The next day, after Jiang Chun finished selling meat, she carried the five jin of eggs she had asked Granny Liu to help buy from the morning market, and went to the Wang family to check on Wang Yin’er.
Although it was indeed just as Doctor Cao had predicted, Wang Yin’er developed a high fever during the night, but with Jiang Xi tending to her tirelessly through the night, by early morning the fever had already gone down a bit.
Jiang Chun reached out to feel her forehead, and using the experience from her previous life where she would get a fever whenever she caught a cold, judged that the current temperature was around 38°C.
She said to Granny Cao, who was taking over the shift to care for Jiang Chun: “Keep applying compresses to her forehead. Once the cloth towel gets hot, change the water and soak it again. Don’t stop.”
Granny Cao probably saw that her granddaughter had hope of surviving and wanted to properly make up for her earlier mistake, so her attitude was very enthusiastic.
She nodded like pounding garlic and said: “Don’t worry. Can I not feel pain for my own granddaughter? I’ll definitely take care of her properly and thoroughly.”
Jiang Chun nodded in satisfaction: “You sure do love your granddaughter.”
“Grandmother, I want to drink some millet porridge. Go cook some for me.”
Wang Yin’er found an excuse to send Granny Cao out, and then said to Jiang Chun: “Second Miss Liu had someone send over the things I left at the Liu family early this morning, and even rewarded me with a set of silver jewelry and twenty taels of silver.”
As she spoke, she fished out a money pouch from under the quilt and handed it to Jiang Chun, saying: “This is the set of silver jewelry and the twenty taels of silver. Trouble you, jie [older sister], to hold onto it for me first.”
Jiang Chun weighed the money pouch in her hand, gave Wang Yin’er a sidelong glance.
This fellow really knew how to read the times. In the past, whenever Jiang Xi asked her to call herself ‘biaojie’ [表姐 — older female cousin], she acted like it was going to kill her. Now that she had to rely on her for support, she called her ‘jie’ so sweetly, like they were real close.
However, Jiang Chun didn’t reject this matter.
There weren’t many good people in the Wang family, and her aunt Jiang Xi was soft and easy to bully. Who knew whether they’d take advantage of Wang Yin’er being stuck on the kang and unable to move, and swallow up this bit of life-saving money of hers, then kick her out?
At that time, if Wang Yin’er had no money and her legs weren’t working well, wouldn’t “miserable” be too light a word to describe it?
In theory, her being miserable had not much to do with Jiang Chun, this biaojie.
But her mother Jiang Xi was Jiang He’s biological elder sister and had once helped Jiang He greatly. If Wang Yin’er really fell to that kind of end, Jiang He wouldn’t stand by and watch — he would definitely give her money to help.
So protecting Wang Yin’er’s property was the same as protecting the Jiang family’s property.
As for those more than eighty taels of silver held by the Wang family, it would depend on whether Wang Yin’er wanted to claw it back. If she did, she could think of a way herself after she recovered — Jiang Chun was too lazy to interfere more.
After coming out from the Wang family, Jiang Chun bought buns and tofu pudding at the bun shop, went back to Granny Liu’s house to push the wheelbarrow, and returned to Daliushu Village.
She placed the buns and tofu pudding on the dining table, called out to her father, then pushed open the door to the west room and said with a smile to Song Shi’an, who was sitting at the kang table binding books: “Husband, come down and eat breakfast.”
Song Shi’an did come down, but he ignored Jiang Chun and just sat down at the dining table by himself, picked up a plain bun and silently gnawed on it.
Jiang Chun placed a bowl of tofu pudding in front of him, smiling as she asked: “Is Husband still mad at me?”
Song Shi’an picked up the bowl and took a sip of tofu pudding, then continued silently chewing on the plain bun.
Even Jiang He, slow as he was, could see the two of them were having a spat.
He glared at Jiang Chun and scolded: “Chun-niang, you better be mindful. Don’t bully your husband all the time just because he’s easy to push around.”
Song Shi’an, upon thinking of how she had “bullied” him last night, immediately turned red in the face, to the point it looked like blood might drip — and choked on the bun in his mouth, coughing his lungs out.
