Daily life of farming and supporting a family on the ancient Loess Plateau

After the two embroiderers carried Cuiling back to her residence, the other girls in the courtyard, upon hearing of Cuiling's plight, felt great sympathy for her and pooled their money to pay for her medical treatment.

The next day, the two embroiderers took some time to carry Cuiling to a nearby clinic to see a doctor.

The doctor said that Cuiling's loss of leg strength after fainting was due to poor blood circulation, which could lead to some recovery if medication and acupuncture were administered promptly. However, Cuiling later fell from a height, injuring her bones, so a full recovery was unlikely.

In other words, Cui Ling's leg is definitely going to be crippled for the rest of her life.

When Cuiling heard this, she didn't want to continue treatment. She felt that since her life was already like this, there was no point in living, and she might as well die quickly. However, the words of an embroiderer touched her heart again.

The embroiderer said, "Sister Cuiling, none of this is your fault! Those who hurt you and harmed you are all alive and well. Why should we, the victims, have to die?"

Yeah, why should they?!

Why should she admit defeat? She didn't do anything wrong. Why can't she live?

She couldn't understand why those damned people could live so well, while she, just because she was a girl, deserved such a miserable fate and didn't deserve to live.

She refused to accept this; she wanted to live; she wanted to see if the world was truly beyond redemption!

The doctor felt sorry for Cuiling, so he only charged her a token amount for the medicine. He first set Cuiling's bones, then gave her a few acupuncture needles, and finally prescribed some blood-activating herbal decoction, instructing her to continue taking it.

After Cuiling received acupuncture and took medicine, one of her legs recovered somewhat, and she was gradually able to exert some strength. She could even drag her other leg off the kang (a heated brick bed) and move around in the yard.

Cuiling wept with joy, suddenly realizing that she could truly live a good life. At least she could use the outhouse, pick up a small item to look at, and was no longer paralyzed on the kang (heated brick bed), waiting for others to take care of everything.

With the help of two kind-hearted embroiderers, Cuiling temporarily settled down in the embroiderers' courtyard.

Originally, the two embroiderers planned to wait until their next day of rest before sending Cuiling back to her family home before she was sold, but this never happened.

The thought of going back to her parents' home filled Cuiling with intense resistance. Even during the years when she was beaten and kicked by Shen Zhihe, and spent years being pawned and sold, living an inhuman life, she never considered going back to her parents' home.

Her maternal family was unloving; her mother didn't care for her, and her father didn't love her. If they could sell her once, they could sell her a second time!

So deep down she didn't really want to go back, because if she went back this time, she was afraid she wouldn't even have the chance to be sold again.

Is she even capable of being sold now? She'll probably be abandoned by her grandmother and father and starve to death!

But now, in this useless state, she can't even support herself. Where else can she go besides her parents' home?

If her family could remember the few taels of silver they got from selling her, and give her a place to stay so she could barely survive, that would be an immense favor.

However, things are unpredictable.

Before Cui Ling could even wait for the two embroiderers to take her back to her parents' home, which she didn't want to return to, she had already implicated the two embroiderers.

Because the two embroiderers' quarters were provided by the owner of the embroidery shop specifically for the girls working there, the head housekeeper would come to check on them from time to time to see if the girls had damaged anything in the yard, if the rooms were clean, or if they had brought in any outside men to cause trouble.

That day, while the embroiderers were at work, the head housekeeper came to check on the courtyard and found that a strange "paralyzed person" had been taken in. So she questioned Cuiling about it.

Upon learning that Cuiling was a seamstress who had been picked up and taken in by the embroidery workshop, the head maid immediately turned around and went to complain to the workshop owner's wife.

The embroidery shop owner's wife hasn't been having an easy time lately, because recently, three-dimensional embroidery has become fashionable on clothing in the prefectural city. It's said that someone is specifically selling it from the Ningping County area, and many of the embroidered garments are one-of-a-kind; once they're gone, they're gone forever, so those garments are in high demand.

Nowadays, wealthy young ladies in the city take pride in wearing clothes with three-dimensional embroidery.

The emergence of this three-dimensional embroidery immediately changed the aesthetics of women in the city. Now, many ladies and young women from wealthy families are inquiring about ordering clothes from Ningping County, which naturally has a significant impact on her embroidery workshop.

The embroidery shop's business has been declining lately, causing the shop owner's wife to lose her appetite and sleep poorly. Even her goiter, which had been almost cured by medication, has started to recur.

What's even more troubling is that the doctor at the clinic said that if things continue like this, the "goiter" of the embroidery shop owner's wife will be incurable, and they will have to seek help from a more skilled doctor.

So the owner of the embroidery workshop has been extremely irritable lately. As soon as she hears the steward's complaint, she doesn't ask any questions about the reasons and directly tells the steward to sell the two embroiderers.

Anyway, their embroidery workshop has no shortage of ordinary embroiderers like this. Business has been bad lately, and keeping so many idle people is a waste of her money!

After receiving the order, the head maid came over arrogantly. First, she ordered people to throw Cui Ling out, then she called back the two embroiderers, beat and scolded them, and prepared to have them tied up and sold.

Just as chaos erupted in the courtyard, Huang Daopo and Xiuqin and a few others arrived.

Because Xiuqin's illness had improved a lot under Ji Yongling's treatment, she wanted to see her former mentor and the sisters in the embroidery workshop after coming to Qingzhou Prefecture.

The craftsmen in the embroidery workshop were all very kind. Some of them had taught her step by step, and even after her skills surpassed those of her mentors, her mentors never said anything. On the contrary, they encouraged her to accumulate more skills so that she could support herself after she was redeemed when she got older.

Before she fell ill and was kicked out of the embroidery workshop, several of the workshop's craftsmen went out of their way to find a famous doctor to treat her, and she never forgot this kindness.

So, since she had come all this way to Qingzhou Prefecture, she wanted to visit her masters and tell them that her illness had been cured by a master. She also wanted to inquire about the current fashion styles and patterns in Qingzhou Prefecture.

They went to the embroidery workshop first, where the people said that the two embroiderers had been called back to their lodgings by the headwoman.

Xiuqin initially said to forget it and come back next time. But Huang Daopo felt that they had nothing else to do anyway, and since they had already come all this way, she went to check on the two masters in the courtyard, which was only a short walk away!