Chapter 259: [Tianyin Pavilion] With the Son

Someone asked, "How can you remember so well how long this has been going on."

How could he not remember it? In Jiang Xi's memory at Upper Fairy World, it was an uneventful six months, in Xue Zhengyong's memory at Lower Fairy World, it was a year of great emotion.

In Mo Ran's memory, it was thirty-five days of growing despair, of days that felt like years. Every day was a living hell, every day was a purgatory.

In those days, when the price hike came, people were in a state of panic and Duan Yihan and his children were unable to get any food, so they had to collect rotten vegetable leaves and mouldy rice and noodles to feed themselves. Later on, the number of people who could not afford to eat grew so large that they could not even pick up the leaves. In the midst of the hardship, Mo Ran could not resist saying to Duan Yihan, "Mother, let's go to the Confucianism School and ask him for some food".

Duan Yihan, however, murmured, "I can't ask anyone to beg him."

Begging and selling in the streets, nodding and smiling, are all forced livelihoods, but if you go to Nan Gongyan, it means something different.

Duan Yihan is poor, but he doesn't want to break this last layer.

She refused, so Mo Ran stopped talking about it.

On the ninth day of the price hike, he finally stole a white radish from the field.

Duan Yihan hid the white radish carefully, cooking only a fist-sized portion each day and sharing it between the two of them. By the eighth meal, the radish was rotten, but as he had not seen anything to eat for a long time, Duan Yihan cut the remaining bit of rotten radish into pairs and managed to survive for a few more days.

By the twenty-first day of the price adjustment order, they had eaten the last of the turnips and could not find any more food to feed themselves.

Day 25.

When a rainstorm fell and earthworms emerged from the ground, Mo Ran caged them, caught some of the rainwater and cooked and ate them.

Mo Ran mumbled to the skinny little creatures that he was sorry, there was nothing left to fill his stomach and if he survived this, the earthworms would be his benefactor. God forbid he should have to eat any more of them, when will this nightmare ever end?

Day twenty-eight.

Mo Ran has a fever.

Even if a child is gifted and has an extremely high aura, it cannot withstand such hunger and torment.

Duan Yihan has also long since run out of steam and his eyes are hollow.

That day, while Mo Ran slept, she finally made up her mind and left the woodshed where she was staying, and slowly made her way to the towering immortal city of the Confucianism School.

But the child is innocent, he is so young, how can he leave this earth with her.

The people in the main hall at this time have been compassionate, Mo Weiyu guilty or not guilty right not to mention, but the old story, but also really too much miserable some.

Someone slowed their tone and asked with a sigh, "Did you get it?"

"No." Mo Ran says, "Bad luck, Nan Gongyan was arguing with his wife when we went."

After a pause, he continued, "As soon as that Lady of the City saw my Mother, she went into a rage, and instead of giving my Mother a single morsel of food, she had her expelled from the School of Confucianism with a rod."

"What about Nan Gongyan?"

"I don't know." Mo Ran said, "My mother didn't mention him."

It may have been prevented, or it may have just stood by, lovingly.

Mo Ran doesn't know exactly what happened that day, except that Mother came back with scars all over her body. She curled up in the woodshed and hugged him without saying a word, then she started coughing up blood, spitting out blood and stomach fluids, and the house smelled foul and sour.

Thirty-fourth day.

Duan Yihan is dying, barely able to speak and not shedding tears.

That night, she awoke from her daze with some strength. She saw Mo Ran cowering beside her, trying to keep her warm with his thin body. Then she said to him, very gently, very softly, "Little Mo Ran, if you have a way, go back to Xiangtan."

" Mother "

"Go back to Xiangtan, go to sister Xun, go and repay your kindness." Duan Yihan stroked Mo Ran's hair, "Go to Xiangtan to repay your kindness, don't stay in Linyi to seek revenge. In the future, if others give you favours, remember them well."

Mo Ran, with tears in her eyes, looked up at her thin face in the woodshed.

Duan Yihan's eyes are dark and shiny, even with a touch of grape-like purple.

"Then go and repay."

That was Duan Yihan's deathbed calculation for Mo Ran.

She was afraid that if she left, her child would go astray, so she told him to always, always leave this sad place.

If a person has a running start, he will not be tempted to think wildly and will not easily fall deeper into the prison of hatred.

She gave him the runaround to repay the favour, I think.

