Chapter 2: Pick Up the Second Brother

Chapter 2

However, the Buddha clearly did not know them.

After just two meals, the rice in Jiang Sheng's little sack was gone.

Jiang Sheng worriedly looked at the little young master, wondering where on earth they could find more food to eat.

Zheng Ruqian misunderstood, having just experienced being abandoned once. He clenched his legs together and trembled, "I can eat a little less."

As long as he wasn't abandoned again.

"I've got it!" Jiang Sheng clapped her hands. "Let's go to the market to pick vegetable leaves to eat."

The vegetable market on the east side of town was where the wealthy households bought vegetables, often discarding several layers of vegetable skins and only taking the tenderest hearts.

The poor families couldn't bear to buy vegetables, so they came to pick up the vegetable skins that had been thrown away. Although wilted, they were still edible.

Jiang Sheng also picked through the discards, but her cooking skills were poor. She could only hastily boil the leaves, barely making a meal.

"Actually boiled vegetable leaves aren't bad, but if we could sprinkle on a little salt, they'd be even more delicious," Jiang Sheng whispered to Zheng Ruqian. "Later you have to be quick and grab them, or we won't get any leaves."

Zheng Ruqian's eyes went wide.

How could even rotten vegetable leaves need to be grabbed desperately?

Later he realized that in the world of the poor, even rotten vegetable leaves were precious.

After going through a storm, the two children emerged from the crowd, faces smeared with dirt but holding armfuls of vegetable leaves.

Jiang Sheng's little braid was askew, and Zheng Ruqian's clothes were wrinkled.

But fortunately, they had both gotten a full harvest - a good two armfuls of leaves.

"Tonight we'll eat the most wilted ones, and we can still eat for two more meals with the rest..." Jiang Sheng was delighted.

But she wasn't happy for long before a teenage boy suddenly darted out from the side and grabbed away more than half of the leaves in her arms.

Then he turned and fled swiftly.

Zheng Ruqian was nearly in tears, those were leaves that they had painstakingly grabbed. Vissit novelbin(.)c.om for updates

But Jiang Sheng was used to this. She touched her little braid with a sigh, "Auntie Zhang specially plaited it for me."

"Jiang Sheng," Zheng Ruqian pouted. "Our vegetables."

"You'll get used to it," Jiang Sheng said as she picked up the remaining leaves. "They're a group of little beggars who roam around here. We can't beat them so we can only avoid them when we can."

And when they couldn't avoid them, they just had to take the loss.

In the world of the poor, the law of the jungle was pure and simple.

With a thud, the boy fell back to the ground.

Eyes wide, for a moment he didn't know whether to cry or get angry.

"Big brother, does it hurt a lot?" Jiang Sheng asked in a small voice.

She remembered that a teenager in the village had gotten his foot caught in a trap. When the medicine man had removed the trap, the teen had shrieked in pain the whole time. In order to make him more comfortable, the doctor had knocked him out with a punch.

If this big brother was also in great pain, she would just have to reluctantly sacrifice her fist.

"You..." The boy eyed Jiang Sheng's raised fist and swallowed hard. "My legs are broken."

Jiang Sheng nodded solemnly. That definitely needed her fist even more.

Luckily Zheng Ruqian held her back and carefully suggested, "I've seen the aunties at Yihong Courtyard whose legs were broken. They all had to be taken to the doctor."

The boy inhaled sharply and looked at Zheng Ruqian gratefully.

But how could someone with broken legs be taken to the clinic?

Jiang Sheng discussed with Zheng Ruqian for a long time before finally deciding to "borrow" Uncle Zhao's cart.

Uncle Zhao had a bad temper, but he had a cart that was tied to a post at the village entrance.

Zheng Ruqian would keep watch while Jiang Sheng went to get the cart.

The seven-year-old girl had never eaten well, and her shoulders weren't much higher than the cart. But she put the rope over her shoulders and stubbornly pulled it forward, really looking the part.

With the two children's combined strength, the boy was loaded onto the cart.

The two seven or eight-year-olds used all their strength to pull and push the cart until it stopped in front of the town's only clinic.

"Doctor, doctor!" Jiang Sheng knocked on the door with hands red from rope burns. "My brother's legs are broken, could you please help treat him?"

The door opened, and a middle-aged man with a beard smiled.

Suddenly Jiang Sheng felt embarrassed. She mumbled, "But we don't have any money."

She had originally intended to trick the doctor into treating him first, then avoid paying through stubbornness. But the doctor's eyes were so kind that she couldn't bear to continue deceiving him.

"His legs are broken?" The doctor looked at the boy on the cart and immediately frowned. "Don't move, let me take a look."

First he carried the boy to a bed, then carefully examined the wounds before getting medicine and splints.

"Broken legs are serious." The doctor sighed. "He'll need at least three months of rest, change the dressings every half month, and try not to move him otherwise, but still prevent bedsores."

Then he carried the boy back to the cart, and added medicine packets for half a month to the end of the cart.

"Doctor," Jiang Sheng bit her lip. "We really don't have any money."