LHBP | Chapter 3

Gu Yun slept all the way until broad daylight before waking up.

Maybe because he had taken medicine yesterday, Gu Yun felt much better today, but he was still hot all over, weak, and in severe pain from a pounding headache. He took a thick coat from the wardrobe and put it on, making sure he would not get chilled, before going out.

“You only got up now after sleeping until this hour. Which girl or ge’er from what family is as lazy as you? How are you supposed to get married in the future?”

Just as Gu Yun came out of the main room, he heard Cui Guizhi cursing in the kitchen.

At home, breakfast was usually made by Gu Yun, and Cui Guizhi only needed to get up and eat once the meal was ready.

Now that Gu Yun was sick, no one else in the family could be relied on, so this task naturally fell to her, and she became even more displeased with Gu Yun.

Gu Yun followed the voice into the kitchen. Looking at Cui Guizhi, who was tending the fire in the kitchen, he said, “Mother, I really feel too awful. Doctor Wang also said that my illness needs proper recuperation. Otherwise, wouldn’t this medicine have been taken for nothing, and wouldn’t the money have been wasted for nothing?”

Cui Guizhi thought of the three hundred wen she had spent on medicine yesterday and felt a pang in her flesh. She would sooner or later have to make that money back from this good-for-nothing.

Thinking of her own plans, she no longer wanted to say much to Gu Yun, so she said, “The medicine is on the table in the main room. You go and boil it yourself.”

Gu Yun nodded, returned to the main room, took out the clay stove and medicine pot, and began to boil the medicine.

His illness would be mostly cured after drinking medicine for three or four days. He planned to find a way to leave the Gu family once he had recovered.

In his previous life, he had been an orphan and had finished university through work-study and state support. He liked studying food. After graduating from university, he worked for a period of time before quitting and becoming his own boss, setting up a street stall.

He started from a street stall and step by step opened his own restaurant. He was still very confident in his cooking skills.

Now that he had lived again, he believed that with his own abilities, he could live well in this other world too.

However, in Dayan, girls and ge’er could not, like men, split off and live on their own after starting a family.

Their fate was decided at birth, at home they obeyed their father, and after marriage they obeyed their husband.

So his wanting to leave the Gu family was simply impossible, and Gu Yuanshan and Cui Guizhi would not agree either.

After all, he was already eighteen, exactly the age for discussing marriage. The Gu family could marry him off and get a betrothal gift for free, so Cui Guizhi naturally would not miss such a good thing.

Besides, with Cui Guizhi’s blackhearted nature, no matter what the other party’s character was, as long as the betrothal money was enough, she could marry him off.

And what Gu Yun wanted was not to split the household, but to break off relations, to completely sever ties with the Gu family.

Although splitting the household meant establishing a new household, there would still be ties between them. Children would still have to bear the responsibility of supporting their parents. Breaking off relations was different, it meant there would be no connection in matters of life, old age, illness, or death.

In this age where filial piety was paramount, unless something touched someone’s bottom line, generally no one would do something this absolute. After all, being unfilial would have people pointing at your back and cursing you.

And the Gu family simply did not treat the original owner as a human being. Beating and scolding him at every turn, and not letting him eat enough, were common occurrences. The original owner had long since been utterly disappointed in this family affection.

As for Gu Yun, he had an even worse impression of this whole Gu family, so completely severing ties with the Gu family was something both the original owner and he hoped for.

Given the current situation, if he wanted to break off relations, he could only make Gu Yuanshan and Cui Guizhi bring it up themselves. As for how to make them propose cutting ties with him, Gu Yun already had a rough plan in mind.

Gu Yun’s medicine finished boiling, and Cui Guizhi had also brought the meal to the table. Breakfast in the countryside was very simple, a bowl of porridge, a few coarse grain steamed buns, a plate of pickles, and two eggs. Cui Guizhi loved her son, and the eggs laid every day by the two old hens the family raised almost all went into Gu Zhenxing’s stomach.

Smelling the food, the other members of the Gu family gradually came out one after another. When Gu An saw Gu Yun sitting by the dining table, he glared at him fiercely.

