e-booksonline Chapter 277 Plum Wine
Chapter 277 Plum Wine
After knocking out the melon seeds and watching the show, Qin He stretched and wandered around Liucheng.
The army attacked the city, the atmosphere in the whole city was tense, and the streets looked very depressed.
There are dead branches and fallen leaves everywhere, mixed with ice and snow, and pedestrians come and go in a hurry.
Very few shops are open.
The only thing that can be considered lively is the newly opened Qingniu Immortal Temple.
With Feiyuwei, 300 soldiers, and the young and strong defenders of the city, the people passed it on from one to ten, and the small abandoned Town God's Temple regained its popularity after a makeover.
Qin He took a look around, and went into a tavern that was still open two streets away.
The tavern is not big, there are two or three tables, the curtains are tightly tied, and there is a heater in the corner. As soon as you enter, you can feel a warm breath on your face, which is very comfortable.
"Shopkeeper, you can serve as much good wine and food as you want." Qin He sat down at the table and greeted the shopkeeper.
Perhaps it was too early, and there were no customers in the tavern, only an old shopkeeper with white hair was cleaning the cabinet table.
"Ahem...Guest officer, please wait for a moment." The old shopkeeper coughed, and a smile appeared on his wrinkled face.
After a while, "good wine and good food" was served.
A dish of salted beans, a dish of pickles, a dish of dried plums, and a pot of wine.
"Shopkeeper, that's all... that's all?" Qin He was a little disappointed, and originally planned to come out to eat some meat.
"Guest officer, that's all that's left." The old shopkeeper shook his head slowly, and said: "The dishes are not good, but this plum wine is made by my grandson and grandson-in-law. The guest officer is new here, so you can try it. Flavor."
"How does the shopkeeper know that I'm here for the first time?" Qin He was a little surprised. He changed his appearance and imitated the local accent. He never expected to be recognized by the old shopkeeper at a glance.
"The loess is buried up to the neck, and they are all doing business in the neighborhood. New customers will naturally know when they first come." The old shopkeeper smiled and poured wine for Qin He.
"The shopkeeper is very polite."
Qin He quickly put his hands up, and when the wine was full, he took a sip, his eyes lit up.
"Good wine!"
The plum wine is slightly sweet, not harsh or pungent, not dry in the mouth, but warm and moist in the throat, especially the fragrance of plums, which is refreshing and very comfortable to drink.
To make such fruit wine, good food, water and craftsmanship are essential, and the plums must be picked at the right time. If any link is missing, this wine cannot be produced.
"Guest officer drink slowly, this is the last jug left." The old shopkeeper slowly put down the jug.
"Just one jug left?" Qin He felt a little regretful at once, thinking that if you still have this, buy a few jugs and go back and drink slowly.
"There is a severe drought this year, and the plum trees outside the city are all withered. There will be no more plum wine in the future." The old shopkeeper shook his head, with a trace of loneliness and loneliness on his face.
"Thousands of sails pass by the side of the sunken boat, ten thousand trees spring before the sick tree, old trees wither, and new trees sprout. It will flourish again in a few years." Qin He comforted.
But the old shopkeeper shook his head and said: "No, even if there are plums, there will be no one left."
"Why?"
Qin He asked with a smile, stretched out his hand and pushed away the stool next to him, motioning for the other party to sit down and chat.
There is wine and food, but the story is missing.
After chatting with the old shopkeeper, I found out that Liucheng not only experienced a severe drought, but also a plague broke out in the middle of the year.
The people in the city fled and died until the cold winter and the plague receded. There were less than 10,000 people left in the city from the original 40,000 to 50,000 people.
The neighbors are surrounded by ten rooms and nine are empty, and the tavern has no food, no plums and no customers, so it has long been unable to operate.
After selling out the last bit of stored wine, the store will be closed.
"Where's your grandson and grandson-in-law?" Qin He asked.
"I ran away from the plague in the middle of the year. I originally planned to take me with me, but my old bones couldn't move, so I stayed. I survived the plague by luck, but I didn't know that my grandson who escaped the plague What about the daughter-in-law?" The old shopkeeper shook his head and sighed, his face full of worry.
Qin He couldn't help being silent for a while.
Natural disasters and man-made disasters continue in Lu land, and bandits are everywhere. If you don't escape, you will die, and if you escape, you will be close to death.
The old shopkeeper is very old, if the grandson and granddaughter-in-law unfortunately go early, even if there are customers in this tavern, there will be no one to make wine.
In his dying years, the rest of his life is cold, the old shopkeeper has been running the tavern all his life, and this small tavern is his spirit.
Once a person loses energy, he will be fast.
After a moment of silence, Qin He smiled slightly, and said, "Don't worry, shopkeeper, after the New Year's Eve, the land of Lu is in chaos, and your grandson and daughter-in-law will come back. The weather will be good in the coming year, and there will be plums and wine. "
The old shopkeeper was taken aback when he heard this, and he cupped his hands and said with a smile: "Thank you, officer, for your comfort, I will save my life." The words obviously did not believe Qin He's words.
Seeing this, Qin He said again: "My words are not nonsense to comfort, but the art of observing the face. Judging from the appearance of the shopkeeper, there are younger generations who will die."
When the old shopkeeper heard it, his cloudy eyes immediately lit up a little, and he hurriedly asked: "Is this objectively true?"
"Of course it's true." Qin He nodded.
...
After a long time, Qin He left the tavern and was escorted out by the old shopkeeper.
Walking on the empty streets, most of the surrounding houses are leaky, and the snow has not been cleaned. They are all empty houses, and many doors and windows still have signs of being stolen.
Sparse smoke rises, gloomy clouds.
Unlike the "hustle and bustle" of the canal docks, the only scene of troubled times reflected elsewhere is depression.
The living are hungry and thin like ghosts, and the city is decaying like a ghost city.
What happened to the old shopkeeper is just a small microcosm of the troubled times.
Countless refugees left and never came back. No one knew where they went, they just disappeared without a trace.
When the prosperity reincarnates, the living space left by them will soon be filled by the new population.
Repeatedly, one cycle after another.
Qin He has no motivation to intervene in such a process, or rather, he does not know the meaning of such an intervention.
He was just chasing the reward for burning the corpse, walking forward step by step based on his feeling.
Unless, the technological revolution of later generations broke out.
But the question is, this is a low martial arts cultivation world, where monsters and monsters cannibalize people, and alien knights are rampant, will it be the same as the future generations?
Qin He doesn't know either, so let's take a step at a time.
Back to the old shopkeeper.
Qin He knew that the old shopkeeper's grandson and grandson-in-law were no longer alive after sweeping the qi technique.
The whole world is in chaos, and the lucky ones who escaped and survived are very few, and most of them are just buried in another place.
But what Qin He said to the old shopkeeper was not nonsense comfort, it was true that someone would die for the old shopkeeper.
Life is so amazing.