Chapter 90

Chapter 90

At daybreak, the rooster crowed, and she was made to get up early.

Well, more like she was dragged out from under her blankets.

Jiang Yunsui had gotten dressed, but her entire body was still dazed and foggy. She stood swaying in the doorway, looking as if she might topple over at any moment.

“Wicked. So wicked…”

Even half-asleep, her little mouth kept going, muttering “wicked” over and over.

And wasn’t it wicked? She had been sleeping perfectly well, only to be hauled out of bed at such an early hour. Utterly wicked!

Ji Si pretended not to hear.

He pointed at the courtyard. “Go hold horse stance.”

Jiang Yunsui wanted to play dead. Her little body tilted to one side, about to collapse.

Ji Si had clearly predicted this and caught her head, then set her upright again.

So she tilted and tried to fall the other way.

Ji Si: “…”

“Stand properly. Training.”

Weren’t you the one who said you wanted to learn qinggong?

Jiang Yunsui yawned, her eyes misty with tears.

“Can I learn when I’m a little more grown-up?”

She had discovered, with great heartbreak, that talking about it and actually doing it were two completely different things.

She was genuinely very tempted by qinggong, but her body said it did not want to move.

“No.”

In the end, Jiang Yunsui was still forced to run a few laps and hold horse stance for a while.

While she was holding horse stance, those tiny little legs of hers trembled and shook without stopping.

The maids, pageboys, and even the guards in the courtyard all laughed quietly at the sight.

For people like them, watching Jiang Yunsui get into all sorts of trouble every day was their greatest source of joy.

Of course, Jiang Yunsui herself believed she was an extremely well-behaved, extremely obedient, and extremely easy child.

There were not many children as pretty, adorable, and low-maintenance as her.

“I can’t do it anymore!”

Her indignant little milky voice cracked from the shout, and then she plopped straight down onto the ground.

Her little short legs felt like they were no longer hers.

Ji Si saw that she had done about enough for today and let her off.

Nanny Zhou carried Jiang Yunsui off to soak in a medicinal bath first, then tucked her in for a morning nap.

When she woke up, she felt none of the soreness that usually came after exercise. Once again, she was a Little Mushroom bursting with energy.

In Nanshu’s words, she had more energy than a dog, scampering joyfully all over the place.

Ji Si stared at Jiang Yunsui as she ran out of her room, looking completely fine.

He thought that tomorrow’s training could be made a little heavier.

Jiang Yunsui, who was wandering around, suddenly felt a chill down her back, and her little eyes instantly turned wary.

How dare they! Some unruly commoner was trying to harm her!

She ran next door. Ji Yan’an had already ordered people to tidy up her room for her.

When she went in for a look, oh-ho, the weeds in the courtyard had basically all been cleared away.

Three people were loosening the soil in the courtyard.

Jiang Yunsui did not go inside. Her tiny body clung to the doorway as her big eyes fixed on the three strangers.

One was an elderly man whose foot seemed a little lame. One had only one arm. One was blind in one eye.

None of them looked sturdy. In fact, they were all rather excessively thin, but they worked very hard.

The old man was the first to notice Jiang Yunsui. He smiled kindly and said, “You must be the little child the Young Master mentioned, the one this house belongs to.”

Jiang Yunsui noticed that he was already missing several teeth.

“Mm-hmm. Hello, old grandpa.” Little Mushroom became obedient again.

Those who knew her well all understood that this was simply how she behaved when facing unfamiliar people or strangers.

“Aye, we’ll have this plot cleaned up very soon. Your room may still take another two days to finish, though.”

Jiang Yunsui shook her head. “It’s all right. I’m not in a hurry.”

After looking at them a few more times, Jiang Yunsui ran back.

“Fat Chef, Fat Chef…”

When Fat Chef heard her voice, he came out with a spatula still in his hand.

“Aiyo, Little Ancestor, slow down when you run. Be careful you don’t fall.”
Almost the instant the words left his mouth, Jiang Yunsui put on a perfect performance of tripping over absolutely nothing.

The two of them: “…”

Fat Chef hurried over. “I told you to be careful. See? You fell, didn’t you?”

Jiang Yunsui huffed twice, unconvinced, then climbed up from the ground with practiced ease.

“If you hadn’t said anything, I definitely wouldn’t have fallen!”

Darn it. She had clearly already tamed her two legs.

“Fat Chef, food. For those people working.”

She pointed toward her own residence.

Fat Chef understood at once.

“Oh, you mean them. Don’t worry, the Young Master already made arrangements. They won’t be treated poorly.”

Jiang Yunsui nodded, then her little brows knitted together.

“Who… are they?”

They were all disabled.

“You want to ask why they ended up like that, right?”

Fat Chef handed her a roasted sweet potato.

“They used to be soldiers on the battlefield.”

“There are a lot of wars around here. Those barbarians come harassing us every now and then, so there are many deaths and many wounded. The ones missing arms or legs survived the battlefield, but they can’t keep fighting anymore.

“They received a sum of silver and retired. But people are people. Even the most filial son grows weary at a sickbed. There are too few relatives who can accept that someone is disabled, unable to work in the future, and will become a burden on the family. Plenty of them went back to their hometowns after retiring, but later they came back to Mobei.”

Fat Chef patted Jiang Yunsui’s little head and sighed.

“In their own homes, they couldn’t survive.”

By coming to Mobei, perhaps they still had a chance.

The Ji Family Member were decent and were willing to support them.

Even if there was no money, they would be allotted land. The vegetables they grew and the pigs they raised would all be bought by the Ji Family Army, which at least gave them a way to make a living through their own efforts.

But that was only enough to keep them from starving to death.

Because there were far too many people like them.

And the Imperial Court refused to issue military pay. They even held back the army provisions and were unwilling to send them. The Ji Family could not afford to support so many people either.

Fortunately, Old General Ji had discovered sweet potatoes before. They might not make for good eating, but at least people would not starve.

Fat Chef used to serve as a cook in the army, so he knew how hard life was for military households. He knew even better how hard it was for those disabled soldiers who had been discharged.

At least the Ji Family was still willing to look after them. In many other places, the armies did not care at all.

Once Fat Chef got going, he told Jiang Yunsui a great deal about the army.

“These sweet potatoes can save lives, but if you eat them every single day, your face turns yellow from it.”

Jiang Yunsui’s little mouth was smeared all black from eating.

“Then make them into vermicelli.”

She remembered that sweet potatoes seemed to be able to be made into vermicelli.

Fat Chef said, “What vermicelli? How do you make vermicelli out of this stuff?”

Jiang Yunsui furrowed her little brows and thought. Only after a long while did she dig out a bit of something Tuantuan had said from deep in her memory.

“I think… you need something called starch.”

Starch did not exist yet.

Fat Chef was a cook, and he keenly sensed that if sweet potatoes could really be made into vermicelli, it would be of tremendous benefit to Mobei.

But how was it done? From Jiang Yunsui’s two simple sentences alone, he could not be sure.

“How about we give it a try?”

Try it, then try it.

And so, one large and one small rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

Since it was supposed to be a powder, they naturally had to crush it first.

Fat Chef pounded away with a stone mortar for ages, but trying to turn sweet potatoes into a powder as fine as flour was simply wishful thinking.

“How about we dry them in the sun first, then try again?”

So they left them to dry.

They found a clean cloth, spread it flat over a winnowing basket, washed the messy sweet potato bits they had pounded, placed them on top to sun-dry, and then the two of them left it alone.