Farming to Defy My Fate 48

Chapter 48: Favoritism

Hu Sheng had fought several times with the local chieftains on the Nanyue Kingdom’s side. Those people had no choice but to acknowledge their status, allowing his men to stabilize their position there.

After settling the people there and confirming that Li Dake and Ma Chuan would take turns leading the horse caravans to transport goods between the two countries, he left the sugar-transporting caravan and rushed back alone. After all, he had promised Zhao An that he would be home before the New Year.

Even though he had been judged by Zhao An as a jealous person, he absolutely did not want to be a person who broke his promise.

As expected, his faithfulness was rewarded. After the initial surprise of seeing him, Zhao An began to worry about whether he was cold or hungry. Without waiting for his answer, he draped a thick coat over him and quickly had someone go to the kitchen to cook for him. This was the feeling of being cared for, and it was wonderful.

Zhao An also felt wonderful. He had been in this world for almost a year, from struggling for a living at the beginning to now having his own home.

The New Year was getting closer. On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month, Zhao An announced a holiday at the school. Both adults and children were very happy. Although there were not many adults who still persisted in coming to the school, most of them had already started preparing for the New Year.

Slaughtering pigs and sheep, making cured meat and sausages, and also grinding rice paste to make sweet rice balls, and steaming glutinous rice to make New Year cakes. In the southwest, there was no custom of eating dumplings for the New Year. They all ate sweet rice balls and New Year cakes, and on New Year’s Eve, there had to be a fish.

Of course, these luxurious enjoyments belonged to families with spare money. Changxi County had suffered some disasters last year. Even though County Magistrate Feng had let everyone go into the mountains to get some miscellaneous things to fill their stomachs, and the road construction work had reduced the grain consumption for some families, everyone was still in a state of lacking oil in their stomachs.

When the people of Zhaojia Village were busy preparing for the New Year, there were inevitably some peering heads outside the village. So even though it was approaching the New Year, the village’s guard team could not be dismissed like the school.

But whenever Zhao An saw such a scene, he always felt unbearable, even after the era of the great cataclysm. Many, many people had died all over the world, and he had also become an orphan. But after everyone’s joint construction, in less than three years, everyone’s standard of living had returned to the state of the early twentieth century. Although the forms of entertainment had become monotonous, and the variety of food choices had been greatly reduced, people were still able to maintain the most basic food and clothing, and children could get enough meat, eggs, and milk during their growth.

To put his mind at ease, he discussed with Hu Sheng, “The yield of the sweet potatoes I’ve improved is more than double that of the existing varieties. Since you can now eat rice transported from the Nanyue Kingdom on the mountain, why don’t you sell these two kinds of sweet potatoes to the common people at the foot of the mountain? Sell them in the name of your horse caravan, and say they are excellent varieties transported back from a foreign country.”

With these high-yield sweet potatoes, even if they encountered natural disasters again, everyone should at least not have to starve.

Hu Sheng put down the intelligence report from the north and said in a good mood, “How did I not think that I would fall in love with such a kind person as you?”

Zhao An leaned closer to Hu Sheng. “Don’t say that. I’ll be embarrassed.”

The two kissed, then quickly skipped this topic and began to discuss the intelligence sent from the north.

Ever since Zhao Tongming had died and someone had come to confiscate his property, Zhao An had been a little curious about what was happening in the capital.

When he used to read the novel, he felt that although the love story of Tears of a City-Toppling Beauty was melodramatic and contrived—the male lead had to destroy the female lead’s family, and the female lead, as if she didn’t understand feelings, was always ambiguous with different people—the world outside their love story was not presented in the book. Zhao An didn’t know that this world was so full of disasters.

This year, not only had there been a drought in the southwest, but in the winter, the entire north had experienced large-scale snowfall and a drop in temperature.

Ever since he had received this news, Hu Sheng had been paying close attention to the situation on the border, because once the temperature on the grassland was too low and too many cattle and sheep died, there would be a danger of a large-scale invasion by the grassland peoples.

Even though they had just won a great victory, besides the Xiongnu, there were many small tribes and ethnic groups on the grassland. In order to seize more living space and survival resources, they would reunite when life was difficult, form new large tribes, and challenge the rich central plains dynasty.

However, the capital was still immersed in one court struggle after another. Before the crown prince was enfeoffed, Consort Mei and her family had already been uprooted. But this time, a new character had made a dazzling appearance.

That was the King of Jiangdu, whose fief was in the most prosperous part of Jiangnan. He was described in the book as a gentleman like jade. He had once helped the female lead when she was pregnant and was driven out of the house by the male lead’s mother, taking her back to the capital with him. On the way, they had discussed Go and calligraphy, and there was a rather ambiguous atmosphere between them.

It was just that the female lead had hidden her identity at that time, only saying that she was the daughter of a minor official who had been driven out by her mother-in-law. After returning to the capital, she had disappeared without a trace.

And this time, when the King of Jiangdu came to the capital to pay homage to the crown prince, he saw Zhao Qingcheng, who was now the empress, and still couldn’t forget her. So he found an opportunity to get close to her, and during this period, tens of thousands of plot points occurred. In the end, the King of Jiangdu’s ending was to be given a white silk cloth to commit suicide by the male lead on the charge of treason.

