On the day when the imperial court announced the results of the autumn examination, Jiang Wu's reply was also brought by the pigeons.

Lu Yan unsurprisingly passed the review and was admitted to the Tongsheng examination.

Jiang Wu's letter not only expressed his indignation against the Li and Zhang families, but also showed concern for his niece. He categorically supported his niece's divorce in his heart, and also made it clear that if the old lady and Lu Zhenyuan disagreed, he would show them the letter, and whoever dared to stop it would bear the consequences.

Zhihua read the letter from her uncle, and seemed to be able to see his murderous appearance in front of her, smiling knowingly, and her heart was warm.

Afraid that her uncle would be worried, Zhihua immediately wrote a reply after reading it, telling her uncle that she had retired from her family, and attached the good news that her younger brother was admitted to the middle school.

At this time, Bai Lan walked in: "Miss, Uncle Zhong sent someone to deliver a message, all the grain on the Zhuangzi has been harvested, he wants to ask you, how much grain will be sent to the house this year?" ”

Zhihua wrote the last word, put down the brush and replied casually: "It's the same as in previous years." ”

Bai Lan blessed her body and was about to pass the word, but Zhihua suddenly remembered something: "Wait." You go and bring someone here, I have something to ask. ”

Bailan sent Chunxi to lead the people, and he took Chunxiao to take out a four-season flower and bird screen from the warehouse and stand in the side hall, in case the young lady will meet the next person later.

Uncle Zhong sent a well-spoken little guy, this little guy was obviously carefully trained, as soon as he entered the side hall, he knelt down and kowtowed, and did not dare to look at the exquisite furnishings in the side hall at will.

"Get up, don't be formal. Chunxi, bring him a small pestle and let him sit and talk back. The little guy only heard a somewhat muffled female voice sound from behind the screen.

"Minion, thank you for the seat." Although the eldest lady's tone was friendly, the little girl who spoke back to the master for the first time was still a little restrained, and after thanking Chunxi, she was only half-sitting on the small pestle.

Zhihua saw that this little guy's nervous sitting posture was really interesting, smiled and asked kindly, "What's your name?" How old is this year? ”

Perhaps it was the eldest lady's smiling voice that made people feel more cordial after listening to it, but the little guy finally calmed down, no longer cramped, and replied seriously: "The younger one is the youngest son of Zhuangtou Wang Dagui on the Zhuangzi of Shilitun on the outskirts of Beijing, and there is an elder brother and two sisters at home. The youngest is named Chunsheng, and he is thirteen years old this year. ”

"Oh? Why did Uncle Zhong send you over to deliver the word? ”

"We are the last one to harvest the crops in our farm. Manager Jiang worked hard for half a month, personally supervising the autumn harvest of each Zhuangzi, and my father saw that he was too hard, so he offered to let the little one run errands for Manager Jiang. The little one grew up in Zhuangzi and has a little understanding of farming. ”

"I see. Do you know how this year's harvest went? How were the harvests distributed in previous years? ”

Speaking of business, Chunsheng's face was a little more positive: "I heard that Mr. Jiang said that this year, a total of 4,800 stone of grain will be collected, and according to the practice of previous years, the five Zhuangzi will each store 300 stone of grain, and send 1,000 stone to the house, and the rest will be sold to grain merchants together with the remaining old grain from last year." ”

Zhihua nodded: "I know, I'm going to write to Uncle Zhong, you wait here first, Mother Han will come over to ask you later, you carefully tell her about Uncle Zhong's current physical condition, and I will let her prepare a few pairs of tonic suitable for Uncle Zhong." When you go back, you will bring the reply letter and the herbs for me. ”

After writing a letter to explain that Uncle Zhong mobilized a qiē fund to secretly hoard food, Zhihua silently sorted out his thoughts.