Don't take revenge.

Thirty-fifth day.

This ridiculous price adjustment order was finally annulled in a riot that lasted but a month and five days.

For the affluent, it was as if a farce had finally come to an end. Linyi was filled with pandemonium, while they woke up stretched out in their soft tents, rinsed their mouths and flossed their teeth with the eight-jewel dew served by their maids, and when they heard the news that the price adjustment order had been annulled, they just whined and yawned.

Everything is irrelevant.

But for Mo Ran, it couldn't be more exciting.

Not having to worry about food rations themselves, the streets were full of kind-hearted people again, and Mo Ran begged for a pie and even a pitiful bowl of meat porridge.

He couldn't even take a sip, and held it carefully in his hand, wanting to hurry back and take it to his very sick mother.

I'm sure Mother will recover from such good meat porridge.

He couldn't wait to use the bowl of porridge to save his mother's life, but he didn't dare to run home. The bowl was cracked and there was a big gaping hole in the side, so it would be a shame to spill it if he ran too fast.

And so he returned to the woodshed in a mixture of leap and torment.

" Mother "

He holds the broken bowl in both hands and rubs his dirty head, little puppy-like, against the crumbling woodwork, with a smile on his face, full of hope for the future.

How good it is, there is meat porridge to drink, Mother will soon be well, and when the spring flowers finally bloom, they will go on the road together, back to Linyi. There they will not go hungry, they will have a sister named Xun, and they will no longer have to be displaced to beg for a living.

How nice that they went home together.

"Squeak".

The door opened.

"She's lying in there." Mo Ran said quietly and indifferently in the Loyalty Palace.

Onlookers were either amazed at his coldness, or their teeth were chilled by his cold-bloodedness.

This man, who mentions his mother's death, is surprisingly all heart, no temperature, no ripples, not even tears.

But no one has ever thought about how many years of soul-searching and heartbreak it takes to smooth out the scars and get such an ancient, untouched face.

"I called to her, but she wouldn't wake up." Mo Ran says, "She will never open her eyes again, and she will never drink that porridge again."

A long silence.

Mrs. Wang said in a trembling voice, "Then later, you you were alone and went back to Linyi "

Mo Ran shook his head, "I went to the School of Confucianism."

Someone said, "Ah", "You, you're going to seek revenge."

"My mother said, repay your kindness, don't seek revenge." Mo Ran was faint, "I didn't want to seek revenge, I just wanted to bury my mother. But I had no money and it was too late to raise it, so I went to his house and begged him for some money or two."

"Did he give it?"

Mo Ran almost chuckled and said, "No."

"No, no, but according to what you said before, Nan Gongyan still has more or less your mother's figure in her heart, so how can you even pay for a funeral?"

Mo Ran said, "Because his wife also died not long ago."

"What."

Jiang Xi narrows his eyes: " Nan Gongyan's wife did leave very early and committed suicide"

"When she was pregnant, her husband was having an affair with someone else, and after she gave birth to the child, she was always quarrelling, and her life was extremely unsatisfactory. My Mother went to the house that day to look for them, and after she ran into her, she became more and more furious, and it is said that she stabbed Nan Gongyan with a knife at that time, and made him angry, saying that he would repudiate his wife."

Mo Ran paused for a moment and then said, "She couldn't take it anymore and hanged herself late that night. She left a few days before my mother actually did."

When they heard this, they didn't know what to say. The first love affair of the lascivious gentleman had ended in the death of a beautiful woman and the death of his family.

"When I showed up, Nan Gongyan was being reprimanded by the headmaster and his wife's family, a well-known merchant in Linyi, had also arrived." Mo Ran said, "Nan Gongyan had already been scolded and was angry with himself. When he saw me, he didn't have a temper."

Although she knew that Mo Ran was not a blood relative, she was still in tears and said, "Mo Ran".

It's a story that Mo Ran really doesn't want to talk about.

The face of Nan Gongyan at the time, the face of those present at the memorial.

There is also Mrs. Nangong's spirit hall with its gold and silver flowers, paper-tied children, mountains of spiritual paraphernalia, brocade streamers, black and shiny golden coffins, and so much more.

Hundreds of people knelt at the sides to mourn and weep for the woman who had killed herself.

The long-lit lamp is filled with smear whale oil, and the ninety-nine rolls of heart-worded incense burn silently, the wind blowing the smoke away, the incense powder rustling.

