After speaking, she hoisted the large machete onto her shoulder, turned around, and walked back to the mule cart.
The strong man stared at that string of coins for a long while before shifting from lying down to kneeling. Facing Jiang Chun’s back, he knocked his head on the ground three times with loud “thud thud thud” sounds.
With reddened eyes, he said: “Great benefactor lady, such immense kindness and virtue—you’ve saved the old and young of our village. You, good person, will definitely receive good karma!”
Jiang Chun waved her hand without even turning her head: “Enough, stop playing dead—hurry up and clear the road, don’t delay my journey.”
The group helped each other up, dragging and lifting, and quickly cleared the road.
Jiang Chun jumped onto the cart shaft, flicked the whip, and drove the mule cart quickly away.
Whether disaster relief or porridge distribution would happen—that was the business of the court officials, and had little to do with her, this mere commoner.
She was willing to give them a hundred wen—it was only because of the few small children sneaking around in the roadside grass.
Of course, she could have taken out more. Not to mention, the three liang of gold she got from her last check-in at the money house were still lying in her system warehouse.
But as the saying goes: rescue emergency, not poverty. (【救急不救穷】—a Chinese proverb meaning one should help those in urgent, temporary crises, but not those who are perpetually poor without trying to improve themselves.)
This group of people was only the vanguard. Later, more refugees would arrive in Hongye County. Could she help one village of people, and also help ten villages, a hundred villages?
Besides, even if she did help this one village of people, there would be endless troubles afterward. She would definitely get targeted by other refugees.
After all, those with bare feet aren’t afraid of those wearing shoes. When people have no way out, would they still be afraid of taking risks?
The most important thing was—why should she help this village of people who had just robbed her?
If it hadn’t been for her strength and having weapons for protection, the one who would have suffered today could very well have been her.
She wasn’t some kind of saintly mother—how could she possibly not hold a grudge?
Still, it wasn’t like she came away from the “fright” empty-handed—at least now she knew about the famine.
So, upon arriving in Hongye Town, she went straight to the Qiu Family Grain Store, and said to the shopkeeper: “Give me five sacks of wheat, five sacks of millet, and five sacks of soybeans.”
The shopkeeper, surname Qi, naturally recognized this cousin girl who had ties to the boss’s family. He grinned and said: “Cousin girl is helping the villagers buy grain again, huh?”
Jiang Chun sighed, speaking helplessly: “They saw my family bought a new mule cart, so they all crowded around like it was a big event, wanting me to bring back grain for them. I reckon these next few days, I won’t get any peace.”
Shopkeeper Qi thought she was just finding an excuse to show off the fact that her family bought a new mule cart, so he craned his neck to look outside, and exclaimed in shock: “Oh my, that mule sure is plump and sturdy—it’s a good mule! The cart’s woodwork also looks solid—using it for ten years or so definitely won’t be a problem.”
Jiang Chun put on a look of smug satisfaction, grinning like a petty villain who had gotten their way: “That’s right. My family either doesn’t buy a mule cart, or if we do, we buy the best!”
Shopkeeper Qi quickly followed up with a string of compliments.
The two bantered and joked for a while, and soon, the shop assistants brought out the grain that Jiang Chun had ordered from the back warehouse.
Shopkeeper Qi opened each burlap sack one by one, letting Jiang Chun inspect the quality.
Jiang Chun gave it a cursory glance and smiled: “We’re all family here, I trust Shopkeeper Qi wouldn’t try to cheat me.”
Shopkeeper Qi chuckled: “The boss has repeatedly instructed us to treat cousin girl well when she comes. How would I dare to cheat cousin girl?”
He personally weighed each burlap sack on the scale.
For convenience in counting, the grain store measured by the shi (approx. 150 jin or \~75 kg). But since grain stored for a long time tends to lose weight, whenever someone bought grain by the sack, Shopkeeper Qi would reweigh each sack and add any missing weight on the spot.
After weighing was done, Shopkeeper Qi returned behind the counter, picked up the abacus, and started calculating: “Wheat, eight qian silver per shi—five shi is four liang silver; millet, four qian two li per shi—five shi is two liang one qian silver; soybeans, four qian silver per shi—five shi is two liang silver. Altogether, that comes to eight liang and one qian silver. Since cousin girl is family, I’ll waive one qian for you—let’s settle it at eight liang silver.”
Jiang Chun straightforwardly and cleanly paid the bill.
Luckily, she had brought along all the 30 liang of silver savings from home today, since she had so many things to buy in town and wasn’t sure of the price of the deerskin boots. Otherwise, she would have had to thicken her skin and buy on credit.
The shop assistants were about to carry the burlap sacks out to load onto her cart, but Jiang Chun stopped them.
The mule cart already had 1,000 jin of coal loaded on it. If they added these fifteen burlap sacks, over 2,000 jin of grain, and with the road being dirt, the mule might not be able to pull it.
She smiled at Shopkeeper Qi: “The mule cart’s already carrying quite a bit. I’ll go back to the village to unload first, then come back to pick up the grain.”
Shopkeeper Qi naturally agreed readily.
So, Jiang Chun drove the cart back to Daliushu Village, carried the sacks of coal into the firewood shed, didn’t even bother to greet Song Shi’an, and hurriedly returned to the town to haul back the purchased grain.
After dumping all the grain into the grain bins and filling both bins completely, she finally relaxed and let out a long breath.
