Chapter 372 Go to Taiyuan
One thousand coins were obviously an outrageous price, but the middle-aged man didn’t have any reaction after hearing this. Soon, he took out one thousand coins and put them on the table.
Cripple Xu immediately took the money and put them into his pocket, more quickly than drinking wine.
Seeing one thousand coins disappear in front of him, the young man was shocked and suddenly felt very unhappy. Even though the people in this small town worked hard all year round, they wouldn’t save one thousand coins. But the bookworm in front of him took them out without any hesitation.
He was not only stupid but also completely unaware of the world’s suffering. Such a scholar had nothing but his family background. Of course, he was a good-for-nothing because he had no reaction to Cripple Xu and his conversation about the state’s affairs just now.
Moreover, after his passionate speech about the two generations of Prince An, the other side was just busy eating and drinking. The young man was sure that even an ordinary farmer in the small town, who was illiterate, would not be unmoved by the stories of the two generations of Prince An.
So the young man was very unhappy.
He squinted at the middle-aged man and snorted from his nose. “Are you a scholar?”
The middle-aged man was slightly surprised by this sudden question, but he answered immediately, “Yes, I barely am.”
The young man raised his jaw higher and said aggressively, “Since you’re a scholar, you should be concerned about people and the world. Do you know the battle in Taiyuan? What do you think about it? Which side do you think will win?”
The middle-aged man with gray hair smiled lightly, and he was easygoing, but he answered with great confidence, “The Pinglu Army will win.”
“The Pinglu Army will win?”
The young man laughed and looked at the middle-aged man with strong contempt. “Do you know the battle situation in Taiyuan? How dare you talk nonsense! If I were a minister of the imperial court, I would send the pedantic scholars like you to fight on the battlefield so that you would know what fear was, instead of making irresponsible remarks!”
Unexpectedly, the middle-aged man nodded slightly. “I’m going to Taiyuan.”
The young man was a little stunned, and then, he sneered. “Go to die?”
The middle-aged man smiled casually and didn’t mind that, but he stopped talking to the young man and turned to leave the shed.
“Please, wait.”
At this point, Cripple Xu suddenly stood up with a solemn look. He put away the tobacco pipe. Looking at the middle-aged man, he asked in a deep voice, “Don’t you know that this meal is not worth one thousand coins?”
The young man snorted and was about to say that he didn’t know.
But the middle-aged man said, “Yes, I know.”
“Then why don’t you say no?” asked Cripple Xu.
The middle-aged man smiled. “If I don’t give you the money, I think this fellow will force me by momentum and power.”
The fellow he said, of course, referred to the young man.
The burly young man’s face darkened.
The middle-aged man was right. He often did this. In fact, he hurried over because he saw the middle-aged man enter the shed. He aimed at him long ago. This gentle, weak scholar was the target of their prey.
However, the other side knew what to do, so he didn’t make a move.
This was the truth, but the young man was very unhappy as the middle-aged man said he would force him by momentum and power. With a gloomy face, he moved closer to the middle-aged man and was about to speak.
Cripple Xu motioned him not to move and spoke first, “Now, do you need the extra money back?”
The young man was a little stunned and didn’t understand why Cripple Xu would ask this. Cripple Xu looked like he would discuss it with the middle-aged man if the middle-aged man’s answer was yes. This was not his style.
But the middle-aged man’s answer was once again beyond the young man’s expectations. He said, “I wouldn’t give the money to you just now if I wanted the extra money back.”
“Don’t you dare?!” The young man finally couldn’t stand the middle-aged man’s behavior. This guy’s calm and easygoing look made him very unhappy.
Cripple Xu ignored the young man but continued to ask the middle-aged man in a deeper voice, “Why did you pay so much money?”
The middle-aged man said, “If I’m right, you’re a veteran. You have fought on the battlefield and killed many people. And in Hedong, the war was mostly on the northern border.”
It wasn’t difficult for him to figure it out because Cripple Xu’s murderous spirit had not yet disappeared.
He continued, “You were crippled, so you left the army after being injured. You once fought for the country, bled, and were injured. You made contributions to the country, so you should have been supported by the country. You’re old and infirm now, but you can’t enjoy your old age and have to manage this wine shed... It is the fault of the country not to let the hero live in glory, enjoy the happiness of his family, and be respected by people.”
He sighed slightly. “Without your effort to fight for the border, the Tang Empire would collapse. This little money is nothing.”
Cripple Xu stood stunned there. His hands were trembling, and his eyes were red.
As the middle-aged man said, he once guarded the border, fought bloody battles, had a narrow escape from death, and was seriously injured. The best years of his life were devoted to the bitter, cold border.
Once he was injured and his leg was broken, he withdrew from the border. There was nothing left for the rest of his life but a small amount of money from the army.
Glory?
No.
Ample food and clothing? They didn’t exist at all.
Because of the inconvenience of movement, the money given by the army was spent in the first few years. He lived a tough life in the following two decades. No one cared about his glory, no one remembered his exploits, and no one regarded him as a hero. Everyone’s heart was in the pursuit of self-interest.
This was the way of the world.
With his disabled leg, he struggled to survive and suffered difficulties and humiliation in the country he had fought for. In the end, life made him throw away the glory which was once more important than his life.
During the past twenty years, he had become a philistine. He kept a wine shed, but he was always trying to get more money out of the guests. Because of this, he, sometimes, asked the young man next to him to threaten the guests with power.
He had to do so. Otherwise, he would starve to death a few years later when his leg was so immobile that he couldn’t work.
