Miao'an's farming life

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, after visiting the lively Lantern Festival, the footsteps of the year seem to be gradually moving away.However, the villagers of Qingling Village still have one last New Year's activity, which is to warm up to the fire on the [-]th night of the first lunar month, hoping to use the fire to get rid of the catastrophic diseases on the body, and then officially start the new year.

To warm up a fire, as the name suggests, requires a fire. Every year on this day, after dinner, everyone goes out one after another. You take a bundle of corn stalks, and he takes two handfuls of soybean stalks, and they gather together to light a bonfire on the street.Generally speaking, because corn stalks are flammable and large, they are the main force. Of course, you can also use sesame straws, which have a better meaning.

According to the principle of proximity, there are several fixed bonfires in the village, and there is no need to worry about who has more firewood. People gather around the dancing flames, chatting, and roasting themselves back and forth. There are simple smiling faces.

This is the first time Miao An has heard of this custom. Before he was reborn, he lived in a city. There was no place where people could gather to light a fire, nor did he have so much firewood. It made him want to pull everyone to sing and dance together like it was shown on TV.

But he held back, and only took Mo Su's hand next to him and squeezed.Mo Su turned his head and saw that Miao An didn't have anything to say, so he understood. He found that his husband would pinch his hand whenever he was emotionally ups and downs. He didn't know what he was thinking at the moment. .

Mo Su took him into his arms, stroked his head and smoothed his hair.

"Look, An Zi and Mo Su have such a good relationship," said an Ah Mo.

With this topic, everyone joined in one after another. From the "gossip" they talked about to the two getting married, and then there was a storm in the mountains, and during this time they sold Spring Festival couplets.Miao An, who was listening, was very emotional, and unknowingly experienced a lot of things.

In fact, there is already a brother in the village who has become Miao An's little fan, because he dared and was able to take down ice cubes. He found a new way to get rich, even the older generation spoke highly of him.

Miao An didn't know this, or she would have put her hips on her hips and laughed, of course, just in her heart.

At the end, no one added more firewood, and when the fire naturally became smaller and extinguished, the crowd gradually dispersed.

Miao An and Mo Su who found Yoyo also returned home.Before washing up and going to bed, Miao An went to the room where Yoyo slept to see if he had kicked the quilt as usual, and then added some charcoal to the brazier.

When he was leaving, he caught a glimpse of a small clay figurine on the table next to Yoyo's bed. The image was abstract, and it was probably made by Yoyo himself, but it was very hard to the touch, with some cracks. It didn't look like mud, but Like Tao's.

Could it be that there is clay near the village?Miao An put down the cute and ugly clay figurine in his hand, and planned to ask Yoyo about it tomorrow.

As a result of pretending to be something in his heart, he didn't sleep well all night, and Miao An dug his brother out of the bed early the next morning.

"Where did this come from?" Miao An asked while holding the clay figurine.

"Huh?" The sleepy Yoyo responded, "I set it on fire yesterday."

Sure enough, it should be clay. "Where did you get this mud?"

"On the opposite side of the river from our house, at the foot of the mountain, there are many, and the children in the village dig."

After hearing this, Miao An rubbed Youyou's chicken coop vigorously, gave him a bear hug again, stuffed him back into the bed and covered him with a quilt, and rushed out the door in two or three steps. After a while, he heard him shouting in the yard : "Mo Su, let me go out!"

The emotional Miao An ran all the way to the foot of Qingling Mountain, circling around the place Youyou said, and finally found the target: a pit that had obviously been dug not long ago.

He took this pit as the center and turned around. The soil quality seemed to be similar, indicating that the clay resources were relatively rich.However, he is not a professional after all, so he is really not sure whether his judgment is right or not.

The reason why Miao An was so excited after knowing that there was clay was because with clay, there was a way for Mo Su to save time and effort—movable type printing.

He had already guessed the printing method when he was reading a book before, but he is a layman, and he can't tell the truth from the details of the typesetting and spacing of the words, but the price of the book here is extremely expensive, and the paper is relatively cheap. It can explain that the printing efficiency is not high, and nine out of ten are engraving printing.Woodblock printing can print hundreds or even thousands of books per plate, but engraving is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It usually takes several years for a large book, and it takes up a lot of space to store the plates. Damaged by insects and corrosion.If the print run is small and does not need to be reprinted, the plate becomes waste.In addition, once a typo is found on the engraving plate, it is very difficult to correct it, and the entire plate often needs to be re-engraved.

It is precisely because of these inconveniences that the invention of movable type printing was born.

The history textbook only mentions Bi Sheng's invention of movable type printing in the Song Dynasty in passing, without introducing the process in detail. Miao An knows the general process because of his curiosity and looking through the materials.Generally speaking, clay is used to make blanks of the same specifications, and one end is engraved with reverse characters, which are hardened by fire to make individual clay movable type, so that typesetting becomes more convenient and quicker.

