After a male student transmigrated into the body of a widow,

Chapter 109 Trouble (3 words added)

Yu Ercheng suppressed his anger and said to the men not far away, "Our Good Luck Pavilion acts with integrity. If you don't want to eat the porridge in the shed, please go back. There are other people waiting behind you."

Among the scholars, an older man looked coldly at Yu Ercheng and sneered, "I never knew that they were giving away porridge, but now they're even giving away swill. It's really something that makes us look at them with disdain."

Faced with the man's mockery, Yu Ercheng's temple bulged with a vein. Just as he was about to retort, a familiar voice broke in.

"You are unaware of the true situation of the soup kitchens, so please refrain from speaking nonsense."

Chen Xiaoliu followed behind, and Gu Lin walked toward the porridge stall of Haoyunlou, interrupting Yu Ercheng's argument with several literati.

The leading man turned his gaze, assuming it was the other party's boss, but when he saw that the speaker was a young man, his wary expression relaxed. Then his face darkened, and he sternly rebuked, "Where did this ignorant young man come from? We are here as commoners of the South, arguing with the wealthy families in the city about why swill is being used as porridge water. How dare you interrupt?"

At the same time, Yu Ercheng and the other workers in the soup kitchen saw the young man standing not far away and called out in unison, "Boss."

Upon hearing the man rebuke Gu Lin, Yu Ercheng and Chen Xiaoliu looked at them with displeasure.

The man narrowed his eyes, not expecting the owner of the soup kitchen to be a young man.

He looked at Gu Lin and said with dissatisfaction, "Are you the owner of this soup kitchen? Since you're distributing soup, why insult us refugees from the south with swill and other filthy things? If you don't have the heart of a bodhisattva, why bother with this pretense?"

What a mouthful of shrewd gossip!

Gu Lin realized that the other party had put them in a disadvantageous position with just a few words, and even wanted to provoke the dissatisfaction of the people in the south.

I don't know if it was someone sent by the rival, or...

Facing the hundreds of southerners around him and the men who were causing trouble in front of him, Gu Lin calmly said, "Since the southerners fled to the outskirts of the city last year, my Good Luck Pavilion has been providing porridge, rain or shine, for a whole year."

With reason and evidence, Gu Lin spoke with conviction. He looked at the man and continued, "However, money and food are limited and will eventually run out. We have to be careful with our spending to maintain the porridge distribution. The swill you mentioned is made by crushing up the leftover food from the diners of Good Luck Restaurant and the unused ingredients from the restaurant that day, then boiling it at high temperature before sending it over. Apart from the less-than-ideal taste, it is absolutely clean."

As soon as Gu Lin finished speaking, a young scholar behind the leading man stepped forward. He looked at Gu Lin, pointed to the brown porridge in the wooden bucket in the porridge stall, and said sarcastically, "You give us leftovers and call them clean? Your Lucky House is going too far! Even dogs wouldn't eat this filthy stuff."

The room fell silent upon hearing this.

At first, the young scholar did not notice anything amiss, but when he turned around, he saw hundreds of pairs of eyes staring straight at him.

The young scholar felt a shiver run down his spine as he looked at the black eyes of the refugees in front of him, whose heads were large and bodies small, and whose eye sockets were completely sunken.

"If I'm not mistaken, you should be educated?" Gu Lin asked.

The young scholar immediately ignored the refugees' gazes, turned his head, and then slightly raised his head, glancing at Gu Lin with disdain.

Gu Lin turned his gaze away from the surrounding refugees and said, "I don't know how you all read books. You are all either in your early twenties or your thirties, yet you still say such naive things. It's really pathetic and laughable."

Showing no mercy to the other party, Gu Lin prepared to retaliate directly.

He raised his eyelids, his gaze sweeping over the turbans they wore on their heads, and spoke with his lips slightly parted.

"If I continue to use food indiscriminately without any flexibility, knowing that there is not enough money or food, instead of finding other ways to maintain soup kitchens, do you know how many people will starve to death?"

Without waiting for a reply, Gu Lin looked at them and continued, "You scholars care most about face and dignity, but you don't know that we common people will eat anything to survive, not to mention the swill you mention, even mud and tree leaves."

