Rebirth of the Forbidden City: The Troublemaker in the Courtyard

After Ning Yuan ate the millet porridge and steamed bread on the stove, he simply washed up and went to bed.

.........

Ning Yuan has formed a biological clock during his more than three years of career in the border defense troops in later generations.

Even now that I have traveled to this time and space, I still maintain the habit of going to bed early and getting up early.

Near the end of the year, the weather in the city was freezing cold. At this time, the military compound was not equipped with centralized heating facilities, and every household had to get up early in the morning to burn the boiler.

Ning Yuan was no stranger to this kind of work. He got up early and quickly lit the fire in the stove, and the temperature in the house rose in a short while.

There wasn't much food left. There were a few clean sacks of coarse cloth in the cupboard, one of which was filled with millet, which weighed about two and a half kilograms.

The other two bags contained about ten pounds of yellow corn flour in one bag and about five or six pounds of grayish-white wheat flour in the other bag. The color indicated that the wheat flour must have been mixed with coarse grain flour.

At the innermost part was a woven basket with a dozen eggs left in it.

Relying on his memory, Ning Yuan knew that this was all the food rations for his family.

Ever since Ning Yuan's parents were taken away, the two brothers have only a total of 30 yuan per month for living expenses.

Ning Yuan searched his pockets and counted carefully twice.

After eating at Lao Mo's yesterday, I only had seven dollars and forty cents left. It's only the 10th, and I have to wait until the beginning of next month to get next month's living expenses.

Moreover, during this special period, grain production has dropped significantly and many supplies are in extreme shortage.

Thus, food coupons, meat coupons, cloth coupons and other purchase vouchers came into being.

Simply put, even if you have money, you can't necessarily buy what you want. Especially in state-owned places like the supply and marketing cooperatives and meat processing plants, you must have a ticket to verify your purchase.

In this environment, many underground markets have emerged, including morning markets, night markets, and ghost markets, which are all trading markets of this nature.

No receipts are required to buy or sell things here, but the items here are priced one or two times higher than the same items on the market.

There is such a market outside Deshengmen, and it is said to have grown to a large scale.

While Ning Yuan was thinking about how to make money through his special space, he started to busy himself with making breakfast.

Ning Yuan didn’t eat the boiled eggs from last night, so he heated them up in the morning and gave them to the little kid Ning Wei.

I cooked some millet porridge, made a few cornmeal flatbreads, also called pot stickers, and took a small bowl of pickled cabbage from the jar of pickled cabbage in the yard. Breakfast was complete.

After a lot of busy work, it was almost half past eight. Ning Yuan went into the inner room and slapped little Ning Wei on the back of the head to wake him up.

"Hurry up and get up and eat, you kid, you still can sleep?" Ning Yuan said with a smile as he shook off Ning Wei's quilt.

"Hey, hey, hey, brother, it's cold! Cold! Cold! Don't lift my quilt, brother, get up immediately!"

Ning Wei was slapped awake. Before he could come to his senses, the warm quilt covering him was lifted off his body. He quickly jumped up and begged Ning Yuan for mercy.

"Hurry up, you! The meal is ready. I'll go out after dinner. You just stay home and relax. It's so noisy outside."

After saying that, Ning Yuan put down the quilt in his hand, walked out of the room on his own, sat at the table and drank the slightly hot millet porridge with sauerkraut, taking a bite of sauerkraut and a bite of cornmeal pancake. It was really delicious.

Ning Yuan had finished eating three pancakes, but little Ning Wei still didn't get up. Ning Yuan remembered the scenes in his later life before he joined the army when his mother often pulled the quilt off him, so he decided to follow suit.

Without any nonsense, he went straight into the room, lifted Xiao Ningwei's quilt and opened the curtains.

"Brother, what's wrong with you today? Don't you usually sleep until eleven when you have nothing to do? You got up so early in the morning to light the fire and cook. Are you my brother?"

Little Ningwei wanted to cry but had no tears, as if he had accepted his fate. He complained and mumbled listlessly while slowly getting dressed.

Ning Yuan ignored Ning Wei's complaints and kept urging the kid to get up quickly.

After Ning Wei finished his meal, the two brothers washed the dishes.

It was still early, and Du Weidong invited everyone to have Lao Mo at noon, so we still had time to leave at 10:30.

Ning Yuan looked at the old floor clock at home. Since he had nothing to do anyway, he went out of the yard and started exercising.

I had just finished a set of military boxing to warm up when I heard a loud noise outside the door.

Ning Yuan hurried out to check, but unexpectedly bumped into Fan Xinhua who was rushing over.

Fan Xinhua ran very fast, and his originally white, round face turned purple-red.

Seeing Ning Yuan coming out, Fan Xinhua stopped and took two deep breaths before he could speak.

"Ningyuan, hurry up, there's a fight at the gate of our yard!"

Ning Yuan was puzzled when he heard this. "Who fought with whom? Fatty, please explain clearly. It's all so confusing."

"Ma Hongbing, Ma Hongbing and thirty or forty men are blocking the entrance to our compound. Zou Cheng, Yuan Jun, and the others came over early this morning and ran into us right at the gate. They've already started fighting!"

Fan Xinhua dragged Ning Yuan towards the door while explaining the current situation.

When Ning Yuan heard this, he thought, this is really evil. I haven’t settled the score with you yet, and you still dare to come to my door.

So he quickened his pace and ran to the door, picking up a round-headed shovel in the yard.

By the time Ning Yuan, Fan Xinhua and the young men from the same compound who were running and shouting along the way arrived at the door, the fight had stopped.

Zhong Yuemin stood at the door with a grim face, and Yuan Jun stood beside Zhong Yuemin. This guy was in a miserable state. His hat was blown off, his old green military uniform was covered with footprints, and half of his face was swollen.

Zou Cheng and Zheng Tong were in the same miserable situation.

Zhong Yuemin arrived earlier than Ning Yuan.

When he rushed to the door with four or five people, the three unlucky ones had already been surrounded and trampled on the ground by dozens of people from Ma Hongbing's group.

Seeing his buddy being beaten like this, Zhong Yuemin immediately swung two pieces of wood in his left and right hands and turned around to smash them into the crowd.

The four or five young men who followed Zhong Yuemin to the door followed suit and threw more than ten bricks in a row. The group finally stopped and turned to look at the door.

Ma Hongbing walked out of the crowd. Si'er behind him stepped forward and told Ma Hongbing that Zhong Yuemin was also among the group of people who beat up He Jianguo and others at the gate of the Temple of Heaven yesterday.

Hearing this, Ma Hongbing was quite happy. He called so many friends here today just to avenge He Jianguo and the others.

All the people who took action yesterday showed up one by one, saving me the trouble of looking for them one by one.

"Grandson, were you one of the people who injured my buddy at the entrance of the Temple of Heaven yesterday?"

Ma Hongbing stared at Zhong Yuemin and said.

Zhong Yuemin did not lose his momentum in the face of so many people.

"I'm your grandpa, so what's the matter, grandson?"

As Zhong Yuemin spoke, he took out the triangular scraper from his waist.

"She's really asking for her own death, brothers, chop her up for me!"

Ma Hongbing also took out a kitchen knife and prepared to take action.

"Hold on, don't do anything, Red Soldier, don't do anything!"

A loud shout came from the crowd, stopping Ma Hongbing's actions in an instant.