Floating population—those without houses, land, or jobs. They were mostly refugees fleeing famine from other regions.
To be honest, these two sisters were quite conscientious. They administered the medicine with such meticulousness and focus that not a single drop was wasted!
It was just that neither sister showed any expression; the features on their faces didn't move even a fraction!
Although the two brothers were in pain all over, their minds were very clear, and they cooperated fully by drinking all the medicine!
Perhaps they also knew that only by drinking the medicine could they recover faster and reduce the sensation of pain in their bodies!
Sure enough, after about ten minutes, the two brothers stopped making painful groans and instead fell into a deep sleep!
Seeing the brothers fall asleep, the two sisters actually began discussing the prescription, talking about which medicines could be substituted for others, which ones could be found in the mountains, and which could not. It was all jargon that outsiders wouldn't understand!
However, there were a few medicinal names that all mountain dwellers knew—very common and inexpensive herbs.
Finally, one could hear Fang Xiue sighing, "We sisters are full of medical knowledge, yet we are trapped in such a place of ignorance and superstition! The most laughable part is that while we have plenty of formulas to save lives, we are forced to study formulas that cause harm!"
Fang Xiuying also said indignantly, "We originally had a heart full of passion to support rural construction, only to be schemed against by that despicable old dog! He made us two sisters marry these two sub-human things! What's most infuriating is that we were tricked into registering our household residency here, and now we can't even return to the city!"
After speaking, the two sisters could no longer hold back their tears, and they fell!
…On the other side
Wang An arrived home very quickly after riding hard!
Because Mu Xueqing was worried about her brother, she immediately stepped forward to question him, anxiously asking how the matter had finally been resolved.
Wang An did not hide anything and gave a simple recount of everything that had happened.
He even proudly showed off the two guns with a grin, saying they were spoils of war captured from the enemy.
The whole family and Shen Wei were left speechless after hearing this, shocked by Wang An's "badass" maneuvers!
It took a good while for the family to recover their senses.
Liu Guilan asked with a face full of confusion, "So you're saying you beat those two brothers up pretty badly, and then you extorted their guns and money from them?"
Hearing his mother's question, Wang An said very helplessly, "Ma, how can you call it extortion? They paid us as compensation! It's called compensation, not extortion!"
Liu Guilan raised her voice and said unpleasantly, "Isn't that extorting people? How did their guns end up in your hands? That's still extortion!"
Wang An was speechless. After thinking for a long time, he explained, "Ma, you have to think of it this way: wasn't it wrong for those two brothers to rob Xue Li of his wild boar?"
Liu Guilan nodded.
Wang An: "Since they robbed the wild boar, shouldn't they return it to us?"
Liu Guilan nodded.
Wang An: "But they already ate the wild boar, so what do they do? What are they returning to us?"
Liu Guilan: "Pay us in money, obviously!"
Wang An: "How much?"
Liu Guilan: "The price of one wild boar!"
Wang An: "But I think that's too little. I'm not satisfied!"
Liu Guilan raised her voice: "On what grounds are you not satisfied?"
Wang An: "On the grounds that they were being jerks to Xue Li! On the grounds that they made Xueqing unhappy! On the grounds that they didn't let me sleep well! And on the grounds that they made our two horses tired!"
The whole family and Shen Wei were completely stunned by Wang An's logic!
Wang An continued, "Besides, beating them up was more tiring than working! Shouldn't they make me satisfied? I can't just go through the effort of fighting for nothing, can I?"
Although the whole family and Shen Wei still felt something was off, they also felt that what Wang An said seemed quite reasonable!
Wang An stopped explaining and turned to go into the house.
Lying on the *kang*, tossing and turning, Wang An found he couldn't sleep!
After thinking for a while, he remembered what he could do—that deer head was still freezing outside in the lower room!
He got out of bed, put on his shoes, and carried the deer head into the room.
It was quite a struggle to carry it; the thing was much wider than the door because of its awkward shape!
He had to carry the deer head sideways to get it out of the lower room and sideways to get it into the room!
Mainly, the straw curtain of the outer room was in the way, so he had no choice but to take the curtain down.
