EBE Chapter 2 How much does the girl cost?
Chapter 2 How much does the girl cost?
Chapter 2 How much does the girl cost?
Wang Wenzhou pointed to Gao Guilan kneeling on the ground and said, "Look everyone, what a beautiful young girl. Buying her will not only help her fulfill her wish and do good deeds, but it will also bring us joy. She's young and beautiful, and we can play all sorts of games with her."
"Haha..." The onlookers burst into laughter.
Gao Guilan's face flushed instantly, and tears streamed down her face like a kite with a broken string. She was a young lady from a wealthy family; she had never heard such words before. At that moment, her heart was filled with resentment.
"By the way..." Wang Wenzhou turned around and asked, "Miss, how much are you selling it for?"
Gao Guilan lowered her head deeply and said softly, "Guilan couldn't bear to see her grandfather's soul return to his hometown, so she inquired and found that if she were to find a corpse driver to send him back, it would cost forty taels of silver."
"Tsk tsk...too expensive. A maid of this size only costs seven or eight taels of silver."
"I don't know what this young girl is thinking. She insists on buying the best coffin, a coffin made of Phoebe zhennan wood, which costs more than thirty taels of silver!"
"If it weren't so expensive, I would have bought it long ago."
Listening to the discussion, Wang Wenzhou laughed inwardly. "Not a bad idea! They've fallen to this state, yet they still buy the best coffin! They can't bury a living person directly; that would definitely give them away."
The corpse-transporters were definitely accomplices. A few of them took the money and left first, while the woman tried to sneak away later, perhaps even helping the buyer move. These swindlers are not only unprofessional, but also incredibly ruthless. Even though this little girl is quite pretty, she shouldn't be sold for such a high price.
Wang Wenzhou looked at Lao Cheng and said, "Old sir, you are clearly a kind person. This girl is obviously literate. If you buy her and take her home, you can hold her and recite poems or paint pictures. How elegant that would be!"
Liu Laosan chimed in, "That's right, Lao Cheng, you're not short of that little bit of money."
"This is an insult to civility!" Old Cheng's expression changed, and he flicked his sleeve.
In ancient times, the relationships between maids and male masters in wealthy households were purely platonic. Most maids would be sent out of the mansion to marry around the age of twenty, or be married off to male servants by their masters. Occasionally, a lucky one might be promoted to concubine.
Old Cheng is over fifty years old. As a scholar, he still has his pride. He doesn't want people to gossip about him for being disrespectful and ruining the young girl.
“Boss Liu, you could consider it too. You run an inn, so buying it would not only bring you joy, but also entertain guests occasionally and earn you a little extra money,” Wang Wenzhou joked with Liu Laosan.
"Haha... Liu Laosan, I think you should just give up running this inn and turn it into a brothel instead," someone laughed.
Gao Guilan lowered her head even further, clenched her fists tightly, and bit her lip.
"Haha... You think it's too expensive?" Wang Wenzhou laughed and said, "Boss Liu, you can do it this way. Find a few more friends, each of them contributes one or two taels of silver, 40 people will be enough. Then each person can use it for a few days, you're happy, I'm happy, everyone's happy!"
"Haha...that's a great idea!"
"How about we call more people, and if each person contributes one coin, I'll be the first to pay."
"Go away! Meat buns still cost two coins each!"
The onlookers started to cheer and make jokes.
As the saying goes, rivals are enemies, and Wang Wenzhou thought it was time to play a trick on his colleague who played the corpse. Judging by his acting alone, this "corpse brother" was incredibly composed. Even as he was playing pranks on the female con artist, the "corpse brother" could still calmly play dead. His acting was on par with Leonardo DiCaprio's; he'd definitely win an Oscar.
"Alas..." Wang Wenzhou sighed dramatically, walked to the side of the corpse brother, pulled off the white cloth covering the corpse brother, and said in a pained voice, "Fellow elders of Hanshan, look at this, Miss Xing's grandfather is in such a state, why is there no kind-hearted person to help him?"
After saying that, Wang Wenzhou looked down and was startled. The corpse's makeup was really good; its face was pale, and it lay motionless on the mat with great professionalism. It was truly the quality of a professional actor, even more professional than many actors who played corpses in TV dramas, whose corpses often looked like they were still breathing.
Wang Wenzhou squatted down, and to outsiders it looked like he was tidying up the corpse, but in reality he was secretly using force to try and wake the corpse up.
"Wow! What great acting!" Wang Wenzhou pinched him, but the Corpse Brother seemed not to feel any pain and remained motionless.
"Are there no kind-hearted people in such a large county as Hanshan?" Wang Wenzhou asked, sounding like a crocodile tear.
