If this excuse worked, Jiang Rou wouldn't mind buying a bit more to take back for Master Zhang to use in making bone broth.
Master Wang's callused palms, which held the bone-chopping cleaver, were cracked and purple with frostbite, blood seeping through the splits. He viciously drove the tip of the knife into the cutting board, the rusted blade seeming to take on a murderous chill. "Injured? Which village? These days, who doesn't have a few broken bones in their family?"
Jiang Rou instinctively pulled the collar of her padded cotton jacket tight, rubbing her reddened cheeks with both hands, and fished her worn-edged educated youth permit out of her jacket pocket. The faded worker-peasant-soldier emblem on the cover looked all the more weathered in the bitter wind. With frost-numbed fingers, she traced the oil stains on the document, her clear voice carrying a touch of earnestness as she described the scene.
Chapter 119