"Do you know how to cook?"

"Yes...... Master. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ”

When a woman answers someone else's words, she always habitually adds an honorific sentence, but the person who hears it does not feel very comfortable, on the contrary, feels a little awkward.

"There are no masters and slaves here, and when you return to Yucheng in the future, you are also a human being, as long as you work, you can support yourself."

sighed and explained, I don't want a woman but I'm a little scared. There are no master slaves...... Isn't that like a chicken without a head? Such chickens must not live long.

Although it seemed that this army was very kind, the woman was still a little timid, and followed the people to escort the captured Dongyi people to the river, and told her a lot of things along the way, maybe she still didn't quite understand, and her heart was at least not as scared as before.

As they approached the river, several boats hid quietly in the fork of the river, and the soldiers brought out a swarthy iron pot from the boat.

"Cook rice with this stuff, there is corn and some dried fish and pickles. Be careful not to use firewood, there is charcoal here. For the time being, you'll be in charge of cooking, and we'll bring back all of the Great River kinship who are slaves here after the war. ”

The charcoal woman had seen it, but when she faced the iron pot, she was scared and didn't dare to touch it.

"What's wrong?"

The woman mustered up the courage and said, "This one is too thin, I'm afraid of breaking it." ”

Not because of the iron, but because she used to cook with clay pots or clay mustaches, and if it was so thin, she would be beaten if it was broken.

The people next to him laughed and encouraged: "It's okay, it can't be broken." You listen ......"

Someone struck it with a stick, and when she was sure that it was strong, the woman uneasily dug a hole in the ground, skillfully ignited the charcoal, and added water and corn.

The child next to him looked at the two dried fish and couldn't help but swallow his saliva, but he didn't cry or make a fuss and didn't reach out to catch it. Even if you are only six or seven years old, you already know that you can't touch things that are not your own, this is a lesson that has been bought with blood.

When I was cooking, I saw a lot of miracles, such as this thing called an iron pot that can boil water quickly, and if you use a pottery pot, I am afraid that it will take a long time, but in a moment, the unique fragrance of corn has already wafted out.

Not far away, the soldiers escorted the captured Dongyi people onto the ship and tied them with rattans, and several of them smiled and said, "This reminds us of the time when we went to the west to hunt slaves in Xia City." ”

"Just let them build a camp for us over there, but it saves a lot of auxiliaries."

Those who were bound did not resist, this is the law of this era, if you lose, you have to be a slave or die, and the luck of not dying is already good.

When the corn was cooked, the soldiers took out the wooden bowls they were carrying and lined up to receive the meal, while the woman obediently retreated to the back, knowing that she could not eat, and that she needed to reward herself when her master had finished eating.

This is something that even a child knows, so even if he was only six or seven years old, the little child did not cry out about hunger or anything like thatch, but skillfully picked up a few snails by the river and pulled out a few thatch roots.

But two wooden bowls were handed to the woman, and they were empty.

"When you're hungry, you can eat as much as you want. Also, when I go to Yucheng in the future, I must abide by the rules and can't eat snails. ”

A soldier who had been a slave walked up to the child, threw the child's snail back into the water, and gave him a small piece of steamed dried fish.

The child looked at her mother a little bewildered, and the woman was stunned with two empty bowls.

These two empty bowls are heavier than a full bowl of rice, because what the other party gives her is not rice, but a bowl that can hold rice.

Holding the two bowls, the woman approached the cooked corn and said with some twisting and embarrassment: "The child is really hungry, and you are not allowed to eat the snails...... I'm not saying you're wrong, it's the kid he's hungry......"

Halfway through, he was a little incoherent, but the soldiers who had been slaves did not laugh, they understood this woman's mind very well, because they had been, and the scars on someone's body were left by stealing a bite of food.

He handed over the wooden shovel containing the rice and said, "Eat, you don't need any other reason to eat, just eat when you're hungry." But your corn is a little hard cooked, this is not a pottery, put more water next time. ”

This was supposed to be a word to ease the atmosphere, but at this time it was not good at all, the woman took the wooden shovel a little scared, and kept explaining that she would pay attention to the first time she used the iron pot next time, etc.

She was hungry, and this meal was the first time she had eaten it on the grounds that she was hungry.

Because she was hungry, she ate a very simple truth, but it made this woman feel as if she had changed. It turns out that being hungry is also a reason to eat......

The corn was indeed a little hard, and when the woman ate it, it seemed to be more delicious than the little meat that her master had given her after sleeping with her a long time ago, and she ate two bowls of it herself without the need for a little salted fish or pickles.

After eating and washing the dishes, the woman carefully put away the bowls of herself and her child and hid them in her bosom for fear of losing them.

In her eyes, this is no longer a wooden bowl, but the right to serve rice in a wooden bowl.

This simple wooden bowl that is not easy to break is very important to her, and her biggest dream before was to be able to eat enough corn every day, but now this bowl is not to be snatched away, not to be broken.

So much so that when the strong man who had been bitten by her before came up to her and asked her name, she thought about it and said that her name was Wan, and her seven-year-old child was called Chopsticks.

In fact, she didn't have a name at all, when she was very young, her mother was still alive, and she vaguely remembered that her mother called her Yan'er at that time, but then her mother said that swallows were cheerful birds that could fly away, so she still didn't call it by this name, and a swallow-shaped jade pendant was secretly thrown away.

"Bowl, do you know there is a city around here?"

"Know...... Master ......"

"My name is Ji Bai, not the master. Yes, we're going to attack those who take you as slaves, but we're not familiar with this place, can you take us there? ”

The woman nodded, then shook her head.

