Small supermarket welcomes visitors from all directions

Chapter 91: Food Delivery Team

The old lady had a kind smile on her face and pushed a stack of banknotes over to her: "Take it! I am old now and can't do anything anymore. This is a little gift from me."

"It's Tang Qiao's honor that the old lady can come to support us." Tang Qiao did not reach out to take it.

"Take it! This is not for you, it is for the common people. You and your son have provided the common people with food to eat. This is a great merit!" said Mrs. Fu.

Is this something you can say? Tang Qiao was a little afraid to listen.

"Madam, please stop saying that." Tang Qiao quickly stopped her.

"I am not senile yet. You have done good things and I will not cause trouble for you. I have never said this before." The old lady just wanted to praise Tang Qiao.

Madam Fu picked up the banknote and put it in Tang Qiao's hand: "Take it! If you can't wait any longer, come back to me."

After saying this, he stood up and left, his brisk steps not at all like those of a man in his late eighties.

……

This is a border town, a sparsely populated place. Coupled with the sudden drop in temperature and the cover of ice and snow, it seems as if the whole world is silent.

There was a noise in the distance. It turned out that someone was coming. A team was coming from the south. It was not an army, but a team delivering food. It was a long team, probably stretching for two miles.

The food was all pulled by sleds, but the animals pulling the sleds were a bit mixed, including mules, horses, donkeys, and even dogs.

There were two men on the sled walking at the front of the team. Their faces could not be seen. They were wrapped in fur coats from head to toe and their faces were also wrapped with scarves, leaving only their eyes exposed.

"Lao Zhang, look, we're here." A man spoke to another man.

"Yes! We're here now. If we had delivered food in previous years, we would probably still be halfway there. This sled is great, it saves a lot of manpower." said another man.

"Of course not. This time we brought half the number of people as before, almost as many. We have to thank the prince of Prince Fu's mansion. I heard that it was he who came up with the idea of ​​the sled. It would have been much better if we had used it a few years earlier." The man praised the sled highly.

"It wouldn't have been possible a few years ago! Only this year has the snow been this heavy."

“You don’t need to use it in other seasons, but it’s totally fine to use it in winter.”

"Stop talking, we're here. Wait! Look, what is that?" The man pointed to a wall on the other side of the camp that was not there when he came last time.

"That's right! I saw it just now and thought I was seeing things, but it turns out there really is a wall."

The two men led the team into the camp in an orderly manner, handed over to the soldier in charge of food and fodder, and then settled the vehicles and personnel they brought.

Zhang and Li went to chat with the sergeants they knew. Only Zhang and Li were allowed to move freely in the camp.

After all, it is a military stronghold, and it is impossible for people to walk around here at will. The reason why Lao Zhang and Lao Li can shuttle in the camp is that they have been in charge of grain transportation for more than 20 years. Their whole family is in the capital, and the army trusts them.

The main reason is that transportation was inconvenient and communication was too difficult in ancient times, and the grain delivery teams traveling back and forth between the two places had to serve as civilian messengers every time.

Officials with some rank could use the post station, but the post station would not care about the low-ranking officials and the powerless soldiers. It was not that they would not send them, but they would just wait. If they got lost, they would be lost. Compared with the post station with no guarantee and no speed, the low-ranking soldiers would rather spend some money to find a grain transport team.

Anyway, it costs money, at least the grain transport team has a fixed number of four round trips per year. And the grain transport team will also deliver the letter to you.

Oh! Not only that. They also wrote and read letters, even though Lao Zhang and Lao Li themselves didn't know how to read. Isn't this like picking the tallest among the short ones? They can't write the correct characters, and they can't write the blank characters either? Most of the time, they write and read by themselves, so there is no problem at all.

When they arrived at the camp, they separated and went to find people they knew.

Lao Zhang knocked on the door of a barracks. The soldiers were all in the barracks. The weather was too cold now, and except for the necessary training and duty, everyone was in the barracks all the time.

"Lao Zhang! This year it's much earlier! How come the bad weather didn't delay us, but instead brought us earlier? Did we set out many days in advance?"

A familiar sergeant asked Lao Zhang.

"No, we set off at the same time. But this year we used a sled, which is not only faster but also saves manpower. I only used half the number of people as before, and we arrived several days earlier." Lao Zhang was very satisfied with the speed this time.

"We also use sleds here, with two dogs pulling the cart. It's fast and light," said the sergeant.

"Yes! Sleds are useful as long as there is snow." All the other sergeants in the barracks had ridden on sleds.

Lao Zhang took out a large stack of letters from his arms and found the one for this barracks: "Hou Shengli, Tang Shiping, Liu Fugui, Dai Dabao, come and get the letters."

A simple-minded soldier came over and said, "Old Zhang, you should read it first!"

Old Zhang found the letter from Dabao Dai as usual and began to read: "Hello, Dabao! I am Erbao. Everything is fine at home now. Mom is fine, Dasao is fine, Sanbao is fine, Niuniu and Xiao Tieniu are fine too. It was cold a while ago, and Sanbao and I couldn't find work. We were almost out of food at home, so the court started distributing food. It was all rice porridge with salt in it, so we even saved on salt at home."

"Later, Xiao Tieniu fell ill and had a fever. His whole body was burning hot. The family had long since run out of money. My sister-in-law pawned her dowry and used the money to pay for Xiao Tieniu's medical treatment. But Zhang, the sister-in-law next door, said that he couldn't be cured and it was a waste of money."

"Later, my sister-in-law sent Tie Niu to the old clinic at the entrance of the alley. The waiter took a look and gave Tie Niu a piece of white medicine. After taking it twice, the fever went away. It only cost ten cents in total. Everyone said that the waiter gave Tie Niu a magic medicine..."

Actually, this letter was also written by Lao Zhang, and he was reading it by himself, so there were no words he didn't recognize, and the blank words were written by himself anyway. He was reading it very fluently.

Almost everyone in the barracks gathered here. Everyone heard the content and was interested in the miracle medicine mentioned in the letter.

"Lao Zhang, is there really such a magical medicine? You're not a liar, are you?" Only a liar would dare to claim that his medicine is so magical.

"How could he be a liar? Didn't you hear? Tie Niu got better after taking the medicine. Can a liar's medicine have this effect?" Before Lao Zhang could say anything, the people next to him began to refute him.

"Maybe he's almost recovered. Haven't you seen it? Someone had a fever for two or three days and was about to die. When the doctor couldn't do anything, the fever suddenly went away and nothing happened to him."

"Why don't you tell me? Some people were burned to ashes, and some became fools."

"There's nothing we can do about this!"

Which village or place doesn’t have such things happening every year?