When Yin Ruxu was in Yin and Zhao, she often attended court banquets. Every year, there were always many festivals to celebrate in the palace. The princes and nobles had nothing to do and enjoyed themselves every day, so most of them loved to hold banquets. She had been to many such occasions, but this was her first time to attend a night banquet on the grassland.
There was no distinction between upper and lower seats, no waiters kneeling to serve chopsticks, no literati toasting and composing poems, and no stringed instruments, wind instruments, fragrant breezes, and soft dances. The tribe leader, Wo Tu, sat with everyone, under the tent and on the ground. He even rolled up his sleeves and sat there roasting the mutton himself. He sliced the cooked mutton with a dagger and handed it all to Yin Ruxu beside him.
Men, women, young and old here all love to drink, but the wine here is different from that in Yin State. It is made from horse milk and other things, and has a strange sour taste. Yin Ruxu is not used to drinking it.
"Princess, drink this." Wuzhizhuam brought the filtered milk tea. Tea is not produced on the grassland, so tea is exchanged with the caravans from the Wutu tribe. It is a relatively precious thing. "Outsiders are generally not used to drinking this at first. Princess, try this goat milk boiled with tea leaves. It will relieve your greasiness."
This way of drinking did not exist in the Yin State. Yin Ruxu tried it and found it tasted quite good.
She was surrounded by people from the Wutu tribe whom she didn't know, but everyone was relaxed and sat freely, eating meat and drinking wine, and some were singing and dancing. Yin Ruxu discovered that the Wutu tribe, whether male or female, loved to sing. Often, when there was nothing to do, someone would suddenly start singing, and others would join in, and eventually everyone would sing together.
This is especially true of men. They have loud voices, and their throats are like big drums. When many men join together, the sound is more powerful than the drums played at a state banquet.
The men sang, and the women linked arms and began to dance beside them. They laughed and sang along, and the colorful ribbons tied around their waists flew around, causing the men sitting nearby to reach out to grab them, but they were kicked in disgust.
Wo Tu also started to sing along, and his voice drowned out the others. These men were like animals on the grassland, and their strong bodies and loud voices were a way for them to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Wo Tu looked at Yin Ruxu while singing, and everyone burst into laughter after he sang just two sentences. Yin Ruxu didn't understand what his song meant, but seeing the reactions of others, he roughly guessed what he was singing.
Wotu shaved his beard today. People often came to look at him curiously, and some children even asked, "Chief, where is your beard?"
Several older women also laughed and said, "The chief has shaved his beard, and we can hardly recognize him."
It seemed that he really hadn't shaved for a long time. Wo Tu felt very embarrassed when this was exposed. He chased away the troublesome children with a fierce face, and said to Yin Ruxu with a shameless face: "Having a beard makes you look more fierce, which is more convenient." Anyway, it's not because he is lazy.
After everyone finished eating, there was an entertainment program, the men wrestled. Such "barbaric" activities were not seen in the land of Yin and Zhao, where people were extremely noble, and their words and deeds were measured and they had to pay attention to their status. No one would do such a thing, but it was different here, everyone was happy to show their strength.
A brave warrior won several games in a row and came to challenge the chieftain. Wotu was also a warlike man, so he pushed his palm over the obstacle in front of him and left the field.
"Do you think I look less scary after shaving my beard?" Wo Tu laughed, snapped his fingers, and knocked the man to the ground with two punches. The warrior who challenged him was very strong. When he was thrown to the ground, Yin Ruxu felt the ground shake, which made her tremble with fear.
But that guy seemed fine. He got up from the ground, moved his arms and admitted defeat. Wotu looked like he hadn't even warmed up yet. He picked someone from a group of Warriors to continue fighting.
Wo Tu wanted to let his wife see what he was capable of, so he became more and more excited as he fought. After he knocked down a group of people, it was already late. He looked at Yin Ruxu's position and found that his wife was gone.
Wo Tu: “… ?”
"Where are the people? Where is the princess?" He strode back.
Na Risong smiled as he held the wine in his hand, "The princess is tired, so Am sent her to the tent to rest first. Seeing that you were having so much fun fighting, he ignored you."
Wo Tu scratched his hair, which was tied at the back of his head, feeling a little annoyed. He looked in the direction of the princess' tent, and it was indeed lit up. He paced twice in place, but couldn't help but walk over.
"What is the chief doing? He's just wandering around outside. He doesn't even dare to go into his wife's tent. He's too cowardly. He's not like our chief at all!" The warrior who had just been knocked to the ground by Wo Tu said gloatingly while covering his injured arm.
The other warriors who had been thrown down one by one also followed suit, looking over there with great interest, waiting to see what would happen.
"Hey, it's in, it's in!"
Wo Tu rubbed his hands outside the princess's tent, not knowing whether he should go in. It was only after Yin Ruxu inside noticed him and asked him about it that he was called in.
"Are you tired?" As soon as Wo Tu entered the princess's tent, Yin Ruxu felt that the originally spacious tent seemed crowded.
Yin Ruxu sat quietly on the brocade cushion, lowering her head slightly, "A little." She took a short rest in the afternoon, but after a long journey from Yin State, it was impossible for her to recover so easily.
Wo Tu: "Then you should have a good rest." He said that but didn't leave. He just looked at her.
