Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 470 Did the parents survive?

Grandparents always called their son Xiaocheng, so Tian Xiaofu and his friends all called their father Uncle Xiaocheng.

"What's going on? Cousin, have you seen my father? Then why didn't you bring him back? Also, where is my mother? Did you see her too?" Hua Lei's voice suddenly became anxious.

"It's like this, cousin Hualei, our ship was at the ferry in Jianyang Prefecture, unloading cargo. I saw a man who looked very much like Uncle Xiaocheng, helping other ships load cargo at the ferry.

However, the officials in Jianyang Prefecture were inspecting the books at that time, and I couldn't leave for the time being. After the inspection was completed, I went ashore to buy food and looked for Uncle Xiaocheng for several times, but couldn't find him.

And because Mr. Gu from the Yongjia Prefecture's etiquette office was on board, I did not dare to waste time and only wrote two notices, one of which was posted on the notice board at the ferry.

I left a copy at the "Xi Xiang Feng" restaurant that has business dealings with us, asking the owner to help keep an eye out at the ferry to see if there is anyone like Uncle Xiao Cheng.

If anyone came to ask, please leave an address. I would go back to him after handing over the books, and then I would sail to the next ferry.

After all the books were handed over, I went back to the ferry in Jianyang Prefecture to ask the shopkeeper, but he said that no one had come to ask.

"Did you see it clearly? Is it really my father?" Hua Lei couldn't help but grab Tian Xiaofu's arm, feeling a little ecstatic and a little uneasy.

"They look very similar. I only saw the front from a distance, and the other thing I saw was the side profile and the back. He looks very similar to my great-uncle." Tian Xiaofu said.

Originally, he was not sure. He was a dozen years younger than Hua Lei's father. When Hua Lei's father took his wife to take up the post, he was about thirteen or fourteen years old.

And now it has been fifteen or sixteen years, not to mention that his memory is fuzzy, even Hualei's father should have changed a lot. I only saw his side profile and back, so I'm really not sure.

After hearing what Tian Xiaofu said, Hua Lei couldn't help but fall into deep thought. In fact, ever since Hua Lei brought Xiao Yuan to settle down in Shangjing City and had enough money in her hands, she had the idea of ​​looking for her father and mother.

She always felt that her father and mother should still be alive, but for some reason, they could not come back. After all, it would take four or five months to travel by horse carriage from Changyun County to Tongde Town, Hualei's former hometown.

If you don't have money or means of transportation, and there are many mountains and rivers between the two places, the two places are like the ends of the earth, so it is very likely that you will not be able to come back.

Hua Lei also learned that there was a severe flood in Changyun County where her father worked. The flood was caused partly by continuous heavy rains and partly by the river bursting its banks due to the heavy rains.

However, the county town where the dike burst was Changfeng County, which is upstream of Changyun County, and not within the territory of Changyun County. Therefore, when the river burst its dike, even if people were really washed away, they should have been in the upstream, and the people of Changfeng County were more likely to be washed away.

Changyun County was not the first county to be hit, and due to the time difference and the terrain, no one would be directly washed away, and his father was the county magistrate.

As a county magistrate, he should receive information earlier than ordinary people. He would know about river breaches earlier and have more time to arrange follow-up matters.

However, I heard that when the flood happened there, too many people were washed away, resulting in the bodies not being buried in time after the flood, which caused them to rot and stink, leading to a large-scale epidemic. Many of the living people became ill, and so a large number of people died later.

If his father and mother had not been washed away by the flood and were still alive, as a county magistrate, he would not be able to escape the task of epidemic prevention and treatment. Many times, he had to lead by example, rush to the front, and actively provide disaster relief.

So, in the end, Hua Lei never knew whether her parents survived or not. However, she always had a dream, hoping that one day her parents would suddenly come back and appear in front of her.

Therefore, since the establishment of her own fleet, Hualei has made many wooden plaques with the word "Hua" engraved on them in her grandfather's handwriting. In addition, the word "Hua" in her grandfather's handwriting is also engraved on the hull of the boat.

When the fleet went out, no matter whether it was going north or south, east or west, Hua Lei took care of all the crew members. This wooden plaque should be hung in the most conspicuous place on the ship so that people can see it at a glance.

If someone asks who the hosts are, you can tell them openly that they are Hua Canghai and Hua Moyuan. What you are worried about is that your parents might be stranded in a small county town and have no money to return home.

Occasionally, he would see the fleet of the "Hua" family. The wooden plaque with the word "Hua" written on it would be obvious to his father. He would then find the boat and Xiaoyuan and himself, just to reunite the family.

Moreover, Hualei asked Liang Xiangyi's fleet for help, although she felt embarrassed to put her own name on someone else's boat. However, Liang Xiangyi took back a few of the wooden plaques with the word "Hua" that Hualei had customized.

Hanging it next to the wooden plaque with the Chinese character “梁” in her home, she said that she and her father had both received great favors from her grandfather, and now Hualei’s request was just a piece of cake for her.

Moreover, Hua Lei also considered that after she left Tongde Town, her great uncle and his family moved to Shangjing City. She was worried that her parents would return to Tongde Town and would not be able to find her.

So, in the second year after my great uncle came to the capital, when he returned safely to Tongde Town for the imperial examination, I asked him to go to Tongde Town again to look around, thinking about buying a house or a shop and staying there to wait for his parents to come back.

Unexpectedly, her ancestral home was for sale, so Hua Lei spent money to buy back her own house and hired people to reopen the shop that was originally used as a bookstore, also for the purpose of waiting for her parents' return.

Now, Hualei's business is getting bigger and bigger, and all the items he sends out will have the word "Hua" printed in his grandfather's handwriting in a conspicuous place.

In an inconspicuous place, he used lacquer to print a pattern of a budding wintersweet flower. This pattern was the shape of a wintersweet flower that his father had specially drawn when he was one month old.

At that time, my grandmother also made a silver wintersweet flower pendant based on my father's design and hung it on her chest. If my parents could see it, they would recognize it at a glance.