As soon as I saw the official uniform, my head suddenly exploded. I rushed out of my sister's room and shouted at her, "Where is that bastard Zhong Wenjie? Why is his official uniform in your room?" Suddenly I remembered that I had just run into him. No way, the thing I feared most really happened.
"What does the official uniform have to do with Zisheng?" The confusion on my sister's face made me feel that she was not lying. Suddenly I remembered that before I left, Zisheng had already become a military advisor, and the chief grain and fodder officer should be replaced.
"Whose clothes are those? When I'm not around, someone starts bullying you. Tell me and I'll kill him."
"What do you have? That's mine."
"Oh, that bitch is you? No, no, that's not what I meant.... How did you become an official?"
"What's wrong? Can't I be an official?"
"No, that's not what I meant. I know you are well-read, but..." I immediately figured it out. With our teacher's style of doing things and his courage in employing people, since we can use the mao heads, it would be strange if he didn't use a talented girl like my sister. Although there is no precedent, the teacher never seems to care about this.
"You seem to have forgotten that before you went to study with Mr. Wei, the governor of the state, I was the one who taught you to read and write. Do you think I, your sister, am not capable of that?"
Seeing that his sister was about to bring charges, Wang looked around and said something else. He looked around and had a pretext.
"Well, sister, why is the tree in our yard gone?"
"You asked me about the two people you introduced. They were good in other aspects, but they climbed trees when they had nothing to do. They climbed trees and even fought with each other. Your uncle Zhang and aunt Zhang were scared of them. We chopped them down when we went to fight the bandits last time."
"Oh." I turned around and went back to the house as if I had suddenly realized something, but I had already prepared myself that I couldn't go back to the house at all, because my sister's brain was not that slow. As I expected, I was treated as a unique example of a bad guy in history who severely discriminated against women and was scolded in the living room for an afternoon.
"I'm going to Changsha to be the prefect. Sister, come with me and you can help me manage Changsha's food and grass." I asked cautiously during dinner.
"That depends on the governor. You think you are the boss. ... Ah, I didn't expect you to climb so fast."
"What do you mean you're climbing so fast? Who do you think I am? I'll go find the teacher tomorrow. I think he will definitely agree. Oh, let's take Zhou Cang and Zhou Yin with us, okay?"
“Okay, are you…” You can tell that my sister’s smile is cunning but unnatural, and she stopped talking before she finished her words.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." My sister became serious again. "I want to go to the government warehouse to check. The grain and grass near Xiangyang have already started to be collected. I'll go and take a look." My sister went back to the house and changed into official uniform.
"What a handsome young man! He's just a fake son." I stroked my beard and acted very mature. I immediately knew that revenge was coming because my sister grabbed my beard and said, "You little bastard, don't let me see this tuft of hair when I come back. Shave it off for me, or I will pull it all out for you when I come back." Then she left.
To be honest, I didn't want to shave my beard. I felt that a mighty man like me would look more majestic with a beard, but my sister ordered me to... Because Uncle Zhang always shaved my head before, I still asked Uncle Zhang to shave my beard for me. I didn't dare to do it myself, because Ziyu cut several cuts on his face when he shaved his beard for the first time, and we laughed at him for a month. And we all agreed that his beard was not a beard at all, but just a dozen uneven hairs. But mine was really a beard! That night, I kept expressing deep regret for my first beard.
In the morning, I was woken up by the shaking at the table in the living room. "Sister, why did you come back so late? It's already dawn. I wanted to wait for you to come back, but I fell asleep at some point. Sister, you should rest first... Hey, sister, did you go to the wrong door? This is my home." Looking at the smiling girl in military uniform in front of me, I knew she was not my sister, but she looked familiar. Suddenly, an idea came to my mind. I tried to open my eyes and pointed from top to bottom: "Zhou Yin?"
