Spring comes to the desperate place

Chapter 237 Fool

Song Chunlin looked confused and said, "Did your brother make up his mind a long time ago and ask me to come here specially because he knew I could get the other party's secret?"

Gu Fengyue: "Let me put it this way. In order not to reveal their identities, spies from other countries will hide poison in their mouths. Unless the identity and status of the spy are not simple, once such a person is caught, the enemy country will definitely know it immediately and then try every means to rescue him. This person this time is probably not a small one. Ping Chau seems to be calm now, who knows what undercurrents are hidden underneath?"

Song Chunlin: "Hiss~ Are you afraid that they can't save the people, so you want to silence them?"

As the two were talking, a boat came to the dock. Song Chunlin quickly put the still burning fire and the tent into the space. At the dock on the other side, a huge cargo ship was docked quietly. Song Chunlin didn't know much about ships, but just by looking at the waterline outside, he could tell that the ship was not loaded with cargo.

"There's nothing in there but people."

"How many?"

"More than ten people, judging by their walking posture, they seem to be martial artists."

The manager of the dock looked at the documents in their hands and didn't find any flaws. However, he remembered that his superiors had recently told him to report any suspicious persons in a timely manner, so he suppressed his doubts and let these people pass.

"Old Yu, what are they doing here in the middle of the night?"

"The grain merchant from the south said he was here to buy potatoes and sweet potatoes. I've read the documents and they are indeed merchants."

The sailor wondered, "Potatoes and sweet potatoes? Don't they have any in the south?"

The steward smiled and said, "No, really. These two good things came from the capital. They are blooming everywhere here this year, but the plants are planted late in the south, so the yield is far less than that in the capital."

"I see, but they came too late. I finally fell asleep."

The manager waved his hand at him in disdain: "Go, go, go, go back to sleep and alert the others. I'm going back first."

"understood!"

Their conversation was translated word for word by Song Chunlin. It was the first time that Song Chunlin knew that the output in the south was actually not as good as that in the north?

"The capital is in the north, right?"

"But there are indeed many more people growing potatoes in the capital than in the south. Now the imperial court does not restrict the sale of potatoes and sweet potatoes, so it is reasonable for these people to go north to buy them."

"But the timing was not right. They were in such a hurry."

Gu Fengyue quite agreed. If they really wanted to buy grain, they should have come here two months ago. That was the autumn harvest season and every household had enough surplus grain. But now it was already the beginning of the twelfth lunar month. Who would go north in the cold winter just to buy grain? This year is a good year in the south and it is also a bumper year. It is not like there is no food to eat. Only a fool would leave his warm bed and sleep in the open air to run to the north to buy grain.

Gu Fengyue poked Song Chunlin's shoulder and asked, "Want to follow?"

Song Chunlin shook his head: "No, I'm watching."

Gu Fengyue didn’t know what Song Chunlin meant by “watch”, but since he said it, it must be watching, so she stopped talking.

The city gates of Pingzhou Prefecture would not be opened at night unless there was an urgent message of 800 miles. Those people seemed to know this, so they did not even think about entering the city. Instead, they huddled in their boats, waiting for dawn.

Song Chunlin stared for a while and then stopped. He took out the tent and went into the tent with Gu Fengyue.

Each of them had a sleeping bag with a hot water bottle stuffed inside, which kept them warm. Neither of them slept much. Gu Fengyue closed his eyes to rest, while Song Chunlin closed his eyes and devoted a bit of his mental energy to paying attention to the dock. The rest of them went straight into Pingzhou Prefecture. He bypassed the government office and searched around in the surrounding houses, but he didn't know if the officials of Pingzhou Prefecture had hidden the person too well, and Song Chunlin couldn't find where the spy was hidden.

It was still dark outside. Song Chunlin felt as if he had just rested for a short while, and Gu Fengyue seemed to have just squinted his eyes, but the people at the dock could no longer sit still.

After waking Gu Fengyue up, the two drank a few sips of spiritual spring water to refresh themselves. Song Chunlin folded up the tent and handed Gu Fengyue a chocolate energy bar.

The two of them ate a simple breakfast as they walked, and when they arrived at the dock, the sky had just begun to brighten, and the people on the dock began to move.

At first, it was the early-rising sailors who were changing shifts. When they got up, they found a cargo ship docked here. Although they were a little surprised, it was not a big deal, so they didn't say much and went back to work.

