Chapter 351: 347: Stranger_1
Then she went to the kitchen to fill up two large jars with water.
Chunniang was already up and cooking. She first boiled a large pot of rice porridge, then mixed up a basin of dough to make egg pancakes.
The side dish was home-made sweet and sour pickled garlic, and there was also fermented beans and stinky tofu.
This kind of stinky tofu was not actually stinky at all. It was made by naturally fermenting tofu, and the taste was very delicious.
Some radish slices and cilantro were added to the tofu, which was a great accompaniment to meals. Mr. Wu particularly loved this stinky tofu, and he had to have it at every meal.
“Yingbao, are you planning to stay at home?” Mr. Wu asked as he sipped his porridge.
Yingbao nodded.
She felt that her life was quite good now. Without realizing it, she had cured all the people with scabies in the surrounding villages, and no one had come to see her for treatment today.
No wonder, the villagers had been quite healthy in these years, and even if any child had a headache or fever, they just needed to get some medicinal syrup from Yingbao.
The medicinal herbs used for treatments were all gathered from the wild by the villagers, who kept a portion for themselves and gave the rest to the Divine Doctor.
Mr. Wu asked again, “Yingbao, have you ever thought about going to Shu Region?”
Yingbao shook her head, “As the saying goes, we must not travel far while our parents are alive. I will stay at home to accompany my parents.”
Her parents kept the two-story mansion in good order, saving her a lot of trouble. She didn’t want to leave her parents and roam around.
Mr. Wu picked up a piece of egg pancake, spread some stinky tofu on it, rolled it up and ate it with relish, saying, “Your Uncle Wu has only two more years to fulfill his duty. I wonder if he will stay in his post.”
His son didn’t want to remain in office and even contemplated resigning, which made Mr. Wu very anxious.
He wanted Yingbao to persuade him, and perhaps his son would change his mind.
“Uncle Wu will certainly not remain in office,” Yingbao said with great certainty.
In her dream, Wu Daozi returned to the capital for his appointment and was promoted one level higher. He later served as an official in Yuzhou Prefecture.
Mr. Wu didn’t say anything more, and continued eating his egg pancake rolled with stinky tofu.
It was good if that kid didn’t hold any public office. Then, their father and son could settle down here, find a wife for his son later, even a village girl would do, as long as he could extend the Wu Family lineage, social status was not important.
The old man watched the children running around every day, envying them greatly, wishing that his own son would get married right away and give him a bunch of grandchildren.
By then, he would take some trouble to cultivate them one by one, like Jiang Jie.
Yingbao had no idea what Mr. Wu was thinking. After finishing her meal, she went to write.
Actually, she was writing down the things she needed to buy.
She still needed to buy some seeds and farming tools, and also needed to spare some time to get a few water gourds.
Most of the land of the Jiang Family was now managed by hired farmers, so Chunniang and Jiang Sanlang were not very busy.
But they still needed to supervise during sowing, or else they would end up using too many seeds without noticing.
Everyone had their meal and went off to do their own things, leaving only Chunniang and her daughter at home.
After tidying up the dishes and chopsticks, Chunniang picked up a vegetable basket and went to pick vegetables in the field.
She saw three people standing outside their house.
“Who are you looking for?” Chunniang, seeing strangers, couldn’t help but become alert.
The visitor smiled and said, “We’ve come for a consultation. Is your Divine Doctor at home?”
“Where are you from?” Chunniang noticed their strange accents and asked.
One of them flashed a moment of impatience on his face, but still smiled and said, “We’re from a nearby village. Someone in our family is seriously ill, so we wanted to request the Divine Doctor to visit.”
Chunniang flatly refused, “I’m really sorry, my daughter is just a young girl and she doesn’t make house calls. If you want a consultation, you should bring the patient here.”
“You, you…” one man said with a fierce look, threateningly, “Don’t refuse the toast only to drink the forfeit!”
Another waved his hand, saying, “Calm down.”
The man with the fierce expression then shut his mouth.
Chunniang’s face darkened, saying, “I’m a lone woman at home, I ask you to go back, it’s not good if my husband sees.”
Saying that, she tried to close the door.
Both men moved simultaneously to block the courtyard gate, another slowly entered the yard.
Retreating a few steps, Chunniang was about to scream when someone suddenly covered her mouth and nose.
Groggy, Chunniang collapsed to the ground.
Several people walked into the courtyard, closing the gate behind them, quickly rushing towards the main house.
Reaching the main house, they didn’t see anyone. One person went to check another room, but there was still no sign of anyone.
“No one, what now?”
They had crouched outside for a while, waiting for the family to leave before entering the house, only to find that the young girl wasn’t inside.
“How is that possible? I clearly saw that she didn’t leave, how could she just disappear?” One man, a former Scout, had excellent observation skills and had complete confidence in his abilities.
The leader, with a grim expression, said: “Wake that woman up and ask her some questions.” After asking, they would certainly kill her to eliminate all risks.
So the other two ran out of the house, circled around without finding the woman, they looked at the yard gate which was tied up, not looking like anyone had left.
“What’s going on?” Both were shocked, turned and went back to report to the boss, but the boss was nowhere to be seen.
“Something’s not right! Let’s get out of here!” Both turned around to leave, one man was struck in the back of his head with a club by someone who suddenly appeared at the gate.
The man collapsed to the ground in response.
The other man, scared out of his wits, ran madly towards the yard gate.
Jiang Sanlang raised an iron club and chased after him, soon knocking him to the ground as well.
Yingbao came out of the house, stretched out her hand to take these corpses into the cave dwelling, then went to open the courtyard gate.
There was no one outside, and no one behind the hay bale either.
Yingbao turned around and brought her father back into the cave dwelling.
At this time, there were three people lying in the cave dwelling, two people dead, one unconscious.
Jiang Sanlang fed his wife a vial of medicine, and after a while, Chunniang woke up.
Only when Yingbao saw her mother awake did she relax.
Earlier, she had heard someone talking to her mom from inside the house and noticed something was wrong. One of the men, Yingbao, actually recognized as a former confidant of Chen Guanglu, who used to serve in the County Government, but was later dismissed by Wu Daozi.
She instantly understood what was happening, she wanted to go help her mother, but didn’t expect them to use some kind of medicine to make her mom faint.
Yingbao was immediately fuming, she quietly slipped to the door and hid behind it, instantly entering her cave dwelling.
She estimated when those people were inside the house searching, she quickly showed up, ran out to retrieve her mother, and then went back to find her father.
At that time, her father was in the fruit orchard in the cave dwelling picking grapes, preparing to make wine, hearing his daughter’s story, worried they might hurt his family, he immediately grabbed an iron club and stepped out, promptly knocking down one person.
With his daughter’s help, Jiang Sanlang easily knocked down two others as well.
Only after they dragged these people in, did they find two were already dead.
Jiang Sanlang dragged the one who didn’t die to a corner, tied his hands and feet with a piece of thin rope.
He had cordoned off a place here with a straw mat, planning to use it as a grain store to move the extra food from the house. It was just the right place to interrogate someone.
Jiang Sanlang stared at this man for a while, he picked up a chisel and jabbed it into the man’s face.
“Ah!” With a dreadful scream, the man was abruptly awakened.