Gu Yun looked at the eggs on the table and felt that this body really did need to be properly nourished. He directly reached his hand toward the plate holding the eggs, gave one of the two eggs to Gu Yuanshan, and said, “Father, eat an egg. You work the hardest in our family.” After saying that, he peeled the remaining egg right there and put it into his mouth.

The others at the table were all stunned by his actions. In the past, let alone eating eggs, Cui Guizhi would only scoop him a bowl of thin porridge and tell him to eat it in the kitchen. Today, not only did he sit at the table to eat, he even ate an egg.

Cui Guizhi slapped her chopsticks down and said angrily, “Yun ge’er, these eggs are for Zhenxing to grow his body. You’re already such a grown person, and you’re still snatching your younger brother’s egg to eat.”

Gu Yun pretended to be innocent and said, “Mother, I just think that younger brother eats eggs every day, and he doesn’t lack this one. Father works so hard every day, he should also eat an egg and properly nourish himself.”

Gu Yuanshan, sitting in the seat of honor, slapped the table and said, “Enough, laozi works himself to death every day, and I can’t even eat one egg?”

Seeing that even Gu Yuanshan had said so, Cui Guizhi could not say anything more and could only glare at Gu Yun.

Seeing that his egg was gone, Gu Zhenxing immediately lost it. He slapped his bowl to the ground on the spot and shouted and cried at Gu Yun, “That was my egg, Mother said you’re a money-losing wretch, you’re not allowed to eat my egg.”

Seeing her son crying, Cui Guizhi hated Gu Yun even more and hurriedly coaxed him. “Oh, my good son, come, Mother will steam you some egg custard, they don’t get any.” After saying that, she took Gu Zhenxing to the kitchen.

The Gu family did not have much land, and the fields had already been planted. So after eating, the whole family went back to their rooms to rest.

Taohua Village was backed by mountains, and not far away were continuous mountain ranges. Gu Yun was planning to go look at the front mountain. It was now early spring, and there was already much more greenery in the forest.

At the foot of the mountain in Taohua Village was a bamboo grove. Gu Yun used bamboo to weave a simple bamboo basket. His craftsmanship was average, and his requirements were not high, as long as it could hold things. On the way over just now, he had discovered that there were quite a few medicinal herbs on this mountain. Probably because there were few rural doctors and not many people who understood medicinal materials, the herbs could grow freely.

In his previous life, Gu Yun had interned at a traditional Chinese medicine clinic. The old Chinese doctor who sat the clinic there had taught him to recognize many medicinal herbs, and he also understood a little about processing them. It was just that he had no tools on hand right now, so he could only gather some commonly used medicinal materials and see whether any doctor would take them later.

Along the mountain path he had walked out on, Gu Yun held a long wooden stick in one hand to probe the way ahead, and carried the bamboo basket in the other. Along the way, he encountered quite a few medicinal herbs.

Gu Yun picked some medicinal materials that were commonly used in the countryside, carefully gathering them. Some medicinal herbs used roots and stems as medicine, and when picking them, he had to be careful not to damage them, otherwise it would affect their medicinal properties.

He was busy all morning, exhausted to the point of collapse. After all, this body had been malnourished since childhood, and on top of that he had just recovered from a serious illness, so Gu Yun was so tired that he was gasping for breath.

But the harvest was also plentiful, a basket full of commonly used medicinal herbs. Gu Yun tied up the herbs one bundle at a time with leaves according to their types, and arranged them neatly in the bamboo basket. The farther in he went, the richer the mountain’s produce became, and Gu Yun even discovered a tree bearing ice powder seeds. However, he did not have any suitable tools on hand right now, and it was also inconvenient in the Gu family, so he could only wait until after he left the Gu family to deal with it.

Gu Yun stretched, and found that the place he was in now was already considered deep in the front mountain.

After resting for a while, Gu Yun was just about to head back when he suddenly heard a rustling sound from the grass ahead. Gu Yun held his breath and tightened his grip on the wooden stick in his hand. Not long after, a gray-furred rabbit emerged from the grass and ran straight toward Gu Yun.

Gu Yun subconsciously dodged to the side, and only heard a bang, the rabbit actually slammed straight into the tree behind Gu Yun.