Mortal Immortal Gourd

The winter solstice is approaching, the north wind is howling, and the sky and the earth are all white.

Er Gouzi is wearing a torn jacket handed down from his ancestors, with patches on top of each other, but it still can't stop the weeds and catkins stuffed inside from getting in.

His upper body is better, at least he has an torn jacket handed down from his ancestors to keep warm, but his pants are half-cut.

The pants are just above the knees, one leg is longer than the other, and the buttocks are worn into yarn, revealing half of the frozen purple buttocks.

One of the torn straw sandals on his feet also fell off, leaving two rows of footprints of varying depths on the snow.

At this moment, Er Gouzi has tied up a small pile of firewood, which weighs more than 30 kilograms. He should be able to carry it back to the task.

It is not easy to collect firewood now. Every household needs to burn firewood, and trees can't grow enough.

He walked more than a mile and worked for a long time before he dug out the firewood from the snow.

After tying up the firewood, he sat on the firewood, blew hot air on his hands for a few times, and then stuffed them under his armpits to cover them.

He took a few breaths, took out a piece of bran cake from his torn jacket, bit off a piece of it fiercely, and chewed it with his hands.

The bran cake was mixed with a lot of bran and wild vegetables, as well as a small amount of acorns and grass seeds. It scratched his throat when he swallowed it.

This thing is called a cake, but in fact he stole it from the pig food.

Even with such bran cakes, he rarely ate enough.

After eating a bran cake, he licked the residue on his fingers, grabbed a handful of snow from the ground and stuffed it into his mouth and swallowed it.

He sat for a while, feeling that his body had recovered some strength, and then he stood up and carried the firewood to go home.

He was too excited just now, and he was carrying dozens of kilograms of firewood. His feet slipped, and he fell down the slope with the firewood.

"Bang! Bang... Bang!"

Er Gouzi lay on the ground, unable to straighten his waist due to the pain.

When he fell just now, a very hard object hit his waist.

It rubbed a hole in his clothes and a bloody streak on his waist.

He reached out and fumbled around on the snow for a while, and soon found something under the snow.

This was a yellow gourd that looked very ordinary, about one foot high, and the largest part of the diameter was at least as big as a human head.

There was still a little blood stain on the lid of the gourd.

At this moment, the little blood stain was disappearing, and it seemed to have seeped into the gourd.

When he opened the lid of the gourd, he found that it was a mess inside and he couldn't see anything clearly.

Er Gouzi thought to himself that this thing was very good for holding water.

He worked outside every day, and often couldn't drink water.

But this gourd was a little too big, it would be better if it could be smaller.

Just as this thought came to his mind, the gourd actually shrunk a circle.

Er Gouzi couldn't believe his eyes a little bit. He rubbed his eyes and confirmed that the gourd was really an inch taller.

"Smaller!"

This time, Er Gouzi stared at the gourd in his hand with his eyes wide open.

Sure enough, the gourd shrunk another circle right under his nose and now became about five inches tall.

"Smaller!"

"Smaller!"

Accompanied by a dizziness, the yellow gourd has shrunk about an inch.

It was because he was dizzy, nauseous, and his fingers were trembling slightly.

This situation of the body was probably related to the gourd, and he didn't dare to continue trying.

If he fainted in this icy and snowy place, he would become a cold corpse before tomorrow morning.

After playing with the shrunken gourd for a while, he temporarily stuffed it into the interlayer of his clothes, then tremblingly carried the firewood and walked downstairs.

On the way back, he slipped several times in the snow.

The remaining broken straw sandal was completely dismembered and could no longer be worn, so he walked barefoot in the snow.

After passing two small bunkhouses, he finally saw Shexi Village at his feet.

There was a stream in the center of the village, and many adobe thatched houses were located on both sides of the stream.

Among them, a few houses covered with green tiles were extremely eye-catching among the pile of thatched houses. They were naturally the rare wealthy families in Shexi Village.

At this time, it was getting dark, and Er Gouzi carried firewood and walked through the door of a tiled house.

The door was half open, but he stopped and stood at the door, a little hesitant, as if he didn't have the courage to step through the door.

"You're still dawdling after leaving the house! Go fetch water and feed the pigs."