Too hilarious a scene.

And his mother

Xiangtan lexian Duan Yihan, with only a tattered garment which he may never put on again after taking it off, and a bony infant son.

She didn't even have a straw mat to wrap her body in.

"It is hard for you to ask for a tenth of a foot when your life is three feet."

Those were Nan Gongyan's words to Mo Ran in a fit of rage and desperation.

The man then shoved his illegitimate son viciously out the door, refusing to acknowledge him, under the watchful eye of the patriarch and the stares of his parents-in-law.

When Madame Nangong died, she was given a colourful coffin with gold and red lacquer, onyx incense beads, a snowy life jacket to protect her body from decay, silk to cover her face and satin to cover her eyes, and a crane to ascend to the top.

Duan Yihan is dead, a corpse, one person pouring out tears, and nothing more. According to Nan Gongyan, she should not even ask for a thin wooden coffin.

So who dares to say that men are equal in the face of death

Fate was unjust from the start.

To the end.

She is still as muscular as jade.

She has decayed into mud.

"I dragged her off to a mass grave and buried her." Mo Ran A few numbers, an understatement.

He didn't go into detail about how he begged the passing gentleman for a ride and how it took him fourteen days to drag the rotting, stinking corpse to the outskirts of the city.

Nor did he say how he plucked away the stones and broken earth with his hands and buried his mother's thin body.

Mo Ran is not used to complaining in front of people.

He has always been a man who buries his past very deeply and does not speak lightly until forced to do so.

He had already suffered humiliation, malice, slights and slander in those first ten years of his life. His heart was hard as iron, and he did not care what others thought of him. He did not care to be pitied.

"Then I went to Xiangtan."

He couldn't stand Linyi any longer, so one day he sneaked out of town, hiding in a basket behind the wagon of a Taoist priest leaving the city.

He began to walk towards Xiang, as his mother had instructed, for six months, from the height of summer, to early winter. When his shoes broke, then he walked barefoot, and in time the soles of his feet became thickly calloused.

And so he walked on, asking questions, and when he reached the Temple of No Mercy, he finally fell into the grass with a thud from the cold and hunger.

" Mother," the tiny child crouched on the ground, lax eyes beneath his dishevelled auburn hair. He looked out at the vast expanse of heaven and earth.

It's snowing, the first snow of the winter.

"I'm coming to see you... I'm sorry I can't hold on."

Snowflakes fall lightly, sighing softly, covering his brow.

In a trance there were footsteps approaching, a rustle, followed by a pair of hands picking through the grass and he heard a green child's voice: "Master, come quickly you must see him, what is wrong with him"

After a while, a pair of mansard shoes approached and a man spoke, "Leave it alone and go back first. I'll see to him."

The man's voice was deep and cold, without much emotion.

Mo Ran instinctively felt scared, he instinctively felt close to the young man and the man was cold. He didn't know where the strength came from, but his desire to live made him raise his hand and tug weakly at the corner of the young man's coat in front of him.

The tears flowed before she could speak.

"Rice"

So hungry, please, I want to eat.

The young man he was tugging was Chu Wanning, who had come down the mountain with Huai Zui that day.

Mo Ran barely lifted a small face, soiled to the bone, and made a trembling gesture of picking at her food, swallowing bitterness in her throat. Everything in front of his eyes was a blur, a dizziness, and his ears buzzed.

With tears streaming down his face, he begged the man before him. He knew that if this little brother was like the many lords and masters he had once met, who had abandoned him, then he would not survive and would surely breathe his last. He really could not bear it any longer.

"Eat."

Later, Chu Wanning fed him a pot of rice soup.

A pot of soup that saved a man on the verge of starvation.

After drinking the rice soup, Mo Ran left the Temple of No Mercy, so dazed was he that he remembered only a pair of slightly upturned phoenix eyes with long, thick eyelashes, but nothing else.

However, from the Temple of No Mercy to Xiangtan, he wore the cloak that his benefactor brother had given him, day and night. He was small and a teenager's garment looked awkward and comical on him, especially when he put the hood on, the brim of which covered almost his whole face.

On the road there were always children who were well fed and clinging to their parents, laughing and shouting, "Father, Mother, look at that little barker, what is he wearing, it's so funny"

Mo Ran is not angry either.

He was grateful for the shelter and tenderness of this ill-fitting cloak.

