The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 733 I confirmed the dynasty, actually by these Taoist priests?
The group of swaggering fellows finally left, taking one of the two large buckets of grain with them.

In their words, "Considering your hard work throughout the year, we'll only give you half the rent. After spring, you can continue cultivating this land. This is the master's grace; you must remember it!"

A cloud of dust billowed as they sped away. Shen Le coldly watched their retreating figures, her fists clenched tightly.

"……grace?!"

"Sigh, you little brat, when you're under someone else's roof, you have to bow your head." Muramasa slowly approached, gripping Shen Le's fist and pressing it down:

"At least they're still willing to let you farm the land; they didn't take it from you. Otherwise, what land will you be farming next year?"

They had their ten acres of poor land rented out to landlords; not a single acre belonged to them.

Fifty percent of the produce goes to rent, twenty percent to land tax, leaving only thirty percent barely enough to feed the family.

They worked hard to cultivate a small plot of wasteland, hoping to build up their family fortune, but their efforts were interrupted right at the beginning...

"I understand." He slowly relaxed his fists and straightened his back.

"I understand. Thank you, Grandpa. Don't worry, I'll endure it."

"Just bear with it, just bear with it..." Muramasa, though not thin, gently patted Shen Le's hand with his wrinkled and age-spotted hands:
"We ordinary folks are like eggs hitting a rock when we're up against them... They're the kind of people who can sit on equal footing with the county magistrate and drink with him. We can only kneel down when we're in the main hall..."

Gouwazi, think of your father, think of your mother, think of your younger brother and sister…

Shen Le respectfully saw him off, a burning anger suffocating him. Night had fallen, and he quietly rose and tiptoed out. Before his hand even touched the door, a cough sounded behind him:
"where are you going?"

"I--"

Shen Lezhen wasn't prepared to lie without batting an eye. Hearing this, she choked for a moment, unable to fluently say, "I'm going out to relieve myself." A stick had already come crashing down:
"You want to get your whole family killed!"

The wooden stick, hanging in the wind, sounded incredibly heavy, but when it struck his shoulder, it held back eight or nine tenths of its force. The father rushed forward and pressed down on his shoulder.

“You little rascal, I know you’re capable… but if you don’t want people to know, then don’t do it in the first place! Even if people only have a few suspicions, we can’t withstand it, we can’t afford to bear it!”

...Miscalculation.

To get rid of those servants, to get rid of that constable, and even to get rid of the "master" behind them, we need to be more meticulous and cautious.

At the very least, we need to endure this for another year or two, and find out exactly where that "master" lives...

Furthermore, even if we eliminate them, can we really take Tian back?
Is it really possible to avoid paying rent?
"Father, let's go." Shen Le took a few steps back, helped his father sit down beside him, and said in a heavy voice:

"Go to the mountains, go to places where the officials can't find us... Then, the fields we cultivate and the crops we grow will all be our own!"

"That won't do!" To his surprise, the old man's voice trembled instantly:

"How can you go into the mountains! Gouwazi, you're too young to understand... The mountains are no place for humans to live! It's so hard to cultivate fields and build houses in the mountains!"
Here, we have a big market on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month. On other days, peddlers come by to buy cloth, hoes, and salt. Where would you buy that in the mountains?

But being exploited like this, there's no way to ever turn things around... Before Shen Le could even open her mouth to retort, another shoulder slumped down, and a slow, mournful female voice said:
"Doggy, have you forgotten Aunt Honghua's youngest son? The one who was carried off by a wolf... He was just playing at the village entrance, he hadn't even gone into the mountains yet!"

Shen Le was speechless. He had overlooked the fact that the ecological environment in ancient times was different from that of modern times. There were many wild animals, and jackals, tigers, and leopards could appear in the deep mountains.

Let alone ancient times—seriously, what dynasty is this again—Xianglin's son was even carried off by a wolf!
"I understand..." he sighed softly. Behind him, the father breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't cause trouble, don't make a fuss. Let's work hard and keep our heads down. If one acre isn't enough, we'll cultivate two acres, and if two acres aren't enough, we'll cultivate four acres... One day, we'll save enough money to build a house, get married, and turn our lives around!"

However, before he could even turn his life around, Shen Le witnessed firsthand the endless hardships of ancient farmers. Just days after paying the rent, and as the weather began to turn cold, a gong was sounded at the village entrance:
Conscripting laborers!
Workers are heading out of the river!
The entire village has fifty households, and twenty people need to be selected for work—it should have been done in rotation, according to regulations, or at least by gathering all the people from each household and drawing lots in public.

