8. Cheap concubine - cherry gluttony
In the afternoon of the next day, the group finally arrived in the capital.
Passing through the towering city tower, you can only see high-rise buildings and busy traffic. Shu Bing felt that he had suddenly entered another prosperous world that was no less prosperous than his previous life—the quaint version.
General Duan, as a close attendant of the Son of Heaven, has his own imperial mansion close to the imperial city, but the Shu family is a private house that they buy by themselves, so they are not in the same square, and the two families have already parted ways.
Xu has never received the grace of saving his life and is not the first person he saw when he first arrived in another world, this time more than ten days of getting along did not make Shu Bing feel inseparable, she only remembered General Duan's promise: as soon as she found the news of the Rong family's brothers, someone would bring her a message.
It wasn't until he entered the gate and got off the carriage that Shu Bing had no choice but to let go of his worries, and began to pay attention to the surrounding situation.
"This is our family, your Ah Weng and Uncle live in the neighboring area, and I will take you to ask for peace tomorrow morning after resting." Li took Shu Bing and Ah Yi as he spoke, and he had already entered the second gate in two or three steps, and the distance was so short that Shu Bing was startled, she thought that she would have to change the sedan chair or go inside on her shoulder.
There was already a group of people waiting in the atrium to greet each other in the second gate.
"The slave family has seen my sister, my sister Jin An. I've seen Da Lang, Wu Lang, and Wu Niang. Seeing Li and the others, the leading woman hurriedly stepped forward, smiled and curtfell to the knees. She was slender and fair-skinned, wearing a golden hairpin and a silver-red pin-pleated skirt. He looks like he is about 30 years old, but when his eyebrows are crooked, he can see crow's feet.
Next to the woman stood a boy of the same age as the Rong family's eldest man, who was still childish but pretended to be old with a straight face, and then knelt down and saluted and called Li "Ah Niang".
Then another middle-aged woman in a plain skirt called "Niangzi Jin'an", and led a slightly smaller girl in pink to come forward to salute. Then the slaves knelt down and kowtowed.
"This is your grandfather's noble wife, Pan, you can call her Aunt Pan. This is your second brother Xingxu, and your uncle's family is Shiro in the order of men and women. Li introduced the current two people to Shu Bing, and then pointed to the two people behind him, and said briefly, "This is Xi and Siniang." ”
She didn't particularly explain how to call Xi's, probably it doesn't matter how you want to call it. Shu Bing also noticed that the Pan family could call the Li family "sister", but the Xi family could only call the "lady" like the slave maid. These are Shu Hongyang's two concubines, who can distinguish the noble from the inferior just by their titles.
After everyone saluted, the eldest son Xingyi stopped in the front yard, and the rest of the people continued to walk towards the middle courtyard while talking.
Shu Bing was really curious about the creature like his aunt, and couldn't help but observe secretly. I saw that the two of them were elegant and gentle in appearance and speech, and the noble lady Pan added a bit of bookishness and a touch of melancholy, and there was a pitiful delicate style in her gestures, which was usually commonly known as the sick and delicate white lotus in various novels.
The cheap concubine Xi is dignified and beautiful, and her true attributes are unknown.
On the way, I heard that she was Li's personal maidservant, first carried the room and was lucky to get the fourth lady who was superior in appearance and intelligence, Shu Hongyang felt that if such a girl was a lowly maid and gave birth to a child, she could only be a slave in the future, which was really a loss, so she gave Xi's good book to get rid of her slave status and officially accepted as a good concubine, but in essence, she was no different from a cheap concubine.
"My sister, Wulang, and Wuniang have worked hard all the way, and the slave ordered someone to prepare the soup, which can relieve the fatigue and rest for a while before dinner." Pan looked weak, but when he had no master mother at home, he took on the housekeeping job, and he was not timid when he spoke.
"Hmm." Li Shi nodded slightly, she did feel that her back was sore and wanted to go to the couch for a while. Turning his head and seeing that the two children were still in good spirits, taking into account Shu Bing's "forgetting the past", he specially asked the maid Yaxiang to take her around the house first.
In this regard, Shu Bing's most intuitive feeling is that our family is not as good as the worst first-class inn we have ever lived in! Is this really the Assassin's Mansion? It is said that there are three houses with four gates, but each courtyard is particularly cramped, and the atrium is slightly larger than the tennis court, and the grass and trees are scattered and there are no delicate flowers.
In addition to the reception hall, the outer study and the tea room, there are also big brothers Shu Xingsheng and Shiro Xingxuan, and there are guest rooms.
The upper room of the middle courtyard is the residence of Shu Hongyang and the Li family, and the left and right are the flower hall and the inner study room for entertaining the female dependents; The east chamber was divided into two siblings, Xingyi and Yanbing; The west chamber is the boudoir of Siniang Yanjie, the ear room and the piano room, the painting room, the embroidery room and other functions; Slaves and maids, mothers, etc., live in the inverted room.
The backyard is actually a small garden, and there are many flowers and plants, but there are only one bright and two dark three rooms, all of which are owned by the Pan family, and the Xi family can only squeeze the back cover room of the middle courtyard.
After returning to the right suite of his own east wing, Shu Bing looked around the bedroom of about 20 square meters and divided into inner and outer rooms on the Hu bed, pinching his fingers, such a small courtyard house with four entrances, living a husband and a wife, a concubine, three sons and two daughters, and one belly, in addition to more than ten maids, more than ten mother-in-law slaves, and five or six nurses.