He wore it so that when it snowed, the snowflakes could not fall on him. When the night is late, the darkness cannot enter his heart.

And whenever night fell, he made a fire and sat by it, hugging his knees to keep warm, his cloak over his head, his whole body shrunken in, looking down at the molten orange flames from under the gentle velvet edge.

The cloak was warm, like Mother's embrace, and like the gentle phoenix eyes of my brother, the little child curled up and fell asleep, smelling the faint scent of the cloak in her sleep, like a begonia tree in full bloom.

Looking back, it's no wonder that I always find Chu Wanning's scent so pleasant, and that I always sleep peacefully with his scent between my pillows.

It is no wonder that when I first saw Elder Yu Heng under the Tongtian Tower, I felt the gentleness of those downcast phoenix eyes. It was as if I had seen them somewhere before.

It turns out that everything has a cause and effect.

He and Chu Wanning had spoken so early, had touched body heat, he had even licked Chu Wanning's hand. He had smelled the flowers on Chu Wanning's clothes so early on, and the benefactor brother he had been looking for was close by, never far from him in death or in life.

Mo Ran's eyes drop, and in the coldness of the Loyalty Palace, a warm feeling is created.

But it was a secret between them, Mo Ran thought in his heart, both sour and sweet, and he kept it to himself, telling no one and telling no one.

He took a deep breath and after a pause continued, "When I arrived in Xiangtan, I found Xun Fengruo in accordance with Mother's will."

Little Mo Ran, then only five years old, was wrapped in a thick cloak belonging to teenager Chu Wanning.

The hem of the cloak trailed on the floor, long since soiled, and the little child poked a dirty bird's nest head out of the fleece, tilted its small, yellow face and asked softly, "Excuse me, Sister Xun Fengruo, is this place"

" Xun Fengruo" the actor he was pulling laughed out, curiously looking him up and down, " theater Hua Kui although we sell our art here, not our bodies, right, but rushing to Xun girl wind to come, a few not like her looks more than like her singing little brother how old you are I'm not sure I know how to find her."

Mo Ran's eyes were open and his brow was sparse, pressed to understand her words.

But the mockery in the girl's eyes was stark, and Mo Ran therefore looked blushing as he clutched the lapels of his cloak and turned red: "Please, I want to see Sister Xun. I... my mother told me to come to her."

"Huh who's your mother?"

"My mother's name is Duan Yihan."

"Ah," the songstress paled and took a step back, covering her mouth with her handkerchief, even her originally lazy peach blossom eyes suddenly widened, "You, you are Duan Le Xian's child."

When Duan Yihan was famous, he never made a fool of himself, and often shared his extra jewellery and money with his sisters, who were old and faded and whose singing voices were not what they used to be. When the actress heard that he was Duan's child, she changed her attitude and took him to the warm room in the Flower Pavilion, where he met Xun Fengruo, who was lying on his back.

When the door was closed, Mo Ran bowed down to Xun Fengruo and told her the whole story. Xun Fengruo's heart was in mourning and her tears were wet.

She immediately approached Niang Niang and said that she wanted Mo Ran to stay with her. Niang Niang Niang originally refused, but could not resist the flower girl's repeated pleas, and she reluctantly agreed as she felt that the boy could at least do something for the house. It was a rule that the flower girl had to burn all her clothes and clean them thoroughly before entering the house.

The bath was fine, but when it came to burning the clothes, Mo Ran cried.

"What are you crying about? It's not like you won't get a new one later," Sister knocked Mo Ran's head impatiently with her water pipe, "Be smart, I'll give you food and shelter, people can't stop laughing, look at your poor face."

Mo Ran is afraid of getting her sister Xun involved, and she has already said all the good things for him.

So he bit his lip and held back, rubbing his red eyes and standing in front of the fire without making a sound and choking.

He really wondered at that time why all this was happening. Why did he want to keep an old coat, but because he was weak, because he was lowly, because he was a beggar, he had to let others strip it off him in order not to cause bad luck and trouble. He could not struggle, he could not say "no", and he did not even have the right to shed a tear.

It used to give him so much warmth, to hold on to, to rely on. To shelter him from the wind and rain, it has become so dirty that you cannot see its original colour.

Now that he has a place to stay, he may never need it again. He just wants to wash it carefully and fold it neatly, even if he never wears it again, and press it under a small box. It was his friend, more than just an old coat.

