Chapter 066: Eternal Joy (V)
After the thirteen states in the north fell into the hands of Danqiu, General Yujie Xu Hexue also recaptured the six states of Yanguan. When he was there, Juhan Pass was the defense line of Da Qi. Sixteen years after he left, Juhan Pass fell, and the throat fortress Yongzhou became the last line of defense of Da Qi in the north.
For the past sixteen years, there have been frequent disturbances by the Hu people here, and Emperor Zhengyuan has issued an imperial decree to station troops here to guard against them. Although the national treasury has suffered losses, the spending on military expenses has not been vague over the years.
There are two major clans in Yongzhou, one with the surname Qin and the other with the surname Wei. The two families have been in-laws for a hundred years. They are also the two generals stationed in Yongzhou after General Yujie confessed his crime of treason.
Qin Jixun, a general of the Qin family army, was the governor of Yongzhou. He became brothers with Wei Dechang, a general of the Wei family army. They worked together to guard the border for 16 years and made considerable achievements.
Ni Su left Yunjing in early spring and arrived at the border city of Yongzhou just as summer began. She was born in Que County in the south of the Yangtze River. If she had not seen it with her own eyes, she would never have been able to imagine the majestic mountains and vast plateaus of this place.
After the summer, the temperature difference between day and night is large. During the day, Ni Su learned from the locals to wrap her face with a gauze scarf to avoid sunburned cheeks, and at night she had to wear thicker clothes to avoid being too cold.
"My dear, is my grandson still alive?"
The old woman paced back and forth outside the curtain, listening to her daughter-in-law in excruciating pain, and she couldn't stop muttering outside.
Ni Su's hands were covered in blood. She pressed the fetus' head lightly with her fingers, but it didn't move. Her heart sank. "How can you save the baby if it hasn't been delivered for three days and you don't know how to find a doctor?"
"ah?"
The old woman almost fainted. Her unmarried daughter came to help her. She looked at the busy figure inside and asked, "What's the point of inviting you to our family?"
"Aunt Wang, the dead fetus is still in the vulva. If it is not taken out, Pingniang will die!" The maid lifted the curtain and came out, speaking to her in a kind voice.
"When I gave birth to Afeng, I wasn't as pampered as her. Why didn't he live?" the old woman complained.
"Everyone's situation is different. If the ostium cannot open, the fetus will be stuck in the birth canal. It is not her fault that she cannot be born."
The female voice behind the curtain was clear and melodious. The old lady saw through the curtain that she was feeding something to Ping Niang, so she hurriedly said, "Young lady, the fetus is dead. Don't dare give her the medicine to open the bones at this time!"
"It's not a medicine for joint joints, it's a pill for replenishing qi and blood." Ni Su said, and then she comforted Pingniang, who was lying on the bed, sweating all over, and said, "Don't worry, if this medicine is harmful, I will pay with my life."
She said this to Pingniang, and also to the old woman and Zuopo outside the curtain who did not trust her enough.
Pingniang was in so much pain that she couldn't speak, and her eyelids were almost soaked with tears. Ni Su observed under Pingniang's dress, and after a while, she immediately called her maid to come in.
After about an incense stick of time, Pingniang's voice became hoarse and her body felt weak. Her mother-in-law, sweating profusely, wrapped the dead baby she had given birth to in a cloth.
There was also a thin layer of sweat on Ni Su's temples. She washed her hands and lifted the curtain to come out. The unmarried girl saw that her body was stained with blood, and remembered her sister-in-law's crying just now. Her face turned pale. It was the first time she realized that childbirth for a woman was such a painful experience.
"I'll write a prescription, and please go get the medicine to help her recover."
Ni Su said this, but saw that the old woman hesitated and did not respond, so she continued, "It's not some precious medicinal material. Giving birth is not easy for women in this world. You must have felt pain back then. She must have been sad too after losing her child."
Ni Su wrote the prescription and gave it to her daughter, then went out with the maid.
"Did the young lady really study medicine?"
The sitting lady talked to her.
"My family has a long tradition of learning, and I have been influenced by it since I was a child."
Ni Su said.
"So you really come from a medical family. Young lady, your pills are really effective. I thought they were for opening the joints, but I didn't know they were for replenishing qi and blood."
The mistress had never seen a young lady like her. Although she was young, she had some skills in gynecology and was always polite to everyone.
"I'll give you all the money for today's consultation. I want to ask you to do me a favor."