All the people on the boat got off. Their mission today was to find out where the man was hiding, and then wait for an opportunity to take action.

Song Chunlin and Gu Fengyue looked at each other, pretending to be on their way and went to sit in the teahouse outside the pier. This teahouse not only sold tea, but also some breakfast, mostly steamed buns, cakes and millet porridge. Before potatoes and sweet potatoes appeared, the people of Dajing in the capital had always used millet as their staple food. Now that they have sweet potatoes, people will also add sweet potatoes to millet porridge, which will make the cooked millet porridge sweeter.

This is how the teahouse cooks it. The sweet potatoes are cut into large pieces and cooked together with the millet until they are soft. The sweet, sticky and soft sweet potatoes add another flavor to the millet porridge.

Song Chunlin and Gu Fengyue couldn't help but drank a bowl each. The people around them did the same. They each ordered a bowl of hot millet and sweet potato porridge. The boiling hot porridge not only dispelled the chill of the early morning, but the sweet potatoes also increased the sense of fullness, which made everyone who ate it praise it.

Song Chunlin drank up the porridge, put down the bowl, and was quite satisfied with this snack.

"It tastes good. It seems that sweet potatoes are very popular here. They even sell sweet potato porridge."

Gu Fengyue also licked her lips. "The first place where the court distributed sweet potatoes was the surrounding areas of the capital, and then it slowly spread out. I guess every household here can grow sweet potatoes now."

The owner of the teahouse happened to hear this, walked over and said with a smile: "This brother is right. In our area, every household can grow sweet potatoes. They were able to grow them last year. Not only sweet potatoes, but also potatoes. You know what, these two lumps of soil look insignificant, but the yield is really high. I only planted one acre of land last year, but when I harvested it, the yield was as high as that of three acres of land. Wow, this is really a good thing. After paying taxes, my family has a lot left over. We can't eat it all even if we eat it as food. Some people in the village even feed it to pigs. Hey, the pigs are eating it happily."

Last night, those people were also sitting in the teahouse eating breakfast. Now, hearing the teahouse owner's long talk, the group of people couldn't help but look at each other in surprise.

One of the younger ones curiously asked the teahouse owner: "Are those potatoes and sweet potatoes you mentioned really that productive? We have just started growing them in the south, so we don't know for sure yet."

The owner of the teahouse finally found a soulmate, and he immediately started talking to the young man about the benefits of potatoes and sweet potatoes. High yield was secondary, as the crops were easy to care for, rarely got sick, and were particularly drought-resistant. They would survive as long as it rained, which was much better than growing millet. The owner of the teahouse even wanted to use all his land to grow these two crops.

After hearing this, Song Chunlin couldn't help but speak up: "Boss, you only grow potatoes and sweet potatoes, not millet, so won't there be no such delicious millet porridge next year?"

The teahouse owner laughed when he heard this: "My kid said the same thing. He has a picky palate. This millet and sweet potato porridge was invented by him. Isn't it delicious?"

"Yeah, it tastes good." Everyone nodded.

The owner of the teahouse said proudly, "That's right. That's why I will plant millet next year. If not for anything else, just for this delicious millet porridge, I will plant a few more acres."

After listening to this, Song Chunlin became thoughtful. It seems that the promotion of other staple foods is imperative. Although potatoes and sweet potatoes can also be used as staple foods, who would complain about having too much delicious food?

Those people finished eating but did not rush to get up. I guess they wanted to take this opportunity to find out more things here. However, Song Chunlin and Gu Fengyue had already stood up. They still had to rush to Pingzhou Prefecture. The sooner they interrogated the people, the sooner they could return to the capital.

The departure of the two people did not attract the attention of others. After all, they were dressed in ordinary people's clothes, one was not even twenty years old, and the other was just a half-grown child. Who would have thought that they were their enemies?

Even the leader of the group just glanced at them indifferently. Although he felt that the two men had good temperament and conversation, he did not think about other aspects.

The pier was only three or four miles away from Pingzhou Prefecture. The two men arrived there after walking for a while. After showing their passes to the people guarding the city, a yamen runner came running over soon, looked at the passes again, led them aside, and whispered to them the address of a house.

Gu Fengyue didn't react at all. He just calmly reached out to take the pass. Others who saw it would only think that there was something wrong with their pass and were asking about it. After Gu Fengyue put away his things, he took Song Chunlin and walked slowly towards the city. The two of them walked leisurely, as if they were really here to visit their relatives.

