Wei Shu

Chapter 51 Grit
The evening wind blew past, sweeping away the brief silence in front of the corner gate.

The smile soon came back to Wei Shu's face, she nodded to the old woman, and said in a harmonious voice: "Grandma, go back to the house quickly. There will be a curfew, no one will come."

This time, she switched back to Jin Guo dialect.

"Wait a minute." The old woman called Wei Shu, and walked back to the porter with small steps. When she came out, she held her hands carefully in front of her chest, and there was a delicate bamboo basket the size of a palm lying in her palm.

"Take it...to play..." The little bamboo basket was graciously sent to Wei Shu. There was a gleam of light in the old woman's cloudy eyes, and a smile climbed onto the face covered with holes, just like a child.

The old woman is from the south of the Yangtze River. When she married Yincheng, there was a bamboo ware made by her in the dowry, each of which was exquisite and delicate.

"It's beautiful...the cabinet...A Nan...pretending to be fun...for you..." The old woman held the bamboo basket proudly and reluctantly, as if she was holding her only treasure, and held it with a knot. Stuttering Jin Guohua described the use of bamboo:
It used to be used as a plaything for Ah Nan, and it looks great on the cabinet, and now I give it to you.

Wei Shu understood and didn't refuse, took the bamboo basket and thanked her solemnly: "Grandma's courtesy is too heavy."

The old woman's smiling face was like a wrinkled orange peel, her toothless mouth grinned, she shook her hands and said, "Don't thank me, don't thank me."

The faint local accent was entwined in the words, Wei Shu seemed to hear the singing of the spring warbler in the south of the Yangtze River.

She suddenly became homesick.

Her homeland, Weiguo, is located to the east of the Great River, and her mother and queen are noble daughters from the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River.

When she was young, Wei Shu loved to listen to her mother's mother humming country songs, the gentle misty rain in the south of the Yangtze River seemed to be able to flow out of the singing, softening the world and her heart.

She never thought that in the early spring in a foreign country thousands of years later, she would hear that gentle singing again, with a lingering aftertaste, as if dreaming back to her hometown.

Hanging the small bamboo basket on her belt, Wei Shu walked forward in a trance. When she walked out, she felt something far away. When she looked back, the white-haired old woman was still waving to her by the door. The figure looked a little blurry.

When we returned to Baiyuan, the courtyard had already been lit with colorful lights, and the colorful candles set against the exotic flowers and plants all over the courtyard, crowding out the twilight.

The flowers really did come back.

Two days earlier than Goode said.

There were many more servants walking back and forth in the yard, and Xu didn't stand majestically on the porch to inspect as usual. Wei Shu heard her gentle voice coming from the east room, and occasionally the girl Yinling Like laughter sounded.

Hua really seems to be in a good mood.

As a result, the Baihuayuan with laughter also became brighter, no longer the silence of the previous few days, and even the colorful lights seemed to be noisier than usual.

Wei Shu was not qualified to serve Huazhen up close, so she just squatted down outside the corridor to salute, then went to the East Wing to hand over the food box, and took an errand from a mother in charge.

When I went out, I saw an oil-painted cart parked in the middle of the road, and a few maidservants were taking things out of the cart with big bags and small bags, and it was Yu who was watching them.

"Get out of the way." Yu also saw Wei Shu, and sternly shouted, but didn't pay attention to her, turned his head and ordered the rest of the maids to move faster.

Wei Shu bowed her head and waited for them to pass by the side of the road. All she could see was a wheel not far from the dirt under her feet.

It didn't take long for the maidservants to take out all the things on the cart and walked into Baihuayuan one by one, and Yu also left.

Wei Shu lowered her head and continued walking.Maybe it was dark and the road was dark, or maybe she didn't pay attention, and when she turned around, her feet suddenly slipped, and she fell to the ground with a sound of "ahhh", and fell to the ground and gnawed on the mud.

A few young golden slave girls were hanging lanterns in the verandah. Seeing this, they all covered their lips and giggled, and someone whispered, "This man looks so ugly."

Under the candlelight, the scars on Wei Shu's face were very eye-catching. Against her face grinning from pain, it was both ugly and funny. Shu limped away, and they were still laughing there.

Song slaves were not allowed to walk along corridors and walkways, but in places other than these two places, the lamps and candles were not very bright, and some places were still very dark.

Wei Shu chose to walk in the dark, and stopped at the corner of a courtyard not long after.

The darkness under the wall is so dark that you can't see your fingers, and it feels like a world away from the brightly lit courtyard in the distance.

She slowed her breathing and slowly loosened her clenched palms.

The warrior's line of sight is not restricted by light and shadow, so she can see clearly what is in her hand:
A grain of sand with white in gray.It seems that it is two circles larger than ordinary gravel, but it is still very inconspicuous.

It just fit into the gap in the rear wheel of the oil wall car.

He shot out the wooden cone with dark force, shook it out from the gap, and "accidentally" fell down, and the grain of white sand fell into Wei Shu's hands.

In Aqisi's memory, there was nothing about this thing, but Wei Shu knew about it.

This is the debris of silver ore, and the purity is very high.Even though the debris was small, it didn't prevent her from identifying it at a glance.

Looking at the tiny white stone in her hand, Wei Shu couldn't help feeling a little dazed again.

When she accompanied her father to fight in the Central Plains, because she was in charge of the army's supplies, she often had to lead her troops through the wilderness and jungle, and she had traveled half of the Central Plains.

I remember one time, she lost her way in a mountain and almost couldn't get out. Fortunately, a Taoist priest who knew the art of geomancy passed by and led them through an abandoned mine road through the mountains, and finally found the main road.

That mine road was originally used to mine silver ore, but it was abandoned because the ore vein had been hollowed out.It was also in that mine tunnel that Wei Shu learned the simple method of identification from the Taoist priest, and she could recognize all four kinds of ores including gold, silver, copper and iron at a glance.

Baishuang City is known for its rich silver mines, and these mines are regarded as important places by the Kingdom of Jin. They are guarded by five thousand forbidden troops directly under the imperial city. This kind of excellent ore seen at this time is extremely difficult to appear outside.

Where did Huazhen get such extremely high-purity silver ore?
She has been to the mines?
The mine is more than a hundred li away from the north of the city, very far away from the other courtyard of the Shuai Mansion, and there is almost no place to hide nearby. How did she run from the east of the city to the north of the city, and escape the thousands of forbidden troops and pass several checkpoints along the way?

Is there a secret way to the mine?Or someone brought her in?

Wei Shu frowned slightly, and her fingers subconsciously stroked the silver-white gravel.

Huazhen's so-called hunting, what exactly is she hunting?
Are those ten or so Li slaves really her only "harvest"?

A lot of questions came to mind, Wei Shu always felt that Huazhen was acting strangely, as if she was plotting something, but Akis's memory was not up to par, and she couldn't recall any clues.

(End of this chapter)