This county is not big. If it is located in the affluent areas of the Central Plains, such a county can only barely be regarded as a town. This small town between the mountains is not an important traffic route between the north and the south. There are not many tourists from other places and the most lively in the county. Time is the temple fair twice a month.
On this day, people of all ethnic groups in the four wilds and eight townships come to the town with all kinds of mountain goods, such as mushrooms, wild fruits, game, bamboo mats and bamboo baskets, to exchange goods and barter.
Of course, there were also some foreign merchants who brought cloth, salt, wine, rouge, gouache, jewelry and head coverings to this small town, and exchanged some wild game and delicacies with the local mountain people, and then transported them to other places to earn a difference.
There are two small inns in the town, mainly for the mountain folks and merchants who came from elsewhere that day, so the conditions are very simple.
Aunt Ma does not usually "do business" in the city. Although the government in this kind of place is not as prestigious as the government in the Central Plains, it is still very deterrent in the eyes of ordinary people like them. The risk of committing crimes here is greater.
However, Xue Shuiwu's mother and daughter have such good conditions. It would be a pity to sell them to mountain people as reproductive tools. They have to be sold to rich people or brothels to earn a good price. They look like foreigners who don't know much about the world. The aunt only does it occasionally in the county, so she doesn't worry about anything.
When Aunt Ma arrived in the town, she first asked for a room in a small inn, and said to Xue Shuiwu: "Little lady, there are always some naughty rascals in this county who bully Goodness, you are as beautiful as a flower, but Don't move around.
Auntie will settle you here first, and go to a relative’s house in the city. First, to visit relatives, and second, to ask them to help you contact the business gang, so that I can take you to Guizhou Road. Otherwise, you are such a delicate little lady. It is simply impossible to travel in peace. "
Xue Shuiwu was grateful and thanked her again and again. Aunt Ma smiled and turned to leave the room. Xue Shuiwu put down her daughter and just poured a glass of water when she heard a "click" and hurried out to open the door , the door exposed a palm-width gap and could no longer be opened, it was actually locked from the outside.
Xue Shuiwu suddenly felt an ominous feeling in her heart, she called out "Aunt Ma" a few times, but she didn't hear Aunt Ma's reply, but attracted some guests who stayed in the hotel, and the guests peeped through the crack of the door. A beautiful woman whispered to each other with a strange look on her face.
Seeing this, Xue Shuiwu was terrified and didn't dare to say anything anymore, but the ominous feeling in her heart became stronger and stronger: "Is it because I ran into a human trafficker?" Thinking of Aunt Ma's kind and simple look, Xue Shuiwu couldn't Da believes in his own judgment, but the current weird situation makes people feel uneasy.
Le Yao had lost interest in hide-and-seek. He pouted and said to Xue Shuiwu, "Mother, why hasn't Brother Xiaotian found us yet?"
Xue Shuiwu gently hugged her in his arms, tears rolled in her eyes, she knew that Ye Xiaotian would never appear in front of her. If she can successfully bring Le Yao to Guizhou and hand it over to the person who should be handed over, maybe what Ye Xiaotian left in her heart is just a regret from the past, but now she misses that man more than ever.
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After Aunt Ma left the inn, she wandered around the city excitedly. She seldom commits crimes in the county town, and there is no familiar person here who can help her "sell the stolen goods", but she is also a half-local, and she probably knows who The family is rich.
Aunt Ma's idea is to find rich and noble families first, such families can afford the most money, and if not, then go to a brothel, but the brothel here is only a gathering place for wild prostitutes and warblers, and they only earn money from poor people. There will be a good price that makes people feel ideal.
Aunt Ma was running around in a hurry in the county town, not noticing that there was a figure following her from beginning to end...
Guan Er is in his early fifties this year, half of his thinning hair is gray, he wears a bun and sticks a locust wood hairpin. He was wearing a worn-out Gebu blouse, squatting in the shade of a tree by the side of the road, with a sack of walnuts, a sack of chestnuts, dried persimmons, red dates, etc. in front of him.
Because of the hot weather, he hugged his robe, revealing a pair of thin hairy legs under the robe, squatting there like a big horse monkey. Whenever a pretty woman passed in front of him, he would stare straight at her, looking at her chest and buttocks, his eyes were like hooks, his head swung from left to right, from right to left …
He is a collector of mountain goods, and collecting mountain goods is a hard job, even if they are transported outside the mountains, they won't make much money, so he is a slightly rich but not very rich person.
The market is very chaotic, the stalls are not arranged neatly, and the pedestrians walk without rules, so the bustling is very chaotic. Even in this situation, Guan Er's eyes can still accurately follow a swaying butt. Gradually far away, until his eyes are deep like a philosopher.
