Chapter 1 Yellow Gourd

The end of the year is approaching, the north wind is howling, and the sky and the earth are all white.

Er Gouzi is wearing a torn jacket handed down from his ancestors, with patches on top of each other, but it still can't stop the weeds and catkins stuffed inside the jacket from getting out.

His upper body is better, at least he has an ancestral coat to keep warm, but his pants on the lower body are only half full.

The length of the pants just reaches the knees, one leg is longer than the other, and the buttocks are worn into yarn, revealing half of the frozen purple buttocks.

One of the torn straw sandals on his feet also fell off, leaving two rows of footprints of varying depths on the snow.

At this moment, Er Gouzi has tied up a small pile of firewood, which is about 30 kilograms. He should be able to carry it back to the task.

It is not easy to collect firewood now. Every household needs to burn firewood, and trees can't grow enough.

He walked seven or eight miles and was busy for most of the day before he dug these firewood out of the snow.

After tying up the firewood, he sat on the firewood, blew a few breaths of hot air on his hands, and then stuffed them under his armpits to cover them.

He took a few breaths, took out a piece of bran cake from his torn jacket, took a big bite, and chewed hard.

The bran cake was mixed with a lot of bran and wild vegetables, as well as a small amount of acorns and grass seeds. It scratched his throat when he swallowed it.

This thing is called a cake, but in fact he stole it from the pig food.

Even with such bran cakes, he rarely ate enough.

After eating a bran cake, he licked the residue on his fingers, grabbed a handful of snow from the ground and stuffed it into his mouth and swallowed it.

He sat for a while and felt that his body had recovered some strength. Then he stood up and carried the firewood to go home.

But he got up too hard just now, and he was carrying dozens of kilograms of firewood. His feet slipped, and he fell down the hillside with the firewood.

"Bang! Bang... Bang!"

Er Gouzi lay on the ground, his waist was so painful that he couldn't stand up.

When he fell just now, something very hard hit his waist.

It tore a big hole in his clothes and a bloody wound on his waist.

He reached out and fumbled around on the snow for a while, and soon he found a big thing under the snow.

This was a yellow gourd that looked very ordinary, about one foot high, and the largest diameter was at least as big as a human head.

There was still a little blood on his waist on the lid of the gourd.

At this moment, the little blood was disappearing, as if it had seeped into the gourd.

He opened the lid of the gourd and found that it was a mess inside, and he couldn't see anything clearly.

Er Gouzi thought to himself that this thing was very good for holding water.

He worked outside every day, and often he couldn't drink water.

But this gourd was still a little too big, it would be better if it could be smaller.

Just as this thought came to his mind, the gourd actually shrank a lot.

Er Gouzi couldn't believe his eyes, rubbed his eyes, and confirmed that the gourd was really only seven or eight inches high.

"Smaller!"

This time, Er Gouzi stared at the gourd in his hand with his eyes wide open.

Sure enough, the gourd shrank a lot under his eyes, and now it was only five inches high.

"Smaller!"

"Smaller!"

Accompanied by a dizziness, the yellow gourd had shrunk to about one inch.

But now he was dizzy, nauseous, and his fingers were trembling slightly.

This situation of his body was probably related to the gourd, and he didn't dare to try again.

If he fainted in this icy and snowy place, he would become a cold corpse before tomorrow morning.

After playing with the shrunken gourd in his hand for a while, he could only temporarily stuff it into the interlayer of his clothes, and then tremblingly carried the firewood and walked down the mountain.

On the way back for seven or eight miles, he slipped several times in the snow.

The remaining broken straw sandal was also completely dismembered and could no longer be worn, so he could only walk barefoot in the snow.

After passing two small hills, we finally saw Shexi Village at the foot of the mountain.

There is a stream in the center of the village, and many adobe thatched houses are located on both sides of the stream.

Among them, a few large houses covered with green tiles are very eye-catching among the pile of thatched houses. They are naturally the rare wealthy families in Shexi Village.

At this time, it was getting dark, and Er Gouzi carried firewood to the door of a tile house.

The door was half open, but he stopped and stood at the door a little hesitant, as if he didn't have the courage to step into this door.

"You are still dawdling at the door! Go and fetch water to feed the pigs."