Jiang Chun saw this and instantly dropped the meat bun in her hand, reaching out to lightly pat his back.
Once Song Shi’an caught his breath, the first thing he did was push away her hand, then moved the small stool a bit farther away from her.
Jiang He, seeing this, glared at Jiang Chun again.
Son-in-law Song was someone with a good temper. For him to be provoked to the point that he wouldn’t give her any face even in front of himself, the father-in-law—his own daughter must have done something very excessive.
Jiang Chun rubbed her nose and changed the topic: “Dad, hurry and eat. After eating, you still need to go to the fields and dig up the rest of those radishes.”
Jiang He really did bury his head and eat, not saying anything more.
Newlywed young couple—fighting at the bedhead and reconciling at the bed’s end [床头打架床尾和 — idiom: minor marital spats resolve quickly]. As the father, scolding the daughter a few words to show his stance was enough. The rest should be left to them to handle themselves.
After breakfast, Jiang He placed the hoe into the wheelbarrow and pushed it off to dig radishes.
Jiang Chun washed the bowls, and taking advantage of the sunny weather, spread out the radishes she had dug up a few days ago one by one to dry.
After drying for a few days, once the skin and the leftover soil were dried out, they could be stored in the cellar.
In the freezing cold winter, without modern vegetable greenhouses in ancient times, basically every household would be rotating between radishes and cabbages—these two kinds of vegetables that stored well.
After drying the radishes, she washed her hands clean and entered the west room. First, she took out the three bolts of fine cotton cloth she had bought and signed in for yesterday from the wardrobe.
She picked out a half-burnt charcoal stick from the stove hearth, wrapped the end with a scrap cloth strip, and took a slip of paper that Song Shi’an had cut off while binding books.
Then she found the wooden ruler commonly used by the original host and said to Song Shi’an: “Husband, come down. I want to make you a cotton-padded jacket and need to take your measurements.”
After the original host’s mother passed away, all the household’s needlework had fallen on her. Originally only five parts skill, after doing it a lot, she’d practiced up to about seven or eight parts skill.
Of course, that only applied to sewing repairs. As for embroidery work, she didn’t know it at all.
Song Shi’an remained sitting, not moving, and didn’t even pause the brush in his hand—obviously not planning to pay attention to her.
Jiang Chun crossed her arms, slanted her eyes to look at him, and gave a snort-laugh: “One autumn rain brings one cold spell. It won’t be long before it’s winter. Are you planning to just wear Dad’s padded jacket and get through winter like that?”
Song Shi’an’s brush paused.
Qizhou Prefecture was located in the north. In his past life, he had stayed here for a full two years and knew well that the winter cold here was just as bad as in the capital.
People with strong constitutions couldn’t even withstand wearing a thin old padded jacket—let alone someone like himself with a weak body?
If he kept being stubborn with her and refused to let her make a thick cotton jacket for him, when winter came, he’d definitely be frozen miserably. By then, he’d still have to compromise with her.
But if he gave in so easily and didn’t hold her accountable, she wouldn’t have any fear. Not only would she dare do it again next time, she might even go further and take more advantage.
After thinking for a moment, he chose a middle-ground approach.
He got up from the kang and stood on the floor, but still kept silent and didn’t speak to her.
But that was enough.
It was enough for Jiang Chun to see that he wasn’t actually angry, just pretending to be angry to scare her a bit, to make her not dare to be flirty with him again in the future.
But not being flirty was impossible.
She was spending money, putting in effort, running around every day serving him—what, did she come to ancient times to do charity work?
Even servants attending to their masters got a monthly wage. What’s wrong with her collecting a bit of “interest” from him? It’s completely reasonable and justified!
She tiptoed and placed the wooden ruler against Song Shi’an’s broad back.
In ancient times, one chi was about 33 centimeters. It clearly wasn’t as wide as his shoulders, so she pressed her finger on the end of the ruler, then moved the ruler head to where her finger was.