"With tens of thousands of refugees facing us, starving and naked, we merchants in the city are responding to the prefect's call, and all we can think about is how to keep the refugees from starving and save their lives. As for the face and dignity that you care about, I'm afraid I can't take care of that."

Hearing the young man say these words as if it were perfectly natural, the faces of the scholars showed disbelief.

In the past, if others were pointed out in this way, they would either be extremely ashamed or leave in shame. But the other party was not ashamed at all and even dared to confront them.

The young scholar spoke up: "So, this is your reason for regarding us as beasts, for offering us swill, and for insulting us?"

Gu Lin thought he had made his point very clear: the food porridge served in the soup kitchen was because there was not enough food and the refugees were facing starvation. As long as they wanted to survive, they wouldn't care about such things. As long as they had something to eat and could stay alive, that was enough.

However, the people in front of him completely ignored Gu Lin's words and remained stubbornly obstinate.

Gu Lin's gaze swept over the group of men. Although their clothes were somewhat dirty and disheveled, they were clearly different from the other poorly clothed disaster victims.

Judging from the details about them, these people were definitely not ordinary people. Other refugees who fled from the south to the north were either starving and emaciated, or they had eaten too much clay and were swollen all over. Only these people were far superior to many other refugees in terms of both their mental state and their clothing and physique.

"Why not eat meat porridge?" Gu Lin pondered this question.

He glanced at the scholars and then at the surrounding refugees, saying, “Before distributing the porridge, I had someone tell all the people in the refugee camp about the source of the food porridge. Whether they eat it or not is their own choice. I never intended to force you.”

“I also made it clear that this strategy was only necessary because of limited food supplies. If you are not satisfied, you can go to other soup kitchens.”

Gu Lin's words were not aggressive in tone, nor did he show any intention of backing down.

Several scholars visibly frowned.

According to their assumption, the young man in front of them should have apologized with remorse after hearing them point out his mistakes, instead of being so stubborn and unyielding.

Just as the man in the lead was about to speak, an unidentified object was suddenly thrown at him and hit him on the head. The man immediately cried out in pain, clutching his forehead and bending over.

Gu Lin looked across at the man and saw with his own eyes that bright red blood was flowing continuously from between his fingers.

Upon seeing this, the scholars all took a step back, fearing that someone would throw more things. Then they turned around and looked around, angrily saying, "Who is it? How dare they openly commit violence and throw stones at us?"

A deep male voice came from the crowd, accompanied by a few sneers. The man replied disdainfully, "We're smashing you bunch of ungrateful wretches!"

Gu Lin saw a tall, burly figure emerge from the crowd.

Under the furious glares of the young intellectuals, the man stepped forward, his tall and strong figure a head taller than theirs, immediately putting the menacing group in his place.

The young scholars couldn't help but take a step back, looking at the other party's tiger-like physique, they dared not speak out in anger.

The man said, "No wonder you've studied for decades and still haven't passed the imperial examinations. It turns out your hearts are all wicked. You can't see the good in others. One moment you're surviving on someone's charity, and the next you're turning your back on your savior. The sages in the books teach the way of doing good. How can you, with your wolfish hearts, take the words of the sages to heart and let them take root in your hearts? How can you possibly pass the imperial examinations?"

The man's words were undeniably harsh, striking a nerve with the group. Gu Lin witnessed the previously fair faces of the scholars opposite him turn flushed with anger.

The man who had been hit on the forehead by a stone and was bleeding finally stopped bleeding. Hearing what the burly man said, his chest heaved, clearly very angry, and the scholar's turban on his head shook.

He glared at the burly man and said hatefully, "You dare to do this, you brat?!"

The burly man was not one to be trifled with. His fierce face darkened as he said, "Old man, Boss Gu is kind and won't hold it against you, but I have received favors from Boss Gu, and I won't let you bully my benefactor at will!"

If a few bad apples like you cause my benefactor to shut down the soup kitchen, I will not let you get away with it.

The disaster victims, who had been watching the farce from the sidelines, began to show signs of nervousness or panic after the man spoke. They all looked at the young man with unease.

The burly man said to the group, "If you find the food at the soup kitchen unpalatable, then don't eat it. We common folk don't mind."