But all things are not for him.

The dirty cloak was thrown into the flames with a loud bang, and the person who threw it was just throwing it away, dirtying his hands at the end. But for Mo Ran, it was a cremation, a funeral.

He watched.

Tongues of fire roar upwards and the earthly world is magnificently blurred.

"Slow down, there's not enough left to drink."

"Where are you from?"

The gentle voice of the boy was still in his ears. It was one of the few kindnesses he had ever received in his humble life.

It's all turned to dust.

Mo Ran thus became the godmother of the Zuiyu Building, and was given the surname Mo (Mo) as his godmother's rightful name. From then on, he became a servant in the building and was able to live a peaceful life.

However, it was not to last. At that time, Xun Fengruo was already quite young, and according to the rules of the house, theater was not like a youth house, but if a girl was old enough to earn a "self-pity fee", her first night would be sold to a rich merchant by the maiden.

Xun Fengruo is not worried, she has already made a lot of money for Zuiyu Building.

"There is still a shortfall of 150,000 gold." Xun Fengruo smiled then and said to Mo Ran, "Little Mo Ran, when your sister and I have earned enough money, we can redeem ourselves. I will take you to live a good life."

Mo Ran was assigned to the kitchen and was rarely seen.

She reached out, pinched his cheek and then slipped him a handful of sweets: "Shhh, take it and eat it. Too bad I can't give you money, I'll get caught. How poisonous the godmother's eyes are, heh heh."

Mo Ran then grinned, showing a mouthful of missing milk teeth, "Well, thank you, Sister Xun."

But Xun Fengruo was still 150,000 gold short of the ransom, a matter that Sister knew only too well.

Although her face was unmoved, her heart was in a frenzy.

The loss of Xun Fengruo means the loss of most of the Zuiyu Building's money, so the mother thought that before Xun Fengruo left, she would make a good profit.

At that time, there were many large families who coveted Xun Fengruo's beauty and offered her a price so high that she could sit and eat for the rest of her life. In the end, she was tempted to go behind Xun Fengruo's back and make a contract with a wealthy merchant who was a Tongtian. The two of them took advantage of the Shang Yuan Festival to have Xun Fengruo play a song on a building, give her a cup of tea spiked with ecstasy and bring it to her room.

Mo Ran cooked dumplings that day and carefully took them to the Nuan Court to give to Sister Xun for dinner.

Before he could enter, he heard heavy panting from inside the house and, startled, Mo Ran pushed open the doorway to reveal a strong, smoky scent of rabi that made him want to vomit.

In the dim glow, he saw a rich, greasy, pancake like merchant, salivating at the corners of his mouth, his lapels wide open, shrugging against a helpless, sore and limp Xun Fengruo.

"Dang."

As the bowl of dumplings shattered on the floor, Mo Ran rushed into the house and, with the strength he'd had since he was a child, he beat the rich merchant up and then, holding the fat man down, shouted at Xun Fengruo, who was already crying and overwhelmed.

"Sister, come on."

"But you."

"You go now I can't go, I have to hold him If you don't go, we'll all have to die here when Sister comes, you go, you go, you go, I'll escape right away"

Xun Fengruo was his benefactor.

Mo Ran told her to go away and flee Xiangtan and never come back.

That day, he finally did a heroic job.

Xun Fengruo choked back a sob and fled the building. But Mo Ran did not have time to leave. When she heard the commotion, she quickly brought someone up, and as soon as she did, she saw that Mo Ran had struck the guest of honour and let the flower girl go, her face twisted in anger and she was about to vomit blood.

Sister had a son, about Mo Ran's age, who was evil-minded and wicked, and when he saw how angry his mother was, he had the idea that children's malice was sometimes so innocent and horrible. The boy punishes his mother's peers in the same way he punishes the animals.

He found a dog cage and had Mo Ran locked up in it. The cage was so cramped that Mo Ran could only crouch, not lie down, not stand, and they fed him scraps of cold food like a dog for seven days.

For seven days, Mo Ran was trapped in Xun Fengruo's old house, where the smell of incense mingled with the fishy stench of men's bodily fluids.

He is crouched and hunched over.

Smell the drowsy, sweet, cloying smell.

Want to vomit.

Seven days.

From then on, the smell of incense made him nauseous, and fear and horror roamed from his bones.