On this trip, the boss of the ship did not come with him because he was a regular customer. There were three sailors on board, one to watch the rudder, two to manage the sails, and a handyman to light the fire and cook.
Hearing the cry, the sailor under the mast, named Dazhu, ran over quickly.
Zheng Haizhu saw that the other two sailors and the handyman were just watching from a distance. The person in front of him, Dazhu, who was the talker, had a somewhat strange face.
Zheng Haizhu stared at him: "Brother Dazhu, you already know that there is someone hiding in the cabin, right? The cashier?"
Her expression was cold, but her tone did not lose its calmness.
On the vast sea, there were only two men on his side, Wu Bondang and Xiao Xu, and neither of them knew how to sail. Zheng Haizhu did not want to offend these sailors.
Dazhu said "Ah" subconsciously.
After all, most of the sailors who go to sea are just with well-developed limbs and simple minds.
At this moment, Dazhu, who didn't know how to lie and cover up, suddenly said angrily to Aya who was shrinking into a ball: "You damn bitch, you can't even hide it for a long time."
Mu Zaohua blurted out: "You are so mean! She was seasick and vomited so much that she made a sound and I heard her."
Zheng Haizhu said: "Zaohua, she is pregnant and may be very happy. Bring her a bowl of warmer millet porridge."
Everyone else present, except Xu San who accompanied Zheng Haizhu to Liu's house yesterday, was stunned.
In a brief moment, Dazhu's previous angry expression clearly froze, and his hunched cheeks and narrowed eyes even showed a bit of compassion.
"What? You have Liu Baihu's baby, and old Liu's wife wants to beat her to death? Zheng, Zheng Dongjia, do you know her?"
Zheng Haizhu said: "Sure enough, you also recognize her. In that case, when you return from Lushun, you can send her back to the Liu family."
"No!" Aya whined, crawling over and hugging Zheng Haizhu's legs, "Please, please, my boss. Beat me, they beat me. I'm hungry."
The sailor also sighed: "Everyone in the village knows that they treat this Li Dynasty woman like an animal. Zheng Dong's family, our hearts are also grown from flesh. She is really pitiful. She said that if she wants to go back to the north, she will die.
In front of the grave of North Korea’s mother-in-law. Speaking of money, I collected a little money, that’s all.”
The sailor took out three small silver coins from his pocket and showed them to Zheng Haizhu and others.
Zheng Haizhu recognized it at a glance. She asked Xu San to take the silver ingots and cut them open at a store in Dengzhou in order to stuff them with money along the way. Yesterday, she stuffed the broken pieces to Liu Baihu.
Zheng Haizhu looked kinder and said to the sailor: "I'll take her in and ask her a few questions. If you know anything, please tell my shopkeepers."
After saying this, he looked at Wu Bond.
Wu Bond understood that this was a habit Zheng Haizhu had said, such as separate interrogations.
Zheng Haizhu helped Aya up, walked into the cabin where he was resting, closed the wooden door, and said bluntly: "Aya, you are not a Korean."
A look of panic appeared on Aya's weak face.
Zheng Haizhu continued: "There are also smuggling merchant ships from Dengzhou to Tieshan, Korea. Since you have stolen the money and can give the sailors enough remuneration, why not just find the ship there? You have to spend half of the money.
For the sea route, leave half the cost to travel through the mountains?"
The avoidance in Aya's eyes became even more intense.
In fact, Zheng Haizhu also considered whether Aya chose to go ashore from Lushun and go overland to the Yalu River because the sailors above were kind-hearted and easier to bribe.
However, not to mention that the land route from Port Arthur to North Korea was slower and more dangerous than the sea route. The key point was that her intuition convinced her that the lonely pregnant woman in front of her but with the ability to control a horse was not that simple.
During interrogation, deceiving the source first may put psychological pressure on the other party.
When Aya fell silent, Mu Zaohua knocked on the door outside.
Zheng Haizhu took the millet porridge and signaled Mu Zaohua to go to the deck first, then took the pale Aya in his arms, put the bowl to her lips, and let her drink slowly.
"Aya, you saved me yesterday. This is a kindness. But I have to repay the kindness clearly. After you drink this porridge, tell me the truth."
In the hot air, Zheng Haizhu felt that the body in his arms gradually sank and relaxed a little.
The warm and light millet porridge did not make Aya vomit again.
Aya swallowed a few times and felt it was smooth, so she no longer concealed her hunger. She took the large stoneware bowl from Zheng Haizhu's hand. Gudu finished the hot porridge, then stretched out his tongue to lick the bottom of the bowl, and then slowly
He leaned forward and placed the empty bowl in front of the cabin door.
