Rise From the Humble

Dark clouds covered the sky and the earth, and the lightning that tore the sky cracked in the ink-like sky. The thunder rolled in, and then the rain poured down.

On the official road in the distance, a carriage covered with linoleum swayed in the storm, and the healthy horse was drenched into a buffalo, panting heavily, struggling on the muddy official road.

"Young master, Yingtian is less than three miles ahead. The wind and rain are too heavy. Let's take a rest and wait for the wind and rain to calm down before we can make our way." The chariot-horse style wearing a straw hat turned his head and asked inside the car.

Perhaps the wind and rain are too noisy and the sound is too small.

There was silence in the car.

Chariot and horse style asked again loudly.

After a while, a lazy voice sounded like he had just woken up. It was a boy who said, "Oh, it makes it happen, of course it makes it happen. Brother Zhao decided to do it."

The horse driver wearing a coir hat laughed when he heard this, and joked, "I really admire you, you can sleep well in this kind of weather."

"The sound of wind and rain is so rhythmic that I couldn't help falling asleep after listening to it." The naive voice in the carriage seemed a little embarrassed to explain.

"Master, you are joking. I can save others from being unconscious. In the past, you always read in the car. Today, you can't see clearly in the weather. You just can rest. It's just that you can sleep on this day, but I admire it." The man driving the horse parked the carriage on the side of the road, and while putting a straw woven mat on the healthy horse, he laughed and talked to the boy in the carriage.

The man who drove the horse took pity on the horse, but he did not dare to drive the carriage to the woods to avoid the rain in a thunderstorm, so he had to park the carriage on the side of the road to avoid it.

"Brother Zhao, hurry up and take shelter in the car from the rain."

A corner of the curtain of the carriage was lifted, and a slightly fat, naive boy poked his head out, looked at the wind and rain outside, and said to the man standing outside the carriage.

With the light of the lightning, it can be recognized that this slightly fat and silly boy is Zhu Pingan who came to Yingtian to rush for the exam.

The horse driver in coir raincoat shook his head, "This and that can work, I won't go in if I'm wet."

Zhu Pingan, who leaned out of the carriage slightly, waved his hand nonchalantly, "It's okay, Brother Zhao just came in except for the coir raincoat, and I put all the luggage and scrolls in the bag."

The horse driver hesitated for a moment, and at Zhu Ping'an's repeated request, he took off his coir raincoat and got into the carriage to rest for a while.

This carriage is also a coincidence. In ancient times, there were no direct trains everywhere like in modern times. In the Ming Dynasty, even a carriage and horse dealer could not say that there was a carriage wherever you wanted. After going around for a while, I happened to meet a horse driver who was going to Yingtian to pull goods. After a little negotiation, the horse driver readily took Zhu Pingan for a ride, and only charged a small fare. In ancient times, under the constraints of ethics, there seemed to be more good people.

Yichuan Tobacco is full of wind and wind in the city. Plums turn yellow when it rains.

The gust of wind outside the carriage whizzed down with the torrential rain, and he was so energetic that he started to fall without sleep. Zhu Pingan looked out through the car window and saw a world full of water, so he was even more impressed with Jiangnan Meiyu. In the past, it was only recorded in textbooks: In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, there will be continuous cloudy and rainy weather in June and July every year. Since it is the ripening period of Jiangnan plums, it is called "Plum Rain". It is called the rainy season. Now Zhu Ping'an felt more about the rainy season. He drove for several days without seeing a sunny day.

From the morning to the middle of the afternoon, Fengyue did not stop, but it was slightly smaller. Brother Zhao, who was driving the horse, put on his coir raincoat again, and drove the carriage along the official road.

The road was muddy and watery, and the carriage wobbled unhappily. Even the official roads in ancient times cannot be compared with modern roads, even if they are tofu engineering roads.

It took less than three miles to walk for more than half an hour, that is, more than an hour now, before arriving at Yingtian, which is now Nanjing City.

Just one glance after opening the curtain of the carriage door, Zhu Ping'an was shocked by the majestic Nanjing City.

majestic, majestic, majestic

The city wall of Yingtian is like a huge dragon winding around to guard Yingtian, stretching as far as the eye can see, winding tens of kilometers, the city wall is newly built, and looks newer under the baptism of heavy rain. The Yingtian City Wall was completed in the last years of Hongwu. This is the largest city wall that Zhu Pingan has seen. It is even more majestic than the Xi’an City Wall. It can almost be called the largest city in the world. Of course, Shuntian (Beijing) should be the largest at this time , but this does not affect Zhu Pingan's emotion.

Especially at this time, the rainwater poured from the city to the drain outlet of the city wall, and flowed out through several stone faucets protruding out from the city wall.

At this time, outside the gate of Yingtian City, even in this weather, there are many pedestrians and vehicles coming and going, and there are also people outside the city who look like scholars and students, holding paper umbrellas, sighing "dragon spit water" outside the city, regardless of the heavy rain. , Leaving excellent works, but suffering from the servants of the book boy who held up an umbrella to protect the paper and ink.

Not long after entering Nanjing, due to the heavy rain that delayed the trip, brother Zhao, the horse driver, was in a hurry to buy goods, so he put Zhu Pingan in front of an inn, charged him with a crime, and drove the carriage away.

Zhu Pingan stood outside the inn with his luggage on his back, waved to the departing carriage, and thanked loudly.

"Hey, this is not Zhu Ping'an, the chief of the case. I haven't seen him for a few months. Why did he get so fat?"

One of the scholars and students who watched the return of the dragon spitting water from outside the city heard Zhu Ping'an's voice and felt familiar, so he looked up, and it took him a few seconds to recognize Zhu Ping'an.

This Zhu Ping'an really lived up to the title of a rice bucket, he ate it after not seeing him for a few months. He got fat.

Hearing this, Zhu Pingan looked around, and saw a person among a group of scholars and students looking at him in surprise. This person looked familiar, but he couldn't recognize who it was. Somebody upstairs.

"It's just a fluke that I dare to claim the top case. Being fat, uh, my mother's craftsmanship is uncontrollable." Zhu Pingan bowed his hands far away, and said with a silly smile.

"Brother Zhu Xian is humble." The man also cupped his hands.

After the man finished speaking, he whispered a few words to the students next to him, and after a while, he looked at Zhu Ping'an with some dissatisfaction and perhaps disdain.

"The wind is heavy and the rain is tight. Brother Yu should go to rest first. Brother Yu will come to visit Brother Zhu some other day." The man cupped his hands and left with his colleagues around him.