After Jiang Zhen sent people to report to the government, he didn’t bother with the follow-up, and Zheng Yi didn’t bother with it either, so they didn’t know that the magistrate almost cried tears of joy after taking the yamen to the pirate village. The members of the yamen no longer had to go hungry, and the county yamen could finally function normally.

This had a lot to do with the fact that Jiang Zhen was in a hurry to leave.

Jiang Zhen was in a hurry to leave, so not all goods in the pirates’ warehouse were moved completely; only the silver and valuable goods were moved out and loaded onto the ships.

If it weren’t for the many people on board that they had to feed, Jiang Zhen would not even bring the grain from the warehouse.

In this way, he left quite a few things in the treasury. . . and in the pirate village, the warehouse was not the only place that had valuables.

These water bandit homes also had silver and food.

After the yamen officials arrived, they searched the entire mountain and naturally harvested quite a lot of things. But when they found that the women and children of the pirate village, as well as the robbed sailors, were all taken away by the Jinzhen Escort Agency, the magistrate couldn’t help but lament, “This Jinzhen Escort Agency are really good people.”

If they had to rescue a group of people, it would have cost money to resettle them, so now they saved another sum of money.

After exterminating the pirates, he was still able to get some money and food to feed the people under his rule, the new county magistrate was very happy and helped to promote the Jinzhen Escort Agency.

Jiang Zhen didn’t know about this, but to be frank, he did leave the grain behind intentionally. One couldn’t be too greedy in life.

After Jiang Zhen reported to Zheng Yi, he was busy allocating the sailors and giving Zheng Yi the rescued people. By the time he was finished, it was already dark.

After a few days of sleeping and dining outside, Jiang Zhen was so tired that he cuddled up to Zhao Jinge to sleep in the cabin of the main ship. When they set out the next day, he stayed on the main ship again.

As a result, Zhao Jinge never saw those two people who coveted Jiang Zhen again.

He didn’t even eat the food cooked by that cook. Jiang Zhen assigned that person to cook, but there weren’t enough ingredients on the ship, so the lady cook couldn’t make anything.

Zhao Jinge was eager to stay on the main ship all the time and not see Liu Qianqian and Zhao Lingxi again, but it was Jiang Zhen’s ship, so it was obviously impossible not to . . .

That evening, when several ships stopped by the river and decided to take a short break, Jiang Zhen took Zhao Jinge to his own ship.

While Zhao Jinge was still on guard, Jiang Zhen had already forgotten about the previous incident and was determined to let Zhao Jinge taste the food made by the cook. The cook on the main ship would not cook especially for him, but it was not good for Zhao Jinge to always eat salted vegetables.

As soon as Jiang Zhen boarded the ship, he had ordered the cook to make some dishes, and soon afterwards, the cook delivered the food.

Although a lot of seasoning had been taken from the main ship, there was not much to eat on board, and Zhao Jinge couldn’t eat greasy foods, so there were very few things that could be made . . . but even so, the cook still made several dishes.

A plate of boiled river shrimp, a bowl of tea eggs, a bowl of pickled vegetables and mung bean sprouts, a plate of cold seaweed, and a large bowl of egg blossom soup.

“Madam, you can’t eat meat, and I don’t know if you can eat shrimp. If you can’t, I’ll change it,” the lady cook said.

Zhao Jinge could eat shrimp. He felt nauseous when he smelled meat and grease, but the shrimp that had been cooked with ginger slices smelled delicious.

The cook had specially mixed a bowl of vinegar with garlic, so even the vinegar Zhao Jinge smelled was good. He peeled the shrimps dipped in vinegar and could not stop eating.

“I used to think that nothing could be better than eating shrimp dipped in soy sauce, but I didn’t expect it to taste better in vinegar,” Zhao Jinge could not help saying. In Hexi, no one would catch shrimps specially to eat, but they were often accidentally caught when catching fish.

Generally speaking, you could catch a few of these things every time, but no one would cook them specially, however, the children did like eating shrimps very much, so of course, no one would waste them.

If the people in Hexi were to catch shrimp, they would usually put them in a bowl and pour some boiling water into it to scald it. The river shrimps were not big, so when you scalded them, they would be cooked already.

