The year I was born was the 20th year of Xingrui, and it was a disaster year. Zhongzhou was drought, Leizhou was flooded, and Yunzhou had a month of heavy snowfall, and hunger was everywhere.

I don't remember yet, though. I have never seen dry land, nor have I seen floods, nor have I seen snow that reaches my knees.

But I'm convinced of that.

Because beyond that, I can't think of any other reason for my father and mother to sell me and my second brother.

It must be because I can't live anymore.

That's right, it must be because I can't live anymore.

When I was sold to the Qinglou, I was just five years old.

At that time, my second brother was nine years old, not much taller than me, skinny and bone-like, coughing all day long, and others said that he had tuberculosis and would not live long.

The bustard soon found out that the second brother was sick, and was afraid that he would pass on his illness to the girls and customers in the store, so he threw him in the alley outside the Qinglou and left him to fend for himself.

Every day, I secretly kept my food and wrapped it in a plaid cloth cut from the corner of my coat and brought it to my second brother, while I stole something to eat from the girl and the back kitchen.

After a month, Shengjing entered winter.

It's getting colder and colder, and I feel like my second brother won't survive this winter.

On the tenth day of October, it is the annual flower tasting meeting in Shengjing.

The bustard and a few beautiful girls have been preparing for this flower tasting party for months, and when they mention it, they are like a great enemy.

I tentatively asked them what this flower would do.

The girls told me that the flower tasting would be the "flower" in "There are flowers that can be folded and must be folded".

After speaking, the girls always smiled and teased each other.

I could only lower my head and continue to mop the floor.

On the day of the flower tasting party, there were very few customers and few girls, only a few of us were young people who worked in the shop. I stole two torn clothes from the girl in the shop and gave them to my second brother, and then hurried back to work.

In the middle of the night, the outside of the store suddenly became lively, and I looked out of the window on the second floor and saw a large group of people coming back with a girl from the building.

I knew the girl, she was the number one in our shop, she was only eighteen years old, and her name was Butterfly.

Her head was covered with hairpins, her face was covered with thick white powder, she was painted with delicate makeup, and she wore a gorgeous and rich brocade robe with a red background, embroidered with black and white butterflies, which complemented each other, like a couple with wings ready to fly. The wide-sleeved brocade robe with a waist gathered out a deep neckline, and a pair of jade-white fragrant shoulders and slender collarbones loomed in between.

It's breathtakingly beautiful.

Only then did I realize that the "flower" they were talking about was not a flower in the ordinary sense, but such a beauty in front of me.

Butterfly Girl won the first prize at the flower tasting and was elected this year's Oiran, earning our store fame and money.

The bustard decided to give her an extra maid.

Butterfly Girl chose me out of a crowd of girls.

From then on, I became the lady-in-waiting of the Oiran.

That night, the butterfly entertained a guest, and I waited outside the house for the night.

Early the next morning, she threw me a man's jacket and told me to dispose of it.

I was ecstatic because it was a thick jacket that was well made to withstand the bitter cold of winter.

I took the jacket to my second brother.

Butterfly was elected Oiran for three years in a row, and after I followed Butterfly, life got better.

She would always throw me unwanted clothes and food for me to "dispose of".

With these things, the second brother not only survived that winter, but also gradually improved his health after the spring of the second year. He stopped coughing and grew taller.

He wore that somewhat fat jacket and went to the store to find an errand as a porter, and he had two copper coins a month, enough for food and clothing.

I always wanted to ask Butterfly why she chose me back then, but she was always cold, so I didn't dare to ask.

When I was eight years old, one day a customer in the store lost something, and the bustard suspected that I had stolen it, so he beat me up and scolded me for not sticking to the wall. At that time, I realized that when I stole the food in the store, the bustard had already known that if the butterfly girl hadn't asked me to go, I would have been kicked out of the green building a long time ago.

This time, it was the butterfly who came forward to vouch for me, and the bustard let me go.

I couldn't help but ask why the butterflies were helping me.

"Because if I don't keep you, you will be kicked out of the Qinglou, and most likely you will starve to death. Left and right is to pick a child, pick anyone is picky, pick you can still save someone's life, why not? "Butterfly said it casually.

Butterfly and I talked a lot that day.

She told me that she was originally from Zhongzhou, and her family was also a wealthy local family, with seventy or eighty acres of land. However, in the past few years, there was a drought in Zhongzhou, and there was no grain growing in the field, so life became bitter, and by the second year, he could not even pay the tax grain.

At this time, a group of gentry from the capital wanted to buy their land. But the price offered by these people was too low, and her father did not want to sell all the land cheaply, so he just wanted to give it up to 30%, pay this year's tax, and keep the rest of the land in his hands.

Because her father had some fame in the township, he and several other lieutenants discussed the sale of land. Clinker, the other party's original intention was to take advantage of the drought to annex all the local fields, and took out this cheap money to think it was charity.

Naturally, it will be difficult for the two sides to reach an agreement.

In the midst of the stalemate, a fire suddenly broke out in the village, killing more than half of the village, and Butterfly's father and several brothers also died in the fire.

After the fire, no one in the village resisted the sale of the land. Butterfly and her only remaining brother were also forced to sell their ancestral property and bury their family with the pitiful money they had received.

Her brother didn't believe that the fire was a natural disaster, and it took more than a year to investigate, and finally found out that the fire was indeed arson by the gentry. However, he went to the county government several times to complain, but he was closed.

The township officials protect each other, and he has nowhere to complain, so when he arrives in Beijing, at the feet of the Son of Heaven, there should always be someone who can control these lawless people.

So, he took his only sister to Beijing to sue the emperor.

As soon as he handed the complaint to the yamen of Jingzhao Mansion, he was brought in the next day, and within a few days, his body was swept away by a roll of grass and thrown out.

The butterfly that had been waiting at the gate of Jingzhao Mansion kept watch in the cold wind for five days, but only waited for his brother's corpse. She hugged her brother's corpse and cried until her tears flowed, and no passers-by looked at her more.

"I knew then that the sky in the capital was darker and colder than the sky in my hometown." Butterfly said to Qin Baozhu.

Then, she told Qin Baozhu that when she was living on the streets and was about to starve to death, it was the old bustard who gave her a bite to eat. Even the name of her butterfly was given to her by the bustard at that time.

And her real name is Chen Lan.