Chapter 16: 16. Yue Girl A-Qing

16. Yue Girl A-Qing

"Father."

"What's wrong?"

Xie Lingjiang hesitated.

Xie Xun was in front of the desk, lowering his head to spread paper, his carefree scarf hanging on the table, and he didn't raise his head:

"Help me grind the ink."

"Okay."

Xie Xun took a small wolf-hair brush, lowered his eyes to think for a moment, and began to dip ink and write. This was a letter.

Xie Lingjiang, who was grinding ink on the side, watched her father's concentration for a while, then turned to close the window. It seemed it was about to rain outside.

"Don't close the window." Xie Xun paused, "Rain is a good thing."

Xie Lingjiang stopped and said directly: "Father, Ouyang Lianghan is different from what I imagined."

"What did you imagine him to be like?"

"I thought he would be a like-minded person, talking happily."

"And in reality?"

"In reality... a bit strange. Serious yet not serious, not quite the same as what you said before."

"Oh?"

Xie Xun stopped his brush, "People change, not to mention experiencing great ups and downs at a young age."

Xie Lingjiang hesitated and recounted the "misunderstanding" at Sanhui Courtyard this afternoon, concluding:

"He also lied, although it was to be nice. But daughter doesn't like this kind of worldly wisdom."

As she spoke, she frowned and looked back, but found her father was stopping his brush and looking at her with great interest.

"Before, I felt it wasn't suitable. How could two upright gentlemen live together? One board, one eye, holding the tray to the eyebrows? But now that I hear you say this, Father feels it's quite suitable."

Xie Xun laughed lightly.

"What 'live together,' what 'quite suitable,' what is Father talking about?"

"Nothing. I'll tell you when I come back tonight."

Xie Xun put down his brush, placed the letter by the window to dry the ink, turned around, and pulled out a blue-gray paper umbrella:

"Let's go. I'll take you down the mountain to see a 'family friend'."

"Family friend? We are a powerful clan of six generations. In this small Longcheng County, or even Jiangzhou City, is there anyone who can be a family friend with our Xie clan?"

Xie Xun nodded calmly: "If it weren't for seeing this 'family friend,' how would Father have built the Buddhist pagoda in this county and this temple?"

Xie Lingjiang was stunned.

"First of all, I didn't provoke any of you."

Ouyang Rong was reasoning seriously.

"Secondly, the marriage aunt forced, I never expressed any support. Even if Junior Sister was addicted to male beauty and ate my face and agreed, I would sternly decline tomorrow. I want to go home and not delay the great talented woman.

"Thirdly, the child bride who pricked me with needles that aunt mentioned... seems to be called Xiuniang. I didn't harbor any malice either. In my memory, she did prick me, but it didn't look like acupuncture to save people. Could it be a misunderstanding? I can only guess it was some kind of disease; otherwise, why murder her husband?"

"So..."

In the Merit Hall where clouds and mist rolled, Ouyang Rong paused and tried his best to coax the small wooden fish seal in front of him softly: "Can you return my merit?"

He paused and threatened slightly:

"This is an indiscriminate deduction. Aren't you afraid Buddha will revoke your business license? So just return it to me, or give me fifty more V's, and we'll pretend nothing happened, okay?"

After both soft and hard tactics and sincere grievances, Ouyang Rong waited expectantly for a long time, but the Merit Pagoda remained quiet, and the cyan-gold characters above the small wooden fish remained motionless:

【Merit: 90】

"Damn!"

Ouyang Rong flicked his sleeves and left.

With a straight face, he broke away from this black-hearted Merit Pagoda.

He was in a very bad mood now. An adult's collapse often happens in an instant.

The merit hadn't even started to be earned, and so much had already been deducted, and it didn't support appeals for wrong deductions... This life couldn't be lived.

Near evening.

Yan Liulang came to East Forest Temple again and delivered a bag of medicinal herbs to Ouyang Rong.

Bidding farewell to the former, Ouyang Rong opened the package to check:

Cicada slough, scorpion, bile arisaema, etc., were all there, all grabbed according to the prescription. In addition, there was a pot of yellow wine and mugwort used for disinfection.

This prescription for treating tetanus was learned by Ouyang Rong from a barefoot doctor in his hometown village during summer vacation when he was a child. At that time, a relative had tetanus, and he had seen the miserable state of tetanus with his own eyes, which was particularly memorable.

And at that time, the very naughty Ouyang Rong also had a similar wound on his arm. The old barefoot doctor scared him by saying that he would also get this disease, scaring him into foolishly memorizing the prescription to get medicine to eat. Later, he was naturally teased by his relatives and friends...

So the impression was deep.

Just like sometimes you might forget the appearance of your first love, but you particularly remember the plaid long skirt she wore when you first met...

Ouyang Rong brought the medicine to Liu A-Shan's house.

It was the same closed, dim room, the same meeting of one standing, one lying, and two kneeling, and the same oppressive atmosphere that was stifling if he didn't speak.

This time, Ouyang Rong didn't talk much nonsense. He carefully looked at Liu A-Shan's condition. What made him slightly relieved was that Liu A-Shan's tetanus infection should still be in the early stage, just when symptoms had appeared.

Intervening in treatment at this time gave some hope, but to be honest, it finally depended on whether Liu A-Shan's life was tough enough to survive.

Ouyang Rong wasn't sure either.

Just as he hesitated on how to explain to Mother Liu and the others why a young magistrate knew how to treat this thing.

Boom—!

The thunder outside, the thunder and rain that had been pressing on the clouds all day, poured down like a waterfall.

Ouyang Rong couldn't leave for a while.

