Idle courtiers

Chapter 7
One hadn't even seen a decent woman for half a year, and the other had spent ten years in a cold kiln, finally looking forward to her husband's return.The sky thunder catches the ground fire, the general draws the bow at night.

Throughout the night, the two of them woke up and fell asleep, and when they woke up, they turned on the lamp to learn the way of saints.Unity, tension, seriousness, liveliness, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, family love, dedication, sincerity, and friendliness.

Zhou Nan has never been so hearty and dripping, he just feels that everything in his body is useless.The reason for this, besides Yunniang's tenderness and beauty, is that the main reason is that she has solved the problem of identity and household registration, and finally no longer has to be arrested and sent to the border, fearful, and can't even sleep soundly.

As a human being, my hometown is where my heart is at ease, and stability and peace are the greatest happiness.

Yunniang sent the leftover chicken and fried chicken giblets to Zhou Yang, and Xiaolan and Xiaodou swallowed them in three mouthfuls side by side.After all, the two brothers Zhou Nan and Zhou Yang have not yet separated. For now, they still have to eat in the same pot, and the relationship cannot be made too rigid.

In fact, now is the day when there is no harvest, Zhou Yang has not enough surplus food to eat, how can he divide it, and the future will have to wait until the summer harvest.Zhou Nan also felt that it was meaningless to talk about it. In this day and age, an acre of good paddy field is only five or six taels of silver, which is equivalent to 5000 yuan in later generations.The ten mu of land is divided into half, which is a little over 2 in RMB, but he still doesn't look down on his previous income of more than a month!
Anyway, he is a modern person with foresight and a graduate of a famous university. Even if he travels back to ancient times, it is not a matter of minutes to make a fortune?

Probably because of the half chicken, and I don't know what kind words Yun Niang said to Ci Gu down there, the two families sat down to eat together again.Zhou Yang looked at Zhou Nan with a dark face and said nothing, but Cigu had already started chatting with Zhou Nan without saying a word, and everyone could barely get along.

In the era without pesticides and fertilizers, although the output in the fields was not high, the air was very good, and the water in the small river was also crystal clear, and you could clearly see the fish gathering and dispersing.

The sky is blue, with large groups of white clouds drifting by, and under the white clouds in the distance is a circle of blue hills. It's really a beautiful ink landscape.One look at it makes people feel happy.Zhou Nan couldn't help shouting and screaming: "The chest is full of stratus, and the canthus is like a returning bird. It will be the top of the mountain, and you will see all the small mountains."

The sun has risen, and after three days without embarrassment, the seedlings in the field have finally grown, and it is finally time for planting.The villagers in Zhoujiazhuang have already pushed the one-wheeled rooster bus and pushed the carts of seedlings into the field.Hearing the sound of chanting, they all laughed and said, "Brother Nan, is this reciting poetry?"

"It's been ten years, and it's been ten years. Back then, we could hear your reading every morning."

"Hey, if it hadn't been for what happened back then, Brother Nan might have been sitting in some county government office and become a grand master."

"My lord is not my lord, so don't say any more, it's God's blessing to be able to come back from Liaodong safely and alive."

"Yes, who said otherwise! Yunniang has been suffering for ten years, and now she is finally healed. The man in the family is back, and there is finally someone in this family who can support the sky."

"It's strange. You said that Brother Nan served in Liaodong for ten years and suffered so much. After washing it today, it still looks thin and tender."

Hearing everyone's comments, Zhou Nan was slightly surprised.Yes, he looks fair now, he doesn't look like a bitter man, and it will inevitably arouse suspicion in the eyes of caring people.

Another villager snorted and retorted: "Brother Nan has suffered a lot, but what is he, Wen Quxing came down to earth and almost became a master of Juren, so God will naturally protect him. Don't talk about Brother Nan, look at Yun Niang, She has come and gone in the wind and rain for ten years, and she is not the same as a young lady. Look at her pretty appearance now, is there any difference from when she just passed the door?"

A woman retorted: "What do you know, this woman is the earth, and the man is the water. The earth is nourished by water, and it will naturally come alive. Yunniang has been nourished these days!"

The women and aunts in the village didn't care much about what they said, and they let it go. When they heard this, everyone burst into laughter, and Yunniang blushed with embarrassment, so she couldn't stop throwing the seedlings on the wheelbarrow into her paddy field.

Zhou Nan smiled and greeted everyone enthusiastically, "Aunt", "Mother-in-law", "Auntie" and shouted affectionately.What he does in the modern society is welcome work. There are many middle-aged women in the office, and dealing with women is his strong point. In the past few days, he has become more and more intimate with everyone in the village.