After a lot of tinkering, he finally sat down quietly on the *kang* in the western room.
He picked up the skinning knife and began peeling the skin. The thing was frozen rock-hard, making it quite difficult to handle!
But for something he enjoyed, Wang An was extremely patient!
The family members and Shen Wei, who were also busy outside, had finished processing a sled-load of prey.
Wang An was only one step away from the final task: removing the deer brain.
Perhaps because he had been gutting prey outside in the freezing cold, Liu Guilan, upon entering the room and finding Wang An not sleeping but instead messing with a deer head, gave him a fierce scolding!
Wang An was stunned by the scolding, mainly because he didn't even know what he had done wrong!
Only after the scolding did she tell him: next time he hunts prey, he should gut it in the mountains before bringing it back.
Don't just kill the prey and drag it back without doing anything, acting like a master!
Wang An didn't dare talk back and could only agree repeatedly with a bitter face. Seeing Wang An get scolded, Mu Xueqing, Shen Wei, Wang Dazhu, and Wang Yi were all very happy, laughing heartily!
Previously, when skinning prey, the family would bring the carcasses into the house so the work would be warmer and more comfortable!
However, the family had discovered that the smell of the prey's organs during gutting was very intense and wouldn't dissipate for many days!
This smell wasn't just pure stench; it was a type of mixed odor caused by fermentation, especially with carnivores, which was very foul and made people want to vomit!
Therefore, whenever Wang An brought prey back, he would light two fires outside.
Although skinning was more difficult that way, it prevented the whole house from being filled with the smell of organs that made people feel nauseous at any moment!
Especially since this kind of smell would seep into everything related to fabric, such as clothes, quilts, and mattresses.
This resulted in Wang An's family having to endure this smell every moment.
There was no choice but to air out quilts and clothes in the middle of winter!
But in Northeast China during this era, heating relied entirely on the *kang*. A Northeast *kang* had two places to burn fire.
One was the stove pit in the outer room; when this stove was lit, the smoke traveled through the *kang*, heating it up.
The other was under the edge of the *kang* near the door, which was also a fire hole. Locals called it the "fire-scorched *kang" (huoliao kang); burning fire from here heated the *kang* the fastest!
So, when the villagers usually talked about going home to "burn the *kang*," they meant lighting the fire from the hole under the edge.
In a Northeast winter, in a mud house like this, a huge amount of firewood was burned every day.
But even so, the indoor temperature was only around seven or eight degrees Celsius; reaching ten degrees was considered quite impressive!
In this era, people's sleeping time in the winter was basically before 7 PM, because it got dark before 5 PM.
During the day in winter, the outdoor temperature was normally minus twenty-seven or twenty-eight degrees Celsius. It was hard to air anything out; the only benefit was that it could freeze lice to death!
Furthermore, quilts in the Northeast during this era were exceptionally thick.
So, even if you aired out the quilts during the day, by the time you went to sleep at night, the mattress might be fine, but the quilt wouldn't warm up for a long while!
With a freezing quilt and a cold room, the experience was indescribable!
Moreover, the job of gutting was actually something hunters did on the mountain while the prey still had residual warmth!
This way, their hands wouldn't freeze, and there wouldn't be that smell of organs when they brought it home, unlike Wang An, who just brought it home and ignored it!
This was also the reason why the family members were busy outside in this bitter cold.
And the reason Wang An got scolded was because the root cause was him—laziness was his original sin!
After eating a meal that was neither lunch nor dinner.
Because Shen Wei had helped out all day, even according to the mountain-hunting customs, she had to be given a portion of the meat.
Therefore, Liu Guilan decided to give Shen Wei half a skinned wolf carcass, a piece of tiger cub meat, half a jumping cat, and so on, so she could have a taste.
She also packed warm food and dishes for Shen Wei to give to Shen Wei's child and mother-in-law!
There was a lot of stuff, and since there were dishes that needed to be carried properly, Wang An naturally had to help deliver them.
Wang An pretended not to see Mu Xueqing's warning glare and told his family he would go for a stroll after delivering the meat.
Shouldering the meat, he headed toward Shen Wei's house.