Records of the Cattle and Horses of Chang'an

It would take time for Cui Bianxu to arrive. Even if they waited all the way for him, the guards who stayed behind could only find some fragments that were suspected to be Wu Sanniang's blood-stained clothes after searching for many days. It can be said that this trip was not worth it.

Whether Wu Sanniang was truly dead or had faked her own death and escaped, they had no idea. If she had faked her death, why would the person behind the scenes have rescued a little dancer like Wu Sanniang? The matter became increasingly shrouded in mystery.

But this case cannot be investigated in detail, and the only solution now is to take it one step at a time. If the person behind this does something else...

Time flies and it is winter. The city of Chang'an is very peaceful during this period, as if all the tense atmosphere was used up in the middle of the year and lost its momentum in the second half.

Mother Jiang came out of the kitchen, still steaming from her body, and white mist came out of her mouth: "Nian Nu, get up!"

The weather was getting colder. Even though there was hot mutton soup in their stomachs, many people could not stand sitting in the cold wind without any shelter to eat breakfast early in the morning. Xia Zhenying tossed and turned for several nights and could not sleep well. Finally, she made up her mind to spend money to buy two second-hand thin quilts, propped up them with poles and placed them on both sides to block the wind.

As for the effect...

Jiang Shangxian can only say that it is better than nothing.

For her, the biggest harm of the colder weather is that it makes her become so inseparable from her bed in the morning. She deeply suspects that perhaps many years ago, humans hibernated in the winter like snakes.

Chinese people believe in being sleepy in spring, tired in autumn, lazy in summer and hibernating in winter. Every morning when Jiang Shangxian is woken up by her mother's loud voice, she just wants to die at this moment. The best interpretation of her current state is "the highest virtue is not to contend."

The firewood in the floor stove always went out at the hour of Yin, and even with the warm curtains, the temperature in the room would drop little by little. Jiang's mother knocked on the door a few times, then pushed it open, pulled back the warm curtains, and came in. She stuffed a small copper hand warmer into her quilt, put down the kettle in her hand, and patted her on the back lightly: "Hurry up, you are so precious, you have to use this hand warmer every day to survive."

In the Tang Dynasty, there were two ways to keep warm indoors. Nobles and nobles generally used copper incense burners or heating stoves to burn charcoal. Commoners dug a deep pit in their homes, piled it with firewood, and mixed it with flammable materials like pine resin and fir, which was called a "ground stove."

Jiang Shangxian grinned foolishly, his hands deftly turning over and over on the hand warmer like pancakes to keep warm: "Mother, has the meat been delivered?"

This hand warmer was given to her by Cui Bianxu. Hehe, everything is ready, only the confession is missing. To round it off, it's the same as talking.

The good days of touching muscular handsome men are just around the corner, and the future is promising!

"It was delivered as soon as the market opened. Just as you said, we bought a lot of succulents this time!" Jiang's mother said this and slapped the greedy girl on the back with some heartache. She didn't know who she took after, but she was always thinking about food all day long.

As the weather turned cooler, Jiang Shangxian began to crave firewood-cooked bacon. The weather in Chang'an was too dry. When the autumn wind started to blow, every morning when she woke up, her mouth would be swollen and painful as if she had been slapped.

Since I was in pain, I couldn't let the glutton in my stomach go untreated. "Have you prepared the salt and cypress branches?"

(In the early Tang Dynasty, the price of salt was relatively low, at about 10 coins per dou (12.5 jin). It was not until the An Lushan Rebellion and the intensification of the Tang Dynasty's financial crisis that the Tang Dynasty began to implement the "Quyan Law," a salt monopoly system, which led to a sharp rise in salt prices.)

"Our house is so small, where can we get so many cypress branches? Didn't you say that the meat needs to be marinated for a few days? Why are you in such a hurry?" It was really like a child's words. Her parents ran around like crazy. She and Old Madam Xia were the only two people free at home during the day. It was so cold outside, and they would never let their old mother go out to buy things. She didn't sleep much yesterday and was just going out to buy things.

Jiang Shangxian chuckled and hung the small compass given by Cui Bianxu around her neck. This thing was nice to wear when the weather was hot, but it was still too cold when it was cold. She went to buy some scraps of cloth and asked Jiang's mother to sew her a small five-layer cloth bag to hang around her neck.

Jiang's mother glanced at her and curled her lips. "What does that Cui Shaoqing mean? Let me tell you, that kind of status is not something a family like ours can even dream of. Although our family is not wealthy, we have enough to eat and drink. You earn a lot of money every month, and your brother is willing to work hard to set up a stall. Our family will have a good life in the future. Don't let your mind get you down and become someone else's mistress. We don't want to climb that high branch."

Jiang Shangxian, who was getting dressed, suddenly drooped. He touched the arrow on his wrist, wrinkled his nose and said in dissatisfaction, "Mother, who said I have to be a slave?"

She was just in a relationship and didn't say she wanted to get married. After she finished her mission, she would go home. No matter how good a man was, no matter how many kisses he had, he was not as good as her own doghouse.

"Then you should be more sensible and have less contact with others. There have been rumors about this in our neighborhood recently." Jiang's mother didn't want to talk about this with her daughter. She had also seen Cui Shaoqing before. He was so tall and big, and it was obvious that he had been eating well since he was a child. His figure, clothes, and demeanor were all so impressive.

"Oh, I know what I'm doing. I'm going to get dressed. Mom, please go out." Jiang Shangxian was unhappy to hear that. He wasn't even in love yet, and she was saying such a depressing thing.

She is still at the stage of coveting Cui Shaoqing's body, and the relationship between the two of them is at most ambiguous! Do you understand ambiguous?

No wonder that song goes like that? Ambiguity makes people suffer grievances~~

Who sang this? She understands it so well. She feels wronged now!

Jiang's mother rolled her eyes at her. "If you have the guts, don't ask me to scrub your back when you're in the shower! Where in your body haven't I seen? You came out from under my ass!"

"Humph!"

Jiang Shangxian couldn't argue with her, so she quickly put on her clothes in a huff. She took a day off today just to marinate the meat.

For Chinese people, preparing for the New Year is something ingrained in their DNA. No matter how poor they are, they have to prepare a whole set of instant noodles of different flavors. Although the New Year has not come yet, there is less than a month left. If we don’t make bacon with firewood now, we won’t be able to eat it on New Year’s Eve.

"Where is the meat?" Jiang Shangxian wandered to the kitchen like a wandering chicken, picked up a piece of Hu pancake and stuffed it into his mouth. It was already cold and a little hard to bite.

"In that bamboo basket next to you, oh, it's covered with a lid. What are those big eyes for?" Jiang's mother was kneading dough. Xia Zhenying's business was very good. She was very busy just making noodles over there. Jiang's mother had kneaded the dough, and Jiang Wangri would come over to get it in a while.

This is the advantage of being close. If it were far away, it would be very troublesome to go back and forth.