Royal Gold Magistrate

After Zhao Dong left, the workers gathered together and joyfully began to allocate bed spaces.

They had all lived through hard times, so they didn’t care much about bed assignments.

They used to sleep on the ground, so now having a bed with bedding, whether upper or lower bunk, was fine anywhere.

Soon everyone had been assigned a place, and each person settled their belongings on their own bed.

Chen Siwu was lucky and got a lower bunk.

He sat cross-legged on the bed, staring blankly for a while.

Then he bent down and pulled out a washbasin from under the bed.

Inside, there was indeed a cloth, a small piece of soap, and a frayed willow twig.

The wooden basin and cloth looked particularly cheap, and the soap was pitifully small.

The willow twig for brushing teeth was even less worth mentioning, as it could be found anywhere.

Chen Siwu just sat there holding the basin, looking at the few insignificant items inside.

He fell into silence.

Chen Siwu was just an ordinary, unremarkable farmer. When floods destroyed his village, he had made his way to Jianjiang City, barely surviving by scavenging for food along the way.

On this journey, both his parents had died, his wife had starved to death, and his child had eaten something bad and died of diarrhea halfway through.

When his parents passed, Chen Siwu had held back his grief, thinking that his wife and child still needed him, so he had to keep going, searching for food in the wasteland every day.

By the time his wife and child died, Chen Siwu felt no pain in his heart. He just stared blankly at the bodies of mother and child, as if they were someone else’s relatives who had passed. He simply buried them and continued on his way.

Chen Siwu had probably reached the depths of misery.

His heart seemed to be frozen, completely numb. Driven only by survival instinct, he had trudged on like a walking corpse until he reached Jianjiang City.

But when he arrived outside the city and saw the disaster relief soup kitchens, drinking that thin, tasteless porridge, his stomach still burned uncomfortably.

Every day, he just barely managed to stay alive, with no hope to speak of.

But since the new official took office in Jianjiang… everything seemed to have changed.

This person didn’t seem to act like an official at all.

From his speech to his actions, he was more like a hooligan from the village entrance.

Yet somehow, this kind of person had stirred emotions in Chen Siwu that had long been dormant.

The stagnant pond of his life began to ripple.

Life also seemed to be getting better bit by bit.

The porridge outside the city was getting thicker.

But he knew in his heart that no matter how thick the porridge from the government soup kitchens became, it would disappear one day.

Now, in the hot weather, they could still survive. But in a few months, if starvation didn’t kill them, the cold would.

But as wooden houses began to be built on a large scale outside the city, and countless disaster victims were led into the city and given new pants,

Chen Siwu’s heart began to rekindle hope.

Finally, it was his turn to move into this wooden house. Although it was extremely simple, it gave people a warm feeling of being protected.

The ice in his heart began to melt slowly.

The wound that had been frozen seemed to be torn open again.

Chen Siwu’s eyes went from moist to shedding the first tear.

Then the tears flowed like a broken dam.

The pain in his heart felt like it would tear him apart.

Chen Siwu clutched his chest and wailed: “Mother… my child…..”

The sound of crying spread throughout the dormitory, but no one looked at Chen Siwu strangely.

Some silently watched him cry.

Some quietly covered their faces with cloth.

Others stuffed the cloth into their mouths, biting down hard to avoid making crying sounds.

A group of people with similar experiences gathered together, silently bearing the suddenly unleashed sorrow.

After a long while, Chen Siwu stopped wailing. He carefully placed the wooden basin beside him, then buried his head between his knees.

Everyone stayed on their beds without saying a word. Who knows how long it was, but the sky had already darkened.

Finally, someone wanted to break the silence. He got up from his bed, walked to the window and opened it.

The cool evening breeze immediately blew in, dispersing much of the melancholy atmosphere.

Then Chen Siwu heard someone speaking: “We start work tomorrow.”

“We’ll have good days ahead.”

By now, many people were sitting cross-legged on their beds, chatting with each other across the beds.

Chen Siwu also raised his head, looking at everyone with his swollen red eyes.

Silently listening to the conversations around him.

“Don’t feel bad, everyone. We start work tomorrow.”

“Once we start working, we’ll earn money. Then we can have a good life. At least now we won’t freeze or starve!”

“The Crown Prince is here! What do we have to fear? The past is past.”

“Hey everyone, what are your names? Let’s get to know each other. We have a long road ahead!”

With this reminder, everyone suddenly realized.

This group of people still didn’t know each other.

So they all started introducing themselves.

Chen Siwu was still feeling a bit down, but after being pulled into the conversation, he felt much better.

The chattering voices around him became more and more excited.

“What do you think… we’ll eat tomorrow?”

“I know! I heard that the Sun family used to give workers porridge, twice a day.”

“Damn! How is that different from the soup kitchen? The porridge in the soup kitchen was already good enough. How much more porridge can we drink? And we have to work too. I feel like we’ve been tricked!”

“Don’t be hasty, I haven’t finished!”

“There are two cloth shops in the city, the Sun family and the Liu family both sell cloth. When the Liu family found out that the Sun family was giving workers porridge, they immediately started giving workers dry food to eat. I heard they even had pickled vegetables!”

“The Sun family was cursed badly in the city, so later they also changed to dry food. Besides pickled vegetables, there were other dishes too. I heard they even had meat once a week!”

“Hey! How do you know all this? Haven’t we been together the whole time?”

“Are you blind? When we left the city, there was such a big sign at the yamen gate, and someone was explaining all this!”

Chen Siwu grinned.

He guessed it must have been the good work of the government officials.

The discussion continued.

“Hey, do you know? I heard from my friend that there’s a really skilled carpenter in the city called Master Qi. His work is so beautiful!”

“My friend said he saw Master Fang talking with the Sun family master and Master Qi at the construction site!”

“They said it wasn’t good for workers to sit on the ground to eat, as they could catch a cold, and squatting was tiring. So they asked Master Qi to make some kind of thing.”

Chen Siwu’s eyes lit up, and he asked curiously: “What kind of thing?”

“Oh! It’s really something.”

“I heard it’s quite a big thing that we can sit on to eat. On one end there’s a donkey, like turning a millstone, that can drive something called a conveyor belt.”

“I didn’t really understand the details, but we just sit there! And the food and soup can be fed right into our mouths.”

“After eating, we can go straight back to work.”

Chen Siwu exclaimed in amazement: “Isn’t that being waited on hand and foot? This Master Qi is too amazing!”

“Master Qi is nothing! I heard it was designed by Master Fang! He was talking so happily with Master Sun at the time, and Master Qi was just taking notes on the side!”

Chen Siwu’s face was full of admiration: “Master Fang is really something else!”

“Yeah! With Master Fang here, how could we not live a good life?”

“Mm-hm!”