Famine and Chaos: Weaving Cloth in Exile to Escape the War

After Jing Zhichun finished speaking, without giving Shen Qingzhou a chance to say anything more, she stepped forward and pushed the sick and unsteady Shen Qingzhou to the ground, then turned him over with her foot so that he was lying face down.

Then, he swung the iron shovel and smashed it down hard on Shen Qingzhou's buttocks.

This blow made Shen Qingzhou's already festering and suppurating chrysanthemum even worse.

"Ah! Jing Shi, you...you will die a horrible death!" Shen Qingzhou screamed in agony as he was beaten.

Jing Zhichun chuckled as he listened to Shen Qingzhou's screams.

This is nothing.

The worst is yet to come.

After being hit by the iron hammer about ten times, Shen Qingzhou's screams grew fainter and fainter, and he was almost half dead.

Jing Zhichun stopped.

She took a breath, raised the iron paddle again, and poked at Shen Qingzhou's anus.

"what!"

Shen Qingzhou's eyes widened in pain, and he spat out a mouthful of blood. He glared fiercely at Jing Zhichun: "Jing family, you mustn't..."

Before he could finish speaking, Kyoto Haru's iron shovel came crashing down again.

It hit Shen Qingzhou directly on the head.

In an instant, Shen Qingzhou's head was flattened.

The screams abruptly stopped.

Jing Zhichun leaned on her iron shovel to catch her breath. She had originally planned to leave, but just then, she saw the small figure on the kang (heated brick bed).

She walked over and reached out to feel it.

The baby has stopped breathing.

His body was already frozen stiff.

Jing Zhichun sighed, picked up the small corpse, and turned to go to the other rooms of the Shen family.

On the kang (a heated brick bed) in a thatched hut, Shen Wangshi and Shen Qingshan lay directly on the bare kang surface, without even a tattered cloth covering their bodies.

The kang (heated brick bed) was also ice cold.

The two men were now pale and stiff.

It looks like they froze to death.

"You've suffered no pain at all, it's too good for you to die like this." Jing Zhichun glanced at Shen Wangshi and Shen Qingshan, then carried the baby's body to the kitchen and sold all the remaining medicinal herbs to the system.

Only then did he carry the iron shovel and leave the Shen family home.

She walked to the back of the Shen family's thatched cottage, found a spot in the snow, dug a shallow pit with an iron spade, and buried the baby in it.

I hope this child will be reborn into a good family in his next life.

After doing all this, Jingzhichun turned and walked towards his own thatched hut.

Back in the hut, she bought three meat buns and a bottle of water from the system, squatted on the doorstep, and quickly ate them.

He bought another thick robe to cover himself before getting up and walking towards the Yang family's house.

She needs to go and check on Yang Dawang's condition.

If the situation remains relatively stable, she should take a good rest.

Her body hadn't slept for several days.

If this continues, she'll die suddenly.

Upon arriving at the Yang family's residence, Jing Zhichun first visited Yang Dawang.

The old man sat leaning against the headboard. Although his face was still sallow, the deathly pallor had dissipated, and his eyes were much clearer than yesterday.

She secretly checked Yang Dawang's temperature, and his fever had subsided to 37.8 degrees Celsius.

This is good news.

However, Yang Dawang's lymph nodes were still very swollen and felt hard to the touch.

However, this is not a big deal. It is a normal phenomenon during the recovery period of plague. As long as the high fever does not recur, these lumps will gradually disappear.

After examining Yang Dawang, Jing Zhichun started preparing medicine again, instructing the Yang family to brew the medicine and then have Yang Dawang drink it on time every day.

In less than ten days, his plague will be almost cured.

Then, she showed it to the other members of the Yang family.

Fortunately, the rest of the Yang family had not yet shown any obvious symptoms of the plague. However, Jing Zhichun still made them drink the heat-clearing and detoxifying tea as a precaution.

After finishing all that, Kyoto Haru was exhausted and sleepy.

They rested directly on the warm kang (heated brick bed) in the Yang family's house.

Kyoto Haru slept soundly until the evening of the next day.

The first thing I did upon waking up was to check on Yang Dawang's condition.

This time, Yang Dawang's fever subsided a little, and he looked much more energetic.

Jing Zhichun pondered that she should deliver the grain she had promised to the Yang family tonight.

So, before she left, she asked Yang Erniu to come to her thatched hut to fetch grain later.

After giving his instructions, Kyoto Haru headed towards his thatched hut.

However, after walking a few steps, she remembered the monkey she had strangled.

She returned to the Yang family.

She remembered Yang Erniu saying that it was a medicine monkey.

She wanted to figure out exactly what the "medicine monkey" was.

Upon hearing that Jing Zhichun had asked about the medicine monkey, Yang Erniu began to recount the stories he knew about the medicine monkey.

