Chapter 133: Even 133 oxen couldn’t mend his broken heart
“Someone come help me quickly…” Ye Gaosheng’s voice suddenly appeared outside the front gate, timely interrupting the awkwardness between father and son.
Old Man Ye turned his head and saw Ye Gaosheng struggling forward, bending under the weight of two large stones on his shoulders.
“Have you lost your mind, you dumb brute? If you can’t carry them, can’t you just take one at a time? Are you trying to crush yourself to death or what?” Old Man Ye got a fright from Ye Gaosheng and came over to try to take the stones off his shoulders.
But after all, being advanced in age, he no longer had the strength he once did. Instead of helping to remove the stones, he actually added more weight onto Ye Gaosheng’s shoulders, increasing his pain.
Fortunately, Ye Gaoshi arrived just in time and quickly lifted the stones off Ye Gaosheng’s shoulders.
“I just didn’t want to waste time, so I thought I’d carry them both at the same time. I didn’t expect it’d be too far, and I ran out of strength halfway down from the mountain. Then I couldn’t remove the stones by myself, and there was no one around on the road, so I had to keep pushing myself to get back,” Ye Gaosheng explained in his own defense.
Hearing this, Ye Gaoshi couldn’t help but ask, “Fourth Brother, you and our sister have been messing around with stones and oil these past two days, what are you up to?”
The day he came back, he had seen the fourth brother with his son and Wenyu chiseling stones. But he had been too busy to ask until now, and it was only after seeing Ye Gaosheng carrying stones that he remembered.
“About our sister, she…” Ye Gaosheng began to explain, but was interrupted by Old Man Ye with a shout, “Enough, get the stones inside and take a rest. Aren’t you tired?”
“Yes, I’m going,” Ye Gaosheng dared not delay any longer and hurriedly carried the stones inside.
Old Man Ye left behind a cold snort and also walked inside with his hands behind his back.
Ye Gaoshi shook his head helplessly, knowing in his heart that, because of the family division, the old man had held a grudge against him.
Ye Gaoshi bent down to help carry the remaining stone inside.
Ye Gaosheng didn’t rest after coming inside; he just drank a cup of water and then took up his tools and continued to chisel stones in the courtyard.
Old Man Ye came out of the main house and called out, “Fourth Brother, didn’t I tell you to come in and talk? What are you dawdling for out there?”
He knew that the two boys hadn’t been given money by their wives when they went out today, but they had come back with a cow. Old Man Ye suddenly realized that the soap his daughter had been making must have actually earned quite a bit of money.
He was eager to ask for details, but the fourth brother was being uncooperative and dawdling outside.
Ye Gaosheng had returned from town quite excited, but he had not expected to come home to the news from Wang Family’s sister-in-law that his marriage proposal had fallen through.
As the one scorned, even owning a new cow couldn’t mend his broken heart.
So, Ye Gaosheng was feeling miserable at the moment.
“Dad, our sister’s mind is sharper than mine. You can ask her whatever you need; I must get back to work quickly. I’m going to be busy these next couple of days,” Ye Gaosheng didn’t want to say anything. He just wanted to get back to work as soon as possible and make the thousand bars of soap that had been ordered.
Making the soap itself didn’t take much effort; it was mostly the drying that took time. But the quantity this time was large, and he needed to hurry and make the molds.
Otherwise, with only the fifty-bar mold to use, it would take an absurdly long time to produce a thousand bars of soap!