novelraw Chapter 273 Strong but impatient
Chapter 273 Strong but impatient
Chapter 273 Strong but impatient
"I'll scoop it up." Gu Ping'an took the bowl and turned to leave the room.
Gu Tang didn't argue with him, but instead asked her father, "Why are you so late? Were you trapped by the heavy snow?"
"They are indeed trapped, but fortunately they are not trapped outside, but trapped at the Wang family's place."
"The Wang family?" Gu Tang paused. "You went to the Wang family to look for Gu Qing?"
Gu Lianshan nodded: "I've gone..."
"Have you found them yet?" Gu Tang asked curiously.
“Your aunt said Qingya isn’t in the Wang family.” Gu Lianshan smirked, his face full of sarcasm.
“Your aunt is stupid. She doesn’t dare to look people in the eye when she lies. I told her she was lying, but she’s stubborn and insists that Qing’er isn’t here.”
Hearing this, the third uncle looked puzzled: "Your sister isn't a good person. Why would she kindly help Qingya hide? What do the other members of the Wang family say?"
"No one else from the Wang family showed up except for Gu Zhier. I called out in the Wang family courtyard for a long time, but no one came out."
I suspect they're deliberately trying to antagonize me; they know I'm here to see someone, but they just won't let me have my way.
Gu Lianshan was very self-aware. He knew how much the Wang family disliked him, and that their help in hiding Gu Qing was probably to vent their anger.
"Have you spoken to the clan leader yet?"
“I told you. I had to tell you. Everyone who went with me isn’t stupid. With Gu Zhi’er’s idiotic appearance, they all could tell she was lying.”
"It's good that you said so. Let them ask Gu Zhier for the person themselves. We'll leave this matter alone."
Third Uncle, leaning on his cane, got up and said, "What do you want to eat? Dad will cook for you."
Gu Lianshan's eyes lit up: "Stewed mutton soup! It'll warm you up and ward off the cold."
"Alright! I'll make you some mutton soup." Uncle San didn't mind the time and effort involved, and went out of the house with a smile.
Gu Tang told her father to lie down in bed for a while, and then took Gu Ping'an out to help.
The mutton was placed in a vat in the east wing, and Third Uncle entered the east wing carrying a lantern.
The siblings went over to help; one held up the lantern for light, and the other helped sort the mutton from the vat.
After much deliberation, I finally chose a leg of lamb.
Gu Pingan put the lid back on, took the lamb leg from the old man, and went to the kitchen first.
"Girl, go back to your room and rest. Ping An can help with the fire, there's no need for you to stay here and cook. When the mutton soup is ready, I'll call you to get up and have a bowl."
“I’ll listen to you and go back to my room to sleep. As for the mutton soup, I won’t have it tonight. Please save me a bowl with the soup and meat so I can have it tomorrow morning.”
"Alright, I'll leave you some extra." Third Uncle nodded with a smile, handed her the lantern, and told her to go back inside.
There were lanterns under the eaves of the main room, which made it easy to see the path underfoot, so Gu Tang did not refuse. After taking the lanterns, she quickly returned to the west wing.
A stove was burning in the west wing, with hot water on it. After washing up, I quickly crawled into bed and soon fell into a deep sleep.
In the middle of the night, I suddenly heard voices outside.
Gu Tang was sleeping soundly and didn't hear who was outside. She just subconsciously felt that it was noisy, so she scrunched up her little face, turned over, and pulled the quilt over her head.
After a short while of silence, there was a sudden knock on the door.
"Girl? Girl?"
Gu Tang crawled out of bed, her eyes still closed, and unconsciously replied, "What?"
"It's gotten colder again. Even with the stove lit, it's not warm enough inside. How's it in your room? Do you want Dad to light another stove for you?"
These words brought Gu Tang to her senses. She quickly sat up and felt the temperature outside the blankets. She was instantly frozen!
She shivered as she lay back down, quickly bringing up the system panel, which displayed the temperature as -20°C.
The bright red numbers completely woke Gu Tang up; the temperature dropped five degrees overnight!
"Girl? Why aren't you saying anything? Are you freezing?" Gu Lianshan asked anxiously from outside the door.
Gu Tang came to her senses and replied, "Father, it's not cold in my room. I have a brazier in my room. If it gets cold, I'll light it myself."
Gu Lianshan breathed a sigh of relief: "Okay, then you can go back to sleep."
Footsteps sounded outside the door, growing fainter as they faded away. Had her father left?
Gu Tang forced himself to put on the fur coat despite the cold, lit the oil lamp, and shivered as he went to the window, opened it, and looked out.
The moment the window opened, a cold wind mixed with snowflakes lashed against Gu Tang's face, quickly numbing her.
It was pitch black outside, and I couldn't see anything.
