I wanted to embrace my master and return home

"I beg kind people to give me a bowl of porridge. You can feed the leftovers to the pigs. Our mother and daughter have not eaten for two days. The little girl is about to die..." The young woman with a cloth kerchief on her head knelt on the ground, her whole body covered. The clothes were drenched by the rain, but they still wrapped the unconscious little daughter in her arms.

"Get away! We don't have pigs here, go beg somewhere else, don't give us the dirty ones!" The gatekeeper yelled at the mother and daughter.

"Master, please do me a favor, my daughter will starve to death if she doesn't eat..." The woman kowtowed again, and the faint blood was washed away with the water.

"If you don't leave, don't blame me for being rude!"

"What are you arguing about?" Gu Mou frowned and pushed open the door. Seeing the situation in front of him, he couldn't help but stagnate.

The woman was overjoyed, she hugged the little girl in her arms and walked a few steps forward, rubbing her knees, crying: "Master! I beg the master to give me a bowl of porridge to save the little girl's life! I wish to be a cow or a horse in my next life to repay the master for saving my life." Grace!"

Gu Mou was startled by their distressed appearance, and almost stepped forward to help them in, but when he took a closer look, the five or six-year-old girl in her arms had a red rash on his arm.

No wonder he was unconscious after only two days of starvation.

After saying wait a moment, he went back to the house to get some things. When he came out, he brought a bowl of minced meat soup, packed a few steamed buns, a packet of medicinal herbs, and a box of plaster, and put them far away on the steps.

The young woman originally only wanted to beg for a bowl of porridge, but when she saw so many good things, she couldn't believe it for a while, until Gu Mou hinted that she would go forward to get them, and then she became dizzy with joy, kowtowed with tears in her eyes , Take food and medicine away.

Yu Shubai stood upstairs and witnessed this scene, frowning the whole time, not knowing what he was thinking, until Gu Mou came up and asked: "Is she a refugee?"

"No, I'm a local with an accent, and I'm not badly dressed. It should be that the house was taken over by refugees." Gu Mou shook his head.

"..." After listening to Yu Shubai, he didn't know what to say, he just looked out of the window for a long time and said: "Tomorrow I will go out with you."

"it is good."

The next day, when Yu Shubai and Gu Mou just opened the door of the inn, they saw a group of people gathered around, all of them were festered by the plague to varying degrees, and some even had demon marks on their bodies.

Seeing the two of them appear, the people knelt down excitedly: "I beg the gods to give me the medicine! I beg the gods to give me the elixir!"

"We heard from the second sister-in-law of the Wang family that the medicine you gave cured the plague on the child, and most of the rash disappeared overnight. I dared to come here to ask for medicine!"

Gu Mou was not angry, but said flatly: "That medicine can only cure rashes."

Everyone was stunned: "What do you mean?"

"It means that the medicine is only effective for the rash in the early stage of the epidemic. If your body is rotten, festering, and even has demon lines, the ointment is completely useless." Yu Shubai poked at him.

As soon as these words came out, the people who were so excited that they could only kowtow were stunned, their moods fluctuated, and they couldn't even speak for a while, and two middle-aged women even cried on the spot.

Amid the crying, Gu Mou's voice sounded: "How many other patients are there like I said, with only initial rashes on their bodies and no festering?"

The woman sobbed, "Very...a lot."

"I have a few jars of ready-made ointment here, take me to have a look first."

After the two took the ointment, they opened an umbrella and followed the others to a dilapidated house. It must have been abandoned for a long time, and many people lived in a mess. Most of the eaves fell off, and the ancestral hall was leaking everywhere. .

As soon as he stepped in, he could only feel the stench, mixed with all kinds of complicated smells. Gu Mou and Yu Shubai looked at each other, although they didn't say anything, they understood the "shaking head" in each other's eyes.

It's too dirty, too messy, even if a hundred cans of ointment are used up, what should spread will still spread, and it can't be prevented at all.

When they entered, it was everyone's "lunch" time. I saw those people with disheveled hair, holding a few broken sea bowls in twos and threes, and stuffing lumps of mud into their mouths. Their faces were not very good-looking. , but still swallowed with neck stuck.

"What are they eating?" Yu Shubai couldn't help asking.

"Flour." Someone scratched his head and answered.

"Is this flour?" Yu Shubai's eyes widened.

"It's flour mixed with soil, tree roots, and wild vegetables. It's a pity that all the bark has been picked, otherwise we can get something easy to eat." The man replied shyly.

"Swallow..." Yu Shubai was almost dumbfounded.

Easy to swallow?What they manage to swallow is called... bark?

Yu Shubai couldn't accept the pictures he saw with his own eyes and the voice he heard with his own ears, but he didn't go out for a few days, how did Qi Shi become like this?

Could it be that he never knew the real Qi Shi?

After Gu Mou distributed the ointment to everyone, he led Yu Shubai out of the house, and after walking a few steps, Yu Shubai stopped suddenly, looked at him and said seriously: "Gu Mou, I will... I have wasted food, and I will no longer beg you to go out to buy meat, and I will not dislike the bad taste of white noodles, I will eat whatever you do, and I will eat up as much as you make."

"..."

"I really don't know...really...it's the first time I've seen someone live by eating this kind of food, but I'm thinking about the unpalatable taste of rice and noodles, the taste of oil and salt, I..."