Miao An never thought of making history, but the popularization of movable type printing is really exciting. Not only can he make money, but he can also benefit the general public.

Suppressing his excitement for the time being, Miao An hurried home again and asked Mo Su about printing books.

Mo Su didn't have much contact with this aspect. He only knew that the books in the whole Wuxi Town were printed by a workshop, which was far away from Qingling Village. On, brush the ink to cover the paper.

"Have you ever thought about engraving the characters one by one, lining them up according to the content of the book, and then brushing the ink?" Miao An asked.

"This..." Mo Su thought for a while, "Do you mean something carved like a seal? I haven't heard of it."

Sure enough, Miao An became more certain of his guess.To be on the safe side, he asked the village chief and some older people in the village, and also asked Tian Sheng, who often walked around the streets, and the answer he got was that he had never heard of movable type printing.

In this way, Miao An can let go of his work, and now at least he can be sure that Wuxi Town and the surrounding towns are all woodblock printing, so there is no need to worry about market problems.

"By the way, when I went to find Tian Sheng, he was wearing a new jacket, which looked like Qiuwen's handicraft." Miao An said while digging the soil.

With an idea, he quickly put it into practice, planning to do a small-scale experiment before the spring plowing started.So he dragged Mo Su to dig the soil, the soil had not yet thawed, and the shovel shoveled it hard.

Although the beginning of spring has passed and the rainy solar term is about to come, the coldness of spring should not be underestimated. The weather is still very cold. Every day in autumn, Ama chanted, "I don't take off my jacket until after Qingming."

Mo Su was strong and dug quickly, and the basket of soil was about to be full. Hearing this, he raised his eyebrows, "Maybe Tian Sheng bought it."

"Forehead……"

Miao An was at a loss for words, he had a preconceived idea that the two of them were having an affair, but now he found everything suspicious, he spurned himself in his heart, and looked at Mo Su, how calm, rational, and non-gossiping...

"But Qiuwen will definitely not accept his money." Mo Su added.

Miao An laughed out loud, retracting his preface, Mo Su's brain was much more tortuous than his.

After the beginning of spring, all walks of life began to get busy, and it became convenient to do anything.

Miao An had dug enough clay, and asked the master in the town to build a small kiln in the yard of his original home for firing movable type, and then went to the town to make a set of tools for carving clay figurines. After buying, the money bag that had already been slapped once during the Chinese New Year became weaker, and Miao An suddenly felt a lot of pressure. If he couldn't succeed, so much hard-earned money would be wasted.

Seeming to see his worry, when he was sleeping at night, Mo Su put his arms around Miao An, patted his back and said: "Don't worry about money, your idea is very good, just let go and do it. "

Selling Spring Festival couplets is okay, because everyone wants to buy them during the Chinese New Year, and you can make a fortune based on the content and fonts, but if you sell calligraphy and paintings, your own characters have no advantage.However, if it is not possible, the land can still be sold.Mo Su was thinking in his heart.

Miao An in the quilt hugged Mo Su's waist, shrunk down, and covered Mo Su's with his own feet. Mo Su's body temperature was high, but his feet were cold. Miao An would warm his feet every time he slept.

When speaking, Miao An could feel Mo Su's chest vibrating slightly on Miao An's face, and even his heart was also vibrating.After rubbing his face in Mo Su's arms for a while, Miao An said, "Thank you very much."

Mo Su, whose chest was itchy, laughed, lowered his head and whispered in his ear, "The thank you I want is not just in words."

Hearing this, Miao An climbed onto him with all hands and feet, smiled charmingly at the person under him, licked his lips along the way, then bent down and kissed Mo Su's lips, which still had a smile on it.

Finally recovering from that smile, Mo Su hugged him, opened his mouth obediently and let him plunder, the sound of water "chirping" sounded in the room, making people blush.After so many hands-on practice, Miao An felt that his skills had improved a lot, because he was unwilling to be led away by Mo Su every time, so he kissed seriously and hard, determined to make Mo Su fascinated.After feeling the familiar heat under him, he raised his head in satisfaction, stared at Mo Su's shining eyes close at hand, and asked in a slightly hoarse voice, "How about this verbal thank you?"

Mo Su felt his blood surge and his throat was uncomfortably tight. He directly pressed the person under him with all his strength, and bit Miao An's lip gently to vent his anger, seemingly viciously.From time to time, my husband would take the initiative to tease him like this, and every time he could experience the feeling of his sanity collapsing, and he only wanted to bully him severely.

Miao An watched Mo Su transform into a wolf with a smile, and touched the opponent's back with both hands dishonestly. Mo Su immediately lost his battle and couldn't bear it any longer.

It's another spring night...