bullyxtreme Chapter 39 The Road Home, Encountering Mountain Bandits
Chapter 39 The Road Home, Encountering Mountain Bandits
"Auntie, how much are your chicks?"
"The male is three coins each, and the female is five coins each."
Where's the goose?
"Geese are all eight coins."
The two sisters chose two chicks and two goslings and paid for them.
The aunt packed the contents into two bamboo baskets and gave them to them.
The two sat on the mule cart, and Lin Lanshan asked her sister:
"What else do we need to buy?"
Then I took out the shopping list.
He muttered:
“We’ve already bought a bushel of fine rice, five bushels of fine flour, fifteen catties of coarse salt, five catties of icing sugar, the second and third volumes of the local travelogue, ten catties of vegetable oil, and five catties of soy sauce and vinegar. Sister, we still need wine, duck eggs, and star anise. We haven’t found beet seeds and sugarcane yet.”
They discovered yesterday that they actually sell icing sugar in the city, but it's expensive, even more expensive than rock sugar!
"Let's go have breakfast first before we go buy them. As for the spices and seeds, we'll just have to try our luck."
The two went to a breakfast stall and ate two bowls of wontons. Then they went to a wine shop.
"Master, I'd like to buy some wine."
"You're here! What kind of wine would you two like to buy?"
The two sisters looked at the wine jars with prices marked on them:
Cloudy sake, clear sake, yellow wine...
"I want a jar of ten liters of cloudy wine."
After they bought the wine, they began searching the whole city for the rest.
Thankfully there was a mule cart, otherwise their legs would have been broken from running.
They bought bay leaves, cinnamon, pepper, Sichuan peppercorns, and cumin from a herbal medicine shop.
As the two walked out, Lin Chunyi suddenly stopped:
"Wait, there's one more important thing we forgot to buy, and we even forgot to write the shopping list!"
"what?"
"We said we wanted to buy medicine last year!"
Lin Lanshan suddenly realized:
"Oh, right! Let's go to the clinic first. Medicine from a herbal medicine shop is definitely not as good as medicine from a doctor."
There is also a Jishetang in the city, less than a mile away from this medicine shop.
Jishidiang.
Lin Lanshan looked at the mule cart, and Lin Chunyi got off to buy medicine.
There were three lines of people at Jishetang, stretching all the way to the door.
Their expressions all conveyed pain.
People with flushed faces, pale faces, clutching their arms, clutching their stomachs... were all waiting to see a doctor.
"Sis, when will this line be open? We have to leave by noon at the latest, otherwise we might not be able to get home before dark."
"I'll go in and ask."
Lin Chunyi skipped the queue and went straight in.
A teenage boy came over and said, "Young lady, you have to queue up here to see a doctor."
Lin Chunyi bowed to him and said:
"Doctor, I'm not here for a medical consultation. I wanted to ask if I could get some medicine prescribed directly? I live in the mountains far from here, and I have to leave soon or I won't be able to get home today. Could you please make an exception?"
"I'm still an apprentice, not a doctor. Buying medicine directly is fine, what kind of medicine do you want?"
Lin Chunyi thought for a moment and said:
"Master, I need three doses of each of the simple medicines for treating typhoid fever, relieving summer heat, stopping bleeding, and treating sprains and bruises."
The young man told me to wait, then went to an older doctor who was seeing patients and whispered a few words in his ear.
The old doctor nodded slightly, gave him a few instructions, and then continued seeing patients.
“Come with me, young lady, I’ll get you some medicine.”
After a while, the young doctor packed up the medicine and handed it to her.
"That's three taels of silver in total. Inside the bottle, there's a hemostatic powder and a multi-purpose balm. Can you read?"
"Will do."
Lin Chunyi nodded in response and gave him the money.
"Then I will write down for you the methods of decocting the medicine, taking the medicine, and using the external medicine."
"Thank you!"
Lin Chunyi thanked him with the medicine, bowed to the old doctor, and then left.
"You bought it so quickly?"
"Okay, let's go. It's almost noon, let's hurry up and buy the things we still need, then we'll leave the city."
The two wandered around the city for another half hour and bought thirty chicken eggs and thirty duck eggs.
I bought another fifteen catties of coarse salt from another store.
From yesterday to today, the remaining two strings of beads have also been sold out.
One of the women, Ms. Wang, said that she was introduced to this store by Ms. Zhang, and it took her a long time to find the two sisters.
There was nothing they could do, so the two sisters sold her two strings for eleven taels each.
Four strings, totaling twenty-three taels.
"Let's go home."
Lin Chunyi drove the mule cart out of the city.
The two sisters are both pretty good drivers now, so Lin Lanshan is leisurely sitting in the car eating and drinking.
The small table was covered with all sorts of snacks they had bought over the past two days.
The mule cart traveled for half an hour before the two men took turns. They also let the mule rest for a while, drink some water, and eat some food.
"Sister, this mule is the first livestock we've ever bought. Shouldn't we commemorate this by giving it a nice name?"
The two men looked at the mule eating and drinking obediently under the big tree and seriously considered what name to give it.
"Its fur is reddish-brown, so it's called Honghong?"
"Sis, this name is too common. Besides, it has a brown color, why not call it Brown Brown? I think it could be called Mount Tai, that's much more imposing."
"Lin Lanshan, it's a female mule!"
"……"All right
Sigh, what name should we choose?
After resting for a while, Lin Lanshan took the reins, and it was Lin Chunyi's turn to sit in the carriage and rest.
A moment later, Lin Lanshan suddenly stopped the mule cart. Her expression was serious, and her eyes seemed to be searching for something.
Lin Chunyi asked, "What's wrong?"
She lifted the curtain and came out, her brows furrowed and her expression serious.
She knew why her sister had stopped the car.
"Sister, it seems..."
Lin Chunyi hummed in agreement, looked around, and locked onto a very large tree.
He raised his voice:
"Who's hiding behind the tree? Come out!"
A short, somewhat scruffy-looking man carrying a large knife emerged from behind the big tree.
Two more people emerged from behind the two trees next to them...
Two men, shorter than the one in front and with similarly scruffy appearances, carrying a spiked club and a large axe.
Wearing a tattered jacket and with a fierce expression, is this a bandit?
Lin Chunyi held her sister's hand tightly, and both of them were slightly sweaty.
The man with the spiked club, looking shifty, said:
"Brother, we're really lucky today. We caught two young women and even got a mule cart."
Lin Lanshan forced herself to act like a江湖人 (jianghu person, someone skilled in the martial arts world) and scolded:
"Who do you think you are? Do you even know who we sisters are? You dare to rob us? If you know what's good for you, we advise you to leave now, or you'll lose your lives without even realizing it!"
The leading man frowned slightly, hesitating. He thought to himself:
Could she be the daughter of some important person? But why are there no guards with her?
The man behind with the spiked club rolled his eyes:
"Brother, don't be fooled by those two young ladies! What rich young lady driving her own carriage, a mule cart no less. They're just trying to scare us!"
Then he said to the two sisters:
"You two damned women still want to fool me? You two are not bad looking, and your figures... well, they're not fully developed yet, but we brothers can still have a go. Why don't you come back to Black Bear Mountain with us? One of you can be the boss's fourth concubine, and the other can be what you call a 'chamber maid' in your fancy way! Huh? Hahahaha!"