Guan Er used to be very poor. He used to be just a boy who received dry goods from Shopkeeper Li. When he grew from a boy to an old boy, he still didn't have much money, and he didn't have the money to marry a wife.
The only time in his life that he had tasted what it was like to be a man was more than 20 years ago. That time, holding on to the money he had saved for a long time, he walked up to the door of a half-closed kiln sister and handed over the quilt. The sweaty twenty-cent coin was dragged into the house by the woman like a child, in exchange for that trembling.
It was really just a shiver, just lying on the white body, before he had time to move a few times, he was already venting. After waking up, Guan Er suddenly feels sorry for the money, but sometimes he feels that blissful feeling, that everything with him is worth it.
Since then, he has never touched a woman again, and can only rely on that dream-like memory to survive until today. Shopkeeper Li has always been so stingy, he has always been penniless, until not long ago, shopkeeper Li tripped in a mountain col on a rainy day, knocked his head heavily on a rock, and died.
The shopkeeper died, and for the first time, he, who had been cowardly and honest all his life, plucked up his courage and did a bad thing. He swallowed up the shopkeeper's goods and money, and became the shopkeeper himself. From that day on, his dream was no longer just to have enough food , but can have a woman of his own.
Guan Er has always dreamed of doing business a few more times so that he can save enough money to marry a daughter-in-law, maybe ugly, older, and married, but she is a woman after all. It's just that he didn't expect that day to come so quickly, so many years later when he recalled that day, he still insisted that the man with the bad smile was an angel sent by God.
Another fat buttocks swayed in front of him, Guan Er's eyes were like feet stuck in the mud, and when he couldn't pull them out, suddenly a young man with a delicate mouth like a woman stood in front of him , cut off his line of sight.
He remembered that he frowned unhappily at that time, and asked, "Are you buying mountain products or selling mountain products?"
The young heavenly official smiled like a blessing, and said to him: "Shopkeeper, I don't buy anything, but I want to sell something."
The boy bent down, and asked in a voice that only the two of them could hear, "There's a woman, do you want it?"
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Many years later, when Aunt Ma held the third girl of her Sixth Boy’s family on her knees, and with her toothless mouth open, when she babbled about her deceased husband, she always couldn’t help but think of a story that she would never forget. lad.
She vaguely remembered that the young man had a mouth that was more delicate than a girl's, and he had a naughty smile, but he was not annoying at all.
But she will never know, in fact, after that, the name of the big man she heard so loudly once was the boy she had met, who only played a guest role as a human trafficker once in his life. she.
"If you don't know the land well, it's hard to do business."
Aunt Ma, who had run into a wall several times in succession, frowned and thought about it. This must be in a place she is familiar with. She knows very well who has money and who lacks women. A few times, but they only came to the market, and they didn't know the city clearly, so the blind people ran around blindly.
But thinking about that pretty young lady who is so tender that she can get water at a pinch, if she finds a good family in this county, the price will be at least four or five times higher than selling it in the mountains, and she feels that the hard work is worth it. Thinking about whether to go to the rich man's house to ask, someone suddenly called her from behind: "Auntie, this auntie, please stay."
Aunt Ma turned around, and saw a young man with a delicate mouth, rushing over quickly, with a very honest look, but when she saw it, his little face turned red. The young man asked shyly, "Auntie, do you...do you have a niece to marry?"
Aunt Ma listened to his foreign accent, looked at his shabby clothes, and the shoes with two toes that had been stripped off, and frowned, "Why, do you want to ask for a wife? Can you afford a wife?"
"No, no, no!" The young man shook his hands in a panic, his face turned even redder with embarrassment, he rubbed his hands awkwardly, looked at his toes, and said, "The boy is just a long-term worker, how can he marry a wife, yes... it's our family Master wants to take a concubine..."
Aunt Ma suddenly realized, but seeing his poor appearance, she thought that his employer must be very mean, but she was reluctant to spend money to buy a woman, so she said: "Your master wants to take a concubine? Let me tell you, my niece is very handsome." Yes, the price is not cheap."
The young man said: "Our master has a lot of money, don't worry, aunt, he just heard that aunt has a handsome niece who wants to marry, so he asked me to come to aunt, I... I can't tell, aunt Guess, you should tell our master."
This young man was so honest that he stuttered just a few words, his face turned red, and his forehead seemed to be sweating urgently, and he stretched out his sleeves to wipe the sweat from time to time. Aunt Ma laughed: "Success! Then I will walk with you."
Aunt Ma was put into a sack when she left, and then she was loaded into a donkey cart together with walnuts, hawthorns and other mountain goods, and left the county town with a "squeak". When she was released again, She became Guan Er's wife, and it was not until she was pregnant that she was able to get out of that thatched hut and know where she was.