Nightfall Chapter 5: Seeing no moon and thinking

Chapter 5 Seeing No Moon and Thinking ()

There is a small ditch in the south of Weicheng that can’t even count as a stream. There is a small soil **** that can’t even count as a hill beside the small ditch, and there is a small yard under the small **** that can’t even be considered a small yard. A thatched house with a fence and a stone ping, the rain clouds cleared early at night, and the extra bright starlight sprinkled on the ditches, soil slopes, and thatched houses, immediately coated with a very beautiful silver halo.

Ning Queyu walked slowly under the stars while pulling his shoes, looking at the thatched house in front of him where he lived with Sangsang for a long time, his speed became slower. But as long as you are walking, no matter how slow you are, there will always be a day when you arrive at your destination. He pushed aside the fence that could only guard against dogs but not people, walked to the oil lamp leaking from the door, raised his hand to block his lips, coughed twice, and said, "How about going to the capital?" /

The thatched house door was pushed open, and the creaking noise pierced the quiet border city at night.

The little maid Sangsang squatted down at the door. The thin figure was drawn extremely long by the oil lamp. She pressed the edge of the wooden door with her finger, and replied, "Didn't you always want to go to Chang'an? By the way, Ning Que , When did you go to the firearms camp to steal some oil back? This door has been ringing for several months, and the sound is really hard to hear."

"Who else uses those hard-to-play firecrackers. If it's just for oil, I will go to the heavy camp tomorrow to ask..." Ning Que subconsciously answered casually, and then suddenly wanted to understand something, "Hey ! It doesn't seem like this is what I want to tell you. If I really want to leave, what do I care about the break?"

Sangsang stood up on her knees, her thin body looked particularly thin in the cool spring night breeze, she looked at Ning Que, and whispered in a serious voice without any other emotions: "Even if we After leaving, there will still be people living in this house, and they will still open the door."

After the two of them leave, will anyone really want to live in this remote and run-down thatched house far from the city? Ning Que thought silently. For some reason, he suddenly felt more unwilling to give up. He sighed softly, squeezed past Sangsang sideways, and whispered, "Pack your luggage at night."

Sangsang gathered the yellowish hair at the temples at will, looked at his back and asked: "Ning Que, I never understand why you are so interested in that matter."

"No one can refuse the temptation to make oneself stronger. And those things are really interesting to me."

Ning Que knew that the little maid had guessed what she was thinking. She raised her head to look at Sangsang’s dark little face and raised her eyebrows and said, “And the two of us can’t stay in Weicheng for a lifetime. The world is so big, there are many other than the empire. The country, we have to go and see, even if we are younger, just to earn more money and get promoted faster. Going to Chang'an is much better than staying in Weicheng, so this time I must be admitted to the academy ."

Sangsang's face showed a thoughtful emotion. Because of her young age, the eyebrows and eyes of the little maid did not have long hair, and because of the wind and sand in the border town, her small face was dark and rough, plus the yellowish and fine hair caused by childhood malnutrition, she was really not good-looking, even pretty. Can't tell.

But she has a pair of willow-like eyes, slender and slender, and her eyes are as bright as ice cuts, and there are few obvious looks, so she doesn’t seem to be a miserable general. The two-year-old little maid looks like a mature woman who knows everything and sees through the world without hindrance. The extreme contrast between her real age appearance and her eyes makes her look extraordinarily ruthless.

Ning Que knows that these are all illusions. In his opinion, the little maid Sangsang is a typical girl with a heartless eye. The two have lived together for so many years. Because she is used to relying on her own thinking and doing things, she becomes more lazy to think about things. Because she was too lazy to think about things, she became more and more clumsy, and in order to cover up her clumsiness, she used fewer and fewer words in every sentence, so she became more silent, indifferent, mature and weird.

"It's not stupid, it should be clumsy." Thinking of something, he silently corrected a sentence in his heart.

After a long period of silence, Sangsang suddenly raised his head, bit his lip, showing a rare timidity, and said: "I heard...Changan is very big and there are many people."

"The capital is prosperous. I heard that the population of Apocalypse had exceeded one million in three years. Living expenses are extremely expensive. Living in Chang'an is not easy..."

Ning Que sighed, saw the nervous look of the little maid, smiled and comforted: "There is nothing to be afraid of when there are too many people. You can treat Chang'an as a bigger Weicheng, and then I will go with outsiders. When dealing with things, you will handle the things at home as usual. If you are really afraid you will go out less."

"How much does it cost to buy meat, vegetables and rice in the capital for a month?"

Sangsang willow-like eyes are extremely round, two small hands gripping the hem of the sarong tightly, and nervously asked: "Will it be more than four taels of silver? That's double that of Weicheng."

"If you are admitted to the academy, you have to pull some good fabrics to make some clothes for me, and there may be guests at home, such as classmates, if any gentleman sees me as your young master, maybe Come to do it at home, so you should at least make a new set of clothes. I roughly figured it out, it would cost you a dozen silver."