A-Shan's mother, Liu, came over and invited him to stay for dinner. Ouyang Rong didn't stand on ceremony either, just declined once, and then agreed.

The guest rooms provided by East Forest Temple to pilgrims were quite good, and the Liu A-Shan family lived in a spacious courtyard.

The place for dinner was a semi-open room facing the courtyard, a bit like a living room without floor-to-ceiling windows in his previous life. The people inside knelt and sat on the floor, living on the floor.

The rain lines sliding down the eaves formed a water curtain, isolating the outside from the inside.

Ouyang Rong was invited here by Mother Liu and sat alone for a while, waiting for the meal.

As if to save money, there were no lights in the room. He turned his head and looked at the rain curtain outside and the dark mountains in the distance, lost in thought.

In this era of material scarcity, the night was just so boring. Once night fell, it was pitch black outside, and there were quite a few insects and mosquitoes.

Speaking of which, Ouyang Rong found that he didn't seem to "miss home" as much as before every night. Maybe he was a little used to it...

"Creak."

Someone carefully pushed the door open. Ouyang Rong turned his head and saw the little girl named A-Qing holding a tray, carrying a small lamp, and "squeezing" in from outside the door. Because she couldn't free her hands, she could only use her slender shoulders to push.

Ouyang Rong stepped forward to help her open the door.

"Thank you, Master."

A-Qing lowered her head and whispered, placed the lamp on the small tea table, knelt on the mat, and skillfully placed the bowls, chopsticks, and dishes in front of him one after another.

Ouyang Rong found that her jet-black hair was a bit damp and stuck together. He didn't know if she had just gone out and been drenched by the rain.

"Is your mother not coming to eat?"

A-Qing lowered her head and handed him the rice, shaking her head gently without speaking.

Ouyang Rong thought for a moment and felt that Mother Liu should be taking care of A-Shan's meal. He had asked a stupid question.

He coughed, took the rice, and took a mouthful, but found that A-Qing was just sitting blankly on the side without moving her bowl.

"Uh, are you not eating? Eat a little too. Let's not stand on ceremony."

A-Qing hesitated, and under the young magistrate's concerned gaze, she also scooped some rice.

Because the room was very dark, the oil lamp on the small tea table looked very bright, but it could only barely illuminate the two people kneeling and eating.

Only then, by the lamplight, did Ouyang Rong see this girl clearly.

Like her brother, she was also tattooed on her face. This was called ink punishment, which was standard for slaves in the Great Zhou. Ink characters showing the master's authority were carved on the face or body, and even after redeeming her freedom, they could never be washed away.

A-Qing had a small "Yue" character on her forehead, but it didn't destroy the delicacy of her small face; instead, it made her look even more pitiful.

She was very thin. Her age of youth wasn't small anymore, and it was the age when she could get married in the Great Zhou Dynasty, but the girl's nutrition couldn't keep up, and her physique couldn't grow at all. With thin arms and thin legs, she looked like a few sections of sugarcane sticks put together, and wearing wide, coarse cloth skirts made her look a bit dull.

However, A-Qing had a pair of very spiritual big eyes. Her pupils and the whites of her eyes were like the black and white pieces of Go, distinct from each other.

But this pair of jet-black eyes had been covered with a curtain of sorrow since Ouyang Rong first saw her.

"Your brother will be fine."

A-Qing seemed to be thinking about some sad thing, biting her chopsticks and staring blankly at the ground. Ouyang Rong couldn't help but comfort her.

"Thank you, Master." She lowered her face and repeated it again.

Ouyang Rong finished his meal, put down his bowl and chopsticks, and began to think about how to explain his "treatment plan" to A-Qing and Mother Liu. Some principles he took for granted, they almost couldn't understand and could only blindly follow him.

Ouyang Rong was thinking about how to convince Mother Liu and A-Qing. For a time, he didn't pay attention to the girl on the side.

After reacting, Ouyang Rong was surprised to find that A-Qing didn't send the bowls and chopsticks out, but moved to one side, clearing the space between the two. Then she lowered her head, stood in front of Ouyang Rong, raised one hand, pulled out the wooden hairpin from her hair, and her damp yet jet-black and clean hair hung down. The other hand wasn't idle either. In Ouyang Rong's desire to speak, she had already untied her slender waist belt and threw it aside. With a shrug of her thin shoulders, her skirt slipped down completely—it was indeed as slender as a peeled, white sugarcane, unable to hang clothes.

"!!!"

Although his reaction was half a beat slow and his eyes were already wide, Ouyang Rong was quick-handed and quickly stuffed the lamp on the tea table under the low table.

The light was hidden, the room fell into darkness, and the sound of the rain curtain outside became louder.

The orange-yellow light "pressed" extremely low by the table board only illuminated a pair of a girl's bare ankles and the slender palms of someone supporting the ground, scared backward.

"A-Qing, what are you doing?" He lowered his voice, his tone unbelievable.

In the dimness, A-Qing hadn't stopped. She called out a low "Master" and then leaned forward, approaching Ouyang Rong.

The latter was so scared that he jumped up and retreated, simultaneously backhanding his outer robe to unfold it, catching the girl who was pouncing, and wrapping her tightly, revealing only a dull and silly little head.

Ouyang Rong pressed this little head, took a deep breath, and then calmed down to ask: "Why are you taking them off for no reason?"

He asked again: "Is someone forcing you?" The weak-crowned magistrate's heart began to flare up.

"No one is forcing A-Qing. My mother and brother asked me to come. A-Qing is also willing... as long as it can make Master have fun." A-Qing shook her head blankly.

Ouyang Rong was silent.

Because the people who had always been forcing A-Qing and A-Qing's family...

Turned out to be him. ===== CHAPTER 17 =====