However, this wasn't actually the case. Some families were entitled to be exempt from corvée labor, and their quotas were naturally allocated to other families.

"Someone from your family needs to come out!" Muramasa knocked on their door once again:

"Let's decide who will go. We'll gather them all under the big locust tree at the village entrance in three days! This dredging of the Xiaobai River will take at least two months, so bring your own food and bedding!"

"Why is it always our family..." Shen Le was pulled back before she could finish her sentence.

His father, his face full of sorrow, shook his head helplessly at him. Shen Le took a breath and exhaled forcefully:

He also remembered that in this village, there were two major surnames and a few outsiders—including his family.

Besides, their family is poor and they don't have many men. If they don't punish them, who should they punish?

"I'll go." The father, his back hunched and thin, stepped forward shakily. Shen Le grabbed him and pressed him down.

"No! I'll go! -- You're the pillar of this family; with you here, the family won't fall apart! I'll go!!!"

My father is old, my younger brother is still young, and there are also my mother and younger sister at home. If he doesn't step up, who will?
"My father has no eldest son, and Mulan has no elder brother. I am willing to buy a saddle and horse and go to war in my father's place." — If women can stand up and shoulder the burden of their families, how can he shrink back?
Silently complaining, "In ancient times, it was never possible to levy two months' worth of corvée labor" and "The government should provide meals for those working on the river, so why are we being forced to bring our own food?" Shen Le shouldered his bedding and joined the crowd.

To be fair, he knew river workers had a tough job, but he really didn't know it was this bad:
In the dead of winter, barefoot, they waded into the river, shoveling up silt and shoveling it onto the bank. After an hour of this, their hands and feet were stiff with cold, and their whole bodies were shivering.
Carrying baskets woven from willow branches, they hauled heavy soil and stones from the riverbed to the bank, or from a distant place where stones were piled up, leaving bloody welts on their shoulders.
He swung a huge sledgehammer, smashing the stones into smaller pieces to build a stone embankment along the riverbank. One wrong move, and he'd either twist his own back or injure his assistant...

Even more unbearable was not having enough to eat. But if there was enough food to eat, a bowl of ginger soup after coming out of the water, or even a bowl of hot wine, one could endure this hardship.
But—Shen Le bent down and rummaged through his bedding roll, pulling out a flatbread and taking a bite. After tearing and chewing for a while, he managed to bite off a small piece, which he then held in his mouth, slowly moistening it with his saliva.

To survive for two months, only unleavened flatbread was a food that could be carried and wouldn't spoil quickly along the way.

This kind of flatbread is so dry and hard that if you swung it at someone, you could break their head and bleed—not to mention, who knows how much bran is mixed in, making it sting your throat when you eat it. He had never suffered like this before!

In the last time Ironclad remembered, the Anxi soldiers stationed in the Western Regions had never eaten such an indescribable thing!

However, Shen Le knew that this was the best meal his family had prepared, with all their might—he had flatbread to eat, while his younger siblings were probably eating wild vegetables…

This little bit of bread isn't enough to fill you up. Shen Le carefully calculated, ate a sixth of the bread, and then drank a lot of water, trying to pretend he was full.

After tidying up his bedding, he closed his eyes for a moment and, taking advantage of the fact that no one was around, cast a healing spell on himself.

He felt the magic slowly nourishing his body, restoring the softness to his sore and stiff muscles and smoothing the bloodstains on his hands and feet. Only then did he get up, crawl out of the shack, and join the river work team.
"You! You! And you! Come here, carry the log!"

Shen Le strode over. Of the three men pointed out by the overseer, besides himself, one was elderly and one was young. Without hesitation, Shen Le walked to the thicker end of the tree trunk and bent down with them.
"rise--"

One step, two steps, three steps. The road on the construction site was rugged and uneven. Shen Le was completely focused, not daring to take a wrong step. As he walked, suddenly there was a sway behind him, and someone cried out in surprise:

"oops--"

The weight of the entire tree trunk pressed down heavily!

Shen Le quickly lowered his stance, managing to brace himself against the tree trunk and avoid being smashed to the ground. Behind him, however, came a muffled thud and two screams of pain:

The three men carrying the log with him were all in the same boat. The boy in the middle took a wrong step and tripped and fell to the ground.
Immediately afterwards, the old man carrying the tree trunk and top could not withstand the force and was pressed down heavily to his knees, crashing to the ground!
By the time Shen Le managed to stand still, the overseer had already rushed over and was whipping him mercilessly. The boy struggled to shield himself, groaning and begging for mercy.
The old man simply closed his eyes, curled up on the ground, and even his groans were barely audible.

