“Where is Shen Dalang?”
“Replying to the master, Dalang is sick in bed...”
“Cut the crap! When will you pay the rent you owe Master Bai?”
“Please appease your anger, master. I beg you to give us two more days...”
“Mother, I'm hungry...”
Angry shouting and low weeping drifted faintly into his ears.
Shen Xiuhan slowly opened his eyes.
Before him was a familiar, dilapidated thatched hut, an old kang table, and a lingering smell of medicinal broth.
He let out a soft breath, his dry, cracked lips twitching slightly:
“It's been three days...”
This was Changyun County, under the jurisdiction of Nanxiang Prefecture in Cangzhou, Qi State.
The county town was built by a lake, and its residents had fished for generations to make a living.
The original owner of this body, Shen Dalang, was the son of a tenant farmer for the wealthy Bai family of the inner city.
His father, Shen Sanhuai, relied on renting a small skiff from the Bai family, boating on the lake every day to catch fish and make a living.
The family was dirt-poor, sheltering in the “Xiaojing Bay” slums of the outer city.
To let his wife and children live a peaceful life, Shen Sanhuai pinched pennies, hoping to save enough money to one day move into the inner city and rent a house that could shelter them from the wind and rain.
Who would have thought that half a month ago, during a routine trip to the lake, he would encounter a water monster.
The man never returned.
The fishing net and the skiff were also swept away.
The original owner of the body fell ill from grief, hunger, and cold, unable to get out of bed.
When he opened his eyes again...
...he had already been replaced by Shen Xiuhan, who had met with an accident on his way home from his restaurant job.
“Cough, cough...”
Shen Xiuhan coughed dryly twice and struggled to sit up, listening to the pitiful voice of a young girl outside the room:
“Mother, I'm hungry...”
“Momo, be good. We're not hungry.”
“Mother, Momo wants to drink congee...”
“Momo, listen to me. The congee is for your big brother to sweat out his fever. Once he gets better, he can catch fish for Momo to eat...”
Memories surged.
The woman was his mother, Madam Zheng, and the little girl was his biological younger sister, Shen Momo.
Since he fell ill, the family's meager remaining savings had all been spent by Madam Zheng on medicinal broth and millet to treat him.
The already precarious household was now completely unable to put food on the table.
Crunch, crunch...
The sound of footsteps in the snow drew closer.
The straw curtain was lifted.
Madam Zheng walked in holding a bowl, lowering her head to blow on the steaming medicinal broth inside:
“Dalang, it's time to take your medicine...”
But when she looked up and saw Shen Xiuhan awake and sitting up against the head of the bed, her bloodshot, exhausted eyes suddenly burst with uncontrollable joy!
“Ah! Dalang, you're awake!”
Madam Zheng quickly walked to the bed, set the medicine bowl down on the kang table, and placed her hand on Shen Xiuhan's forehead.
Feeling the fever that had clearly subsided, tears instantly fell like broken strings of pearls.
“Thank heavens, thank the heavens. My son has finally pulled through...”
“Dalang, hurry up and drink the medicine. I'll go get some food for you!”
Madam Zheng wiped away her tears with joy and hurriedly lifted the straw curtain to leave.
The straw curtain fell, only to be lifted again.
A small head, about five or six years old, wearing a tattered little padded jacket, thin and sallow, with messy hair, poked in.
Her dark, shiny eyes held a trace of timidity as she stared at Shen Xiuhan on the bed.
“Big bwother...”
...
“Hurry and eat, Dalang.”
A moment later, Madam Zheng placed a bowl of thin millet congee on the kang table.
Shen Xiuhan picked up the bowl and took a sip.
Bland and tasteless.
But his empty stomach indeed felt much better.
He took only one sip and put it down.
For no other reason than...
...there was a little head nearby, staring intently at the bowl in his hand.
Her little mouth was slightly open.
The sound of her swallowing saliva was clearly audible.
Sensing Shen Xiuhan's gaze shifting toward her, the little girl hurriedly turned her head away, not daring to look anymore.
Shen Xiuhan smiled and pushed the bowl toward the edge of the table:
“Momo, you have some too.”
The thin congee in the bowl seemed to have turned into a mountain of delicacies.
