The five brothers lined up and sat under the eaves to bask in the sun, but their faces were full of frustration.
Alas, they haven't lit the fire yet. I want to borrow a fire from the neighbors, but all the doors are closed and they can't be opened no matter how hard I knock.
If you knock harder, the cries of women and children will be heard inside, making them look like bandits trying to rob their homes.
Without a fire, there is no way to boil water or cook. I want to drink raw water, but Lao Wu won’t let me. The water in the well must not be clean. If you don’t boil it, you will get sick...
So I could only sit there, licking my chapped lips, and listening to the growling of my stomach in a daze.
"Xia Jie starved to death in Nanchao, Qi Huangong died of starvation in his palace, as well as King Chu Ling and King Wuling of Zhao... Is this the fate of a king?" The third brother shed tears of reluctance.
"Fuck..." Fourth brother only had one word to comment on this.
By noon, the King’s Ox was so hungry that it mooed...
This was easy to handle. The fourth child opened a bag of rations and poured the rice into the pig trough. The big buffalo immediately came over, sniffed it and then lowered his head to eat.
"Why is this rice red?" King Jin was surprised. "Shouldn't all rice be white?"
"Red, red rice." The second child looked very understanding.
"The cow tastes delicious, so we can eat it without any problem," Lao Si said thoughtfully.
"Nonsense, this is our food ration." The third child gave him a blank look.
"No, what I mean is, should we eat uncooked rice too?" Zhu Di suggested.
"You eat first and see." Lao San was noncommittal.
"I, I'll do it." The second brother volunteered, grabbed a handful of red rice grains from the pig trough, stuffed it into his mouth and chewed it hard.
As a result, the teeth were sore, but I still couldn’t swallow them...
"Bah, what does it taste like..." King Qin spit out the residue in his mouth, scooped up a ladle of well water and drank it, and then he recovered.
"Well, it seems that it can't be eaten raw." King Yan came to the conclusion.
"That's right." King Jin nodded.
King Qin: "vomit, vomit..."
Zhu Zhen, who was hungry, looked at these unreliable brothers and felt deeply worried about whether he could survive until the autumn harvest.
In fact, he also racked his brains to think of ways to make a fire this morning, and even tried to drill wood to make a fire, but as expected, it ended in failure, and his hands were blistered...
While Zhu Zhen looked at the blood blisters on his delicate palms, he silently apologized to Master De. It turns out that making a fire is not that simple.
"If it doesn't work out, let's go back. Father, you won't want us anymore, right?" At this time, Fifth Brother, who had always been quiet, spoke up: "It's better to disappoint him than to lose his son, right?"
Fifth brother is always like this, putting his life first. Of course, including his own.
"That won't work, we can't let our father down!" The fourth brother said flatly, "I won't go back even if I starve to death!"
"That's right, we have to keep up the good work! What's this difficulty? We will definitely be able to overcome it!" The third brother was not to be outdone.
The third and fourth sons are in a different situation.
"You, you two, make the steamed buns first..." The second brother is not that strong, and he doesn't want to stay here anymore.
~~
Just when the emotions of the several highnesses were at a low point, Tang Jia Chang's kind voice sounded at the entrance of the courtyard.
"Brothers, are you guys taking a break?"
The brothers raised their heads listlessly, and their eyes suddenly lit up. They all saw Tang Jiazhang carrying a bag of snacks and a small jar in his hand.
"Oh, you are hungry, right?" Tang Jiazhang handed the snacks to Zhu Xi and said, "You're welcome, I bought them for you from the county."
"Very good." Zhu Xi praised it profusely, tore open the oil paper, grabbed a piece of snack and stuffed it into his mouth.
"Don't..." The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth brothers, and the four younger brothers all stopped, but they didn't even stop the second child.
"You, you guys eat too..." King Qin ate until his mouth was full of dregs while delivering the snacks to his brothers.
Please, you just offended someone, how dare you eat the food they gave me? There should be a limit to your heartlessness...
