When they were done they told the women so they would be ready to assign someone to cook for the workers while construction was happening when everything was done Ju-Long turned down their offer for him to stay for lunch, exchanged some pleasantries, and returned home with his children, he changed their wet napkins and rinsed them out and hung them out, he picked up the things that were dry, folded them and put them in the trunks.
It was nearing the time for lunch so he needed to cook but when he went out he saw that the firewood was running out, maybe it would last till tomorrow but he couldn’t take that chance so he would have to go and exchange some of the food he had for firewood, or maybe pay someone to get it. He couldn’t be away from the children for long and to get firewood one would need to go to the forest, he decided that later he would see what children lived around him and give them a small fee to gather firewood for him.
He took what he needed and lit the fire under the stove in the kitchen and began making three dishes, one from the beef he had purchased, one from cabbage and ginger, and the other was from some pickles and cooked some rice, while they were cooking he pureed some fruit for Ming-Yue and warmed some milk for Ming-Ru and Ming-Sheng, just as he finished he heard them crying so he set the things down and went over.
He sighed at the sight of the wet bed and found that even though he had come to the ancient times he wasn’t too bothered by it since aside from his children he had no attachment to that time and place, but now he knew he was bothered because at this time disposable pampers wasn’t a thing. It became a constant cycle of wet napkins, bedspreads, washing clothes, and then praying they didn’t pee themselves again but it was just inevitable, he sighed and changed them quickly decided to only put on enough clothes to cover their chest so that it would save him washing time.
He went to the kitchen and took his food off the fire, set it on the table, and took the pureed fruit and milk to go feed his children, they ate heartily and he burped them again before setting them down to play and returning to the kitchen. It didn’t take him long to finish eating and wash out all the dishes and then went out to wash all the clothes, he picked up and packed away what was dry and then replaced them with newly washed clothing.
He went and sat by his door after seeing the babies were okay, taking his writing tools with him, he cut some paper and quickly made it into a notebook, glued it together and then covered it with some bamboo strips and then waited for it to dry. When it was done he took the inked brush and began writing with strong strokes, he knew himself too well to know that it would be impossible for him to write like this, which meant this was a skill that the original had learned.
He started writing down the things he wanted to do and even though the money he had on him would be enough for him to live lavishly till the day he died, it felt strange to just do nothing and after the babies were old enough he would have plenty of free time so it was best to think about it now. He took note of the things that he and the original were good at, for him it was planting crops, fishing, trapping and catching prey, and any other form of manual labor while the original was more learned than him. He was intelligent, could write, read, and do arithmetic, politics; any form of management, and most of all he had been training martial arts since he was four years old so he was physically strong and especially good at handling many types of weapons.
The only reason he hadn’t entered politics or the army was because of his mother’s family, they had mistreated him since he arrived at their home and when they found he was extremely talented they became afraid that he would use those talents to climb to the top and when he did he would get his revenge on them. So they blocked him at all corners, not even allowing him to get a teacher for himself, so everything he learned after the age of ten was all his own achievement and he did it while hiding and acting as if the things they thought him had an influence on him.
It was only when he had finally had the reputation as a good for nothing that they married him into his wife’s family of two and he took the chance to show his true colors becoming well respected but sadly his wife soon died with her father following leaving him behind with his children. Their lives were so different and yet so similar that it sent shivers up his spine, they both became orphans at the age of ten, ended up in the hands of their mother’s families, and then were mistreated and lived very pitifully.
But their circumstances were also different, for him, his parents were the richest ones in the family so when they died he ended up in a rundown village in the countryside, while for the original even though his parents were well off they had nothing on his mother’s family. He was constantly being treated as a child slave while for the original even though he was treated unfairly it wasn’t as bad as him because his mother’s family were very conscious of their reputation.
And he was an average learner that became a dunce because of how he was treated by his family while the original was a genius that became imprisoned and unable to show his talent because of his family and another thing was that the original’s grandfather-in-law was capable of holding up the sky for him to do as he wished. While he, himself had to work hard in order to feed and keep his family safe.