Ni Su thought for a moment, then stopped and spoke to her.
"Young lady, you say."
The mother-in-law didn't expect such a good thing to happen, she smiled happily.
"I guess that old lady Wang will not be willing to spend money to buy medicine for her daughter-in-law. You can keep this money of mine. Use half to buy medicine for Pingniang and give it to her sister-in-law, and keep the other half for yourself."
The sitting woman didn't expect that the thing she was asked to help with was this. She was stunned for a moment, and after a long while she nodded and said, "Young lady, you are kind-hearted, but there are too many things like this. How can you help with them like this?"
"It's always hard for a poor family to survive. My father used to provide free medical treatment to farmers in the countryside." Ni Su paused for a moment and then said, "I would also like to ask you to tell me about the difficult problems you have encountered since you started delivering babies. I am young and have not seen many patients. I would like to hear how you solved the problems you encountered."
"My dear young lady, do you also want to learn our folk remedies?"
The sitting lady felt a little embarrassed.
"As long as it is useful, it is a good prescription. As a doctor, you should be open to all possibilities."
"What Haichuan?"
The sitting woman was confused.
Ni Su couldn't help but curl her eyes, "I said, please teach me, I know you are the best sitting mother-in-law here, if you are willing to be my master, I will send you a gift tomorrow."
The nun grew up in this poor place and had been delivering babies for poor families for half of her life. There were better nuns in Yongzhou City. They delivered babies for wealthy families and had some status and money. How could she compare to them? She had never been called "sir" in such a serious manner. She had only heard the children in the school call the teacher "scholar" like that.
"I'm not a gentleman at all, young lady, please don't say that," the old lady smiled and stuffed half of the medical fee Ni Su gave her back into her hands, "I don't want my half , I'll keep the rest to get medicine for Ping Niang. If you want to know anything, just come to my house."
Ni Su thanked her and went her separate ways to Liuxiang in the west of the city. The setting sun in the sky looked like crushed gold foil. Before Ni Su approached the well at the end of the alley, she saw the wooden cover on the well being pushed open from underneath, and a head wrapped in a cloth emerged. He raised his eyes with extremely dark pupils, saw her, and shouted, "Miss Ni, it seems my father is back!"
Ni Su followed Qingqiong to Yongzhou, but did not meet Qingqiong's father. He left a letter at his home in the well. Only Qingqiong could recognize the crooked words on the letter.
The letter said that he went to work in the neighboring county.
His legs were not good and he could not walk far or do heavy work. If he went there, he could only make boxes and cabinets for people.
Ni Su and Qing Qiong stayed in Yongzhou for half a month, but he didn't come back.
"There are candies on the table. He must have bought them for me."
Qingqiong came out of the well and covered it with the wooden board and locked it. After his mother returned to Youdu, he and his father came to live in this well.
All the bodies at the bottom of the well were dug out and buried by General Yujie. His father was a carpenter, and he dug out a wider area in the well, making it look like a home.
"Then where did he go?" Ni Su asked.
"We should go outside the city."
Qing Qiong guessed, "It's almost dusk, and no one should pass by Sangqiu at this time. My father should be going to visit General Xu's grave..."
His voice stopped abruptly.
I looked up and met Ni Su's gaze.
"Why didn't you tell me that he had a grave?" Ni Su walked towards him in two or three steps.
Qing Qiong was silent for a moment, and then said, "That is not a tombstone erected to commemorate him."
How will people here commemorate him?
Ni Su knew that sixteen years ago, the government issued an imperial decree to sentence Xu Hexue to death, but Jiang Xianming followed the will of the people and sentenced Xu Hexue to death by slicing. The will of the people he followed was the will of the people of Yongzhou.
There are green gullies at the bottom of the hill, and a tombstone stands on the rugged cliff.
The cold wind blew Ni Su's veil. She had learned to ride a horse on the way to Beijing with a lonely soul. Now she was on the horse's back, holding the reins. She didn't go closer, but she could clearly see his name engraved on the tombstone.
The broken silver spear was embedded in front of the tombstone. Qingqiong said that it was the one he used during his lifetime, but after sixteen years of wind and sun, the silver spear had rusted and was beyond recognition.
"Dad, stop hiding!"
Qingqiong saw a figure hiding behind the tombstone.
When the man heard his voice, he bent over and looked outside. He saw Qingqiong riding a horse with a young woman also riding a horse beside him. He walked out slowly from behind the tombstone with a crutch and a cloth in his hand.