It's just gone with all the good fantasies.
The maidservant Yaxiang was still very proud, and said: "Everyone is living a good life when the year is good, counting less than eighty years forward, a certain person lives in the yard only twice, and when it is windy and rainy, he has to take a pot to catch water!" ”
"Oh." Shu Bing nodded to hear it, but there was a doubt in his heart: Did the Li family or the former housewife emptied all the family funds to make clothes and jewelry as a façade? I don't have the money to save some land to buy a big house.
Or is the family not wealthy in the first place?
According to common sense, as soon as there is less money, everyone will look ugly. In other words, the reason why I lost myself is probably not because the nurse suddenly lost her mind, but because of the house fight? In fact, Shu Bing has always felt that that statement is too, and people who will lose their minds and go crazy can get a grandmother who is a concubine?
Referring to the men's clothes he was wearing when he was lost, it can be speculated that eight or nine times out of ten he was a stand-in for Ah Yi. So, is it the original sister-in-law who thinks that his stepwife's son is an eyesore, or does the noble wife want to kill two birds with one stone and kill the small one to marry the big one?
Mei is a high-grade concubine, who can not only take care of the house but also go out to socialize, if there are no other concubines, it will also work for Xingxu to inherit the family business.
There is only one murderer, and that is ...... Who? You have to find out, or you're likely to have an accident.
However, as a reasoning waste who watched 800 episodes of Conan and almost never guessed the murderer, Shu Bing suddenly felt a pain in his brain, and he couldn't guess anything, so he could only observe it slowly later.
Later, with a full of doubts and a glorious sense of mission, Shu Bing and Ah Yi went to the front hall for dinner hand in hand.
As soon as the family members got up, they no longer ate together, but used a separate food system, one person and one short several, with small plates and bowls on them, containing vegetables, fruits, rice, and cakes. The Xi family did not need to set up rules to serve the housewife Li, and sat silently behind her daughter to eat.
The room was full of almost all kinds of laughter and laughter from Pan Shijiao, one moment to introduce this dish was fashionable in Beijing, and the other time to introduce that the meal was made of rice sent by Zhuangzi.
When everyone bit into a piece of cake and found that it was wrapped in brightly colored pitted cherries, they couldn't help but exclaim, Pan even said complacently: "This cherry gluttony is a rare thing, it was sent by the mother's family of the slave family, for everyone to try." ”
Eh, this Aunt Pan doesn't seem to be a sick white lotus, like a sick Wang Xifeng, but she doesn't have a mother's life, and the Li family is not a mother-in-law, but a younger and more beautiful stepwife.
Hearing the sound of "pop", Li put down the ivory chopsticks in his hand heavily, and snorted coldly: "Is it so delicious that it can't stop your mouth?" Beware of laughing out of breath. ”
How can a wife not be angry when she hears her concubine show off her mother's family? Shu Bing's eyes suddenly flashed slightly, and he said in his heart: Come on, house fight, live version!
However, as soon as Li became angry, Aunt Pan's momentum suddenly weakened and she shut up. There is no male protagonist in the family, and she has nowhere to complain about being coquettish when she is scolded, and a storm seems to be so light and dissipated, which makes people feel deeply bored.
After Li scolded him, he said that he was full and didn't want to eat anymore, and asked the maid to take care of the children and then brushed his sleeves and left, leaving everyone to look at each other.
Ah Yi is a pure child's mind, because Li often says that he is uncomfortable to play and disappear, he has long been used to it, pinching the cake and continuing to devour it happily, the pseudo-child Shu Bing immediately learned his actions in unison.
The eldest son, Ah Sheng, ate something hastily in three or two mouthfuls to wrap his stomach, and then went away with the help of Gong.
There are no tigers in this mountain, and the monkey is called the king, and the Pan family, who was just scolded, came to the spirit again, and said with a smile, not only herself, but also expected to tease Shu Bing to speak.
"It's only been a month before and after, why did Wu Niang see that she lost a lot of weight?" Pan's words seemed to be full of concern.
Shu Bing felt that her eyes were bright, and she didn't look like a good person, so she replied lightly: "A-Niang said that this is called unsuitability." ”
"Why did you lose your memory again?" Pan continued to inquire unyieldingly, "I heard that she was taken away by that grandmother for a while, do you remember what she said?" ”
"I don't remember." After Shu Bing answered briefly, he stopped talking, but he was wondering in his heart, is Pan gossiping and wants to know the legendary story, or is he weak and wants to know who the nurse has confessed?
Just as Shu Bing wanted to list Pan as the number one suspect, he raised his eyes and suddenly saw that Xi Shi in front of him also had an inquiring and concerned expression.
She was immediately forced, who could be the noble concubine who had the problem?
After racking her brains and thinking about it for a long time, Shu Bing finally came up with a scheme called "luring the snake out of the hole", and she decided to use herself as bait to catch the real murderer.
"It's not that I don't remember anything, as if I heard Mama say whose money she gets, or whose words she gets?" Shu Bing tilted his head and pretended to be innocent, and said speculation in his mouth.
Nursing mothers harm others either for wealth or revenge. How much enmity can you have with children? I didn't take the gold lock on my body, so I must have got more money, or I was threatened.
"Who?" "Who is it?" Pan, Xi, and even Ah Yi all looked at each other and asked in unison.
Shu Bing looked at everyone quietly, but still couldn't see who was weak-hearted, so he had to answer casually: "I don't know, just a vague little impression." ”
Next, we only need to wait for someone to learn from the pain and kill people.