Gu Tang couldn't hold on any longer, so she quickly closed the window and crawled back into bed, feeling icy cold all over.
This was the first time Gu Tang had ever experienced such a low temperature. In her previous life, the lowest temperature in the city where she lived in winter was only nine degrees Celsius!
Now it's dropped to 20 degrees Celsius!
It's a miracle she didn't freeze to death!
Fortunately, the bedding that the system rewarded me with was still in good condition, and the bed was still warm and cozy, without a trace of cold.
Gu Tang sighed, blew out the oil lamp, and quickly fell asleep again.
As dawn broke, Gu Lianshan came again to ask if Gu Tang's room was warm enough, fearing that Gu Tang was too sleepy to remember to light the brazier.
Gu Tang didn't say it was warm this time; the temperature dropped again, to -22°C.
The bed was still the same, but the room was definitely not warm anymore.
Of course, this is compared to before, not to the outside.
Gu Tang replied to her father, saying that she had already lit the brazier.
She wasn't just saying that to comfort her. After saying that, she put on her clothes, got up, and lit the brazier.
Then, the brazier and stove were placed three feet away from the bed to ensure that the heat they released could surround the bed immediately.
After waking up this time, Gu Tang did not go back to sleep. It was already the end of the Mao hour. She had arranged with Luo's daughter-in-law yesterday that they would come home at the Si hour to continue working.
Before that, she only had one hour to get dressed, wash up, and have breakfast.
After lingering in bed for a while, Gu Tang reluctantly got up and dressed.
She changed into a sheepskin coat today.
The wool on sheepskin is longer than that on rabbit skin, so Gu Tang thought that it should be more effective at keeping warm than rabbit skin.
The long coat she was wearing reached her calves. Previously, she would wear cotton-padded trousers made of kapok, but at this temperature, the kapok was not warm at all.
She rummaged through the wardrobe and picked out a pair of cotton trousers made of deerskin.
The cotton pants are wrapped in fine cloth inside and out, with deerskin sewn inside. If the cotton pants get dirty, you can simply remove the outer cloth to wash them.
Besides replacing her cotton trousers with leather ones, she even changed her shoes to rabbit fur.
He didn't forget his head either, and immediately put on a gray rabbit fur hat.
This whole outfit, covering me from head to toe in leather, was incredibly warm.
I washed my face with the hot water in the room and carefully applied lotion to prevent it from getting chapped.
I applied more to my hands than usual, massaging it in carefully before opening the door and going outside. As soon as I opened the door, a flurry of snowflakes came into view, the snow on the ground was frighteningly thick, I guessed it hadn't stopped snowing all night.
On the east side, her father, wearing a straw hat and a raincoat, trudged through the snow in the yard, raising a rake high in his hands and clearing the snow off the roof.
Her father had been clearing the snow for who knows how long, and there wasn't much snow left on the roof of the east wing. Gu Tang put her hands in her sleeves and slowly walked towards the east wing.
When she arrived at the east wing corridor, Gu Lianshan had already finished cleaning the roof of the east wing. He turned his head and saw Gu Tang.
Back under the eaves, brushing the snow off her clothes, she asked Gu Tang with surprise, "The sun must have risen in the west today, yet you're up so early."
Gu Tang rolled her eyes at him: "In this snowy weather, where did you see the sun? If you can't see it, how do you know it's rising from the west?"
Maybe it rose from the south, or maybe from the north; nobody can say for sure, don't you think?
Gu Lianshan: ...This is just arguing for the sake of arguing!
"Enough with the jokes. You're up so early today, is something wrong?"
"Of course there's something to do." Gu Tang pointed south. "Yesterday, I invited four daughters-in-law from the Luo family to help grind incense materials. They arrived promptly at 9:00 AM. As the host, I naturally had to get up early to wait for them. Did they expect me to be cornered in bed?"
"Have someone grind the incense materials?" Gu Lianshan looked distressed. "Why bother hiring someone? I have nothing to do today, I'll do it for you!"
Gu Tang gestured with his chin toward the west wing: "The millstone and incense are in my room, you can just give it a try."
"Do we even need to try?" Gu Lianshan untied the rope at his cuff, rolled up his sleeves, and said confidently, "Wait, Dad will show you what he's got!"
After saying that, he strode towards the west wing.
Gu Tang followed behind, entering the house one after the other with her father.
The millstone was still on the table. Gu Tang casually grabbed a handful of incense and put it into the millstone, then asked her father to start grinding.
Gu Lianshan was very confident and immediately started grinding.
"This is a piece of cake!"
Gu Tang remained silent, simply watching quietly.
To grind incense materials into powder, you must first crush the whole materials, and then slowly grind them into fine powder.
It sounds simple, but in reality, it requires strength and patience.