I heard people say that Zhou Xiucai used to be a dull scholar who didn't like to deal with fellow villagers.The villagers have a natural awe for scholars, and now Zhou Nan has suddenly become approachable, and everyone likes him more and more.

During the farming season, they laughed and laughed for a long time. Zhou Nan and Yun Niang took off their shoes, rolled up their trousers and went down to the ground. They separated the seedlings and inserted them into the mud one by one.The weather is already hot, and the seedlings need to be planted non-stop.Otherwise, it only needs to be heated and dried for a day, and it will be dried to death.

People are iron rice is steel.The ten mu of land in the family is the rations of Zhou Nan, Yunniang, and Zhou Yang's family for the next six months. There must be no mistakes, otherwise they will starve to death.

Strange to say, Zhou Yang didn't know where he went today.Yunniang and Cigu are the only ones who go to the field, and Zhou Nan is the only full-time labor force in the family, as long as he has to be the leader.

It is estimated that Zhou's second child is still upset that Zhou Nan, the brother who suddenly came out, went home and ruined his plan to seize the property, so he didn't know where he went to be lazy.This guy is so angry with the whole family's livelihood for the next six months, he is also a person who doesn't know the general situation.

Zhou Nan didn't bother to get angry, imitating Yunniang and Cigu's way, stepping on the mud in the ground and stepping back, while inserting the seedlings in his hand into the mud.

At the beginning, it was interesting to see the blue sky and white clouds reflected in the water slightly rippling, the sky light and cloud shadows lingering together.Seeing that I couldn't plant half an acre of land, my waist was sore and my back hurt, and my mind was so full that I couldn't think.Beads of sweat fell to the water one by one, causing ripples.

The sun began to burn, making the back of my neck burn and hurt.

He is just an office white-collar worker, how could he suffer so much.Several times, he threw the seedlings in his hands on the ground in anger, and went home to sleep soundly.However, seeing Yunniang who was working beside her, seeing her thin body and heavy breathing.He gritted his teeth and persisted: I am a man, and a man is a mountain for women to lean on.I want to persist, for the people who love me, for the people I love.

When it was finally time for lunch, Zhou Nan didn't care to wash his hands and feet, so he fell directly on the ridge of the field, gasping for breath.I just feel extremely disgusted in my chest, and I have no appetite at all.

A gust of wind blew in, and it was indescribably refreshing. Looking up, Yunniang was holding a cattail fan and was waving it at him, her face full of concern: "Sir, you haven't done farm work before, but you don't think so?" It's better, why don't you go home and rest, I'm the one who works in the field!"

At this time, Cigu, who was holding green barnyard rice in her mouth with a coarse earthenware bowl, sneered: "This is just the beginning. After a while, there will be fertilization, weeding, autumn harvest, threshing, and sunning. Good days are still here." It's in the back. Zhou Nan, you'd better eat quickly, go to the ground after eating, don't be lazy."

Hearing her words, Zhou Nan suddenly shuddered.Fertilization, weeding, autumn harvest, threshing, sunning, yes, good days are yet to come.There is no end to the farm work for half a year. Even during the Chinese New Year days, you have to go to the field to pick up the winter wheat in the field.I had only planted half an acre of rice, and I was exhausted with heatstroke. I don't know what the future will be like?
Yunniang said softly: "Auntie, you said Zhou Nan was lazy, but today uncle didn't know where he went?"

After she gave her a no-nonsense top, Ci Gu snorted: "My man naturally has important things to do, so what's none of your business?"

Zhou Nan gave Yunniang a wink, signaling her not to quarrel with Cigu.Yunniang is soft-tempered, she is not a match for this kind of country woman at all, and it is not worth arguing with her.

He scooped up a bowl of dry rice and ate it slowly.While eating, he asked: "Yunniang, how is the harvest in our family's land, and how much tax do we have to pay every year?" Now that he is a small landlord in the Ming Dynasty, he has property.If he wanted to survive, he had to manage the ten mu of land well, after all, it was the foundation of his future.

Cigu cut in and snorted coldly: "What is your land, it belongs to old Zhou's."

Yun Niang replied that the grain produced in the field is one and a half stones every year, and half a stone of seed grain is deducted, and there is still one stone.

"Ten acres of land, ten stones, more than 2000 catties, six people eat, life is hard enough." Zhou Nan sighed slightly. He used to cook by himself, eating about one catty of rice every day, thirty catties a month, half a year That's three hundred catties.A family of six will weigh [-] catties in half a year.Food wasted, about [-] catties.

