[Your understanding of Tong Jia has deepened further, and you experienced a joyous evening together, obtaining 7 Remaining Points].
After opening up, the points he had received had actually increased.
Song Cheng's heart was filled with a bit more anticipation.
By that time, the morning light was streaming through the oiled paper window, heralding another clear day.
Tong Jia rose, sitting on the edge of the bed, fumbling with her clothes to cover the fair skin of her chest and neck, while asking, "Brother Cheng, what did that lone ghost inside you do when he was alive?
Why is he still thinking about martial arts training?
Can a blind man even train properly?"
After a night's thought, Tong Jia had come to a realization that the enhanced version of Brother Cheng was her man, after all... It was only after Brother Cheng awoke that she had climbed into bed with him. And during the days they had spent together, everything had been good and normal.
Song Cheng said, "That lone ghost's memories are quite blurry, but I feel he must have been an ordinary disciple of a certain faction. Just can't remember his own Dharma Method, but if I can get a hold of a Cultivation Technique, I should be able to enter the Entry Level quickly with my intuition."
An ordinary disciple... of a faction," Tong Jia nodded, saying, "Got it!"
Last night, after the spouses had been honest with each other, Song Cheng also made a direct request without any further concealment for what he needed.
Cultivation Technique!
He needed a Cultivation Technique!
At the moment, seeing Tong Jia contemplating, Song Cheng asked again, "Do you know where to find one?"
Tong Jia said, "Why didn't you say so earlier? Yune's family has it."
Song Cheng was startled.
Tong Jia explained, "It's in Yune's head; she's too frail to practice it herself but taught it to her husband. Since she's had a rough night, we should hurry over to see."
Song Cheng also quickly got up, enduring his weak legs and sore arms, hurriedly got dressed, and then clipped the cleaving axe to his waist, glancing over his own strength again.
1~1.
The axe provided him with a strength of 1.
With his persuasion, Tong Jia also shouldered the Bamboo Basket, picked up a sickle, pretending to go gather herbs, changing her strength from "1~1" to "2~2".
Song Cheng took another look at Tong Jia, who was his hostess, his wife, and now also his comrade-in-arms, and said, "First, let's go to Yune's house to see if we can help, and then head to the blacksmith's to get some weapons."
Tong Jia gripped the sickle tightly.
Song Cheng said, "Wife, we're not going to fight desperately; you follow behind me later."
If this were the past, Tong Jia would have certainly objected outright, but thinking of Song Cheng now possessing the memories of an "ordinary sect disciple," she nodded her head.
Without even saying it, the word "sect" made her feel it was rather grand.
These six words "ordinary sect disciple" subconsciously made her feel very reliable.
"Have you tasted blood on the blade's edge before?"
The petite Mistress of the house quietly asked another question.
Song Cheng answered, "I've forgotten."
The petite Mistress holding the sickle spun it around, feeling somewhat like a martial couple from the Martial Arts World.
She was actually the wife of an "ordinary sect disciple," and the thought was quite novel to her.
...
...
The couple, armed with their weapons, slowly made their way to Yune's house.
From a distance, there was already a commotion.
"I attempted to assault her? Clearly it was Yune who seduced me! And she was worried that the old lady next door would discover her affair with me, so she specifically waited till after midnight to let me in!" Ding Siyu's voice.
"You're talking nonsense!" That was Yune's voice.
"Yune, then... who opened the door for me?
"If you don't open the door, how can I come in?"
"Everyone agrees, right?"
"Yes, my elder brother would never lie, I can testify for him." The voice of Ding Siyan.
"Sister-in-law Yune, you and my elder brother have been exchanging flirtatious looks, having such a good time. Why are you denying it now? Could it be that the old lady caught you, so you now want to frame my elder brother?" The youngest of the Ding brothers, the fourteen-year-old Ding Sigu, also spoke.
Yune said, "You're talking nonsense! Nonsense!!"
Her hair dishevelled, her face wet with tears.
Facing the crowd's onlookers, she was completely at a loss, and both her body and mind were on the brink of collapse.
As for how the back door was opened, she had no idea.
She felt that no one believed her.
She endured extreme humiliation yesterday, even had her money robbed, and now she was being falsely accused.