Ning Que replied with a frown. In fact, he was just talking nonsense very seriously. He was not very clear. For the students in the academy, the ten taels of silver might be just a free table at Tianxiangfang Zhongda Restaurant. The price of money—just like the famous joke of Hexi Road: The peasant women who work in the fields chattering, always thinking that the Donggong empress is pancakes, and the Xigong empress is peeling green onions. The patties are like the sea and the green onions are like the mountains.

However, even this obviously shrunken wrong answer far exceeds the psychological bottom line of the little maid. She frowned and looked at him seriously and suggested: "It's too expensive... Ning Que, let's not go to Chang'an, you Don’t take the college entrance exam, okay?"

"Things with no knowledge." Ning Que reprimanded: "You will definitely be an official when you come out of the academy. Then you and I will spend ten taels a month. Why can't I make seven or eighty in a month in the yamen? Two silvers back? Besides, what’s wrong with Chang'an, don’t Chen Jinji’s rouge gouache too much."

The four-character rouge and gouache actually seemed to be the key to the little maid. She pressed her lips tightly and was obviously caught in an extremely intense psychological struggle. After a long time, she replied with a mosquito-like voice: "But you are in the school. What should I do in 2016? My female celebrity is average, and Chang'an people must have high eyelids, so I may not sell it."

"This is really troublesome. I heard that hunting is not allowed around Chang'an City. Those mountains and forests belong to the emperor... How much money do we have?"

The master and servant looked at each other, then walked to the two big elm boxes in a tacit understanding, opened the box and found a very tightly wrapped wooden box from the deepest part of the box.

The wooden box is full of scattered silver, and the nail-sized silver corners are obviously scratched by hinges. There is only a large silver harness in the middle. At a glance, you can see that it is stored in small amounts on weekdays, only the quantity Not too much.

Looking at the scattered silver in the wooden box, neither of them counted, Sangsang whispered: "The old rule is to count once every five days. I just counted it the night before. Seventy-six, two, three, four cents."

"It seems that after going to Chang'an, we must try to make more money." Ning Que said seriously.

"Well, I will try to improve my female celebrity level." Sangsang replied seriously.

At night, Sangsang knelt on the kang to arrange the bedding, moving his skinny knees quickly, moving swiftly and swiftly, pressing his small palm to push the middle of the pillow into an arc, which is exactly the arc that Ning Que sleeps most comfortably. Then she picked up her bedding and jumped off the cold kang, walked to the two big elm boxes in the corner of the room and began to make her own bed.

The light went out, Ning Que put the water bowl on the window sill, got into the bed by the starlight, put his hands on the bed, yawned, then let out a very contented sigh, closed his eyes, and passed After a while, I heard the sound of Xixi rustling from the corner of the room, which had been heard for several years.

This is a night that seems indistinguishable from the past few years. They will fall asleep with the starlight of the empire's frontier fortress. However, the truth is that the master and servant in the thatched cottage today are not asleep, or Because of the excitement and anxiety about entering a new world, or because of the prosperous and faintly visible wealth of the capital city of Chang'an, and the balsamic gouache that exudes a charming taste, the sound of two breaths by the window and the corner of the house has not been calm.

I don’t know how long it has passed, Ning Que opened his eyes, looked at the faint silver halo on the window paper, and said in a daze: "I heard...the girls in Chang'an are not very afraid of the cold, and their clothes are very thin. , The neckline is very big, the body is very white, I don’t know if it’s true... At that time I was too young to remember."

He turned over, looked at the dark corner of the house, and asked: "Sangsang, have you gotten sick recently? Will it be cold?"

The little maid in the dark seemed to shook her head, and she could vaguely see her clenched by the quilt, her eyes closed, but there was a rare smile on the corner of her lips, and she whispered and replied: "I heard that Changan City The girls here are indeed quite white. They use such good gouache every day, can they not be white?"

Ning Que smiled, looked at her and said: "Don't worry, when the young master has money in the future, you can buy Chen Jinji's rouge gouache."

Sangsang opened his eyes, slender eyes like willow leaves reflected bright stars, and said solemnly: "Ning Que, this is what you promised."

"As I said earlier, after you go to Chang'an, you must remember to call me Young Master, so that you can show respect."

Back then, Ning Que pulled out the cold little Sangsang from the pile of dead people beside the road, and then came to Weicheng for seven or eight years. Although Sangsang is a handmaid in the household registration and does the things of a handmaid, he has never called his young master. This does not mean anything else, only a habit.

Today, the little maid Sangsang was forced to throw away this habit.

"Ning Que...Master...You must remember to promise to buy me Chen Jinji."

Ning Que answered, his eyes fell on the frost-like starlight on the ground beside the kang, his heart tightened for no reason, the feeling of being empty many years ago struck again, looking back at the dark blue night sky outside the window , Glanced at the starry sky, and then began to bow his head to miss his hometown, muttering: "There is still no moon today..."

The sangsang on the black lacquered corner of the elm cabinet, curled up like a mouse in the cool bedding, she stretched her hand to her waist and pulled it to block the cool air outside, and let the two cabinets by the way The gap between them seemed not so dignified, listening to the chattering from the window, I thought to Ning Que... the young master started to talk such nonsense again.