Only after the beating ended did the boy and the old man struggle to their feet, shoulder the logs, and move forward with Shen Le.

In response, all Shen Le could do was shift his position slightly backward and try to take on more of the weight.
Let their hungry, exhausted, and injured bodies bear a little less pain, a little better...

However, even when he carried the heaviest weight, his good intentions did not have much effect.

He carried load after load of timber, and when he finished work that evening, as the last log was piled up to the side, the old man collapsed, face down on the ground.

When they turned her over again, she was no longer breathing. Her body, chilled to the bone by the biting wind, remained completely cold; not a trace of warmth could be felt…

The old man was quickly dragged away. He wasn't the only one dragged away that day, and throughout the entire river construction project, he wasn't the only one carried or dragged away.
Many laborers had blistered feet from being soaked in water, their hands were frostbitten and covered in crisscrossing cuts, and their coughs were incessant day and night. The closest death to Shen Le even happened to someone right beside him:

It was a young man of similar age who coughed up blood when he went to bed at night, and when he got up to go to work in the morning, he was already a cold corpse, never to open his eyes again.

When will this end...? Aren't you afraid of wasting the people's strength like this? Aren't you afraid the people will rebel?
Shen Le couldn't understand it. But it wasn't until he endured two long months—two months that felt like two years—and dragged his exhausted body home that he realized what hell truly meant.
In the village, although not every household wore mourning clothes, there was one white cloth hanging every three households.

Shen Le walked quickly past the thatched huts and mud houses. From almost every house, one could hear coughing: some coughing so hard it was heart-wrenching, others coughing weakly.

He was extremely anxious and practically ran towards his house. When he saw his house in the distance, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness, no one died. Everyone is still alive. Everyone is still alive!

However, he was merely alive. After walking a few more steps, before even entering the house, Shen Le heard a series of rapid coughs, as if the coughs were trying to expel his heart, lungs, and internal organs.

He strode into the room. On the only bed, two thin, bony figures were curled up side by side, their bodies flattened under the thin blanket, barely visible.

My younger brother was pale and thin. When he saw me come back, he burst into tears.
"Big brother! Father, Mother..."

Shen Le didn't even need to touch it to know what had happened. It was a plague, without a doubt, a plague—

Even if it weren't for the plague or cholera, this epidemic would still be significant. The typhoid fever outbreak at the end of the Han Dynasty had a mortality rate exceeding 50%, and even having a renowned doctor in your family wouldn't have been of much use.

Zhang Zhongjing, the famous physician of the late Han Dynasty who wrote "Treatise on Febrile Diseases," had a family of 200 members, two-thirds of whom died...

Shen Le rushed forward and placed a palm on her father's body, carefully washing over him with the heat of the healing spell.

He dared not use too much force, fearing that the treatment would excessively drain the patient's vital energy. He only dared to let the heat flow gently circulate in the patient's chest, trachea, bronchi, and lungs.

After a while, the old man's body trembled, and he suddenly coughed up a mouthful of bloody phlegm, then began to gasp for air:
"Huff...huff...huff...much better...Doggy, you're back?"

Yes, she's back, alive and well. Shen Le used the same method to heal the mother in this body and ensure that her younger siblings were not infected with the disease.

However, he was powerless to help the remaining patients:
In the village, everyone was coughing and sick. Even if Shen Le possessed magic, he couldn't cure so many people. Besides, revealing his magic at this time would be like a child carrying gold through a bustling marketplace; he simply dared not attempt to heal them!

Just when the whole village was in despair and almost resigned to fate, a few people came to the village entrance.

They wore grey Taoist robes and headscarves; the leader was a long-bearded Taoist priest with a gaunt face and calm eyes. Behind him followed several disciples, carrying firewood and large pots on their backs.

"Amitabha Buddha." The Taoist's voice wasn't loud, yet it strangely carried throughout the terrified village.
“I am a disciple of the Celestial Masters sect. I was passing through this place when I saw the miasma spreading everywhere, so I came to offer talismanic water to save the lives of the people.”

What?
Shen Le was completely stunned:

The Five Pecks of Rice sect?

Is this really how I confirm a dynasty?

(End of this chapter)