Song Chunlin kept looking around with great interest. Gu Fengyue did not forget to hold him back, fearing that he would get lost.

Suddenly Song Chunlin tugged at Gu Fengyue's sleeve: "Gu Fengyue, are they selling roasted sweet potatoes over there?"

Gu Fengyue thought he was hungry, so she took him over without thinking and said, "Buy one if you're hungry."

"Great!" Song Chunlin cheered, then ran over and picked out a big one. When he paid, he found that this thing was actually quite expensive.

"This roasted sweet potato costs thirty copper coins? It's almost as much as a pound of pork. It's really extravagant."

Song Chunlin held the roasted sweet potato, but didn't eat it. He just used it to warm his hands.

"Little money-grubber, do you still need that little money?"

"Of course it's not bad, but it's really expensive. I wonder if it will be cheaper in the future."

"Sweet potatoes are still a novelty now. In two years, they will be grown in the south and on the border, and they will no longer be rare. I guess roasted sweet potatoes will be cheaper."

Song Chunlin wrinkled his nose when he thought of the outrageous price of roasted sweet potatoes in the future. It seemed that it was not much better than the current one.

"Not necessarily. Even if sweet potatoes are planted everywhere, they are still quite expensive sometimes."

Gu Fengyue didn't understand, and Song Chunlin didn't explain. Instead, he stuffed the still warm sweet potato into his arms.

"Hold it and eat it later."

The two walked and strolled along the way, and walked quite quickly. Soon they arrived in front of the house. This place looked similar to the houses next to it. Who would have thought that the prefect of Pingzhou Prefecture would actually detain the spies here.

Gu Fengyue walked forward and knocked on the door. Someone came out soon. When he saw the two people, he thought they were troublemakers and was about to chase them away, but Gu Fengyue handed them the pass.

As soon as the other party saw the pass, he understood what was going on. He first looked around carefully, and after confirming that there was no one following him, he unfolded the pass to check. After confirming that everything was correct, he let the two people in.

"Second Master Gu, Little Brother Song, please follow me."

Song Chunlin and Gu Fengyue walked into the house. The layout inside was similar to that of a normal house. After passing the screen wall, there was a small courtyard. On both sides of the courtyard were side rooms with their doors closed. The door of the main hall was open, however. The guide led them through the main hall to the backyard. The courtyard here seemed rather cramped and the doors of the side rooms were still closed. There were quite a lot of people in the kitchen, with several men sitting inside eating breakfast.

When those people saw Song Chunlin and Gu Fengyue walk in, they were all stunned, then quickly looked at the person leading the way. The other person nodded slightly, and it seemed that he was right.

Gu Fengyue led Song Chunlin and nodded slightly to those people, then introduced himself: "Gu Fengyue."

Thanks to Gu Fengyun's brother-con, almost all officials who have been to the capital know that the Marquis of Yongyi has a beloved brother, Gu Fengyue. Therefore, Gu Fengyue's name is known to everyone. When he said this, the men on the opposite side immediately knew that the young man in front of them was General Gu who has been in the limelight recently.

And the guy next to him is young, has rosy lips and white teeth, and is dressed like a boy. Could he be the patriotic archer who followed Gu Fengyue to the border and shot and killed thousands of Turks on the battlefield?

Although they were a little uncertain, they still saluted respectfully. Gu Fengyue responded indifferently, and then went straight to the point and asked them where the prisoner was held.

Several men pointed directly to the wing room on the left and said, "That room, there are people guarding it too. There are twelve of us, each guarding for one hour."

It seems that the other party's identity is really valuable, and it is worth them sending people to guard him like this.

"Did he confess anything?"

Speaking of this, several people looked at each other and shook their heads: "He refused to say anything. Because they wanted to keep him alive, they dared not really use severe punishment, so they kept him alive. I heard that General Gu has a way to make the enemy speak. I wonder if you can let us see it."

Gu Fengyue looked at the people around him, and Song Chunlin shrugged indifferently.

"I can get him to talk, but the consequences..."

"Is Bao alive?"

“……”Your requirements are really low.

Song Chunlin was unable to put it into words: "He can survive, but he may become a fool."

It turned out that he just became a fool. Several people breathed a sigh of relief when they heard it. A fool is a fool, he is not their son anyway.