in Echeng, or giving some pea cakes to the children occasionally, listening to each other's stories.

At night, when the oil lamps in the wine shop were lit, Yu Qian'er would write one, two, three, four on a piece of silk to remind herself to remember.

For example, Shujiu’s younger brother was fined a few donkeys by Shujiu more than a month ago because he said something that shouldn’t be said. livestock.He was taken away during the expedition, and E Yue also took away most of Shujiu's tribe, but Shujiu was put in charge of monitoring the city.

Another example is that the harvest of corn started a few days ago. From the casual chatter of those people, Yu Qianer knew that the yield of corn was about [-] catties per mu of land. Get more.The harvest time is just before the tribe planted wheat. If it is possible, the corn can be harvested before planting wheat.

Another example is that most of the wealthy families in E City come from four different tribes. The tribe with the E surname is the most, and there are only a few brothers with several surnames here. The third wife of E Yue is from Dongyi, and there are basically no tribesmen here. E Yue gave birth to a son. This son was in charge of many things in the tribe, but he could only rely on his father.

These are all unintentionally mentioned things, not secret, but to Yu Qian'er, they are the things she wants to hear the most.

In the past, the clansmen only knew that E City was three hundred miles east of Xia City, which was vague and wide.E City is just E City.

And Yuqian'er, following Chen Jian's teaching, carefully saw a real E city, and by the way, let Xiacheng's words and stories become the words and stories of E city.

Chapter No.17 Timing

No matter what, before E Yue wins or loses, the restaurant where Yu Qian'er is located will be the busiest place in E City.

Before the people sent by Chen Jian reached E City, the envoys sent by E Yue had arrived first, and they brought news of E Yue's victory in the north.

The people in Chang'e City were not shocked by this. It seemed that they had already guessed the news of victory, and there would be no second choice.

They only care about how many slaves they captured this time, how much each family can share, and how much land these slaves can cultivate.

Yu Qian'er got the news from the wine shop very early, a few days later Shujiu sent a few more people to "protect" her, Yu Qian'er guessed that her brother who was three hundred miles away must have returned to Xia city ​​and won.

She was waiting for her tribe to tell her the news, and was also thinking about what she could do.

The people in the wine shop had heard about the wheat planting in Xiacheng, and they knew their harvest this year, and the most harvested area reached 150 catties per mu of land.

Although I didn't know what mu and jin meant, I guessed from the excited and proud expressions of these people in the wine shop that this was a terrible amount.

If you want to know what is mu and what is catty, you need to know what is step, what is ruler and what is catty.

Echeng does not have the concept of a ruler, but they do know what a step means. It’s just that people can be big or small, and legs can be long or short. The previous step was just a primitive concept for them, my step and your step. It's not the same, until the people in the wine shop take out the rope as a weight and measure and tell them what is a step that both you and I can accept.