The little girl's nostrils flared. Her head, which had been turned aside, seemed to be pulled by an invisible thread, turning back bit by bit, uncontrollably.
Her large eyes stared straight at the congee in the bowl, and her little belly let out a very uncooperative “growl” sound.
“Th-this is big bwother's food to make him feel better... Momo isn't hungry at all!”
Shen Momo swallowed her saliva, buried her small face in Madam Zheng's embrace, and forced herself not to look.
Madam Zheng's eyes were red. She gently patted her daughter's back and looked at Shen Xiuhan:
“Dalang, you hurry and eat. Don't worry about this greedy girl.”
“Only when you get better... will there be hope for our family.”
Shen Xiuhan's breath hitched, and a lump formed in his throat. After a brief pause, he picked up the bowl, tilted his head back, and drank the congee clean in one gulp.
Now was not the time to be overly sentimental.
He had to restore strength to this weak body first, no matter the cost.
Just as Madam Zheng said, only if Shen Xiuhan stood up would this family have a way to survive.
After he finished the congee, Madam Zheng deftly washed the bowl and chopsticks.
When she walked back into the thatched hut, her face carried a few more traces of worry. Pinching the hem of her clothes with her fingers, she hesitated repeatedly before speaking with difficulty:
“Dalang...”
“Besides the boat rent we owe Master Bai and the money we have to pay to compensate for the lost skiff...”
“We also borrowed two hundred copper coins from Uncle Chen's family when we went to the city to get your medicine a few days ago...”
“Uncle Chen hasn't pressed us, but I heard from Auntie Li yesterday that Chen An is going to practice martial arts, so his family must be in urgent need of money too.”
“Adding all of this up, our family owes two taels of silver!”
She paused, her thin body suddenly trembling uncontrollably.
“Earlier today... the Bai family's steward came to demand rent again.”
“They said... if we don't pay back the money, they will not only drag me to the Bai family's textile mill to do hard labor to pay off the debt... they will also sell Momo into the city and put her into the lowly registry!”
Lowly registry meant slavery!
The laws of the Great Qi were strict. Once one fell into the lowly registry, they would be worse off than even tenant farmers.
They could not take the imperial examinations, could not own property, and could not marry commoners.
The men would be slaves for generations, and the women would be prostitutes for all eternity.
Passed down from generation to generation, never to rise again!
Shen Xiuhan naturally could not allow such a thing to happen. His voice was dry but firm:
“I will find a way.”
Even though he was only a youth of seventeen or eighteen who had just recovered from a serious illness, when Madam Zheng heard these words, her expression visibly relaxed.
She wiped away her tears, stood up, and patted Shen Momo's small head, instructing:
“Momo, be good. Listen to your big brother at home. Mother has to go to work...”
Just now when she was holding the bowl, Shen Xiuhan had seen that Madam Zheng's hands were covered in chilblains and cracks.
Those were the marks left behind from her washing and mending clothes for others from dawn till dusk to treat Shen Xiuhan's illness.
Madam Zheng hurriedly went out.
Shen Xiuhan lifted the quilt, put on his clothes, got out of bed, and walked straight toward the neighboring thatched hut.
The Shen family had three thatched huts in total.
The large one was for living in.
The other two small ones were divided into a kitchen and a utility room for storing miscellaneous items.
In Shen Xiuhan's memory, to teach him how to fish and make a living, Shen Sanhuai had personally made a fishing rod for him this spring.
Sure enough.
As soon as he entered the utility room, he saw a dusty, thin bamboo pole in the corner.
The tip of the pole was wrapped with yellowed hemp rope, and a small iron hook was tied to the end.
Simple and crude.
But this was currently his only tool to obtain survival resources.
“Big bwother, are you going to catch fishy-fishies for Momo to eat?”
A timid child's voice sounded behind him.
The little girl had followed him at some point, like a little tail.
Seeing Shen Xiuhan pick up the fishing rod, her large eyes instantly lit up, and she looked up at him with a face full of anticipation.
“Yes, to catch...”
Shen Xiuhan turned around, intending to rub her head, but his pupils suddenly constricted, his expression froze, and his voice came to an abrupt halt.
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