She couldn't count, but she knew that there were so many people in the nearby city that there were many, many, many people, that they couldn't beat them. In her eyes, the group of people wearing strange black clothes and holding black and white flags were all good people, so she didn't want these people to die.

Ji Bai saw through the woman's mind and said with a smile: "You don't have to be afraid, you don't need to go to war with you, you just need to take us with you." ”

The woman's face turned red, and for the first time she felt ashamed, and quickly explained: "It's not that I'm afraid, it's that I'm afraid of you." ”

Ji Bai smiled, nodded in thanks, and asked, "Is that city huge?" ”

"It's huge. There are a lot of people. ”

"Far from here?"

"It's not far, it's two days to go."

"Do you know the way?"

"I know that my original master was in that city in exchange for sheep."

She gestured to a half-sized lamb to show that she had been exchanged for such a large sheep.

"Well, you take us with you. If we can't come back, you run back here on your own and wait for a boat to come. If you get caught by them, say we're from Summer City, from the west. ”

After a few words, Ji Bai asked some people to escort the captives downstream to prepare for the construction of the camp, and the rest were assembled.

He discussed it with him, and felt that the movement was a bit small, so he took advantage of the night to cause some chaos when he approached the city to make it bigger.

It's dangerous, but it's not impossible. Those Dongyi people who fled must have gone to report the news, but many of the Qingzhuang and Chinese people in the city followed Qiongxi out to fight, and there may not be many who stayed behind. If you find the right opportunity for the night, I don't know how many people are outside, the best way is to stick to it, so that the movement will be much bigger.

After resting by the river for the night, the remaining hundred people took advantage of the mist to march towards the hinterland of Dongyi early the next morning.

Knowing that this was someone else's land, so go cautiously, and the outpost was sent far away. The villages of this era were extremely sparsely distributed, and there was no need to deliberately avoid the main roads, because there were few small roads.

In many cases, it is possible to walk so close to the valley, but Ji Bai only allows everyone to walk on the mountain beam, and he is careful like a mouse that goes to a barn guarded by cats to steal grain.

Three days later, the exhausted crowd finally approached the nearest Dongyi city, and after finding a wood, Ji Bai left some food in the bowl and told her to let her run back if they couldn't come back.

Everyone took advantage of the dawn to walk out of the woods and quietly observe this typical Dongyi city.

In fact, the cities were almost the same, nothing more than a wall of adobe or stone, and outside the city were patches of land, on which slaves had to work collectively to save on the cost of management.

At this time, it was the end of June, and the corn had grown very tall, and through those fields you could see a city towering in the distance, but it was not very large, it should be only a small city among the Dongyi tribes.

The city wall is about three or four steps high, and there is a ring of river water outside, and basically all the people in the vicinity live in the city for dozens of miles.

As for the settlements that are a little further away, it is because the cities have reached their limits. Before there were no advanced agricultural tools, a radius of 34 miles of land could support thousands of people, and no matter how many people were, they would need to leave dozens of miles away to plant and settle, because it was impossible to set off in the morning and it was already afternoon when they arrived at the field, so there was no need to work.

The scale of Xiacheng's city is larger than this, because Xiacheng's output per acre of land is more than here, so it can accommodate more people.

There are oxen and horses, roads and cars, boats and boats, it is a simple and normal city.

This is also the reason why Chen Jian sent these people to create chaos in advance, the speed of information dissemination in this era is too slow. In the era of the Zhou Dynasty in the previous life, the vassal states made chaos and killed the monarch and subrogated the throne, and the Zhou royal family only knew about it more than ten years later......

After hiding in the woods for a day, Ji Bai and the others found that the city had become a little chaotic, and there were very few people in and out of the city today, and even the slaves did not come out to work.

It's a fool's dream to attack this city, but there are many ways to make it chaotic.

"When will you do it?"

"At the end of the month, there is no moon in the first half of the night, and we have to wait until there is a moon in the second half of the night. At that time, it was also the time when the city slept the most deeply, and we will do it at that time. Tell everyone to go to bed first, and wake them up when the time comes. ”

Ji Bai forgot the patches of corn, frowned, and said, "It would be good if I waited for another trip in the autumn, if a fire burns, they won't be able to catch up." After burning like this for three or five years, the Dongyi people can't hold on. ”

He nodded yes, and said, "This is exactly what Ji Xia meant, let the battle be fought in the land of the Dongyi people." Didn't he say, where are the people of Xia City, where is Xia City, why should they be confined to one city? Now we are standing here, which is the wall of Xia City. ”

The two men talked in a whisper and touched back, one sleeping first and the other keeping vigil, waiting until the moon appeared after midnight.

…………

At night, bowls and chopsticks, as well as smaller, nameless children, hid in caves, lit fires, and for the first time in their lives, they had the idea that one side would win and the other side would lose.

Since she was a slave, she has seen a lot of wars, but every time she is very numb, who wins and who loses is meaningless to her, anyway, she is a slave.

There was no hatred and no love, so when the war was raging, he hid and shrank, and after the battle, he followed everyone to a new place and continued to be a slave.

Just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, no one will appreciate the sun rising in the east and hate the sun setting in the west.

But this time, she stared at the two bowls she had hidden all night, muttering the words that the soldiers forbade her to say, thanking the sky, and so on, and for the first time realized that there was joy and sorrow in the victory or defeat of war.

In fact, she didn't know whether it was because she was grateful, or because she wanted the two empty bowls to continue to be filled with corn, or because the young children said that she was also a relative of the Great River tribes, which she didn't understand.

It doesn't matter what you think.

As a result, it's all the same. (To be continued.) )