His image had always been described as Zhao Qingcheng’s soulmate. For this, Zhao Qingcheng had cried for a long time in front of Li Xiuye, and then the two had their usual cold war and reconciliation.

It wasn’t until Zhao An successively saw the intelligence in Hu Sheng’s hands that he realized that the so-called love of the King of Jiangdu for Zhao Qingcheng might just be an adventure to challenge authority, wrapped in calculation.

In fact, ever since the late emperor had no son at the age of thirty, these young vassal kings had been constantly fighting openly and secretly. The King of Jiangdu had actually valued Zhao Qingcheng’s status as the daughter of a prime minister very much, and had even despised Li Xiuye in his heart for not cherishing her.

At the same time, he had positioned himself as a savior. However, what he hadn’t expected was that Li Xiuye would be able to rely on the Empress Dowager, be adopted under her name, and thus ascend to the throne.

And now, the King of Jiangdu still had not given up on the struggle for the throne. Among the assassins who had tried to assassinate Li Xiuye some time ago, there were people he had sent. Unfortunately, all the assassinations had failed.

So, in fact, the reason the King of Jiangdu was given a death sentence was because the evidence of his assassination and rebellion had been discovered. And his repeated attempts to get close to Zhao Qingcheng for excitement were just one of the triggers for his death.

Now, the evidence of the King of Jiangdu’s assassination of the emperor was in Hu Sheng’s hands. The palace maid who had successfully embarrassed Li Xiuye at the Mid-Autumn Festival banquet still had an aunt alive. She was a managing nanny in the King of Jiangdu’s residence.

After reading these messages, Hu Sheng burned the paper strips over an oil lamp, then casually placed the travelogue that had contained the paper strips on the bookshelf. Recently, in order to teach those children to read, Zhao An had always been racking his brains to write some articles. Then he would flip through some miscellaneous books for reference, to see how others described scenery and human feelings. So these miscellaneous books used to transmit messages now had a new use.

Zhao An digested the latest intelligence he had received, but looked at Hu Sheng with some confusion. “None of these things seem to be good news. Why do I feel that you’re in a very good mood?”

Hu Sheng said, “Those are all private matters. You may not have noticed.”

He pulled Zhao An, who was leaning on the table, over and had him sit on his lap, slowly explaining, “You should know that I was born of a Hu concubine. My name carries a humiliating nature. It’s just that I don’t care. But when I see the miserable end of those who have humiliated me, I can’t help but feel happy.”

Recalling the news just now, the only ones who could be described as having a miserable end seemed to be the Shang family, who had recently been executed. The reason they were killed was for bribing Zhao Tongming’s family to harm the crown prince.

Zhao An already knew, but he didn’t want to reopen Hu Sheng’s wounds. So he grabbed his rough hand and said, “Since we are already a family, let’s not think about the past. We just need to live our own lives well.”

In order to live their own lives well, Zhao An and his family, like the other families in the village, had slaughtered a pig and made some cured meat and sausages to hang up.

On New Year’s Eve, they made a large table of dishes and stayed up to see the new year in. It was a bit boring, so some interesting activities between adults inevitably occurred.

Finally, when the moon was high in the sky, at this time, even if Zhao An couldn’t move himself, he had to have Hu Sheng carry him up to set off firecrackers together.

Amidst the crackling of firecrackers, he welcomed his second year in this world. With someone by his side who could bring him warmth at any time, he was not lonely at all.

So they carried the festive joy of the New Year all the way to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The school reopened. This time, there were even fewer adults who came to class, because everyone had started spring plowing again.

The plowing in the first lunar month did not involve planting grain immediately. Instead, they had to deeply plow the land that had been compacted over the winter, and then use a hoe to break up the clods of earth again.

Just this preparatory work before spring plowing took twenty to thirty days. After all the land had been dug once, it was just right for sowing.

This year, it rained seven or eight times in February. Everyone was very happy, feeling that there would definitely not be a drought like last year. But there was also a faint worry, because last year, before the drought, there had been a heavy rain. The villagers were all afraid that there would be a flood this year, afraid that the heavens would pour down all the rain that hadn’t fallen last year.

However, as people passed through March with trepidation, all the seeds that had been sown sprouted into lush green seedlings. The weather was still very good, with neither flood nor drought.

In May, after the first harvest of corn, everyone was relieved. At least there would not be a situation of no harvest at all this year.

It was at this time that Hu Sheng had his horse caravan come to the vicinity of Changxi County to sell sweet potato vines. He also showed them a sample with five large sweet potatoes, and everyone was very happy to exchange corn for sweet potato vines to try planting at home.

Perhaps the heavens really did have a preference for Li Xiuye and Zhao Qingcheng. The drought and snow disaster of last year had passed smoothly, and seemed to have had no impact on the entire Xu Kingdom.

Even the grassland peoples who had suffered from the snow disaster, because they had not yet chosen a powerful leader and had lost enough manpower in their internal struggles, the survivors had a large number of sheep and slaves. When the spring breeze blew and the grass on the grassland grew again, they also temporarily gave up their plan to attack the Xu Kingdom, and a crisis was thus eliminated invisibly.