After scalding, the children would peel off the shell and eat. People who have some soy sauce at home would pour out a little soy sauce so that the children could dip shrimps into it after shelling them.

For children, it was very delicious, and Zhao Jinge had always missed eating shrimps when he was a child.

At that time, his brother was still there, and the two of them put a little rice in the basket before putting this basket into the river. When the shrimps and fishes came into the basket to eat the rice, they would immediately lift the basket. They always caught a lot of river shrimps and ate till they were satisfied. But after his brother died, neither he nor his parents were in the mood to do this.

People in Hexi will buy soy sauce a few times a year as long as their families were able to get by, but generally, no one would buy vinegar.

Even when Jiang Zhen made money before and brought home some vinegar, Zhao Liu didn’t know how to use it, so Zhao Jinge hadn’t eaten much vinegar.

It was only at this time that Zhao Jinge found out that vinegar was so delicious.

“Where did you get this shrimp?” Jiang Zhen asked. This plate of river shrimps was not easy to get.

“Some people on the boat can catch shrimps, so I asked them to catch some.” The cook immediately said, “If your lordship likes it, you can let them catch some more. There are shrimps in the bank water where we are staying now.”

“Then go and get some more,” Jiang Zhen said.

“No need to . . .” Zhao Jinge was not used to letting others make food for him, so he hastened to refuse.

“It’s all right. Eat more if you like.” Jiang Zhen patted Zhao Jinge on the shoulder and said to the cook, “My wife likes eating sweet and sour tastes. Next time, you can try making some sweet and sour fish or something.”

He said something to the cook and let her go, but let her son stay, saying to Zhao Jinge, “His name is Xiao Ruo, and he will follow you from now on.”

The kitchen maid used to be the one who cooked for her master’s family on the ship, and this Xiao Ruo has also done some of the servants’ jobs. Now he was very excited and served Zhao Jinge very attentively and also brought some vegetable dishes for him. But he was refused by Zhao Jinge.

Zhao Jinge felt a little uncomfortable eating this meal because someone was watching him, but he was still very satisfied on the whole. At least, there were no dishes he didn’t like. He even ate a little too much, especially the shrimp.

In fact, he wanted to stop after eating half of it, but Jiang Zhen was still there peeling it for him to eat, making him inadvertently eat too much while making Jiang Zhen unable to eat it as well.

Zhao Jinge was a little embarrassed, but Jiang Zhen was very satisfied. Zhao Jinge got up this morning and retched again, so he couldn’t eat greasy food yet, but if he could eat fish and prawns, then it would be okay if he doesn’t eat greasy food.

Jiang Zhen still had a lot of things to do, so after he accompanied Zhao Jinge for the meal, he left Zhao Jinge with Xiao Ruo.

Xiao Ruo was not very young, but Zhao Jinge still treated him like a child; fortunately, they were able to chat with each other in no time. Then, Zhao Jinge asked about the pirate village.

”Master was awesome. He came up the mountain with his men and killed several pirates with a single blade. He killed several pirates with his hand and even kicked several pirates to death with one foot . . .”

Xiao Ruo was timid, so he and his mother were actually hiding in the woodshed at the time, not daring to come out, so what he said was all nonsense that he had heard others say.

Zhao Jinge knew this as well; after all, these words were too exaggerated, but he was still happy to hear them.

It was just that after listening for a while, Zhao Jinge felt that he. . . seemed a little too degenerate.

Jiang Zhen was busy working outside, so he couldn’t just stay in the room and talk to the boy and not go out, could he?

Zhao Jinge thought that he had better go and give Jiang Zhen a hand.

Zhao Jinge went out, but Jiang Zhen was not on the ship, so he went to another ship.

“What’s the matter?” Zhao Jinge asked Wang Haisheng.

“There are some marks on that ship, so the boss wants to get rid of them,” Wang Haisheng said.

The ships and goods snatched from the pirates were all stolen from their original owners, and some of them still had the original owner’s marks of them.

Although the original owners had mostly been killed by those pirates, their families might still be there and some of them might cause troubles.

 

Edited by: Faro

Proofreader: XLB

 

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