On the day when the dragon raises its head in February next year, there will be ground shaking in Muzhou, 700 miles away from the capital. The ground movement was not severe, only knocking down dozens of houses, but it caused a large flood, and the Yinsha River, which runs through Muzhou, was executed many embankments. The whole Muzhou was severely affected, and after the flood, there were hungry mayflies everywhere. The flood washed away many people's homes, and the homeless people had to become displaced and leave their homes for their lives. Affected by this disaster, the price of grain in Jing'an rose sharply, and many profiteers took advantage of the national disaster to make a windfall. The disaster was urgent, and the imperial court had to temporarily divert the 100,000 stone of grain that was going to be escorted to the border for disaster relief. The house leak happened to rain overnight, and the Limeng people took the opportunity to attack the border pass. The enemy was menacing, and the army did not have enough food and grass, so under such circumstances, no one in the DPRK and China dared to stand up and ask for the commander. My uncle led the army to resist hard at the border pass for more than three months, and after running out of grain and grass, he was defeated, and Yuguan, the northwest gate of Jing'an, was lost. The situation was critical, and the general of the Biao Cavalry, who had long been old, finally stood up and asked himself to take command. After the war was taken over by the general, my uncle's family returned to Beijing to ask for guilt, but fortunately, the emperor was wise and knew that this defeat was not the fault of his uncle's ineffective command of the army, and only removed him from his position in the army. It is precisely because of this that my uncle was able to hit the Zhang family and rescue himself in time.

Natural disasters cannot be stopped by manpower, and Zhihua can only find a solution in the fuse of this series of events. As long as she can raise enough food to donate to the imperial court before the incident, the military food will not be misappropriated. Even if the Limeng people will still attack the border passes, as long as the army has enough food and grass, the uncle will definitely be able to support the commanders sent by the imperial court.

But 100,000 stone of grain is really not a small amount. Zhihua calculated, the current grain in her hand, excluding the rations left to the Zhuang households and the routine handover to the Lu Mansion, plus last year's old grain, can only take out about 5,000 stones. She now has 75,000 taels of silver tickets in her hand, and she wants to make up the remaining 95,000 stones, according to the current market price of 800 yuan per stone of rice, Zhihua has to use all her savings and sell some valuable items to make it up, and this is still under the condition that the price of grain will not rise because of her crazy hoarding.

Knowing that even if he didn't pay the money, his uncle would not be in any big trouble, but Zhihua still didn't hesitate to do his best to stock up on food. She felt that God loved her and allowed her to live a new life, and she could only do her best to help the people she could help, so that this life would be in vain. Although she did not personally experience the natural disaster in her previous life, she was in contact with the victims who fled from Muzhou to Beijing.

These disaster victims, who had nowhere to go, thought that at the feet of the Son of Heaven, they would not starve to death, so they gritted their teeth and survived the hardships and came to the capital. After the catastrophe, there is generally a great epidemic, and the imperial court is afraid that they will carry the epidemic on their bodies, so they are not allowed to set foot in the capital, and only set up a few large sheds ten miles outside the city. In order to torture Zhihua and make her better infected with the epidemic on the victims, Li Yuxue also persuaded her mother-in-law to send someone to build a porridge shed in the resettlement area of the victims, forcing Zhihua to rush to the soup kitchen in person every day. At first, Zhihua was scared, cried, and resisted, but unfortunately she couldn't disobey her mother's order at all, and she had to go no matter how reluctant she was. But after a few days of contact with those victims, Zhihua was willing to take this errand. She found that those victims were not as terrible as she imagined, a bowl of gruel, a simple steamed bun, can make them grateful, in contrast, the Zhang family's subordinates who saw the money and opened their stomachs to the honey sword are the terrifying hungry wolves. Ten consecutive days of porridge allowed Zhihua to win the sincere love of these victims, and also made her more deeply understand the helplessness and hardships of the small people in the market. In the days that followed, whenever she was desperate, she would think of these victims who were a hundred times more miserable than her, but still trying to survive, and a courage to resist fate naturally welled up in her heart. It was with the support of this courage that she was able to see her uncle alive.

Recalling the past, the faces that were covered with dirt but strangely had the purest smile in the world came to mind, and Zhihua silently made up her mind that no matter how difficult it was, she would do her best to dedicate her strength to these self-improvement people.