Because the wooden ruler had been used for too long, and it was part of Mother Zheng-shi’s dowry, the red paint marking the measurements on it had almost completely peeled off, making it rather difficult to read.
Jiang Chun leaned in, squinting her eyes to carefully make out the markings.
Her hot breath sprayed against Song Shi’an’s neck, making him feel as if a caterpillar was crawling over his skin—tingly and itchy—causing even his hands and feet to go a bit soft.
But the annoying part was, she was doing something proper right now, so even if he wanted to push her away, it wasn’t appropriate to make a move.
Jiang Chun spent quite some effort and finally managed to get an accurate measurement of the shoulder width.
She quickly let her tiptoed feet return to the ground, half-leaned onto the kang, and used the charcoal stick to write down the number she had measured on the slip of paper.
From a higher angle, Song Shi’an, who easily got a clear view of the contents on the slip, instantly widened his phoenix eyes, his pupils trembling several times.
If he wasn’t mistaken, what was written there was the script of the Dashi Kingdom!
A year ago, a merchant caravan from the Dashi Kingdom came to present tribute to the emperor. On the day they entered the capital, he happened to be drinking tea at a teahouse with his friend Zeng Ziqing and saw with his own eyes that the characters carved onto the merchant carts were similar to this kind of writing.
Could it be that this woman was actually a stray ghost from the Dashi Kingdom?
No wonder she was so “unbound by propriety”!
Maybe it was because he was too shocked that he momentarily forgot his resolve to give her the cold shoulder and said with certainty, “What you wrote is Dashi script.”
Jiang Chun was completely stunned.
In her heart she thought, what she wrote was Arabic numerals—what did that have to do with Dashi script?
Then her whole body froze.
Arabic… in ancient times, wasn’t it referred to as the Dashi Kingdom…
Did she just let her disguise slip?
Don’t panic, don’t panic—let’s think of a way to salvage this.
Jiang Chun launched a brainstorm, her brain spinning rapidly for quite a while, but she still couldn’t come up with a suitable excuse.
Asking Village Head Zou to take the fall clearly wouldn’t work. He was just a small village head who had only attended a few years of private school, not even a tongsheng. There was absolutely no way he could recognize Dashi characters.
Let alone Village Head Zou—even in Hongye Town, or even all of Hongye County, there couldn’t possibly be anyone who recognized Dashi characters.
Any farther away wasn’t worth calculating. Even if there really was someone there who knew Dashi script, Jiang Chun, a village girl who had only ever gone as far as Hongye County, couldn’t have possibly known them.
She couldn’t even find someone to take the blame.
She racked her brains but couldn’t think of anything. Jiang Chun decided to just let it rot.
She blinked her big apricot eyes, putting on an innocent face and said, “Husband, what are you talking about? What Dashi script? What’s Dashi? I’ve never even heard of it, okay?”
Song Shi’an let out a cold snort and said with mockery, “Is that so? Never heard of Dashi, yet you can write Dashi script? That’s really quite miraculous, isn’t it?”
Jiang Chun made a suddenly-enlightened expression, pointed to the slip of paper on the kang and said with a laugh, “Husband, you mean this? How is this Dashi script—these are just random marks I scribbled to help me remember your measurements.”
“You want to say I remembered wrong?” Song Shi’an gave her a sideways glance, snorted and laughed: “I’ve had a photographic memory since I was young, and was even the zhuangyuan [状元 — top scorer of the imperial exam] in the thirty-fifth year of the Tianqi era. Even if others might misremember, I could not possibly be mistaken.”
Jiang Chun exclaimed loudly, “Ah? What? You were the zhuangyuan lang [状元郎 — an honorific title for the top imperial exam scholar]?”
Before Song Shi’an could reply, she cried out in anguish: “Father was tricked! The human trafficker said you were the son of a merchant family arrested for selling private salt and exiled with the whole household, that buying you wouldn’t bring any trouble—turns out you were actually born from a zhuangyuan background!”
She flopped down on the kang, howling and crying: “It’s over, it’s over! A dignified zhuangyuan lang got arrested—it must’ve been for some tremendous crime. Now my family’s gotten into trouble for sure!”