At this time, a hoarse female voice came from the house.

I saw a fat woman standing at the door, with greasy hair, wearing a set of greasy cotton clothes and cotton pants, frowning at Er Gouzi.

"You only know how to eat, and you are lazy when you do something. You only pick up this little firewood in a day!"

Er Gouzi forced a smile on his frozen face, lowered his head, shook off the snow on his body, and then carried the firewood and walked into the gate.

"Your damn parents passed away early. If I hadn't squeezed out some food from my teeth, you would have starved to death."

"You are sick all day long. People who don't know would think that I abused you!"

"Yes, yes! Thank you aunt for saving my life!"

Er Gouzi smiled and thanked, then put the firewood into the firewood room with his hands and feet.

He picked up the shoulder pole and bucket behind the door, and went out barefoot without changing his shoes.

He carried three loads of water and filled a large water tank.

Next, he cleaned the house, boiled a basin of hot water for his aunt to soak her feet, and fed a pig.

While feeding the pigs, he was so hungry that he even stole a large ball of pig food to eat half full.

There are a lot of wild vegetables in the pig food, as well as a little grain, and the food is no worse than Er Gouzi's.

Over the years, he has been working so hard every day from dawn to dusk. If he hadn't often stolen pig food, he would not have survived until now.

Anyway, the meat grown by pigs eating pig food must be eaten by people, so it is better to eat some pig food directly, which is almost the same as eating pork.

As long as he can survive, it doesn't matter if he eats some pig food and suffers a little humiliation.

When he finished all the chores at home and outside, it was completely dark, and his aunt's family had already crawled into the warm bed.

It was not until then that Er Gouzi held up a burning pine knot and walked into the main hall for dinner.

Lighting lamps consume too much oil. Except for his cousin studying at night, his aunt did not allow anyone else to light an oil lamp.

There was an eight-immortal table in the middle of the main hall, and there were several sets of leftover bowls and chopsticks on the table.

With the dim light of the burning pine knot, he saw some leftovers in the bowl, which was his dinner.

He ate two meals a day. He ate one in the morning and then went out to collect firewood. He finished all the chores in the evening and then had dinner.

Once, he came to eat without finishing his work because he was too hungry. His aunt scolded him and beat him.

Now there is a long scar on his arm, which was caused by his aunt using fire tongs.

There was still a little cold porridge left in the five coarse pottery bowls on the table. Only one of the small bowls had more than half a bowl of cold porridge left.

Er Gouzi picked up the half bowl of cold porridge and drank it up after a few gulps.

There were actually a few pickled vegetables hidden under the bowl of cold porridge.

The pickled vegetables tasted so good that he couldn't bear to chew them. Instead, he put them in his mouth and sucked them carefully.

With the taste of the pickled vegetables, he licked the remaining cold porridge on the edge of the bowl clean.

There was also a little cold porridge left in the remaining bowls, which he licked clean.

After finishing the food in the bowl, he used a rice spoon to scrape the little bit left in the cooking pot and ate it.

Although it was just leftovers, it was much more delicious than pig food, but the amount was too small.

After eating, he washed the pots and bowls and went into his own sleeping room.

His room was very simple, with a broken bed covered with a thick layer of straw.

There were two pairs of new straw sandals woven with straw hanging on the wall of the room.

He woven them in his spare time at night, and they should be able to sell for two cents.

There were more than a dozen copper coins at the foot of the wooden bed, which was all the wealth he had secretly saved.

Er Gouzi had been busy since morning and was already exhausted.

Now lying in the haystack, it was so comfortable!

He took out the thumb-sized yellow gourd from his arms.

He didn't know where this gourd came from, but from the magical features it showed so far, it was definitely a treasure.

At least this gourd could hold a lot of water. He just poured it in the stream for a long time and couldn't fill the gourd.

Er Gouzi opened the lid and drank a mouthful of water from the gourd.

"Huh!"

He found that the water was no longer bitter.

The water around Shexi Village was bitter and astringent. Families with the means would add a few leaves of tea to cover it.

He drank several more mouthfuls in succession to make sure it was not his illusion. The water in the gourd was really not bitter, but had a hint of sweetness.