Elsewhere, a woman held a child who was little more than skin and bones as she knelt in the sand, staring at the steaming, snow-white buns before her. Just like everyone else, she hesitated to reach for one.
She raised her head and looked at Pei Du. “You… you’re not here to arrest us, are you? You’re not going to take our children, are you?”
Her eyes were filled with fear.
“Last year, a group of people came and said they were going to give us food. In the end, they tied up all the men in the village and took them away…”
Her husband had been among them.
Pei Du fell silent for a moment after hearing this.
Then he crouched down and pulled open the mouth of the sack, revealing that it was filled to the brim with white steamed buns. “Auntie, if we were here to take people away, there’d be no need for us to bring such good food and hand it out to every person in the village.”
“Then what do you want?” The woman stared at the sack of white buns and swallowed repeatedly. But when her gaze landed on the armored soldiers with swords standing behind Pei Du, she instinctively shrank back again, tightening her hold on the child. “We don’t have any money to buy your food, and we have nothing to trade.”
Pei Du placed a steamed bun in her hands. “Our Divine Lady is compassionate. This food is yours once we give it to you. You don’t need to buy it, and you don’t need to trade anything for it. If you truly feel uncomfortable accepting it for free, you can help the soldiers wash their clothes. Of course, I won’t have you work for nothing. I’ll pay you according to the amount of work you do.”
“Sir, we can get paid for washing clothes?”
The woman’s eyes filled with disbelief.
She had once heard that embroidery could be exchanged for money in the cities. But times were hard now, and people could barely afford food. Who would spend money on things that could neither fill their stomachs nor keep them warm?
Pei Du said, “In the north, regardless of whether a person is a man or a woman, anyone who works is entitled to wages. No workshop or employer is allowed to withhold a worker’s pay.”
The woman could no longer hold back her tears. “Being a believer of the Divine Lady is wonderful. We can even work and get paid.”
For ordinary people like them, finding paid work was incredibly difficult. Unless they sold themselves into slavery and worked for a landlord, they had no recourse if the landlord decided to pay them—or not pay them. In the end, they would usually be dismissed with a sack of moldy rice at most.
“Sir, could I not take money?” Her eyes remained fixed on the steamed buns in the sack. “I…I want food instead. Don’t worry, I won’t ask for much. Whatever you can give me will do.”
Food prices in the cities were frighteningly high these days.
Even if she were given money, she might not be able to buy any food with it.
It would be more practical to ask for food directly.
Pei Du naturally had no reason to refuse her request. There were several granaries in every city in the north, and they truly had no shortage of grain.
Considering that such unexpected good fortune might make the woman feel uneasy, he added, “Auntie, if anyone else in the village wants to work in exchange for food, you can bring them along. We won’t enter the village. We’ll be camped here on the stony flats for the next few days. You can take the clothes home, wash them, and bring them back when they’re clean.”
The woman’s last concern vanished. Holding her child, she knelt on the ground and sobbed as she kowtowed several times.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you…”
“Please, there’s no need for that!”
Pei Du hurriedly helped her to her feet. “You don’t need to thank me. I’m only carrying out the Divine Lady’s orders.”
Watching Feng Chunya, Pei Du, and the others help the villagers while setting up camp, Zhu Guyu said to Zhu Jingzhe, “Brother, it looks like they really did come to help us. But why would they help us?”
Just as before, when she had mistakenly believed that the Goddess wanted to burn her alive, she couldn’t understand what she had done wrong to deserve death.
Now, she still couldn’t understand what a small fishing village like theirs had that was worth helping.
“Guyu, I don’t know either.” Zhu Jingzhe gently ruffled his sister’s hair, his voice low and hoarse. “Just take things one day at a time. Don’t think too much about it.”
“Brother, I can’t eat anymore.” As she spoke, Zhu Guyu held out the half of the steamed bun in her hand.
How could someone who had gone hungry for so long be unable to eat after only half a bun? She simply didn’t want to watch her brother go hungry like their parents had, saving all the food for her.
“Then save it for when you’re hungry again.”
Zhu Jingzhe had just begun to carefully put away the half bun Zhu Guyu had eaten from, along with his own bun, when Zhu Guyu suddenly shoved half of the bun into his mouth.
“Eat,” Zhu Guyu said. “You said it yourself—take things one day at a time. If you don’t eat, how are you going to survive?”
Zhu Jingzhe felt a warm glow spread through his heart.
From the top-floor terrace of the skyship, Yun Shu watched Feng Chunya and the others assist the villagers while making camp.
The Little Fox asked in confusion, “Host, why don’t you just go to the nearest Wuling City? There are more people in the city, so you could farm a lot more shock points. This fishing village barely has anyone.”
“The villagers are people too.”
Yun Shu was standing high enough to take in the entire fishing village before her, seeing everything at a glance.
The village was small.
It looked as though there were only a few dozen households.
At most, it could provide a few thousand shock points.
But her main purpose in coming south wasn’t to earn shock points. It was to save people.
The shock points were merely a bonus.
If she had come solely for the shock points, she wouldn’t have needed to worry about the consequences at all. She could have created all kinds of spectacular scenes from the very beginning and filled her shock-point meter in a matter of minutes.
“Lil’ Sys, since we have a few free days, let’s make some preparations. That way, we can cause a real stir in Wuling City.”
*
Night had fallen deep.
At the eastern end of the village stood the largest ancestral hall.
In truth, it was nothing more than a ramshackle earthen hut open to the wind on all four sides, with half the roof tiles missing. At present, it was packed with people.
Men and women, old and young, crowded around a newly built fire. The firelight illuminated their gaunt, sallow faces.
An old man with a face full of wrinkles was the first to speak, his voice laced with emotion. “I’ve lived for more than sixty years, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen soldiers handing out steamed buns to commoners. In previous years, whenever those unruly armies entered a village, didn’t they always rob and kill?”
Someone beside him said, “But these people didn’t rob us. And the buns they gave us are incredibly filling.”
“I saw them earlier. They put up all kinds of strange tents on the stony flats. They said they wouldn’t enter the village, and they really haven’t…”
“I spoke with that young gentleman today,” said the woman holding the child. “He said that if we washed the clothes of those Zhenbei Army soldiers, we could earn wages. I told him I didn’t want money, only food, and he agreed without hesitation.”
“He really agreed?” The older woman beside her leaned closer, her eyes shining with anticipation. “How much food did he say he’d give?”
“He said he’d give us a sack of rice every three days. Good rice!”
Everyone listened with envy.
“Can we do it too?”
“Yes. That gentleman said that anyone in the village who wants to take on the washing work can go to them for dirty clothes. Once we wash them and return them clean, we’ll receive food in exchange.”
“Good. Let’s go and have a look tomorrow!”
