Bianshanhan [farming]

Years ago, news came from the people Li Qinghong was looking for in Fangshi. He met a few people pouring Yexiang, who seemed to be from Bingzhou.

Li Qingwen happened to be fine, so he followed his third brother to Qionglefang.

Qionglefang is located in the southeast of the outer city. Although the name sounds good, most of the people living here are poor people, doing the hardest and most tiring work in the capital.

Before stepping here, Li Qinghong, a person who had stayed in the capital for several years, was very surprised. He did not expect such a dilapidated place to exist in the bustling capital.

The sewage on the road has turned into black ice, and the houses are messy, one after another, one eaves next to the other eaves. You have to stop and look carefully to see the narrow alleys. Only one person can pass between the houses, dark and gloomy , I can't see what's going on inside.

The cold winter in the capital is also hard to bear. Most of the people walking here wear thin clothes, with patches piled on top of each other, and their exposed ankles and faces are all blue and white.

There are also some men with unfriendly expressions wandering on the narrow street, people will take a detour when they see it.

Before coming here, I heard from many people that it is very dirty and messy, so be careful not to be alone.

Even though he was very careful, when Li Qingwen came in, his pockets were still cut several times, and he really didn't know it. If the money bags were hanging outside the clothes, there would be nothing left if there were a hundred of them. .

However, Li Qingwen's money bag was inside his clothes, if he was traveling far away, the place where he put the money would be more concealed, this was what Mrs. Chen had always told him.

Following the guides, they found a local snake named Gao Laojiu. This man was a tyrant in Qionglefang. When facing Li Qingwen and the others, he had a skillful smile on his lips, but his eyes were like hungry wolves.

When the people of Bingzhou fled to the vicinity of the capital, this person bought boys and girls from the refugees with very little money and food. The people who were on the verge of starvation had to sell their children and daughters in order to survive.

He bought many young men and women, Gao Laojiu changed hands, and then sold the clever ones to people in the city as maids and servants. Girls who looked good might be sold to brothels, or thrown into alleys as prostitutes.

The first person Li Qingwen and the third brother found was Ma Yujie from the village next door, who was from the natal family of their sixth grandmother and a relative of Zhenger Baben.

Ma Yujie was one of the people Gao Laojiu bought. Because he was clumsy and never sold, he was assigned to do this kind of work of picking up shit and pouring urine.

Li Qingwen came to buy Ma Yujie's deed of sale from Gao Laojiu, and then asked him where the others were sold.

At first, Li Qingwen thought that this person would be difficult to deal with. Unexpectedly, after they explained their intentions, Gao Laojiu agreed happily, and he didn't even raise the price. After taking the money, he included Ma Yujie in his hand The nine people's contracts of selling their lives were happily returned.

Although Gao Laojiu was polite to Li Qingwen and the others, he regarded the people he bought back as cattle and horses. Although Ma Yujie and the others did not starve to death these years, they worked too hard and handed back every copper they earned. I don't know if it is a blessing or a difficult thing to survive.

Knowing that they were free from now on, the nine men and women cried like weeping people. They were about the same age as the Li family brothers, but they escaped and were betrayed, and they suffered too much. The brilliance can be regarded as showing a bit of vitality.

They had no possessions, and when they left Qionglefang, they were all empty-handed, and they were first sent back to the east of the city by Li Qingwen.

Because he took extra money from the Li family brothers, Gao Laojiu sent people to take them to find the people who sold them one by one. Most of them were working as maids, some were sold as apprentices for pedicures, and some people were unlucky. , was sold to learn juggling and singing, and suffered a lot of torture.

Some masters are talkative and willing to let people go, while others just want to make things difficult, so that Li Qinghong knows some people in the east and west of the city, and with a little more money, he can get them out.

Fortunately, the peasant girls are born rough, and they have been working since childhood, exposed to wind, sun and rain, and their faces are mostly rough, which saves them from the pain of falling into prostitution.

After running for less than half of the outer city, except for a few who went south with the owner's house, most of the others were rescued, no matter men or women, they all burst into tears.

I used to think it was difficult to be at home, especially when I was hungry, but after being sold, not only did I not dare to eat enough, I was beaten and scolded at every turn, even if I was beaten to death by the owner, it was nothing. Every day was like a nightmare, not at all. people's life.

They knew that the brothers of the Li family had spent a lot of money to redeem their bodies, and they all said they would stay and help them pay off their debts. Otherwise, they would return to their hometown to farm, and they might not be able to pay back the money for their lives.

There is no rush for this, Li Qingwen will write a letter to his hometown first, and tell them what happened first, as for the rest, we will wait until the new year passes.

There were a few people here who looked at Li Qingwen with a little evasive eyes. When they were young, they made fun of Li Qingwen for being stupid. Although they were beaten by Li Qingfeng and dared not scold him face to face, they scolded a lot behind his back.

Unexpectedly, they encountered a catastrophe, but they were saved by the person who scolded them back then.

After living in the backyard, they found Li Qingwen in private, knelt down, banged their heads, and scolded themselves for not being human before.