However, modern people have enough oil and water to eat less food.In the Ming Dynasty, ordinary people did not see meat twice a month, and when they were adults and hard workers, it was easy and happy to wipe out a catty of dry rice with one meal.Calculated in this way, these two thousand catties of grain can barely be mixed up.

No, you still need to pay taxes.

Yun Niang explained for a long time that the family needs to pay taxes to the country every year, which immediately made Zhou Nan feel like a thunderbolt.

Taxes in the Ming Dynasty were divided into three parts: Tianmu, Dingkou and corvee.

Tianmu is to pay a certain percentage every year according to the area of ​​land owned by your family, while Dingkou pays poll tax according to the number of people in the family.In addition, men have to prepare their own rations for the government to repair bridges, pave roads, and repair canals every year. This is the so-called corvee, and it is also a considerable expense.

In the past, Zhou Nan was selected as a scholar and became a county student. According to the laws of the Ming Dynasty, he could be exempted from the two-stone tax every year, and he didn't think it was a big deal if he didn't have to serve in the military.Now that he has been dismissed from his fame, the tax he should pay cannot be less than a grain of rice.

After hearing Yunniang's words, Zhou Nan's complexion changed drastically.I quickly calculated in my heart, relying on the ten acres of land at home, working hard for half a year, let alone primitive accumulation, it would be enough to survive.No wonder Zhou Yang reacted so violently to his eldest brother who suddenly appeared, one more person would give him one more mouth.If you eat more, your family will eat less.

This is still the peaceful years of the Jiajing period. If it is replaced by a catastrophic year like Chongzhen, and a series of additional levies are imposed on the Liao pay, the training pay, and the suppression pay, the common people will have to die.

Looking at the lush paddy fields, seeing the busy villagers in the fields, looking at the tile-blue sky and the blossoming white clouds, this beautiful rural scenery made Zhou Nan feel chills.There is no idle land in the world, and the peasants still starve to death.

What's more, I am not a farmer at all, and the eyes of the workers in the field are smeared.

Now he originally thought that as long as he gritted his teeth, he could get through it, and he would just get used to it in the future.But now that I calculated it, my previous persistence became meaningless.

"No, no." Zhou Nan's face was grim.

Yun Niang picked up a sweat towel that was so old that it was not what color it was, and wiped the sweat from Zhou Nan's forehead lovingly: "Sir, what's wrong?"

"Life shouldn't be like this, Yunniang, your life and mine shouldn't be like this." Zhou Nan gritted his teeth.

Suddenly, the loving aunt next to her sneered loudly: "If it's not like this, what else can it be? You are still dreaming of being a scholar and the magistrate of Kaozhong County? Judging by the way you work today, you are a useless person. Besides, are you Brother Nan from my family still can't tell, don't be a liar who came from somewhere."

Zhou Nan raised her brows, this kind of shrew, if you don't give her some color, she even opened a dyeing workshop.

Suddenly, Xiaodou, who was playing with grasshoppers on the ridge and got muddy all over, pointed to the distance and shouted: "Mom, Daddy is back."

Zhou Nan looked up, but saw Yang Zheng, the official road, staggering over there, and two men with their chests outstretched in front of them.

The two men were wearing green cloth long gowns with arrow sleeves and square hats on their heads.There is also a chicken feather stuck in the hat.One holds an iron chain, the other holds an iron ruler, suddenly dressed as a yamen servant.

Seeing the three of them, Zhou Nan felt a thump in his heart, and suddenly had a bad premonition.

Zhou Yang, who is busy with farming, is not working in the field, what is he going to do with tolerance?Moreover, the ancients were afraid of officials. In the minds of ordinary people, this kind of subaltern in the yamen is a night owl who enters the house. Once he appears, there is absolutely no good thing, and it is too late to hide.

The three of them came very quickly, and their target was Zhou Nan.

At the edge of the field, Zhou Yang pointed at Zhou Nan and shouted, "That's him."

A yamen servant swung the iron chain in his hand and put it on Zhou Nan's head, and shouted: "What a bold thief, pretending to be a person, a bastard, and taking away people's property. The county magistrate issued a sign to arrest you and bring you to justice." .Come on, follow us to the county government office!"

In an instant, Zhou Nan was dripping with cold sweat.

If things got serious, if he escaped alone before and was caught, at most he would be sent to Liaodong again.Although there is no return, at least for the time being, he can save his life.But now I am pretending to be Zhou Xiucai, occupying my wife, once exposed, I will be executed according to the law, even the heavenly king and Lao Tzu can't save her.

He couldn't help crying out in his heart: Heaven, earth, they forced me to pretend to be Zhou Xiucai, so what's the matter with me?Labor and management have been planting the land all morning, and they are as tired as their grandsons, who are also victims!

(End of this chapter)