Before the crowd, an elderly man was watching the scene unfold with cold eyes.
This elder was none other than Ding Shanming, the village chief of Tang River Village.
Ding Shanming said, "Yune, clear this up. Siyu, Siyan, Sigu, I've watched these three kids grow up. Their mother died early, and their father died in battle... You're twenty-four or twenty-five, a married woman. How could these three kids take a fancy to you?"
Upon hearing the village chief's words, Yune was stunned as if turned into stone.
Her limbs were ice cold; suddenly, she remembered she was just an outsider...
She was not rooted in this village.
Just then, a man with a crutch tucked under his arm stepped forward and said, "Don't you all know what kind of person Yune is?
Yune is beautiful. Why couldn't she catch the eye of Ding Siyu?"
The crowd looked over, and Ding Siyu frowned, "Crippled Chen, what business is it of yours? Are you one of Yune's lovers too?"
The approaching man was none other than Crippled Chen, a bachelor in the village. As for his leg, it was said to have been broken in a quarrel with a master's family in the county town.
Why the quarrel?
It seemed to be sticking up for someone.
But the villagers weren't quite sure, as the government office's report from the county said that Crippled Chen was a robber, and he got off lightly with just one leg broken by the merciful master.
Ding Sigu's eyes rolled around, suddenly saying, "A beautiful widow is nothing but a seductive fox, right? Always enticing men."
Upon hearing this, quite a few young women actually started to jeer along.
Ever since Yune had married into the village, these women had disliked her. Seeing their own men sneaking glances at Yune's waist and hips from time to time, they believed more firmly that Yune was indeed a seductive fox.
Ding Sigu's words struck a chord with them.
So, they started chattering one by one.
"Ding Sigu is right."
"With such pretty dressing, isn't she just a seductive fox?"
"If you didn't seduce men, why would they want to sleep with you?"
"Ding Siyan is still a child, and you, seductive fox, are the one to blame!"
Their words were an indictment of that foreign woman who had married into the village.
Crippled Chen bellowed, "Nonsense! Nonsense!"
But no one paid any attention to him.
Suddenly, a loud "bang" came from behind the door, and Yune hurriedly turned and rushed back into the house. As the door swung open, she saw her mother-in-law collapsed on the ground, clutching her chest, her face contorted in pain.
Ding Sigu exclaimed, "Look, look! Not only did you seduce a man, but you also angered your mother-in-law to death!"
Crippled Chen stood on one leg, raised his crutch, and shouted angrily, "You little bastard, you're truly heartless!"
The onlookers who saw the old lady faint also became anxious and fell silent.
Many people started to disperse.
Some were in a hurry and said, "Quick, go find Doctor Tong."
The village chief, though partial and somewhat biased, saw someone faint and quickly glanced at the three Ding brothers before saying, "Enough, go home!"
Ding Siyu said, "Let's listen to uncle!"
With that, the three teenagers turned around and left.
Yune followed, shouting, "Money! You stole money too! Give it back!"
Ding Siyu turned his head, giving a sneer and said, "Sister Yune, you were quite generous with me yesterday, and today you want it back. Forget it, I won't take it seeing as you're pitiful."
With that, he grabbed a handful of copper coins and threw them out.
The copper coins clinked as they hit the ground and rolled everywhere, roughly thirty or forty pieces.
Yune said, "You took twelve taels and six coins of silver from my house!"
Ding Sigu said, "Sister Yune, how can you still be falsely accusing people?"
Having said that, the three brothers left without looking back.
Yune screamed from behind them.
Crippled Chen, seeing this, roughly guessed the truth, so he hurried over with his crutch and shouted, "If you dare, let her search you! Your house doesn't even have twelve taels and six coins of silver. If it does, it must be Yune's!"
However, the three brothers completely ignored him.
Ding Sigu turned around, making faces and mocking, "Paramour, paramour, paramour!"
Yune screamed hysterically.
"Doctor Tong!"
"Quick, go find Doctor Tong!"
Someone else was calling out from another side.
Tong Jia quickly stepped out and shouted, "I'm here, I'm here."
After saying that, she set down her bamboo basket and went to check on the fainting old lady.
...
...