Legend has it that in the previous dynasty there was a man surnamed Liu who was intelligent and well-educated, but he was physically weak and often fell ill.

His family scrimped and saved to support him in taking the imperial examinations, hoping he would bring honor to the family.

But to everyone's surprise, every time he entered the examination room, he couldn't even last half the time before he felt dizzy, vomited, and had diarrhea, and he would have to be carried out of the examination room each time.

After several setbacks, Liu Shusheng's path to officialdom was completely cut off.

Disheartened, Liu felt ashamed to face his parents and thought his frail body was a burden. In a fit of anger, he ran away from home and went to a Taoist temple outside the city. He became a disciple of an old Taoist priest who was said to have profound medical skills, and started working as a kitchen helper and medicine pounder.

He was determined to succeed. Since he couldn't make a living through writing, he decided to study medicine, at least to cure his illness.

After working for almost a year, Liu Shusheng had learned to recognize all the medicinal herbs and had also secretly memorized a few half-understood recipes.

Feeling that he had some basic skills, he went deep into the mountains and forests, built a dilapidated shed, and began to prepare his own medicine to recuperate.

But after the medicine was prepared, looking at the bowl of dark, unappetizing stuff, he felt uneasy again.

My body is already weak. If the medicine is too strong and causes problems, wouldn't that be adding insult to injury?

As it happened, there were two wild monkeys, a male and a female, in the mountains. They would steal food from Liu Shusheng's shed when he got old.

Liu Shusheng's eyes lit up, and he caught the male monkey and tied it up at home.

Then he forced the monkey to swallow the bowl of medicine he had prepared for himself.

From then on, the monkey became Liu Shusheng's drug test subject.

Two weeks later, the male monkey was indeed much more energetic than before.

Its eyes gradually turned red, and when the night was quiet, the monkey became particularly excited and energetic, roaring and shouting.

Liu Shusheng was just starting to feel happy, thinking that the medicine he had prescribed was working.

Then, he caught a female monkey, intending to have the two monkeys fight to test his medicine.

But the monkey that had taken the drug killed the mother monkey in the blink of an eye.

Liu, the scholar, was so frightened that his soul almost flew away.

I never expected the medicine he prescribed to be so potent.

This matter became a source of anxiety for Liu Shusheng, and he dared not try that medicine lightly again.

Liu Shusheng spent his days staring blankly at the remaining medicine jar, racking his brains to figure out where the problem lay.

One day, while preparing medicine, he became so thirsty and agitated that he grabbed a bowl from the table and drank from it.

Once the water was in my stomach, I realized it tasted wrong—fishy and foul.

That bowl was the one that Liu Shusheng usually used to collect the urine of the male monkey that had become unusually agitated!

Liu Shusheng felt extremely nauseous, as if his intestines were churning.

Strangely, by evening, he felt a long-lost warmth in his long-cold and weak lower abdomen, and he felt less tired and more energetic.

Liu Shusheng was both skeptical and delighted. Could it be that by sheer chance, the monkey urine had a miraculous effect?

From then on, Liu Shusheng inexplicably embarked on this evil path.

Every day, they would feed the male monkey some potent medicines that they believed would strengthen its bones and replenish its vital energy, and then collect its urine to drink.

Later, Liu Shusheng felt that he was becoming more energetic day by day, and his complexion was rosier. The weakness and pain that plagued him seemed to have really lessened.

Later, he told his former classmates about the news.

Gradually, wealthy people who were also weak and sickly, or who wanted to find a shortcut to improve their health, secretly came to Liu Shusheng for treatment.

Liu Shusheng would mix monkey urine into wine or honey pills and sell them to people at high prices. As a result, many people rushed to buy them, and that's how he made his fortune.

When people have money, their greed grows even greater.

Liu Shusheng was no longer satisfied with merely treating his weakened body.

He thought, since monkey urine could make this sickly man feel strong, what if he fed the monkey the legendary elixir that could prolong life and even transform the body? If he drank its urine, could he also glimpse the door to immortality and even gain extraordinary power?

Immediately, Liu Shusheng began to recklessly try things out.

Cinnabar, mercury, powdered various metal ores, and strange, unnamed poisonous herbs and plants gathered from the deep mountains—regardless of whether their medicinal properties clashed or were extremely toxic—were all mixed together and forcibly fed to the monkey.

In less than half a month, the color of the monkey's urine became more and more bizarre, changing from reddish-yellow to dark green, and even turning black, and it also had a fishy and pungent smell.

Scholar Liu treasured this as a precious gem, and each time he would mix it with strong liquor and drink it while holding his breath.

At first, he just felt unusually excited, his five senses seemed to be more acute, and he seemed to have more strength.

Until one snowy night, after drinking freshly collected monkey urine, his eyes suddenly turned red and he became extremely violent.

