Qili Village started to be in trouble the next day. Many people in the village went to Lao Zhou's house to help with cooking, which was basically a woman's job.
The men gathered together, and the old man of the Zhou family took the initiative to open the ancestral hall. A group of elderly people took a few educated people from Zhou Lixue to read the genealogy in the ancestral hall, and offered freshly stewed chicken and duck to the ancestors.
The Queen of Sheep added Zhou Yin and his wife to the family tree again, and recorded Zhou Yin's life in the family tree.
Qili Village is remote and has been lived here for generations. Except for the refugee army that rushed in during the Jin Dynasty, only natural disasters could destroy their village.
But such disasters are rare, because Qili Village is in the mountains, there is no food, there are wild vegetables, weeds, and bark, and there will always be roots left.
As long as a few people from a family or a village survive, they will become a village again after many years. However, it will just change from hundreds of households to dozens of households, and from dozens of households to just a few households.
The drought in the eleventh year of Dade was a catastrophic test for the villagers of Qili Village.
At that time, many families in the village had actually packed their bags and were preparing to go out to escape the disaster. They had privately agreed to go north and walk all the way to the capital. Even if they had to beg along the way, as long as they could survive until the drought was over, they would be fine.
.
However, people leave their hometown (jiàn), so is the hope. No one knows how many people will survive on the road in the end. Didn’t the first batch of people who left the village only come back three, and the rest are basically broken.
On the road.
Those who went out were all young and strong, and none of them had suffered such a heavy loss, let alone those like the village chief who planned to take care of their families.
Just when they were hesitating, Zhou Yin brought back a bag of grain. In addition to keeping some for his own family, he also shared some with some orphans and widows in the village who had been without food for several days.
Then he gathered the young men in the village together and took them to the county town. He nodded and found a job for them to carry bags.
It's very tiring and hard, but I can survive, and the food I get can keep the family members alive.
Thanks to the job introduced by Zhou Yin, most people in Qili Village did not go out to escape the disaster, and most people survived.
The owner of the trading house liked Zhou Yin very much and left the steward to handle the property in Luojiang County, while he and the caravan took Zhou Yin away.
Everyone in Qili Village knew that Zhou Yin had been sold into slavery. According to the rules, selling into slavery should be crossed out from the family tree, but no one in the clan wanted to cross out Zhou Yin's name at that time.
The children of Lao Zhou's family are still living in poverty, and the whole Qili Village is not having a good time. When the year is good, they can live frugally for a year.
When times are bad, you can get through it by tightening your belt.
So in their spare time, everyone would sit under the big banyan tree at the entrance of the village and discuss, saying that with Zhou Yin's intelligence and ability, as well as the importance that the owner of the trading company places on him, he might be enjoying a good life at this time, and it wouldn't be long before he
I will send the letter back.
But the old Zhou family and the villagers of Qili Village waited for the New Year and another year, but there was still no news about Zhou Yin.
The old Zhou family even asked people to deal with passing merchants, but the news that came back was not very good. It was said that the owner of the trading house encountered a refugee army and bandits on the road, the caravan was robbed, and everyone was killed...
It is also said that there is no such company at all, and people must have been deceived into mining in the mountains. Once you enter the mine, you don’t have to think about finding people. They don’t even have bones and dregs...
So year after year, people in Qili Village no longer mentioned Zhou Yin, not even the old Zhou family themselves. They just thought that it was not bad if there was no news.
The reply comes, after all, I am a servant, I can’t help it...
It wasn't until the third year of Dazhen's reign that Zhou Yin suddenly drove a mule cart back to Qili Village with his wife and daughter, and the whole village was in commotion.
For example, although Zhang had a strong opinion against Qian and had been tit-for-tat for half his life, he had no objection to Zhou Yin, so he also joined in the trouble.
Not to mention other families who have a good relationship with the old Zhou family.
Zhou Hu and others who played with Zhou Yin back then also got married and started a business. They thought that when Zhou Yin came back, there would be a dozen tables set up and everyone would make a fuss.
Zhou Yin didn't object, patting his chest and saying that he would have a banquet when he came back from the county to pick up the things he had entrusted the trading company to bring.
As a result, the couple never came back.
If you say Zhou Yin is a bandit, even the villagers in Qili Village who were beaten to death don't believe it. How could Zhou Yin be a bandit?
He was almost killed by bandits!
For this reason, when officials brought Zhou Yin's blurred portrait for questioning, the men were questioned one by one at the entrance of the village. The women covered the bodies of the couple with straw mats, and then dragged them to the grass together in the rain.
Hidden in the pile, in order to prevent a trace of blood from flowing out, they held up oilcloth to block the rain...
Afterwards, they poured a few more buckets of water on the ground. When the officers came to search, they simply threw themselves on the ground and dealt with them.
Then, no one dared to say anything. After nightfall, the young people in the village dug a big hole in the cemetery of Lao Zhou's family. They didn't even have a coffin. They could only cover the two corpses with quilts and then cover them with straw mats to bury them.
Already...
Later, the official came twice more, and the village chief watched with fear. Finally, the old people of the Zhou family quietly opened the ancestral hall and drew a line on Zhou Yin's name, pretending that he had never been seen again after being sold into slavery.
Even when I came back, it was already crossed out from the family tree.
The matter slowly calmed down, and no one came to ask Zhou Yin anymore. The matter seemed to have passed, and the villagers seemed to have forgotten it, but after so many years, everyone was still confused.
What did Zhou Yin do outside, how did he die, and how did he provoke these official officials?
Not only the villagers don't know, but even the old Zhou family doesn't know.
It wasn't until there were shouts outside that the King of Yizhou was rebelling, there was fighting outside, and there were deserters everywhere, and then Manbao and the others' letters came back to Qili Village, that they knew what happened twelve years ago.
Only then did they realize that the little girl they had seen growing up had grown up and could sue for her biological father.
When the old people read out these things and asked the younger generations to write them down, they felt a little emotional. Time flies so fast.
Then the village chief looked at the pen that his grandson had left, and after thinking for a while he asked Lao Zhoutou, "Uncle Jin, do you want Man Bao to be recorded in the name of little Uncle Yin? She is an only daughter, and she is capable and can be included in the family tree."
Old Zhou thought for a moment and said, "Just remember it."
The village chief asked, "Does that remember our Zhou family or the Xia family?"
"Remember the Xia family? Of course I will remember the Zhou family. The name I gave you, Zhou Man, was agreed upon by the second son back then, and he followed Dalang and the others."
"But isn't Uncle Yin talking about Xia Man? After all, she is the bride-in-law..."
Old Zhou was unhappy and immediately grabbed the pen and said: "Who, who said that, Zhou Man! She has been called this name for more than ten years. If you want to change her surname, don't remember it."
The village chief nodded obediently, but the old man beside him was unhappy. He opened his toothless mouth and said vaguely: "You must keep your word, you must keep your promise..."