Looking at this girl smiling with her lips pursed and her head straight, I felt helpless and cheated, "Another fake girl." I immediately thought, could Zhou Cang be a girl too? Then I saw a shirtless boy carrying a cloth bag coming in, which made me feel relieved. However, then I saw her sister come in with an sullen look on her face. I felt that a disaster was about to happen, but I couldn't figure out where I had done wrong.
"Why do you need another fake one? Your beard is clean shaved. Have you forgotten the lesson from yesterday?" Then my cheeks were pulled up. You know, my sister must cooperate with me to pull my cheeks. It seems that my sister has treated them as her own family, because my sister never humiliates me in front of outsiders.
"I don't dare anymore." My sister finally loosened her grip. I covered my cheeks and greeted the Zhou brothers and sisters.
"Why don't you help? You have all your strength but you don't want to use it?" I hurried over to take the bag. It was rice.
"Sister, we are going to Changsha soon. Why are you still buying rice? It seems that the remaining rice will be enough to last us for another ten days."
"If I'm not mistaken, you won't stay in Changsha for long. You'll have to come back in about half a year. So this time when we go, Uncle Zhang and Aunt Zhang will stay behind to help us look after the house. Secondly, they are old and running back and forth is too tiring. So, when they come back, we let Zhou Cang bring back rice to save Uncle and Aunt from suffering."
"Sister, you are so smart." This is exactly what I thought. When the grain and grass are collected, Jingzhou will recruit able-bodied men who are no longer in farming. In this way, we don't need me, a familiar person of the Yellow Turbans, to guard Changsha in winter, because I might become a hindrance to us. Then I should go back to Xiangyang. Sister, it's really a waste of talent to be the chief of grain and grass in Xiangyang. This is the first time I realize that there are so many capable people in Xiangyang City.
One autumn morning, our family, including the Zhou brothers and sisters, and several followers, set out on the road together. As I expected, the teacher fully agreed to let my sister go with me because he thought I was very careless. When I was in school, my case was the most careless. No one helped me take care of it. I didn’t know what kind of mess I would make. This made me very angry. I immediately defended myself, saying that I had already taken care of the matter of going north, and I was much better now than before. Teacher, you really messed up the world. I was speechless.
I went back to my sister. My sister smiled and said, "Your teacher really knows you." I wanted to refute her, but she shut me up again: "If you don't want me to go, just say it."
Zhou Cang is very different from the last time I saw him. Sister, his temperament is better than mine, because he is a person who has been between life and death many times, much better than some people who can only throw stones. I asked him if he had killed anyone. He had killed someone. I asked him how he felt, and his smile immediately froze. He was very uncomfortable the first time, but slowly became numb. Now it seems that he doesn't take it seriously. I think maybe one day I will go to the battlefield, maybe one day I will also be numb. I didn't ask Zhou Yin if she had killed anyone, because seeing her smile so brightly all the way, I didn't want this smile to be replaced by embarrassment and sadness, but I still asked Zhou Cang, and the result was as I thought. After all, fighting is not a game. If Zhou Yin is also a centurion, then it is impossible that she didn't use weapons to kill any bandit.
There were still things to do along the way. For example, Zhou Yin kept pestering me to change her name. I called her Zhou Ying. The word "Yin" was too vulgar. She couldn't do it. It was like a fly. No, no, no. I didn't expect that she had thought of it. I thought I could just deal with it casually, but I was quick-witted. "Just call her Zhou Yu?" It seemed that she was satisfied with this name. I finally dealt with her. My sister didn't say much along the way. She looked at me and her brother and sister fooling around coldly. I thought that maybe my sister was not satisfied with my style, because I was about to become the master of Changsha, and such a demeanor was really not good. I could only secretly warn myself that I had to change it when I arrived in Changsha, so I might as well make a fuss now, otherwise I couldn't make a fuss later. It was quite like a hero going to die.
Changsha City is right in front of me. I straightened my back and searched for the official seal in my bag. This damn guy is still there, and from today on, I am the governor of Changsha City.
It was the autumn of the first year of Zhongping, and I was sixteen years old that year.