Marriage agreement

Even with all the pain Tang He was able to run to the well in a decent speed. Filling up his bucket he started doing stretching exercises. Frank had never really done much yoga in his life before but he had seen the many stances his wife would frequently take. And so, after half an hour of rather relaxing work Tang He carried his bucket home.

Because he hadn't worked on the fields yesterday he would need to help them today. Tang Rong was incapacitated and they had a big problem to solve: irrigation

For now, they would use buckets to bring water from the river into the canals but that could only work temporarily because it was extremely demanding.

As the brothers knew about Tang He's old strength and endurance they let him off after he had done a couple of buckets worth of work and so he wandered off to sit at the river and relax.

< We both seem to really like flowing water…. >

< You know I had always enjoyed going to a river and just watch the water flow. I don't know why, but I always feel cleaner and more relaxed afterwards! >

'Mhh!'

With a strong nod Tang He found a small clear area and sat down with his legs crossed.

For the next hours the boy just sat there as if in trance. Frank was the same, as he watched waves collide with each other and perturbations expand he entered a state of forgetfulness and emptiness. Without feeling it, time flew past them and only returned to its normal speed when a loud shout awoke them. Tang Guo was calling them to return for supper.

Tang He didn't feel any hunger at all yet but he knew to follow his brother's call. Once when he hadn't Tang Guo almost dragged him home by his ears. He had said that he wanted to make them larger so He would hear him next time.

But this time when he returned home it wasn't only his mother who was greeting him.

They had visitors: village chief Su and Ma Cai were sitting in the room where Tang He's father lied. Together with his mother they seemed to discuss something.

When Tang He and his siblings entered the room, they saw sometimes frowning and sometimes smiling expressions on the adults. Then with a smile Tang Mei said to all of them:

"We have decided on a marriage agreement with the Ma family!" she continued

"Tang Ah will take Ma Qian as her husband when she comes of age and now with our connected houses they will of course extend their help to us."

"Elder Su told us that it would be possible to soon expand the village and make it prosper more but for that we will need more manpower on the fields and more building projects will be necessary"

Then she added:

"Tang Guo and Tang He, you will come under Ma Cai and learn from him how to build. For now, you two will not have to work on the fields anymore"

Hearing all that everyone was stunned for a while even Frank was rather surprised how decisive they have given away their daughter and one strong workforce. Even if everything works out fine, it will still mean that the Tang family will depend way more on the Ma family in future.

If they aren't careful the Tang family could even vanish over time as the Ma family had more influence in the village and a household 5 times the size of the one the Tangs had.

Building and repair was something many families in the village needed – a strong storm could always incur damages and because most houses weren't the most structurally stable to begin with even daily use could wear them down slowly. As a result, the Ma family had really good connections throughout the village and many regarded them highly.

Frank suspected the chief to have done something behind their back to make the Ma family agree to the whole thing. Why else would they do such an unusual thing and lose out in the short-term?

They would give away part of their workforce to make the fields larger to work them and maintain them. We would only provide a good worker and one weak boy. They probably really plan to take over the business over the long run.

But it wasn't as if the Tang family could refuse. Their children would probably have a better life working with the Ma family and wouldn't be as ousted as before. And of course, there was the thing with the broken water wheel.

They weren't able to repair it themselves so they would need the help of the Ma's anyway and now they would do the work for free.

Sure, Tang Mei and Tang Rong understood that the deal would not be in their favour in the long run, but this would probably be the only chance they had at becoming a real part of the village again. They didn't have much of a choice to be honest.

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The next weeks proceeded without any special developments. The pump got repaired, new short-term seeds where planted and the fields got much busier.

Tang He got relieved from his water-fetching duties as there were way more people now. A small residential home next to theirs was built for all the workers and they even planned to dig a new well to get a water source near to them.

This of course made Tang He's new training regime obsolete. As he didn't need to get any more water anymore he didn't have an excuse to run and to do his work-outs anymore.

One could have thought that Tang He would be ostracised at his new place which actually had happened in the beginning but as he started speaking more and more fluently and behaving more and more normally, nobody really cared anymore.

He got assigned to work with the woodcutters which would travel with a cart to the forest regions around to find suitable trees to fell. His task was to scout areas ahead of everyone to find exactly where the most suitable places would be to find the wood they needed right now. He was often able to provide the most optimal route to take and the woodcutters actually saved a lot of time when hurling the wood back to the roads.

Very soon they accepted him because of his good work and therefore he wouldn't need to actually cut wood and had more free time.

His stamina improved tremendously over this period, now he was able to run continuously for hours without any break. Frank was very surprised by this quick improvement. It seemed as if that boy could run a marathon right now, maybe not world-class but he still in way better shape than Frank had ever been.

He too got used to his situation over time. Frank would talk a lot about his former life with the boy, about work, family or even the things he experienced.

Tang He became one of the closest friends Frank had ever had. As they both shared a body, all feelings would be laid open between them. If Frank had many more private thoughts before, now everything was more like a dialogue between them.

Tang He too started to feel the thirst for knowledge so they tried to get it where ever they could.

In this era that would mostly be achieved through oral tales and hear-say. Sometimes on the longer trips into the woods he would hear stories about beasts or even immortals and many things sounded very spooky and magical. This didn't really faze Frank too much as he knew how technology could look like, viewed from an unknowing observer. Arthur C. Clarke had summed it up pretty well with

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

He of course still remembered the magical treatment Doctor Shu had shown him but in the end he concluded that those needles and ointments really could have been something special and maybe he himself was just ignorant of the technology used. One fact remained:

He needed more data.

Sometimes when the hunters would come with them to get some wild boars or other game he would help them skin it, as that was the only way to learn anatomy. Things seemed to be pretty similar though. Bones, muscles, digestive tract, nerves, brain.

Nothing was there to suggest any abnormal biology or physics. He certainly didn't find anything like those 'meridians' Doctor Shu had mentioned before. There was nothing to support anything like that and it was not as if he could just ask around why meridians would exist in humans and if someone had opened one up to look for them.

Evolutionary speaking it would be rather unlikely for a complex network of some kind to suddenly appear in one species. There needed to be some kind of procedural development. Hence, looking at other samples from all over the animal kingdom should help but everything did look more or less normal.

And so time went on. Tang He learned a lot about eatable plants and which places to mind. Frank wasn't that useful in that regard as most of the flora and fauna was rather different as the one he had known on earth. Even though many characteristics were the same, often certain body parts were very different. Once on one of his scouts, he had even seen some kind of armoured boar before and after asking about it he found out that it seemed to be some kind of peaceful beast which actually ensured the safety of the whole region.

Even though territorial animals were pretty common and nothing special, this boar had seemed very different. When he saw it, he had felt some kind of shiver run through him and he had a feeling as if he was watched from all sides simultaneously.

With the fear of his life he had escaped and luckily wasn't pursued.

His training went on and very soon his body became rather well-toned and stringy. But his brain didn't stop working either if he wasn't in the woods or at home he would help out chief Su with his troubles.

And troubles did indeed exist. The first one was that he actually wasn't able to sell the 'water-crystal' as chief Su had planned.

The caravans that had come wouldn't confirm its authenticity so even after much bickering it was just placed back into one of chief Su's drawers to collect dust.

And so, the village was much shorter on funds as Elder Su had expected. The expansion-plans were not exactly cheap and thus Tang He was tasked with many money saving programs. Sadly because of all that Elder Su didn't really get to teach Tang He any reading either.

As he spent much time in Elder Su's office he did get to know Su Liling a bit better as well. Even though she seemed all obedient to others Tang He soon came to know her more rebellious side as well.