If you don’t do this, you’ll be poisoned to death!
But, I’m so hungry.
The third, fourth and sixth children all swallowed their saliva and looked at the fifth child. He is an expert in this area.
Zhu Zhu picked up a piece of sesame cake and looked at it carefully to make sure it was not freshly made. Then he broke off a bit and put it in his mouth to taste, then nodded and swallowed it.
The three of them immediately started eating like lightning. The second and fifth oldest children also hurriedly joined in the process of grabbing food.
In the blink of an eye, not a single piece of the snacks brought by Tang Jiazhang was left.
"It seems that we are really hungry." Tang Jiazhang couldn't help but wonder: "You can feed the cattle with grain, why don't you cook and eat it yourself?"
"No, I can't make a fire." King Qin said vaguely with his cheeks bulging.
"The main reason is that the flint broke." King Jin was embarrassed to admit his incompetence and pointed to the flint thrown on the ground.
"This does not affect its use." Tang Jia bent down to pick up half of the flint, and put the tinder under the flint. He picked up the fire sickle with his other hand, rubbed it back and forth on the flint to heat it, then slammed the flint downward several times, and fired.
The sparks all landed on the same spot on the tinder.
The five highnesses were surprised to find that a cluster of black dots quickly appeared on the tinder that they had been unable to ignite before. As Old Man Tang blew gently, the black dots became larger and larger, began to smoke, and then turned red.
Martian...
Finally, Tang Jia Chang easily ignited the dry grass used as fire coals with tinder, and bright flames danced in everyone's eyes.
"Hey, you, your old man is so awesome!" His Highness King Qin gave a thumbs up.
The King of Jin and King Yan also praised it one after another.
Tang Jiazhang didn't expect that these bad boys would be so admired by this, so he simply did his good deeds and guided them to remove the stove, put the pot in place, light the stove, and then taught them how to cook.
He first asked King Yan to pour the water, and then said to King Qin: "Put rice into the pot."
"Hey, that's good." Zhu Xi picked up the rice bag and poured it into the pot.
"Don't eat too much. Just eat porridge now. In a few days, the wild vegetables will sprout. Dig them back and cook them for porridge. When the farming is busy, you can eat some dry food..." Tang Jiachang patiently imparted the experience of old farmers' life.
"Oh..." King Qin responded and continued to cook rice.
"Put down more, down more." Several gray-faced highnesses were urging them from the side.
"There is too much rice." Zhu Zhen still has experience in steaming rice.
"Pour water, pour water." The third brother ordered, and the fourth brother responded.
"Too much water has been poured in again." Zhu Zhen said speechlessly: "It's become porridge again."
"Put in more rice." The third brother ordered again, and the second brother roared.
Tang Jia looked at it and shook his head. How could such a waste last until the autumn harvest?
~~
While waiting for the rice to be steamed, the brothers gathered around Old Tang and asked questions.
They already regard Tang Jia Chang as an old eunuch who knows everything.
"Old Tang, why is our rice red? Isn't it stale?"
"My young master, brown rice is just like this. The white rice we used to eat was polished rice that was pounded again and again after being shelled." Tang Jiachang said with a bitter smile: "We ordinary people don't dare to waste like that. Rice is only shelled once."
, that’s the brown rice we eat.”
"And we are not willing to throw away the bran that has been removed. We can grind it into bran and steam the bran steamed buns to eat." He added.
"Can it be eaten?" The brothers were stunned.
"It's hard to swallow bran steamed buns, and it also makes my stomach hurt after eating it, making it difficult to defecate." Old Man Tang said with emotion:
"But before Emperor Hongwu, we ordinary people couldn't even eat this. We could only eat grass roots, tree barks and Guanyin soil. If we had had bran cornstarch to eat at that time, six of my nine family members would not have starved to death." p>
"..." The brothers were silent. They naturally thought of what happened to their own family. Although they heard their father talk about it countless times, they never felt the same way this time.