Her father had plenty of strength, but what he lacked was patience.
Sure enough, after grinding for a while, her father became irritable: "What kind of shape is this?"
How should it be ground?
Gu Tang took out the powder she had ground yesterday and showed it to her father: "Look, it's done when it's ground like this!"
Gu Lianshan: ...This is too fine! How long would it take to grind such fine powder?!
He narrowed his eyes, hardly believing it: "Are you sure this was ground up by the four daughters-in-law of the Luo family?"
"I saw it with my own eyes, how could it be fake?" Gu Tang gestured with her chin. "Don't stop, you're far from good enough, keep grinding!"
Gu Lianshan wasn't stupid; he knew his daughter was waiting to see him make a fool of himself.
Fortunately, he was thick-skinned enough and didn't care: "Since we've already hired people, then Father won't interfere. Let the Luo family handle these tasks!"
He lowered his sleeves, re-tied the cuffs with the rope, and said, "Father, continue cleaning the roof."
As she spoke, she had already reached the doorway, lifted the curtain halfway, and stepped out with one foot.
Just then, he suddenly remembered something and stopped again, “The yard you bought is now uninhabited, and no one is cleaning the snow off the roof. I don’t know if it will last until winter is over.”
That courtyard...
Gu Tang shook her head: "I don't know then. I hope that the courtyard is made of high-quality materials. Let's leave it to fate."
That's all we can do.
Gu Lianshan sighed and went out to continue clearing the snow off the roof.
Gu Tang didn't stay in the house for long. Seeing smoke coming out of the chimney, she went to the kitchen.
This morning's breakfast was cooked by Gu Ping'an. His third uncle helped him tend the fire, and the two of them prepared scrambled eggs, mutton soup, rice porridge, and flatbread.
When Gu Tang came in, the food was already cooked. She went forward to help carry the dishes to the main room and called out to her father in the courtyard, telling him to come in and eat first.
The family of four sat together, not observing the custom of not speaking while eating or sleeping, chatting casually, creating a very harmonious atmosphere.
After dinner, Gu Lianshan continued cleaning the roof, and Gu Pingan helped him, learning how to do these things.
Third Uncle and Gu Tang sat by the fire in the main room, waiting for the Luo family's daughters-in-law to arrive.
A quarter to go before 9:00 AM, someone knocked on the courtyard gate.
Gu Ping'an ran to open the door in the courtyard, and there stood Luo's four daughters-in-law.
He called out towards the main room, and Gu Tang quickly lifted the curtain and came out, smiling as she led her four sisters-in-law to the west wing.
After entering the house, the group chatted and laughed for a while, then each person ate a bowl of sweet soup before getting to work.
Gu Tang didn't leave; she wanted to make sure the incense materials weren't mixed up.
Compared to yesterday, the two sides are much more familiar with each other today, and Luo's eldest daughter-in-law, Madam Hu, couldn't help but ask.
"Tang girl, why are you grinding these things up? Did you always grind them up like this when you sold medicine?"
“Medicine? Auntie, this isn’t medicine.” Gu Tang pointed to the incense materials and introduced them one by one: “This is clove, this is spikenard, this is sandalwood… these are all used to make incense.”
Mrs. Hu looked bewildered: "Smells good? What smells good?"
"We have all kinds of incense, including incense to help scholars clear their minds, incense to help people relax and fall asleep, and incense that we burn when praying to gods and Buddhas and making offerings to our ancestors during the New Year. We have everything!"
"Oh! So this is the 'fragrance'!" Mrs. Hu understood and looked at these things with a look of wonder.
They exclaimed in surprise, "The incense we burn during the Lunar New Year is actually made from these sticks and dry grass!"
Wooden sticks and licorice?
Gu Tang's lips twitched. These things weren't sticks and licorice...
The other three daughters-in-law of the Luo family were also amazed and praised him.
"Tang girl is very capable! She can go into the mountains to collect herbs and make incense. She's even better than the men!"
"That makes sense! The heavy snow is blocking the road now, but once it melts, those matchmakers will wear down the Gu family's doorstep!"
"This girl's skills are truly enviable! I wonder who will say we women are incompetent in the future! With Tang'er here to support us, we are all proud!"
"That's right! That hits the nail on the head!"
……
Gu Tang was thick-skinned, and she happily accepted the praise, then spoke to them about making incense in a very good mood.
"Once I've finished making the incense, all you aunties and grandmas are welcome to come and take a good look. It's definitely better than what you can buy outside. Once it's lit, the whole house will be filled with its fragrance. If you like any, just take them home!"
These words made the four sisters-in-law beam with joy, and they promised to come and see for themselves.
Amidst their laughter and conversation, the four millstones continued to chirp until noon, never stopping. The four sisters-in-law worked with great diligence.