“Uwah! Grandpa, Grandma, I don’t want to be sold! Mother, Mother, save me! Grandpa and Grandma want to sell me for money. I don’t want it! I don’t want it!”
Old Yu’s grandson bawled loudly in his mother’s arms when he heard what everyone was saying. He was afraid that he would be sold.
Nothing happened to him, but he was already crying like that. However, An Jiuyue’s family made no commotion when she was pressured by Aunt Wang and even hit her head. It made people why there was such a huge difference.
“Shut up!” the Junior Officer rebuked with a stern expression.
Old Yu’s daughter-in-law quickly covered her son’s mouth. “Heizhuang, don’t cry, don’t cry.”
An Jiuyue sighed as she watched the commotion. She gave the Junior Officer and a few others some instructions regarding the wild boar. Finally, she returned to her room to coax her children to sleep and get some rest too.
It was already late. It would be dawn in another four hours.
She had no more energy to care about the long-haired rabbits and the other poultry she had thrown into her space, leaving Wei Na to worry about it.
…
The next day, An Jiuyue, who went to bed late, woke up and went downstairs early. She saw that the wild boar had already been cut into two and was hung up. Its offal was also removed.
She was expecting to be greeted with a stench. However, the area was clean. It seemed like everyone was more conscious and cleaned up the place.
There were a lot of wild vegetables, which had been washed, on the other side. There was also some plain porridge cooked in the pot. However, there was not much rice in the pot. They were probably waiting to add the vegetables into the pot to cook.
“Aunt Ju, here’s some salt. I bought it the day before yesterday.” She handed a jar of salt to Aunt Ju.
“No, no, we’ll just eat it plain.” Aunt Ju shook her head when she saw the jar.
Salt was expensive—no family would purchase extra. The poorer families would usually eat bland food, only salting their food as much as the wealthier families when they were busier.
Salt cost fifty copper coins per half a kilogram. It was difficult to afford it!
“Use it,” An Jiuyue replied and carried one piece of the boar meat into the kitchen upstairs.
Many of them thought that she was easy to bully, so it was good enough that she was offering them a couple of bites of her boar meat. She planned to marinate the rest so that she and her children could consume it slowly.
She would then find a good time to sell the other boars in her space in town. Uncle Lin was pretty good to her, after all.
After cooking for her two children, she brought them down to play with the other children under the tree. Meanwhile, she got ready to descend the mountain.
“Jiuyue, you’ve already rescued everyone. Why are you still going back?” a few women saw that she was about to leave and asked hurriedly.
“We’ve already saved everyone in the village, but there might be some people who drifted over from other places. I’ll go take a look and save as many as I can. Every life counts,” An Jiuyue replied.
“Uncle, Aunt Ju, please take care of Zheng’er and Rong’er.”
“Okay, we’ll keep an eye on them. Don’t worry,” Aunt Ju replied.
Zheng’er did not play with the other children. Instead, he looked at his mother and said, “Mother, be careful.”
“Mother, big brother and I will wait for you here,” Rong’er added.
“Okay,” An Jiuyue replied to her two little ones before leaving.