v4c77: A Cat’s Tale Part 1

Gou Ren took a good look at the guards as he bounced Zhuye on one knee. The guard captain held himself at attention, yet he also had an easy, personable smile; his armour was of incredible quality and well-maintained—Gou Ren could see every slight blemish in the steel from the long travel this man had undertaken, but to a normal person’s eyes it would be unnoticeable. The rest of the guards were the same. They were all disciplined, professional men, even as they drank their tea.

Gou Ren thought it was probably a little excessive to have so many soldiers for an escort, but after listening in on all the shit Lu Ri and the mail couriers would have to deal with, maybe it was just the right amount?

“How was the journey, anyway?” Jin asked the head guard as he poured the man tea. The man, Long Chenshen, had taken Jin’s offer to get himself and his men refreshments as soon as it was offered, and now the caravan guards were drinking tea and looking with interest at the reaping machines.

“It was leisurely until it started raining, Master Jin,” Chenshen replied. “The roads turned to muck, but we managed to push through until we got back to civilization.”

Gou Ren chuckled at the jab about the state of the roads. It was a vast difference, and after a mere year of living with the roads they had made, he wondered how they had lived without them.

“Yeah, the rain can get pretty bad,” Gou Ren chimed in commiseratingly. “But at least by this time next year, we should be nearly to the next town.”

“Truly?” The guard asked, looking impressed.

“Yeah. It’ll make things a lot easier,” Jin said with a nod. “Though I do have one question. I would have thought Bo and Chyou would be with you—they said they would be back up to collect this year’s harvest.”

The guard bowed. “Master Bo and Mistress Chyou are indeed at least a week behind us, but we were sent on ahead; a message from Rou Tigu to yourself is to be conveyed with all due haste.”

Gou Ren blinked.

Right. They were important people now.

It was still damn weird to think that. That people would go out of their way to do things for them, like hire an entire guard squad and a caravan for a single crate. Granted, it was a rather large and very nice crate that he could see through gaps in the protective cloth covering it. Gou Ren could appreciate the craftsmanship. It was a beautiful thing, old hardwood lacquered to perfection.

But it was still a single crate.

The world was very strange sometimes.

They made some more small talk until the guards bowed and left, heading back towards Verdant Hill.

Meiling immediately turned to Jin.

“Come on, let’s just open it right here!”

Gou Ren rolled his eyes at Meiling’s whining as she stared hungrily at the box that the Azure Jade Trading Company had delivered. She was as excited as she had been that one time she had managed to find some rare poisonous herbs from the caravaneers. She was even starting to bounce in place.

“We wait until tonight, when everybody can see it at once,” Jin replied, and he chuckled when Meimei pouted but relented.

… She stille spent the next couple of hours trying to guess what was inside, poking, prodding, and only barely refrained from shaking the box at Jin’s disapproving but amused tut.

“Don’t end up like her, okay little buddy?” Gou Ren asked Zhuye, but he was afraid his nephew was already lost, giggling as Meimei hopped around like a jiangshi, examining the chest from every angle.

==================================

After the festival, instead of staying in Hong Yaowu like they normally would, they headed straight home. The Lord Magistrate had congratulated them on having such a fun day, and then he and Lady Wu had started talking with the other noble ladies about what they thought of the reapers. The last he heard was them saying they would be telling their husbands, and the other ladies they were friends with about the wondrous new tool.

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Though, with the excitement of getting a letter from their friends having faded, the topic of conversation became a bit heavy.

“We’ll go check together the next time you smell it, okay?” Jin said as they walked down the road back home. “I trust your nose more than anything, so if you think something’s off, something’s off.”

“It could just be nothing. Tianlan said things were a little bit off with our senses,” Meimei demurred, still sulking slightly from her curiosity being restrained.

“Still better to check,” Gou Ren said, adding his thoughts. Because like hell was anything going to take his home from him. “We can set up a rotation. You say something, and we go running?”

Meiling nodded. “Next time. I’ll try to get a better direction, but it comes and goes so fast.”

‘All can do is our best,’ Chun Ke stated sagely.

“Exactly. So instead of that… let’s look forward to what comes after dinner, eh?” Jin asked, as they reached the gates of the farm. With a course of action set, the mood lightened as the smell of food filled the house.

As always, they had a bit of an eclectic mix for dinner.

Half of the food was Jin’s creations. Today, they were having Ta Kos. It had slow-cooked beef mixed with the spicy peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, and onion, another variant used breaded fish, and a third type for Chun Ke that was made out of beans and more mushrooms. All of it was encased in a kind of cooked dumpling wrapper made of corn folded in half but left unsealed.

The other half was the stuff Gou Ren had grown up with: the stir-fries, the rice, and Meimei had made some of her dumplings—which was the only food that Jin actually cared about people stealing from him. He may have made up a thousand dishes, but the traditional dumplings of Hong Yaowu were his absolute favourite.

Both the familiar and the new and interesting—Gou Ren always had a bit of everything. Meimei did make the best dumplings, but the Ta Kos were really good too; there was something about assembling and wrapping it up that made it fun.