After a long time, Gu Mou hugged him into his arms and said with a wry smile, "Fortunately, you didn't show kindness and said that you would donate all our rice to them."

"I don't want to eat mud mixed with flour..." Yu Shubai's eyes were red.

The fine grains in the kitchen did not last long. After all, there were still a few thugs to feed in the inn, but if they were not enough to feed these thugs, without their guards, the food in the kitchen would probably be in a hurry on the first night.

In order to make ends meet, Gu Mouzhi took another two taels of silver out of the box and went to the grain shop, but this time the rice noodles he brought back were only half of the last time.

The price is the same, but the quantity is reduced by half. Although Gu Mou had a premonition, he did not expect that the price of food would rise so fast.

Everyone fell silent when they saw the bags of rice he put on the ground.

"Why don't you buy some more, I can't eat much here." After a while, Yu Shubai bit his lip and said.

In fact, Yu Shubai ate very little on weekdays, and the half-bigu state would not have much impact on him, but he was very afraid that Gu Mou would not have enough to eat.

"You can't take the food with you, and you will be robbed on the road." Gu Mou replied without thinking.

"what?"

"Look at the roof." Gu Mou pointed to the eaves, and everyone looked up suspiciously. They saw that the color of the roof was much darker than before, and there were corroded mold on the surface. Gu Mou said: "This house cannot pass How long will it take to collapse."

When the house collapses, you can only find another place, and it will continue like this, never stopping.

"Bang bang bang!!"

One morning, the door of the inn was violently slammed. Gu Mou was sleepless and woke up suddenly. Yu Shubai was haunted by evil spirits for half the night last night, covered in night sweat and having nightmares, and finally fell asleep.

Afraid that the noise downstairs would wake him up, Gu Mou hurriedly got up on tiptoe and walked downstairs quickly, only to see a few thugs looking at him helplessly, and a few soldiers in soft armor standing at the door.

"Is he your master?" the front soldier asked the thug while planning a lot.

"Yes."

Gu Mou didn't speak, so the soldier took two steps towards him, cleared his throat, and spit on the ground, which happened to land at Gu Mou's feet: "Let's make a long story short, since you are the owner of this house, then this year's deed tax , and pay the production tax as soon as possible.”

The shopkeeper rubbed his hands to meet him, he was surprised and not easy to attack, so he could only smile:

"Deed tax? Didn't we already pay the deed tax when we first bought the house? Officer, did you make a mistake? This store has been open for decades and has never collected a second deed tax."

"That being said, there is very little income in the palace this year, and it is difficult to collect taxes. Now that the Ryukyu Kingdom is eyeing a tiger, His Majesty is preparing to recruit troops to defend the city. Is it too much for you people who are sleeping in your nest to contribute too much to the country? !" The soldier slapped the shopkeeper's head away, and the latter trembled and almost lost his footing, barely holding on to the corner of the table.

"Officer! Officer, if you collect deed tax and production tax, we really can't afford it. The master bought a few bags of millet with the last money a few days ago, and put them in the kitchen. The last ration is almost half a year this year. It's been raining all day long, and the crops have not been harvested, so I really can't afford the money..."

"Stop talking nonsense, your master paid for it, and didn't cut your flesh! Get the hell out of here!" another soldier said angrily.

"Hey, I know the reason. You look like a scholar, so I don't need to say more." After the soldier finished speaking, he snorted again, and said, "If I really can't afford the money, I'll pick one from among the guards like you. The two will join the army and enter the camp with us, and each family will be rewarded with at least five buckets of corn, understand?!"

"Thugs are hired on a monthly basis, and there is no contract of sale." Gu Mou said.

"That's easy to handle. Do you have any children in your family? We want anyone over the age of 14. Brothers, go up and search to see if there are any children!"

"Stop." Gu Mou said coldly.

"What did you say? Tell me one more thing!!" The soldier approached him, grabbed his collar, and sprayed all his anger on Gu Mou's face.

"You kid speaks so arrogantly, do you want to die! Do you understand that I can be kicked to death with one kick?! Ah!!"

There is disgusting thick phlegm under their feet, with a ferocious face in front of them, and holding a chicken feather as an arrow. This kind of person is a coward in front of the leader, and when he comes out, he wants to act like a street bully, oppressing the people to have fun, this kind of person A person can teach him how to kneel down and beg for mercy, and throw away his armor and armor with just a snap of his fingers.

Gu Mou pursed his lips tightly, his fists were under the sleeves, the veins were exposed, and he was accumulating strength. Even the center of his brows was tinged with a frightening sharpness, like the cold eyes of a wolf beast in the mountains. The soldier was startled when he saw it. Loose, took a step back.

Unexpectedly, after the man in front of him stared at him for a long time with eyes like ice picks, until his hands and feet started to feel cold, he said softly, "We pay taxes."

"What... what?" The soldier stumbled on his lips.

"how much is it?"

"...eighty dollars."

"En." Gu Mou nodded, as if nothing had happened, turned and went upstairs, walking very lightly, everyone looked at his quiet back, and dared not say a word.

When he reached the corner, Gu Mou looked up and saw that Yu Shubai had woken up at some point, and was standing at the stairs looking at him quietly.