The man immediately stopped the horse and leaned down to check that the axle was broken. He looked around warily, the carriages of the dart board were checked daily for any accidents on the way out, and it was impossible for the axle to break suddenly.
“What’s wrong?”
Father Qin was afraid to lift the curtain for fear of being seen and asked in a deep voice.
“The axle is broken, you guys wait a moment!”
The man wanted to stop a carriage and give some silver to the other party so that they could deliver the man to the dart board, but it was about to be curfew and there were very few pedestrians on the road, let alone carriages.
“You two get down, let’s walk over.”
Qin’s father and mother got off the carriage and had not gone far when the drums of the curfew sounded, several people quickened their pace, seeing that the dartboard was just a street away, when a patrol of soldiers spotted them, “Who are you?”
The man gestured for the two men to stop and he walked up alone, accompanying them with a smile, “We are from the Wei Yuan Dart Board, we are late in returning, please make it easy for the army master.”
Saying this, he slipped an ingot of silver to the leading soldier, who unapologetically weighed it and gestured for him to call Qin’s father and mother forward.
The man turned around and beckoned the two to come over, and as they approached, the leading soldier’s eyebrows knitted slightly, “Aren’t these Qin Qian’s parents? When did they become members of your dart board?”
The three men were startled.
The man was about to say something when the leading soldier’s gaze fell on him, “Could it be that the rumours are true, that Qin Qian is not dead and that you are trying to smuggle him out of the city in the middle of the night?”
“No, no, no!”
The man waved his hands in panic, “It’s these two who also heard the rumours today and wanted to ask our dart board people to find out if they were true, that’s why ……”
“What the hell are you talking about, asking you to find out? The first thing you need to do is to go to the middle of the night.”
“They are afraid to go out after all the trouble at the county office, so they went to the dart board at this time ……”
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the market.
The leading soldier looked at him for a few moments and put the silver ticket away.
“It’s the middle of the night, so don’t skulk around in the streets, go back to your respective places, we’ll pretend we didn’t see you.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
The man gave Qin’s father and mother a wink and walked himself in the direction of the Weiyuan Dart Station, and Qin’s father and mother also dropped off.
I don’t know if it was intentional or just along the way, but a pair of soldiers put followed them all the way to the entrance of the inn and watched them go in before they turned around and walked elsewhere.
After walking a short distance, the lead soldier raised his hand and the group stopped, he went alone to the side of an alleyway, “Boss Wei, it’s done.”
The shopkeeper Wei gave him a silver ticket, “Here is a hundred taels, take it and buy wine for the brothers.”
The leading soldier’s eyes lit up, but his mouth said, “That’s too much.”
“Our young master has said that if you can keep an eye on them, you will be given this amount every day.”
“Really?”
“Naturally it’s true, our young master is true to his word.”
“Leave it to the brethren.”
A hundred taels a day, ten days is a thousand taels, this is faster than collecting money.
“Thanks a lot then.”
The lead soldier happily walked away, and Wei the shopkeeper led the two fellows towards the restaurant.
Inside the dartboard.
The man told them exactly what had just happened.
After hearing this, Madam Qi was anxious, “If we can’t see my sister’s brother-in-law, what do we do next?”
Qi Wu’s face was very unpleasant, he dared to conclude that Gu Yi had done the trick, just to stop his sister’s brother-in-law from coming over.
“He has a Zhang Liang scheme, we have a bridge ladder, tomorrow have someone go to the inn where sister is staying and find a room to stay, so that we can easily pass on news at any time, I just don’t believe it, this way they are still protected against it.”
“Yes, yes, yes, let’s do that.”
“Since they are unkind, we don’t have to be righteous. Tomorrow I’ll send someone to get in touch with the one called Song Ming and see if we can pinpoint his weakness.”
The following day, the Song family village.
A carriage drove into the village. The people of the village had long since seen it, no one looked, and no children chased after it.
The carriage stopped in front of the Song family’s entrance, the boy accompanying it set up the horse stool and a man got down from the carriage.
The boy ran to the door first and shouted towards the inside, “Is there anyone there?”
Grandma Song came out at the sound, “Are you ……?”
“Our young master has come here especially to talk business with you.”
Business matters were not up to Grandma Song, so she sent Erma to call Song Shen over.
Song Shen let the man in and when he heard that he wanted herbal tea, he apologized, “Sorry, our workshop is small and we can’t make that much, we can’t even supply it to our existing customers.”
The man spoke in a non-local accent, “If the workshop is small, then expand it, do you know how big our business is, if we buy goods, we need at least twenty carts at a time.”
Song Shen maintained a decent smile, “I’m really sorry.”
The man said a lot more, and when he saw that Song Shen never agreed, he got angry and got up, “It’s really a small family, it’s not on stage at all, let’s go, let’s go.”
Song Shen politely saw him out, watching him walk away in his carriage, the smile on his face falling.
Apart from the few women who went to work for the Song family, no one in the village knew about the herbal tea business, let alone outsiders.
The carriage came to a sudden halt in front of Song Ming’s house.
“What is it?”
The man’s voice with a fiery tone came out from inside.
After bending down to examine it, the coachman replied carefully, “The cart wheel has broken one, and I would like to ask the young master to come down for a while.”
The man got down from the carriage, looked around, saw a big tree in front of Song Ming’s house, walked and sat over to sit down, looked at his clothes, then at the dust on the ground, and shouted towards Song Ming in the courtyard, “You, come here!”
Song Ming did not want to pay him any attention.
“Here’s a tael of silver for you to carry a stool for this young master.”
A tael of silver?
Song Ming was so happy that he ran into the house and brought a stool out to him upside down.
The man sat down and the boy on one side gave Song Ming the silver.
Song Ming’s eyes slithered around a few times, “The weather is so hot, you must be thirsty, I have freshly dried cold boiled water at home, one large bowl for one tael of silver.”
The man held his eyes at him.
Song Ming thought the man would not take it, and was about to turn away when he heard the man say, “One bowl.”
“Okay, you wait!”
Song Ming went to the kitchen, took a bowl, washed it again and again with cold water, and only then poured a bowl of cold white boiled water from a jar on the side and brought it out.
The man seemed to be really thirsty and took it in his hand, tilted his neck and drank it all, handing the bowl to him, “Another bowl!”
Song Ming was overjoyed, he was really sitting at home and the silver was falling from the sky.
The man drank the second bowl clean, and only then did he look him up and down, “I said you are missing an arm and a leg, why don’t you go work in the field?”