Chapter 222

Chapter 222

Niujia Village, located to the north and below the prefectural city.

The people here don’t usually go in and out through the South City; they take the North Gate. One reason is that it’s closer and saves time and effort, avoiding a detour. Another is that the city is divided into three classes and nine grades—east side wealth, west side nobility, south side poverty, north side lowliness. Those who use the North Gate are mostly the lowest of the low living in the north of the city. These people are despised wherever they go, but they’re not shameless. If you scorn them, they won’t force themselves forward; instead, they keep to their own corner, not even bothering with the main gate.

Although the North City isn’t as majestic and imposing as the South City, with a smaller gate facade, the bustle is not much less. Entering the city still requires queuing, and the City Defense Army conducts strict checks, making it hard to slip in.

Of course, the gap is also large.

The common folk here are noticeably poorer than those in the South City, mostly wearing coarse linen clothes, carrying loads to sell, with few carts or palanquins. Occasionally, one or two fine horses may be seen, but the riders are military lords in armor, not ordinary people.

The flavor of everyday life is also stronger here. Every kind of trade and business can be found: opera, acrobatics, bathhouses, gambling dens, prostitution. One can see many rare outfits, and with luck, even spot a monkey trainer with a little monkey on his shoulder entering the city—the furry-faced little creature would bow, scratch its face, and beg for tips.

There are also various sedan chairs carrying beautiful women dozing inside. The prostitution business isn’t necessarily confined to the city; plenty of unlicensed operations exist outside as well.

Then there are the thieves and beggars. Don’t judge by the children’s ragged appearance—they might have deft hands that catch you off guard. One blink, and your money pouch is gone.

These are all eye-catching people, yet also despised and avoided.

Slightly better, but not by much, are the night-soil collectors. They don’t steal, rob, or sell, but the smell! When you encounter them, you can’t help but cover your nose and eyes with your sleeve, not wanting to smell or see.

Some may not know the term “night-soil collector,” but everyone knows the name “night fragrance boy.” Even a three-year-old child knows that only a man with no skills takes up this filthy job. A capable man would rather haul heavy loads at the docks than do this dirty work. Covered in excrement all day, the stench seeps in for life. Even after death, there would be no glory before the ancestors.

Although this trade is actually in high demand, everyone speaks of it with disgust, as if it’s something to avoid, fearing contamination.

Having left Qushan County and parted ways with the village men, Gan Lei spent the journey telling them about Grandma Xiu Zhu’s situation.

Her husband’s surname was Wang, and his family had been in the night-soil business for generations. They didn’t just work for others for a few scattered copper coins. The Wang family had their own connections, and they knew people from all walks of life. The relationships maintained over generations allowed their family to make a decent living in this trade. Along with other families in the city, they divided up districts, each controlling a part.

The Wang family’s assigned area was the Shuanggui Street area in the East City—the very area that managed the Xu family’s chamber pots for generations.

The reason the current patriarch of the Wang family knew the personal maid of the third branch’s wife of the Xu family was precisely because of this. Night-soil collection, you see. Although the job didn’t fall under Xiu Zhu’s duties as the head maid back then, she was her mistress’s confidante. She wouldn’t let outsiders handle any of the main house’s affairs, including the night soil. Every day, she would personally carry it to the back gate and hand it to Wang Dalang, who came to collect it.

Over time, naturally, the two became acquainted.

When a head maid of a wealthy family reached a certain age, she would either be married off to the master as a concubine by the mistress to secure his heart and keep other vixens from bewitching him, or she would be betrothed to a steward or promising young servant in the household. If she had children, they would become house-born slaves, and the entire family would be given the master’s surname, gaining face outside and trust inside.

When young, she served as a maid; when old, she became a matron. Although she was a servant, as long as she didn’t act foolishly, she would never worry about food or clothing for life, living more comfortably than many small farming families outside.

And a maid like Xiu Zhu, whose contract was torn up by the mistress, given her freedom, provided with a generous dowry, and married off like a younger sister—was indeed rare.

“In the eyes of the Xu family, the Wang family’s trade was looked down upon. After Grandma Xiu Zhu married, she was afraid of losing face for her mistress, lest the first and second branches gossip. She only visited her grandmother on holidays to pay respects. On ordinary days, even when sending fresh fruits and vegetables, she dared not use the Wang family name, only saying it was sent by someone from Niujia Village.”

“Wang Dalang—now Old Master Wang—even voluntarily swapped his territory with another family in the North City. The East City and North City are as different as heaven and earth. Every time her grandmother spoke of it, she would wipe her tears, saying Grandma Xiu Zhu was considerate, that she hadn’t married the wrong man, and that Wang Dalang was a good match.”

Gan Lei spoke about these matters without much feeling, as he had no strong impression of Grandma Xiu Zhu. Although his grandmother said that on the year he was born, Grandma Xiu Zhu had visited him in the manor and given him a pair of gold bracelets, his mother disliked the Wang family very much. She always used his weak constitution as an excuse to keep him from leaving his room, which caused his grandmother to rage several times.

Thinking back, Gan Lei belatedly understood why his mother and grandmother were not like a normal mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The wives of the first and second branches never dared to defy their mother-in-law, attending morning and evening salutations with many rules.

But for their third branch, his grandmother didn’t interfere in his father’s chamber affairs, nor was she close to his mother. She rarely called anyone to attend her.

Perhaps his mother, a woman from a wealthy family, had always looked down on his grandmother’s background. That was why she and his father often quarreled, and their life was never peaceful.

With more experience, the past seemed like a veil, quietly fading in time, revealing a sad truth.

Their family, from top to bottom, inside and out, was different from the other two branches, even from other families.

“This Wang Dalang, he’s quite a man,” said Old Man Zhao, smacking his lips.