Just then, a hoarse female voice came from inside the house.

He saw a fat woman standing at the door, with greasy hair, wearing a set of greasy cotton clothes and trousers, glaring at Er Gouzi.

"You only know how to eat, and you're lazy when you do something. You only pick up this little firewood in a day!"

Er Gouzi quickly forced a smile on his frozen face, lowered his head, shook off the snow on his body, and then carried the firewood and walked into the door.

"Your damned parents passed away early. If I hadn't squeezed out some food from my teeth, you would have starved to death."

"You are sick all day long. People who don't know would think that I abused you!"

"Yes, yes! Thank you for saving my life, aunt!"

Er Gouzi smiled and thanked, then put the firewood into the woodshed with his hands and feet.

He picked up the shoulder pole and bucket behind the door, and went out barefoot without changing his shoes.

He carried three loads of water and filled the water tank.

Then he swept the house, boiled a basin of hot water for his aunt to soak her feet, and fed a pig.

While feeding the pig, he was so hungry that he even stole a ball of pig food to eat half full.

There are a lot of wild vegetables in the pig food, and a little grain, so the food is not worse than Er Gouzi's.

In the past, he got up early and went to bed late every day, doing so much work. If he hadn't often stolen pig food, he would not be alive now.

Anyway, the meat grown by pigs eating pig food must be eaten by people, so it is better to eat some pig food directly, which is almost the same as eating pork.

If you can survive, it doesn't matter if you eat some pig food and suffer a little humiliation.

When I finished all the chores at home, it was completely dark, and my aunt's family had already crawled into the warm bed.

It was only then that Er Gouzi held up a burning pine knot and walked into the main hall for dinner.

Lighting lamps consume too much oil. Except for my cousin studying at night, my aunt did not allow others to light oil lamps.

There was a fairy table in the middle of the main hall, and there were a few sets of leftover bowls and chopsticks on the table.

In the dim light of the burning pine knot, there are still some leftovers in the bowl, which is his dinner.

He eats two meals a day, one in the morning and then goes out to collect firewood, and eats dinner after finishing all the chores in the evening.

Once, because he was too hungry, he came to eat before finishing his work, and was scolded by his aunt.

Now there is a long scar on his arm, which was caused by his aunt using fire tongs.

There is still a little cold porridge left in the five coarse pottery bowls on the table, and there is still half a bowl of cold porridge left in one of the small bowls.

Er Gouzi picked up this half bowl of cold porridge, and drank it up after a few "slurps".

There are actually a few pickled vegetable shreds hidden under this bowl of cold porridge.

The pickled vegetables tasted so good that he couldn't bear to chew them, but put them in his mouth and sucked them carefully.

With the smell of pickles, he licked the cold porridge left on the edge of the bowl clean.

There was also a little cold porridge left in the remaining bowls, which he licked clean.

After eating the bowl, he used the rice to scrape the little bit left in the rice cooker and ate it.

Although it was leftovers, it was much better than pig food, but the amount was too small.

After eating, he washed the pots and bowls and went into his bedroom.

His room was very simple, with a broken bed covered with a thick layer of straw.

There were two pairs of new straw shoes woven with straw hanging on the wall of the room.

He woven them in his spare time at night, and they should be able to sell for two cents.

There were more than a dozen copper coins at the foot of the wooden bed, which was all the wealth he had secretly saved.

Er Gouzi had been busy since morning and was already tired and uncomfortable.

Now lying in the haystack, it was so comfortable!

He took out the thumb-sized yellow gourd from his arms.

I don't know where this gourd came from, but from the magical features it has shown so far, it is definitely a treasure.

At least this gourd can hold a lot of water. He just poured it in the stream for a long time, but he couldn't fill the gourd.

Er Gouzi opened the lid and drank a mouthful of water from the gourd.

"Huh!"

He found that the water inside was no longer bitter.

The surrounding area of ​​Shexi Village is full of bitter water, bitter and astringent. Those who have the conditions will add a few pieces of tea leaves to cover it.

He drank several more times in a row and confirmed that it was not his illusion. The water in the gourd was really not bitter, and there was a hint of sweetness.

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