She turned around and took off her coat.
The coat was still the same tattered singlet she had worn when she tried to turn the horse around yesterday. The Songjiang cotton-padded coat that Zheng Haizhu gave her must have been taken away by the Liu family.
Zheng Haizhu was not surprised when he saw her clothes just now, but then, when Aya continued to take off the linen clothes that were also dirty and hard inside, Zheng Haizhu was almost frightened by the tragic scene that suddenly appeared in front of him.
stand up.
Aya's chest has no breasts.
Yes, no matter how old, weak or sick an adult woman is, she should have breasts, but Aya doesn't have them.
Instead, there were scarred wounds on both sides of the chest. Many earthworms looked like crooked brown lines or flesh bumps, high and low, intricately intertwined.
The shocking scene not only announced that this body was no longer in danger of physical decay, but also stimulated those who witnessed it with the most realistic cruelty.
Zheng Haizhu turned from shock to anger and asked in a deep voice: "Did the Liu family do it?"
Aya shook his head, covered his shirt, and stared at Zheng Haizhu with his long and narrow eyes without any ferocious look.
After a while, she finally spoke again, and the Chinese she spoke was no longer awkward.
"Zheng Dongjia, my real name is Aya, but I am indeed not from the Li Dynasty. My mother is a Han from Kaiyuan, Liaodong, and my father...my father is a Jurchen from the Yehe tribe. My father's family has been raising and selling horses for generations.
When I followed my family to the horse market in Ming Dynasty, I met my mother, and my mother followed him back to the Yehe tribe. Later, the Jianzhou tribe called, and a leader from Niulu wanted to bully my mother. My father and him
The leader tried his best to kill both my parents and gave me to one of his subordinates to make a dressing. I was just ten years old at that time. Five years later, the wife of a Jianzhou native saw that I had grown up, so she breasted me.
I cut it before."
"Why! Why do they do such beastly behavior!" Zheng Haizhu raised her voice involuntarily.
"Zheng Dongjia, the mistress of the Jianbu family, often does this to the captive women, whether they are from the Yehe tribe or from the Ming people in the west and south. The main reason is that they are afraid that their men will be seduced by us.
.Some women died from these two swords. If they die, they will die. Anyway, the Ministry of Construction is powerful, and they can still grab new coats to do their work."
The more Zheng Haizhu listened, the more his throat became clogged.
In the Age of Discovery in 1617 AD, many corners of the earth were still in a barbaric state of primitive tribes.
The slaves of the defeated side were worse than dogs in the homeland of the victorious side.
In fact, it has little to do with whether the Jianzhou Jurchens were slaves or not. The Eastern feudal system, the Ming Dynasty, where the commodity economy and culture and art were highly prosperous, and the Western powers are about to usher in the bourgeois revolution. Such behaviors that destroy humanity and harm the same kind of people,
Where is it missing?
The cruelty shown by women in Jianzhou due to their instinct for female competition is no different from the cruelty shown by men in the empire due to their instinct to fight for power or make profit. They are both disgusting and bad.
Aya, who had replenished some energy and had a slight color on his face, took a breath and continued: "Later, I followed a Yehe man who also made wrappers and escaped. I fled to the vicinity of Aiyang Castle. Because I spoke Jurchen dialect,
He was discovered by a group of hunters from the Jianzhou Ministry. I lured them away and asked me to run away. I saw him in the bushes and he was captured by the Jianzhou people again. I escaped into Aiyang Castle and was captured by a group of Ming people.
I was saved by the elder. He said that I was only half a wise man after all, so I might as well go to Dengzhou to be his brother’s wife. It was close to the sea and everyone could have enough to eat. I wanted to survive, so I followed him to Dengzhou, and I found out the result.
I was to be his brother's concubine and give birth to a baby. To the people in the village, they only said that I escaped from the Li Dynasty, and I was not allowed to speak much Chinese. Even if I did speak, I would have to stutter."
At this time, Zheng Haizhu had unconsciously forgotten his identity as an interrogator and said softly: "But Liu Baihu and the others still abuse you, so you still want to go back to Liaodong, right?"
Aya shook his head and said sadly: "If it was just a little colder and a little hungry, I wouldn't want to run away. After all, Liu Baihu's brother saved my life, and he died in the battle to fight the people who built the Ministry. Speaking of which,
When I was still alive, I vented my anger on my parents who died tragically. I originally didn’t want to let the corps commander down. But a few days ago, Liu Baihu’s eldest daughter told me that if I have a boy in my belly, I will wait until the baby lands.