He was wearing a robe, leather boots and a belt. His semi-long, slightly curly black hair was tied behind his head. His hair was a little loose due to the intense exercise just now. With a pair of green eyes, he looked like a wild beast in the dark night. He sat there without saying a word, with an indescribable greedy look in his eyes.
Yin Ruxu: "I'll rest in the princess's tent today and go to the king's tent tomorrow night, okay?" She knew why she came here and her responsibilities. If it were someone else, she probably wouldn't say such a thing, but Wo Tu made her feel comfortable and at ease, so she said such words naturally.
When Wo Tu heard that she volunteered to sleep with him in his tent tomorrow, he left happily as if he had found a treasure. He went out, but he turned back halfway, lifted the curtain and poked his head in and said to her: "Tomorrow I will take you to the flower field at the foot of Magala Mountain. The grass grows well there, there are a lot of wild flowers, and there are a lot of sheep on the slope."
Yin Ruxu smiled at him under the light, "Okay."
She paused and suddenly said, "Are you sending me to herd sheep?" Na Risong told Wo Tu's previous words to his wife, who then told Wu Rizhu's mother, who just told her as a joke. Yin Ruxu joked so seriously that Wo Tu hadn't reacted yet and subconsciously quickly shrank his head away.
He reacted for a moment outside, then put his head back in, "Are you kidding me?"
Yin Ruxu: "... Sorry, I'm not used to saying these things. Is it not funny?"
It was not only not funny, but Wotu was frightened by her and thought she was going to settle accounts with him. It was like this, the women in their Wutu tribe were just like the men, they could hold up half the sky, if the men in the family deserved a beating, the women would never show mercy. He still remembered that when his mother was still alive, he was beaten a lot. With his physique, he was not afraid of Yin Ruxu's beating, but he was worried that she would be angry.
"Shepherding is actually very fun," said Wo Tu. "When I was a kid, I often went to herd sheep. I would sleep among the sheep and let them carry me. They could also find very sweet grass roots."
Yin Ruxu curled her lips. She had just sat there eating mutton, and Wuzhizhu Amu had told her a lot about Wotu's childhood, saying that when he was a child, he used a homemade small wooden bow to shoot sheepskin buttocks, and was rushed to the ground by the sheep; he also said that he dug a hole in the grassland to catch a ground mouse, and his finger was bitten; he could imitate the wolf's howl, and caught wild wolves when the adults were not paying attention, and he really caught one, etc.
As she listened, an image of a tough, dirty little boy with black curly hair and green eyes emerged in her mind, wandering on the earth like the wind, free and happy.
The green-eyed little boy in her imagination turned into a big man, looking at her expectantly with his green eyes. Yin Ruxu waved at him, "Tomorrow, I'll wait for you."
She thought that she would not be able to sleep in a foreign country, a place completely different from her homeland, but unexpectedly, she slept very well until dawn and had a very interesting dream.
She dreamed that when she was young, she was playing hide-and-seek with the little palace maids in the palace. Everyone else disappeared, and she was wandering around the huge palace alone. She could not hear any other sounds, but the jingling of the bells and jade pendants on her body. Just when she was feeling scared, a little boy with green eyes appeared and said he would take her to herd sheep. The two walked forward a few steps, and she saw that the palace around her suddenly turned into a blue sky, an open grassland, and a flock of white sheep.
The little boy was taller than her, barefoot, and had a robe tied in a mess. She didn't know him, but he seemed to be familiar with him. He asked her if she wanted to ride a sheep, and without waiting for her answer, he led her to a grazing sheep. He was not very strong, so he held her legs and pushed her onto the sheep's back with his shoulders. The sheep ran away, scaring her and screaming, and the little boy chased after her.
Yin Ruxu woke up happily.
The guy in the dream was in her big tent, sitting with his back to her and eating cake.
Wo Tu turned around while biting the cake, "You are awake, do you want to eat some cake? This cake has a lot of meat in it, it's delicious."
Yin Ruxu smelled the burnt aroma of the cake and felt a little hungry, but why did he run to her tent to eat cake so early in the morning
Seeing her silence, Wo Tu was surprised, "You don't like cakes?"
Yin Ruxu: "... I've never eaten this kind of cake, it looks good, I'll try it."
…
At this time, far away in Zhao State, King Zhao Xu of Zhao was entertaining envoys from Jin State.
"King Zhao? King Zhao?" As the envoy was speaking, he noticed that King Zhao suddenly leaned back with his eyes closed and remained silent. He felt a little dissatisfied, thinking, the two countries had agreed on a marriage, but now he was making excuses and resisting. What was his plan? He was unwilling to state the rules. It was nothing more than that he saw that Jin was in a weak position now, and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to gain more benefits.
He was dissatisfied, but he had no idea that in just a short while, the King of Zhao at the top had undergone a drastic change and was no longer the same King of Zhao as before.
The King of Zhao, who had awakened his inner personality, opened his eyes with a bad expression. He had the memory of his outer personality, and at that moment, he had discovered the difference in the plot. The heroine Yin Ruxu, who was supposed to come to Zhao State for marriage, had now gone to the Wutu tribe.
The heroine who was supposed to be his must have been replaced. For some reason, he had a bad feeling that he would fail.
The author has something to say: Ah, the new year is over and it’s almost time to start work!