"Are there any more kids here?"
Qingqiong saw that the cloth in his hand was very dirty, and knew that it was wiped from the tombstone.
“Hey.”
Fan Jiang was slow to react. He responded and then looked at Ni Su, "What is this?"
Qingqiong got off the horse, walked up to his father and whispered to him and the other two. Ni Su also got off the horse. Her hand subconsciously grabbed the strap of the medicine basket. The closer she got to the tombstone, the more clearly she could see the marks left on it by the child's charcoal scribbles. The crooked "bad guy" had not been wiped clean by Fan Jiang.
"General Xu's soul can come back?"
Fan □□'s beard trembled.
"Father, this Miss Ni is the one who called him back." Both the father and the son spoke slowly, and Qingqiong finally explained everything to him.
"Where is General Xu?"
"Father, General Xu has gone back to Youdu now."
Qingqiong tugged at his sleeve.
The wind made Ni Su's ears hurt. She said, "Uncle Fan, can you tell me why Qingqiong's mother knew the truth of that year?"
Fan Jiang looked at her, then at Qingqiong. Seeing Qingqiong nod at him, he spoke slowly, "The prefectural government office caught fire, and they needed to find people to repair it. I was one of them. At that time, I had already chiseled the runes under the well. Ah Shuang was able to get out of the well, so she followed me to work in the prefectural government office."
While Fan Jiang was wiping the tombstone , he said, "She is a ghost, able to hide her figure in front of people. She heard the then governor surnamed Yang quarreling with a commander surnamed Miao. Commander surnamed Miao did not allow half of the garrison troops in Yongzhou to be withdrawn, saying that it was General Xu's order, but Governor Yang did not buy his account, saying that he was delaying military opportunities. The two quarreled, and Ah Shuang was listening. Seeing that Governor Yang refused to listen to General Xu's order, she went home and discussed with me to go to Juhan Pass to find General Xu. She did not allow me to go, and left at night."
"Later she told me that when she went there, General Xu had already led the Jing'an Army deep into the heart of Danqiu. When she arrived at Mushen Mountain, General Xu's Jing'an Army and the Hu army were both defeated. There were dead bodies everywhere, and everywhere was blood red. She saw Lord Xue Huai die with her own eyes. He was hit by many arrows and died as soon as he fell down. She looked for General Xu everywhere and met a few Hu soldiers who crawled out of the pile of dead bodies. She remembered her bad deeds and lost control. She burned them to death with her soul fire."
"She didn't know that what she did would make Youdu discover her. When she found General Xu, his eyes had been scratched by the golden knife of the Hu people. He was tightly protected by the dead soldiers in a sea of blood and corpses. He was shot by an arrow and was seriously injured. He was unconscious. She wanted to save him, but was restricted by Youdu and could not move. Before she was led into Youdu, she saw a group of people who brought General Xu out of the pile of dead bodies, and then..."
Fan Jiang suddenly stopped.
"Then?"
Ni Su's palms were full of sweat.
This was the first time Fan Jiang mentioned this incident to anyone. He tightened his grip on the towel, "Then Ah Shuang left, but I could sometimes hear her talking. She told me that she heard Lord Xue Huai say before his death at Mushen Mountain that there should have been two armies to help in this battle, but I don't know why they didn't go. Then Juhan Pass was lost, Yongzhou was attacked by the Hu people, more than half of the people in the city were killed or wounded, the training envoy named Miao died in the battle, and General Xu was taken back to Yongzhou and became a traitor and was tied to the execution platform by them..."
Fan Jiang's lips trembled, "Ling Chi."
He saw it with his own eyes.
Ni Su staggered back a few steps, Qing Qiong hurried to help her , and her eyes fell hurriedly on the end of the inscription engraved with Xu Hexue's crimes -
He was severely wounded and died after being stabbed 136 times.
Just as Qingqiong said, this tombstone was never erected here to commemorate him, but to use him to tell the world that this is what traitors should do.
Ni Su's eyes were red and tears were falling out. Her breathing became rapid and she could hardly calm down. She pushed Qing Qiong away, approached the tombstone, leaned over, grasped the rusty broken gun, and tried hard to pull it out of the mud, but she did not have enough strength.
Qingqiong came up silently to help her, and the two of them worked together to pull out the broken gun, which was covered with mud and rust.