Since the country couldn’t let him enjoy his old age, he had to save more for himself.
This was him, Cripple Xu.
He was philistine, deceitful, and stingy with money. He had bad conduct. But he never hurt people’s lives.
But today, someone told him he was a hero. He was remembered as a hero!
He forgot it. When he endured difficulties in a leaky house, he had already forgotten it.
But the man even said that it was the fault of the country to fail to support them.
No one understood Cripple Xu for the past twenty years. His eyes turned red now.
The young man also stood stunned there. He didn’t expect that the middle-aged man, who was useless in his view, would say such words.
The middle-aged man saluted to Cripple Xu and walked away after leaving a word.
Seeing the middle-aged man walking away on the official road, Cripple Xu brought back his mind and slowly sat down again. He smoked, trembling. A long time later, he said, “He’s not simple.”
With his sharp eyes, he suspected this long ago. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had that conversation.
The young man was not convinced. He sat down before the table with his legs crossed. He said, “Even though he knew that you once joined the border army, it meant nothing. He said he was going to Taiyuan. What can he do in Taiyuan? Go to die? He said the Pinglu Army would win, but they are about to collapse. No one can save them. Can he? Who does he think he is? Prince An? That’s ridiculous!”
Cripple Xu didn’t speak. He was just smoking.
A long time later, he finished smoking. And at this time, the middle-aged man reached the front of the town. Putting down the tobacco pipe, Cripple Xu said, “If he didn’t give the extra money and you fought him, you would suffer losses.”
The young man immediately got angry. “I’ll suffer losses? How is that possible! He is just a weak scholar and has no fluctuation of Spiritual Qi. How can he defeat me?”
Cripple Xu sneered. “You have not yet achieved the Qi-refining stage. Any practitioner can hide from your sensation of Spiritual Qi.”
The young man sneered. “He’s a practitioner of Qi-refining? Bullsh*t!”
Before he could finish his words, his expression changed suddenly.
He immediately stood up.
Cripple Xu stood up as well.
A cavalry composed of about twenty people rushed straight to the town on the official road. Hearing the leader shouting, the people of the small town were frightened and began to run back home.
“It’s B*stard Wang! He is coming to collect grain again. He has come last month!” The young man gnashed his teeth.
These were the troops from the county.
The battle in Hedong didn’t last long, and the grain reserves of the prefectures and Taiyuan were far from exhausted. However, at this time, some officials began to force ordinary people to hand in grain under the guise of the need for the battle.
Eventually, they would hand in some of the grain, and they would keep the rest.
After they handed in some of the grain, the prefectures and Taiyuan wouldn’t blame them. Since they volunteered to collect grain for the army, they would be praised for showing their loyalty. And the rest of the grain they kept became their personal possessions.
Of course, they couldn’t do that at ordinary times. But during the war, things were messy and out of order. Everything should serve the war. Many places lacked supervision, so officials would take advantage of the opportunity.
They made money during the war.
The young man was filled with indignation. “When B*stard Wang came last time, he had already collected all the surplus grain of every family in our small town. They come again this time. Do they want us to surrender our last resource?”
Cripple Xu was also indignant, but he could do nothing. He retired from the army for more than twenty years, and he was an old cripple now. What could he do when he faced the formal cavalry?
He sighed. “I’m afraid some people will be forced to die this time. I heard that when B*stard Wang came last time, he took a fancy to Pockmark Xu’s daughter. I’m afraid this time...”
Cripple Xu had an experience of this kind of thing because he experienced it before.
The young man was furious. “B*stard! Xu’s daughter is less than 15 years old! I’m going to fight them!”
Cripple Xu hurriedly pulled him. “You are not powerful enough to defeat them!”
The young man broke free of Cripple Xu. Like an angry leopard, he lost his mind. “I have to fight them even though I’m not powerful enough! As long as I can kill B*stard Wang, it’s not a big deal to escape into the mountains and be a mountain bandit from now on!
This was one of the reasons why there were many mountain bandits in troubled times.
Cripple Xu couldn’t stop the young man. His eyes were full of despair as he saw him run out. He knew that the young man couldn’t deal with B*stard Wang because B*stard Wang’s cultivation was at Level 1 of Qi-refining. In this case, the young man would be more ominous than propitious.
Cripple Xu and the young man cheated many guests before, and he was not a good man. But the young man lost his parents in his teens, went through numerous hardships on his own, and lived a difficult life. To Cripple Xu who had no children, he regarded the young man as his son.
The young man often accompanied this bad-tempered old man, making him not so lonely. Over the years, the young man carried him home several times when he was drunk and fell. When he was sick and had no money for medicine, the young man went up the mountain to gather herbs for his treatment at the risk of being targeted by wolves and tigers.
They were neither good nor important, but they had their own joys and sorrows, and their own stories.
When Cripple Xu watched the young man rush out like mad, it was as if he watched his comrades rush toward the enemy army alone on the battlefield. They were doomed to have no return, but he could do nothing.
In the past, he fought a bloody battle for the country against the barbarians outside the Great Wall. But now, in this country, his friend was going to die in the brutal and cold-blooded officials’ hands.
Cripple Xu was full of sadness and couldn’t stand anymore, feeling the sky and the ground were spinning.
But he did not fall.
Because the young man stopped before he could reach the cavalry.
Cripple Xu got stunned.
The young man opened his mouth wide in astonishment.
The twenty cavalrymen from the county were now rushing to the middle-aged man with gray hair.
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