Even if he didn’t fully understand the intricacies, he knew the difference between East City and North City. Wealthy families had high thresholds; even a maid was generous. With night-soil collection, in the North City, you’d haggle over a single coin and struggle to squeeze money from households. In the East City, it was different. Charging two coins, the maid would pay without argument, just asking you to take it away quickly, lest you offend the nobles.

When they dug up the ridge and caught loaches, they had also thought of selling them in the East or West City, never the North or South. For liveliness, the latter couldn’t compare to the former, but for opulence, the latter couldn’t catch up.

Even outsiders knew the difference was huge.

“Yeah, when we go to town to sell vegetables, we know to pick a good stall. To give up such a good location—the Wang family was really determined,” Shi Dalang chimed in, rubbing his hands together. He had some impression of Xiu Zhu, since it was his grandparents who sold fields to buy a dowry maid for his aunt. When his father was still alive, he had been taken to the Xu family and had seen Xiu Zhu as the head maid. He remembered her as a very kind and gentle person, always doing things properly, and she had won his aunt’s favor.

As for her leaving the household to marry, he naturally didn’t know about those matters as an outsider, let alone these details. He was quite intrigued.

Forget about despising the Wang family’s filth—he and Old Uncle Zhao were almost envious of this business. It was a double profit.

City folk hated excrement, but as farmers in the countryside, they treasured it. To fertilize fields, they depended on the goods in the privy. In these times, people didn’t have enough to eat, so they didn’t produce much. While working in the fields with a hoe, if the urge came, they’d have to run home fast, absolutely not letting the “fertilizer” go to waste outside.

Buying night soil also required connections. Villages closer to the town or prefectural city, where the land was well-fertilized, harvested more every year than their village, and lived better lives.

So this business, though with a bad reputation, made money on both ends: collecting for a fee, selling for profit—a cost-free venture.

The Wang family must have made a lot. That was the first thought that crossed Old Man Zhao’s mind when he saw the spacious courtyard at the entrance of Niujia Village.

The second thought was: it’s all for naught! No matter how much they earned, it was all ruined. When the mud walls and stone houses were flooded, they’d be wailing and crying—utter disaster. Such a spacious, green-brick, tile-roofed house, with its corner soaked in filth water—even from far away, the stench was unmistakable!

No wonder as soon as they approached Niujia Village, it smelled so foul and stinky. The smell was completely different from the odor of floating corpses. It was a familiar stench, exactly what you smelled every day in the privy.

“Oh my mother! Niujia Village has become a shit village! The whole village is floating in ‘gold’!” Zhao Sandi pinched his nose, looking at the courtyard ahead, stained a shit-yellow from the soak. Though it wasn’t his, he still felt sorry. “Looks like we came to the right place. Ha, with so much filth water, this must be the Hong family.”

With the upstream cut off and the downstream draining floods, the floodwaters had clearly receded today. The poles could be exposed more than halfway. Compared with the earlier vast expanse of water, the further up they went, the more obvious it became. The flooded high ground was showing silt, revealing the ground.

The prefectural city was higher, and Niujia Village was nearby but at a lower elevation. Although it had suffered damage, judging by the disaster at this village entrance house, it wasn’t too severe. The highest water level hadn’t even reached a grown man’s chest.

Now the tide was receding, revealing things here and there. The Hong family, in that line of work, brought the night soil collected from the prefectural city back to the village every day. Perhaps the goods hadn’t been sold yet when the floods hit. The jars of golden yellow had tipped over, and the whole village had been soaking in that yellow soup for ten days or half a month. Now, the “fragrance” could be smelled for miles.

Voices could be heard from the far end of the village—whether they were cleaning up or causing a ruckus, hard to tell. The noise was quite loud.

Zhao Xiaobao pinched her nose, her eyes rolling back from the stench.

“Is this the Hong family at the village entrance? The one that collects night soil in the prefectural city?” Shi Dalang, struggling not to vomit, spoke between heaves. He had already yelled several times, but got no response, so he had to shout again. “Is anyone from the Hong family home—!”

“What’s all the yelling? Not selling, nothing to sell!” A loud roar came from the far end of the village, followed by the sound of wading through water, splashing violently. “Can’t you see the village is flooded? Come to buy fertilizer? Can’t be! Who’s still buying fertilizer now? Your place not flooded…”

The one wading through the water was an old woman, her face full of wrinkles but looking vigorous, with nimble legs.

She seemed to have just finished a quarrel, with lingering anger on her face. Perhaps her eyesight wasn’t too good. When she saw Shi Dalang shouting at the top of his lungs, she first put her hands on her hips, about to curse. But before she could speak, she noticed Gan Lei standing in front of him. A flicker of doubt crossed her face, and she couldn’t help stepping forward.

She squinted and looked again for a long while, as if unsure. She walked a few more steps.

Until she stopped in front of the raft. She rubbed her eyes repeatedly, then bent down to look Gan Lei in the eye again. Her gaze traced the familiar features of his face. When she confirmed something, her eyes suddenly reddened, and her face showed an expression of surprise and joy.

“You, you are…” Her usually sharp tongue suddenly stumbled. She maintained her bent posture, staring at Gan Lei without blinking, cautiously. “Are you from Yuan’ge’s family?”

This form of address made it unnecessary to identify himself; father and son must look very alike.

Gan Lei looked at her, and in a daze, felt as if he was looking at his grandmother. The loving gaze of the old woman as she looked at him was exactly the same as when his grandmother held him and gently coaxed him. His throat tightened. It shouldn’t be so, but his heart easily accepted this tenderness, making him feel an instinctive closeness.

“Grandma Xiu Zhu, I’m sorry for the sudden visit. I am Ying Nu.”

“There are some things that puzzle me, and I hope you can help clarify them.”