After they kowtowed, Li Qingwen helped them up one by one. There should be less pure malice in childhood, and most of them were fooling around with others. Now that he made an apology, he forgave him.

Now that there were more people, Li Qinghong rebuilt the back yard and divided it into two places, and opened a side door, so that it would be more convenient for men and women to live separately.

In the last few days of the twelfth lunar month, because of these things, they were busier than before. Fortunately, there were so many of them, and they didn't need to work hard. Apart from asking someone to watch the day, they didn't find anyone else to do the work.

Lin Wanjun took good care of these girls in Bingzhou. She found a doctor to see them, and gave them her clothes. She lived in a side courtyard with her, which helped a lot.

Although most of them are relatives, men and women are different after all, with Lin Wanjun around, Li Qinghong saved a lot of troubles.

This is Li Qingwen's second time celebrating the New Year in the capital.

There were so many of them that the shop stopped accepting customers the day before the Chinese New Year, but it was not empty either. Everyone made dumplings inside after closing.

In addition to the sauerkraut stuffing that Bingzhou must eat during the Chinese New Year, Lin Wanjun also specially made sweet glutinous rice balls from Huzhou, and also made a variety of meat fillings. After a day, I used several bags of noodles.

The wrapped dumplings were left outside to freeze overnight. On the day of the Chinese New Year, Li Qingwen took the frozen dumplings and sesame glutinous rice balls to the private school, and distributed them to his classmates and those who did not go back to the Yuebei Private School.

Unlike Li Qingwen, many people are studying alone in the capital. They come from a good family and have no worries about food and drink. It is the same wherever they celebrate the New Year. However, there are also many poor and poor people. It is really not easy for Jian Qiming to make money.

Xueyin Private School is better. In Yuebei Private School, Li Qingwen often heard that some people fainted from reading, and most of them collapsed because of taking care of their studies and making money.

Seeing them, Li Qingwen would think of his second brother. When he was a teenager, he followed the caravan all the way to the capital, and then frugal to study and study. How hard it was.

Can't help but feel sad.

There are too many people from the east and west shops, as well as those who have been rescued. This year is really different.

The doors and windows were closed, the shop was lit, and every table was filled with hot meals. Everyone ate meat in large chunks, drank heavily, and kept watch while eating and drinking.

After this year, Li Qingwen is already 20 years old, twenty weak champions, he has grown up.

Although he didn't drink, Li Qingwen was a little dazed looking at the lights on the table.

Sometimes I feel that time passes slowly, and sometimes I feel that it is fast. Looking back at the past, it seems that I am far away from myself.

Less than a year after leaving the border town, he felt as if he had been away for a long time, missing his parents, brothers, sisters-in-law and nephews at home, thinking about their furs, mules, horses and sheep...

I also miss Jiang Cong.

After rolling around on the bed twice, Li Qingwen almost spit out the contents of his stomach, so he quickly lay down.

He didn't want to eat so much at night, so he accidentally ate too much.

Because he couldn't fall asleep, Li Qingwen got up again, read for a while, and when his eyelids became heavy, he got back under the covers and fell asleep quickly.

On the first day of the new year, after dinner, Li Qinghong and the others went to the neighbors in Dongcheng and Xicheng to pay New Year's greetings, while Li Qingwen went to greet the students in the private school.

From the first day to the fifteenth day of the new year, there were constant temple fairs in the capital, which were extremely lively, but this excitement was destined to have nothing to do with Li Qingwen. He was a person who had an exam in February, and after the new year, he had to plunge his head into the book.

Su Yuanbao was going to visit relatives and friends with his father and uncle, so he just came over with Li Qingwen to make a post and went to work.

The subjects of the provincial examination are the same as those of the rural examination, and the content is similar, that is, posting scriptures plus a few history books and law books. Inquire about each other.

At the beginning of the new year, Li Qingwen also added an hour to his study time. Chen Tai, who was in the same room, had a fever and cough, and Qin Yu and Zhu Zuyuan were also infected. At the same time, many people in the school were also infected, coughing and coughing one after another.

Li Qingwen was still in good spirits.

In order to detoxify, the bedroom and the school were sprinkled with vinegar and burned wormwood every day. Other people's noses are blocked, but it's nothing. Li Qingwen, who is not sick, gets smoked every day.

Under the double burden of health and studies, many people fell ill. Su Yuanbao, who originally wanted to reunite with Li Qingwen earlier, also obediently stayed at home to study because of the cold.

Fearing that his younger brother would also get sick, Li Qinghong sent people to deliver three meals a day to Li Qingwen. Every meal was a big bucket of boiling ginger syrup. This water could not be drunk by himself. Sometimes it entered the stomach of his roommate, and sometimes Xu Qingyuan drank it Down.

Spring is approaching, Li Qinghong wanted to relieve his younger brother's worries, but he didn't know what to do, so he went to the temple to offer incense and pray for blessings. He didn't know whether the blessings worked or not, but he made a good relationship for himself.