Ni Su wrapped it with her shawl. A glass lamp was swaying on the horse's back with the candlelight flickering inside. She went to lead the horse, but saw several pairs of eyes with unfriendly expressions on the dark green mountain road, staring at the three of them.
"Fan Jiang! You are here again! I caught you once before!"
"You sweep his grave, why don't you go sweep the graves of the Hu people?"
They were all filled with righteous indignation and even held sticks in their hands.
Yongzhou had suffered a great disaster. Most of the people living in Yongzhou had lost their loved ones in the battle to defend Yongzhou sixteen years ago.
"I..." Fan Jiang had been beaten before, and he was afraid when he saw the sticks in their hands. He pulled Qingqiong over and protected him in his arms.
"You gave birth to a weird son, and you live in a well where people have died. You..." A woman said in a sharp voice. Halfway through her words, she saw something wrapped in silk in the hands of the young woman beside the father and son. She glared at them and looked towards the tombstone with a strange expression. Sure enough, the broken gun was not there.
Everyone stared at Ni Su.
"You want to take that thing away?" someone asked in surprise.
"Is it not possible?"
Ni Su used a shawl to wipe the mud off the broken spear.
"How dare she pick that up..."
"This father and son brought back another abnormal person..."
“I’m not afraid of getting dirty.”
They were all people who lived near Sangqiu. They stared at Ni Su with extremely strange eyes and talked in a buzzing voice.
“It’s not dirty.”
Ni Su raised his head, held the broken gun in his arms, and stared at them, "This gun has only been stained with the blood of the Hu people, not the blood of any of your loved ones."
"You are an outsider, what do you know?" Someone could tell that her accent did not sound like that of Yongzhou.
"I know better than you!"
Ni Su wiped her face with her sleeve and gritted her teeth, "I am going to take it away today. If anyone tries to stop me, I will fight him to the death!"
"Miss Ni!"
Qingqiong saw her approaching them step by step, and wanted to stop her, but was held tightly by her father.
Ni Su led the horse forward, while the crowd retreated.
They held something in their hands, but they didn't know whether they should use sticks to beat the woman in front of them like they did to the father and son of the Fan family.
She took a step forward and they took a step back.
Ni Su's eyelids were soaked with tears. The glass lamp swayed on the horse, almost blending into the same color as the burning red clouds in the sky. She took out the dagger she carried with her, and someone in the crowd called her a "lunatic."
The children who were being led by adults threw stones at her, and then someone came to snatch the broken gun from her hand.
There is no body of Xu Hexue under the tombstone. They treat this broken gun as if it belongs to him, and want it to be exposed to the wind and sun and to be damaged forever.
Qing Qiong and Fan Jiang saw that she was surrounded by the crowd, and immediately came forward to help her. Ni Su was pushed to the ground, her palms were scratched, but she still held the broken gun tightly.
Suddenly, the sky darkened.
The flowing clouds disappeared, the sound of wind blew, and fine snowflakes fell on Ni Su's cheeks.
People only felt thick fog, and the anger on their faces was gradually replaced by fear. They could not see the sharp floating dust, but only felt something piercing their hands.
The piercing pain forced the people who were fighting with Ni Su for the broken gun to relax their hands. They retreated in panic, and the sticks fell to the ground. No one dared to hit Fan Jiang and Qingqiong father and son again.
They ran so fast that they almost rolled and crawled.
The wind was blowing hard on the cliff. Qingqiong and Fan Jiang supported each other and sat up. They saw the thick fog dissipated and a frosty white figure was standing in front of the woman with his back to them.
He leaned over and took her hand.
Ni Su was startled by the touch of the snow. The fine snow was like salt, flying all over the sky. His face was pale and flawless, and his cold eyes seemed unable to see her clearly.
The glass lamp was on the horse's back, and the light was some distance away from him, so he could only see her vague outline.
He opened his lips to call her, but heard her crying.
He was startled, then he reached out tentatively, grabbed her shoulders and helped her sit up, but she didn't expect her head to fall into his arms.
Xu Hexue's back stiffened and he lowered his eyes.
Her tears soaked his clothes, he could feel it, he raised his hand to touch her cheek, but stopped in mid-air. After a long while, he gently touched her hair.
"Did they hurt you?"
He couldn't see clearly and couldn't tell whether she was injured or not.
"No, no..."
Ni Su was choking with sobs. She was still holding the broken gun, clutching his robe tightly with one hand, and crying bitterly.
He is dead.
But Ni Su knew,
The punishment given to him by this world of the living has not yet ended.