Tong Jia busied herself for a long while and took the old lady to Rejuvenation Hall, where she performed "Acupuncture Technique," which she seldom used... Finally, the old lady slowly came to.
But when she woke, she remained silent.
By her side, Yune sat dumbfounded.
With no man and having suffered such a huge shock and humiliation last night, and now not only failing to seek justice but also being wronged, she had collapsed. Her eyes were wide open with red rings around them.
The old lady tremblingly scolded, "You shameless thing, cough cough cough, why are you still here... doing what?"
Tong Jia said, "Granny Shi, don't get angry! I don't think sister Yune is like that."
As she spoke, she began to try hard to persuade.
She knew the truth, so she exaggerated Yune's "concern for Granny Shi" when asking her for medical treatment the past few days and talked on and on.
In the midst of talking, the old lady said, "Doctor Tong, so in your opinion, was it really the three Ding lads who came to my house in the night?!"
Tong Jia said, "The most important thing right now is for you to recover.
Justice is in people's hearts, the village chief might initially favor his own people, but he is not unreasonable... Crippled Chen went to the Ding house to look, right?
Granny, you rest. We'll call some people to accompany sister Yune and have a look."
Yune, who had been on the verge of breakdown, relaxed a little and looked up at Tong Jia, saying, "Thank you, Doctor Tong."
...
...
While Tong Jia was busy treating the patient, Song Cheng went to the blacksmith's shop with his crutch.
Nowadays, the fire in the blacksmith's forge had been dead for who knows how long, and aside from a few good-looking kitchen knives placed on a wooden table for sale, the rest of the rusted items were all piled up in one corner against the wall.
"These over here are thirty wen each."
"The larger ones here are all sixty wen."
Inside the blacksmith's shop, a woman carelessly knocked with a stick to make a sound and then left it at that.
As for the prices, they were all by weight.
The lighter ones were thirty wen, the heavier ones sixty wen.
These pieces of junk had piled up long ago and she simply couldn't sell them.
Song Cheng squatted down, his palm passing over weapon after weapon as he watched the changes in his personal information.
Different weapons could bring different bonuses to his strength.
He scanned the data.
They were mostly 1~1.
Basically, any weapon would give you a 1 point strength bonus.
Suddenly, data flashed before his eyes: 2~2.
He felt it, and it was a long thin iron rod, very much like his hardwood stick.
His fingers glided over it, and after scanning through, that one was the only particularly special one.
So Song Cheng picked out the iron rod and said, "Sister, how about fifteen wen?"
"Fifteen wen? Isn't that too little?" The woman glanced over and, seeing a dirty, unwanted thin iron stick, was not very firm in her tone.
Song Cheng sighed and said, "My family isn't well-off either, so twenty wen then."
The woman gritted her teeth and said, "Twenty... twenty-two wen. I can't go any lower."
Song Cheng gritted his teeth, too, and slowly lined up the copper coins one by one from his bosom, taking a long time before he reluctantly took them out and said, "Sister, I'm blind, I'll give them to you one by one, count them, okay?"
The woman said, "Alright, alright, I won't cheat you."
The two quickly settled the transaction.
The woman sighed, "Seems like running a medical clinic isn't easy for your family, either."
Song Cheng also said, "Who isn't struggling?"
Having said that, the blind young man walked away with his new cane, step by step back to Rejuvenation Hall.
When he arrived home, Tong Jia had unexpectedly gone out.
Song Cheng asked a nearby neighbor and was told that a group of people, including the village chief, had gone to the Ding family to search for silver again, and they had been gone for a while.
Song Cheng thought for a moment, did not go there, but went to the backyard, took the sharpening stone from his family, sat down, scooped water with a gourd scoop, and then started to slowly sharpen that iron rod.
After sharpening for a while, Song Cheng suddenly realized something. He took a small hammer and started tapping lightly on the top of the iron rod.
Rusty flakes fell off.
Suddenly, a slight loosening sound was heard.
Song Cheng grabbed the top of the rod and pulled.
Shi!
A fine blade, full of rust, came out of its sheath.
"So it's a blade."
Song Cheng felt the "pimply" blade and tossed aside the scabbard, focusing on sharpening the fine blade.
As he sharpened, the "2~2" points around his body began to blur, as if ready to jump up a notch at any moment.