Crying and crying, she suddenly jumped up, clenched her fists and said fiercely: “No! I can’t keep this hot potato in my hands! When Dad comes back, I’ll discuss it with him—we need to get a human trafficker to come and sell you off!”
Song Shi’an: “……”
Nice job changing the topic—it really was a smooth shift.
And she put on quite the performance too—just look at that recitation, singing, acting, and acrobatics; if she got up on stage, she could at least scrape by as an actress.
But he didn’t believe a single word.
She knew full well that she would rise to great success in the future—how could she not know her own origins and background?
That Jiang He didn’t know, that was true.
If he had known that his background was as a member of the prominent Song clan, the wife’s younger brother of Prince Yan, the zhuangyuan of the thirty-fifth year of the Tianqi era, once held office in the Hanlin Academy, and was later exiled and sold after his family was confiscated—he definitely wouldn’t have dared to buy him.
If it weren’t so, how else could he have ended up being sold all the way here to Qizhou Prefecture?
That said, now clearly wasn’t the time to reveal their cards to each other.
So he calmly waited for her to finish acting, and only then said lightly, “I won’t dig into the matter of how you can write Dashi script, and you can also pretend not to know my true background. How about that?”
Jiang Chun collected her expression and stared seriously at his outstandingly handsome face.
Tsk, such a good-looking beauty, but just had to have brains—really hard to fool.
Wouldn’t it be great if he were a silly, dumb, easy-to-mess-with pretty boy who let her tease and bully him however she wanted?
Nope—if he were a dumb pretty boy, then she’d have no chance of becoming the gloriously prominent Shoufu furen.
Tsk, if you add it all up, it’s still better that he has a brain.
She lowered her head and gave a soft laugh, readily saying: “Alright, I agree. No matter what background Husband has, right now you’re my husband. I’m not going to bother with all those this-and-thats.”
Song Shi’an quietly let out a breath of relief.
Although on the surface it seemed like mutual loss, in truth, he was the one who came out ahead.
She knew about his past and future, so she essentially had leverage over him. Though he too had discovered her supernatural ability to produce items from thin air, that was clearly a secret he couldn’t say out loud.
Which meant he was unilaterally being restrained by her.
Now that he had also gotten ahold of a piece of leverage over her, and that leverage wasn’t serious enough for her to need to silence him…
With both of them holding something over the other, they could check and balance each other—it was more or less even now.
With that leverage in place, their relationship would also be more secure. At the very least, there wouldn’t be any more of her threatening, like in her performance earlier, to get a trafficker to sell him off.
Jiang Chun picked up the wooden ruler again and let out a small hum: “Stretch out your arm. I’m going to measure your sleeve length.”
Song Shi’an did as instructed.
After measuring the sleeve length, it was time to measure the waist.
But since there was only a wooden ruler and no soft measuring tape, using a wooden ruler to measure waist circumference clearly wasn’t practical—so she untied her sweat towel.
Then she stood behind him, both hands reaching around to his front, and wrapped the sweat towel around his waist.
The two of them were extremely close, their bodies nearly pressed together.
With Jiang Chun’s movements, the softness in front of her would occasionally bump into Song Shi’an’s back.
Song Shi’an was like a stone statue, his whole body stiff to the point of petrification, his face red as if it were about to drip blood.
He said in an irritated tone, “Stop dawdling on purpose—hurry up with your movements.”
Jiang Chun pulled out the sweat towel, used the wooden ruler to measure against the position wrapped around his waist, and while jotting it down on the paper, muttered: “What are you yelling for? I, who nearly suffered a workplace injury here, didn’t even yell.”
Song Shi’an: “……”
You really know how to turn the tables and make a false countercharge!
After Jiang Chun finished recording, she turned around, cast a glance toward his lower body, and while tapping her palm with the wooden ruler, let out a mischievous “hehehe” laugh: “Next, we’re going to measure trouser length, Husband—are you ready?”
Song Shi’an: “……”
This cotton-padded jacket—can he not have it made anymore?