"At the benefactor's soup kitchen, the soup was not only thicker than at other soup kitchens, but the processed food porridge also contained meat, vegetables, and oil. For people like us who only eat meat a few times a year, it was the best thing ever. My wife was extremely weak and depleted after fleeing all this time, but after eating the food porridge for a few days, her complexion and health have improved significantly. The benefactor saved our family; he has given me a second life. I will never allow you to slander him."

Upon hearing the burly man's words, the expressions of the surrounding refugees were all moved, for most of them, like the man, had received the young man's kindness.

If it weren't for the young men who brought them thick porridge, piping hot and spicy ginger soup to warm them up, and warm and slightly bitter medicinal soup to prevent colds and fevers every day, rain or shine, they probably wouldn't be alive today.

They were grateful to the young man; it wasn't that they didn't want to speak up for Gu Lin when those scholars stood up to cause trouble.

However, these people were extremely docile, having been tamed by the upper class. They were masters at reading people and protecting themselves. Several scholars could tell at a glance that they were not people these people could afford to offend. Fearing retaliation afterward, they all kept silent.

However, when the burly man stood up to speak for Gu Lin, the refugees were moved. In particular, the man said that the actions of these men might discourage the young man and make him unwilling to distribute porridge. In order to repay Gu Lin and for their own survival, the refugees spoke up one after another.

"Are you really scholars? How can you be so unable to distinguish right from wrong! I fled here last year and lived in the refugee camp for a year. Boss Gu is a well-known kind person in the refugee camp. The porridge in the soup kitchen is always thicker than that in other places. In fact, Boss Gu is worried that it will be bad for our health if we eat porridge for a long time, so he will have someone cook bone broth for us every other day to nourish our bodies. We have never eaten such good things at home."

“You don’t need to tell us what kind of person Boss Gu is; we have eyes to see. Before there were many refugees, we could eat minced meat porridge at Boss Gu’s every few days. Do you see any other porridge stall that would be willing to buy meat to cook porridge for us?!”

"You lot are all respectable people, you even had oxcarts to ride in while fleeing. We are cheap, if it weren't for kind people like Boss Gu who were willing to help us, we would have been corpses in a mass grave long ago."

"You may dislike Boss Gu's food, but we don't. If we are fortunate enough to survive, we will definitely offer longevity tablets to the Prefect and to Boss Gu and other kind people like him!"

Tens of thousands of people spoke up one after another to seek justice for Gu Lin. They may have wanted Gu Lin to continue distributing porridge, but undeniably, even though they were destitute and their lives depended on it, they still remembered the kindness others had shown them.

As the autumn wind blew, Gu Lin's eyes felt slightly hot.

He once said that he didn't regret anything he had done, as long as it was the right thing to do.

Just like when he first started distributing porridge, the shopkeeper who knew him well reminded him not to stand out from the crowd, because being too kind to the refugees would attract too much attention.

If Gu Lin were rational, he would have protected himself upon receiving the warning, but looking at the people who were just like him but were now like corpses, Gu Lin couldn't bring himself to be ruthless.

Faced with tens of thousands of disaster victims and feeling their overwhelming anger, the scholars immediately lost their arrogance, and their faces, which had been as red as liver, turned pale.

Clearly, they were overwhelmed by the united and powerful people before them.

Seeing that everyone was standing on the young man's side, they knew that staying any longer was pointless, and that they might not be able to withstand the anger of the disaster victims.

Feeling that their lives were threatened, the scholars abandoned their former arrogance and fled like stray dogs.

Gu Lin did not stop them.

He turned to look at the people who had spoken up for him, controlling his intense emotions. Gu Lin cleared his throat, but his tone was still filled with deep emotion and gratitude.

He cupped his hands to the surrounding crowd and said, "Gu Lin is here to thank everyone for their help and trust!"

Then, he straightened up, looked up at everyone, and said firmly, "Floods are merciless, but people are compassionate. I, Gu Lin, hereby guarantee that Good Fortune Tower will never let you down. We will do our utmost under the leadership of the Prefect and overcome this difficult time together with everyone!"

Under the warm, pale yellow sunlight, the young man's body was so thin, not as tall and strong as that of an ordinary man, but facing tens of thousands of refugees, his slender frame seemed to contain boundless strength. He promised everyone that he would work together with them to overcome the difficulties.