The Jiang family had three mu of high-quality farmland by the West River. One mu of shang tian produced a bit over one shi of wheat after paying the grain tax. So three mu yielded three and a half shi.
This amount of grain was only enough to feed their family of three for two months.
Mainly because Jiang Chun ate a lot—Jiang He ate one jin of flour per day, she ate two jin, and Song Shi’an, at most, ate half a jin.
As for the flour yield rate—it was about 70%, so that meant their family consumed about five jin of wheat per day, which added up to one shi per month.
One year would be twelve shi.
Previously, Jiang He, taking advantage of old wheat being cheaper when the new harvest came in, had already stocked up ten shi of wheat in the grain bins.
Today, Jiang Chun bought another five shi of wheat and five shi of millet. Eating until this time next year should be no problem.
By then, both the summer harvest and autumn harvest would be over, and the famine problem should ease.
She had always written with a sense of rigor. If the famine dragged on for a whole year and still didn’t end, how could Song Shi’an, this neglected zhuixu (赘婿, a live-in son-in-law), still manage to eat even half a black flour mantou? He’d probably have starved to death by now.
But just to be safe, before the large wave of refugees arrived in Hongye County’s territory, she planned to continue buying more grain bit by bit over the next few days. This was also why she had shown off the new mule cart in front of Shopkeeper Qi earlier.
Song Shi’an had long spotted Jiang Chun through the window’s ventilation slit. Seeing her shake the water off her hands and enter the west room, he immediately raised his sleeve to shield the table in front of him, lightly scolding: “Quickly use a cloth towel to dry your hands—don’t go flinging them around carelessly. Be careful not to get my painting wet.”
Jiang Chun knew her limits—those things that Lu Zhengheng sent were very valuable and couldn’t be wasted casually. Upon hearing this, she immediately retreated, wiped her hands dry with a cloth towel, and only then reentered the west room.
Song Shi’an set down his brush, raised his eyes to look at Jiang Chun, frowned, and asked: “What are you running in and out for, fussing about so much?”
Jiang Chun sat down on the kang edge, sighed, and told him about the situation she encountered on the road.
After hearing it, Song Shi’an immediately looked her over from head to toe, asking with concern: “You didn’t get hurt anywhere, did you?”
Although the possibility was small, suddenly hearing that she had been blocked by a group of stick-wielding people still made his heart give a thump.
Jiang Chun waved her hand dismissively, saying nonchalantly: “That group of rabble, they couldn’t even get close—how could they possibly hurt me?”
She had great strength, and the large machete in her hand had been swung so fast and dense it left no gaps. She had chopped their sticks into several pieces.
This was probably what was called—the world’s martial arts, only speed is unbreakable?
Song Shi’an let out a breath of relief, finally calming his expression, and said seriously: “Two locust plagues in a year—that’s no small matter. If the court doesn’t allocate funds for disaster relief, and the neighboring prefectures only mind their own business, with disaster victims unable to fill their bellies, and winter fast approaching…”
“Not only will grain prices skyrocket, but the world may also become unstable. In the future, unless it’s necessary, don’t keep running into the county town.”
This guy, to think he immediately thought of hoarding grain—he really had sharp instincts and wasn’t just any ordinary brain.
Jiang Chun nodded: “Mm, anyway, I’ve pretty much bought everything I needed. I won’t go to the county town for now. I’ll go back in a couple of months after you finish your medicine.”
As she spoke, she took out a cloth pouch from her sleeve, opened it, picked up the silver hairpin inside, and waved it in front of Song Shi’an.
Grinning, she asked: “The silver hairpin I bought for husband—does it look good?”
The silver hairpin swayed slightly, and the gourd-shaped pendant hanging from the end swayed along with it.
Song Shi’an’s mouth twitched, and he gave her a glance, saying speechlessly: “This hairpin has a pendant hanging on it—it’s a women’s hairpin style.”
Jiang Chun immediately retorted: “Nonsense. Who said only women’s hairpins can have pendants? Hairpins, these dead things, don’t distinguish between male and female—it just depends on who wears them.”
She kicked off her shoes, climbed onto the kang, knelt at the edge of the kang table, and reached out to pull out the wooden hairpin from Song Shi’an’s head.
Song Shi’an had just washed his hair today. As soon as the wooden hairpin was pulled out, his entire head of black hair immediately spread loose, draping over his shoulders and spilling across half the kang.
Song Shi’an: “……”
He just knew that after she bought the silver hairpin and came back, she would start messing around, so he had painstakingly lit the firewood, boiled a big pot of water, and washed his hair using soap pod water.
Jiang Chun circled around the kang table, knelt behind him, used her fingers to comb through his hair, and then used the silver hairpin to re-tie it into a bun.
The hair bun was jet black, the silver hairpin bright as snow, and the small gourd-shaped pendant hanging below it swayed gently with the movements of his head…
It was simply swaying into the very core of her heart.
She suddenly lunged into his embrace, her head nuzzling here and there, as she spoke in a tone full of pride: “Aiya aiya, husband looks so good wearing this silver hairpin! Tsk tsk, how is it that my taste is this good?”
Song Shi’an pressed his lips together.
Originally, he had felt a bit repulsed, thinking this was a woman’s hairpin style and not suitable for him. But seeing her acting like this—half-crazed with excitement—he could imagine that wearing it didn’t actually look bad on him.
One could even say, it looked a little good.
Forget it. The silver for buying the hairpin was hers; if she thought it looked good, then so be it.