"Let's see you pretend!" Wang Wenzhou tightened his grip and twisted the corpse several times, but it still didn't budge.
"If I don't do something drastic today, you won't wake up, will you?" This time, Wang Wenzhou used a lot of force, picked up a piece of flesh from the corpse brother, and spun it around hard.
"Something's not right..." Wang Wenzhou was somewhat surprised. Even a normal person couldn't withstand such force. Could this "corpse brother" really be a dead person?
Thinking of this, Wang Wenzhou placed his hand on the zombie's wrist to feel its pulse, "Oh my god!"
Wang Wenzhou was stunned. This zombie wasn't just a good actor; it was a natural performance. It was truly dead.
He tilted his head to look at the little girl, whose head was bowed low and whose face was already covered in tears.
"Sigh!" Wang Wenzhou's heart was touched by something, and a deep sense of guilt overwhelmed him. A young girl had lost her loved ones, yet he had assumed she was a con artist and had gloated over her misfortune. Now, he realized she was clearly not a con artist; he had been judging her with his own petty mind.
"Who said there are no good people in Hanshan?"
Suddenly someone shouted, and then several well-dressed young men with folding fans pushed through the crowd and squeezed in.
The man in the lead bent down, using his fan to lift Gao Guilan's head, and leered at her for a moment before saying, "Not bad looking, how much?"
This man was named Ma Deyun, a local bully in Hanshan County. Relying on his father's status as a martial arts graduate, he terrorized the village. Besides his father's connections, Ma Deyun also had his own pride; he was a genuine scholar.
Gao Guilan was already in tears. She was originally a lady from a respectable family. Her grandfather and father were businessmen. Although her father had been away for the past few years and there had been no news of him, the Gao family was still considered very wealthy. Unexpectedly, life is unpredictable, and she had fallen to the point of selling herself into slavery.
She was truly desperate. Penniless and without relatives, Hanshan was over a thousand miles from her hometown, a journey that would take many days. She had considered begging her way home, but then she thought, by the time she arrived, her grandfather's body would be rotting, and he might be eaten by wild dogs…
Death is a serious matter, and burial is the proper way to ensure peace. As a granddaughter, how could I allow my beloved grandfather, with whom I depended on each other, to be left to rot in the wilderness? This is utterly outrageous!
She initially thought the fat young man was trying to help her, but little did she know he was there to humiliate her. Now, another young man had arrived, handsome and dashing, but his tone was as if he were speaking to a courtesan in a brothel.
Gao Guilan bit her lip lightly and said softly, "Forty taels."
Ma Deyun frowned and said softly, "It is a bit expensive."
Ma Deyun hesitated for a moment, then turned to his companions and said, "Brothers, let's chip in. I'll contribute twenty taels."
Ma Deyun's three companions were Sun Feng, Yang Shan, and Lin Qing. The four came from similar backgrounds and were of similar age. They were all scholars from Hanshan County and were known as the Four Great Talents of Hanshan.
"Brother Ma, it's too expensive. I think we should forget about it," said Sun Feng, Ma Deyun's good friend.
When Wang Wenzhou felt that the "corpse brother" had no pulse, he knew these two weren't liars. When he saw the little girl's tears, he regretted playing a trick on her. Such a cute little girl, if she lived in later years, would definitely be the school beauty at some high school.
Now four idiot youths who wanted to have a group sex arrived, and Wang Wenzhou, still having some conscience, said, "Gentlemen, I'm sorry, but I'll buy this girl."
"Hey! Where did this fatso come from? Girl, we'll pay forty-one taels of silver!" Sun Feng had just been complaining to Ma Deyun that it was a bit expensive, but when he heard Wang Wenzhou's words, he got angry.
"Forty-two taels!" Wang Wenzhou was furious. When other people transmigrate, they usually end up in the body of a handsome man, but he ended up as a fatso! He was already frustrated with his current physique, and these idiots dared to call him a fatso. Don't they know better than to insult someone by pointing out their flaws?
Sun Feng sized up Mao Chengdou and sneered, "Brother Pig, with a body as robust as yours, if you bought a girl, you'd crush her to death in one night! Girl, we'll offer forty-three taels!"
"Girl, have you thought this through? You absolutely mustn't go with Brother Pig! It would be life-threatening!" Yang Shan laughed.
"Brother Pig, you're so ugly, don't go around ruining young girls!" Lin Qing added insult to injury.
"Brother Pig, I think you should go to the vegetable market in the east of the city and buy a few sows. It'll save you money and won't delay your business!" Ma Deyun joked.
"Haha..." The crowd burst into laughter, staggering and falling over.