In the middle of the night, Liu Shusheng smashed all the furniture in the house to pieces!

The neighbors heard the commotion and came to see what was happening. They found that Liu Shusheng was incredibly strong, and three or four strong men couldn't hold him down. Moreover, he didn't even feel the punches and kicks being thrown at him.

This story later spread.

I heard that Liu Shusheng raised a magical medicinal monkey whose urine could make people incredibly strong and fearless.

As a result, those desperate fugitives with ulterior motives who wanted to avenge their grievances, soldiers who longed to gain fame and fortune on the battlefield, and even some ambitious individuals who wanted to raise assassins, all rushed to the deep mountains to find Liu Shusheng.

Gradually, the story of the medicine monkey was passed down.

Then, many people who wanted to take crooked paths started catching monkeys to raise for medicine, or catching other animals...

Later, the streets were filled with vendors selling horse urine, monkey urine, and urine from all sorts of other animals.

Moreover, the animals that drank the drug were all very intelligent, some of them even more intelligent than humans.

Later, after the imperial court learned of this, it suppressed these people who had taken crooked paths for a period of time.

Later, this group of people no longer dared to openly sell urine.

They all came secretly.

This is the origin of the medicine monkey.

Yang Erniu said that many acrobats in the city raise medicine monkeys.

He had personally witnessed a circus performer who, after drinking monkey urine, could lift a 500-pound boulder with one hand.

Jing Zhichun waited until Yang Erniu finished speaking before realizing how incredible this was.

There are just too many abnormal people and strange things in this world.

Especially after thinking about Ma Zhenzhu, she could no longer believe the legend.

However, hearing about the medicine monkey reminded Jing Zhichun of the pack of weasels they encountered in Yeyang'ao.

Their farts can cause hallucinations, which must be because they've been given drugs.

Having gotten the answer she wanted, Kyoto Haru quickly returned to her thatched hut, closed the door, and immediately activated the system to start shopping.

500 catties of brown rice, 8 coins per catty.

500 catties of black flour, 10 coins per catty.

Two catties of coarse salt cost 4 coins per catty.

Thirteen large sacks, each costing 3 coins.

Kyoto Haru carefully considered why she chose brown rice and dark flour.

The so-called "black flour" in the system was actually high-quality white flour in this dynasty, something that ordinary families might not even be able to afford during the New Year.

She chose brown rice because she didn't dare to take out the pure white polished rice directly.

That would be too conspicuous and would make the Yang family, who would benefit from it, feel uneasy and pressured.

As for buying the large sack, the reason was that the brown rice packaging bags in the system were too conspicuous for ancient people, so she bought large sacks to store the brown rice so that it wouldn't be conspicuous.

Immediately afterwards, Kyoto Haru started opening the bags of brown rice and filling the large sacks with brown rice.

After working for more than an hour, Jing Zhichun finally packed all the grain into sacks and wrapped the salt in oil paper.

Looking at the bags of grain scattered all over the ground, she stuffed all the bags that had contained the raw brown rice into the stove and burned them.

Around midnight, Yang Erniu's voice could be heard from outside the door.

"Madam Shen, we've arrived."

Jing Zhichun quickly got up and opened the door.

Yang Erniu, his wife Yang Ersao, and Gao Xiuqin stood outside the door, the three of them pulling two carts.

"Come in quickly, the food is inside, hurry up and move it!" Kyoto Haru stepped aside.

Yang Erniu and the others nodded in tacit agreement and quickly began moving the grain.

Soon, all the grain and two jin of salt were loaded onto the cart.

After thanking Jing Zhichun, Yang Erniu and his companions left, pulling their cart.

Jing Zhichun watched them walk away and then closed the door. Just as she was about to disinfect herself and enter her space, she heard the sound of horses' hooves.

She quickly ran to the gate of the neighborhood and looked outside. She saw many torches in the distance and heard the sound of horses' hooves coming towards their area.

Jing Zhichun felt a pang of anxiety. Could these people be from the Liu family?

Thinking of this, she immediately left the thatched hut and ran as fast as she could towards the Shen family's thatched hut. After running a short distance, she squatted down on a slope and observed the movements of the group of people.

Sure enough, ahead, the torchlight in the darkness, accompanied by the sound of horses' hooves, was heading towards the Shen family's thatched cottage.

Soon, the sound of horses' hooves stopped in front of the Shen family's thatched cottage.

Immediately, intermittent voices drifted into Kyoto Haru's ears.

"Master Steward, the Shen family... the entire Shen family's young master is dead! The house is infested with rats! Quick, get away from here!"

"Damn it, who did this?"

"Quick, let's go check if Liu Yi is there!"

"Butler, we can't find Liu Yi!"

"Damn it... retreat! Quickly mount your horse and go back to report to the young master!"