Chapter 5: Procurement
Su Yaoguang carried corn cakes and mushroom soup into the wood shed.
Just as she entered the door, Zhou Wangshu in the wood shed opened his eyes.
In the dim light, he watched Su Yaoguang approach with the vigilance of a little wolf.
“Hungry, right? Can you eat by yourself? If you can, I’ll help you sit up. If not, I’ll feed you.”
Su Yaoguang first placed the things on the broken stool nearby.
“Help me sit up.”
The young man was still young, but his voice was quite mature.
Su Yaoguang helped him sit up.
Zhou Wangshu let out a muffled grunt.
“Did the wound split open?”
“No.” Zhou Wangshu endured the pain.
Su Yaoguang placed the cakes and mushroom soup in front of him and said, “Then eat slowly. I’ll come back tomorrow to collect the bowl. Eat your breakfast and rest early.”
Zhou Wangshu watched Su Yaoguang’s figure disappear, then touched the cake in the bowl with his fingers.
Today it was either medicine or porridge, a belly full of water—he had been starving for a long time.
Zhou Wangshu was just about to eat when Su Yaoguang, who had just left, came back and said to him, “Your urinal should be full. I’ll empty it for you.”
Zhou Wangshu: “…”
His whole body stiffened, his expression unnatural.
However, with the dim light now, his emotions were all hidden in the darkness.
“You…” Zhou Wangshu said awkwardly. “Thanks.”
Su Yaoguang smiled and said, “You don’t need to feel pressure. You heard earlier—I still need to use your identity to help me fend off trouble!”
Su Yaoguang emptied the urinal and put it back.
This time she said nothing and directly closed the wood shed door for him.
Zhou Wangshu listened to her footsteps fade away before picking up the corn cake to eat.
After observing for these few hours, he believed this was a remote poor village. The people here didn’t know who he was, so he should be relatively safe.
Besides, in his current state, if they were after his life, there was no need for such extra effort.
Zhou Wangshu ate the corn cake and found it fragrant and crispy. Paired with the fresh mushroom soup, this simple farm meal was surprisingly delicious.
How long had it been since he had normal food?
The next morning, Su Yaoguang carried a back basket to the village entrance to wait for the ox cart.
Not long after she arrived, she saw Jiang Yihuan and Zhong Lanhua coming one after the other.
The villagers saw the mother and daughter and greeted them proactively.
“Yaoguang girl, you’re going into the city too!” Zhong Lanhua said with a smile. “Is your mother feeling better?”
“Auntie really cares about my mother.” Su Yaoguang said sarcastically. “If my mother knew, she would surely greet you properly.”
Greet your eight generations of ancestors.
“Your mother and I are from the same village, and we both remarried to Anning Village later—that’s such great fate, of course I care about her.” Zhong Lanhua clutched her handkerchief. “By the way, is that little husband of yours for ten copper coins still alive? You’d better watch him closely. He’s worth ten copper coins at least—dead and you’d have to pay for the coffin.”
Su Yaoguang got on the ox cart, found a corner to sit in, and responded coldly, “Thanks for the concern. Auntie, you’d better worry more about the one in your own family! A scholar is useless. A scholar’s body is so frail—you bought him as a long-term hired hand, who knows if that frame of his can handle it. In the end, you’ll be the one at a loss.”
“You girl, what are you saying? My son Jiang Yihui is also a scholar—you’re not scolding him too?” The auntie nearby stirred things up.
“Oh, didn’t notice. But Jiang Yihui, having grown this big, the hardest work he’s done is probably feeding himself. My words apply to him the same.”
“Older sister Yaoguang is in a bad mood, speaking with thorns—we can understand. Luckily we’re from the same village, we know each other well and can understand your mood. If it were strangers, they might misunderstand older sister Yaoguang.” Jiang Yihuan held Zhong Lanhua’s arm, stabbing at Su Yaoguang’s soft spot with a soft knife. “Older sister Yaoguang, I heard Grandma Su still wants to marry you off to Zhang Mutou. If your newly bought little husband is up to it, you’d better draw up the marriage contract soon.”
“If the marriage contract is drawn up and that boy doesn’t come back to life, won’t Yaoguang become a widow?” The auntie nearby said.
“Yaoguang is still too young. Yesterday she could clearly have bought that long-term hired hand Mr. Xiao, but she was reluctant to spend the money and insisted on picking up cheap goods. If she had bought that long-term hired hand, he has a proper appearance, decent body, and most importantly he’s a scholar—having a man like that at home would definitely make things stand up.”
“I like the one I bought myself.” Su Yaoguang said defiantly. “What’s so good about that Mr. Xiao? I could tell from his eyes he’s not honest. If you bought him home, who knows when he’d run off. Auntie Zhong, you actually dared to leave him alone at home—aren’t you afraid he’ll run?”
Zhong Lanhua frowned and looked at Jiang Yihuan, muttering in a low voice, “That girl is right—we should have left someone at home to watch him.”
“I carry his deed of sale with me. If he runs, we can pursue him with the deed of sale—the government punishes fugitive slaves severely.” Jiang Yihuan replied in an equally low voice. “Besides, before I left I asked the brother next door, Chunshui, to help watch him today. We’re leaving this time to test him, to see if he’s honest. If he’s not, we’ll give him a harsh lesson to make him behave.”
The mother and daughter’s conversation reached Su Yaoguang’s ears.
Su Yaoguang’s mouth curved upward.
Xiao Yanci, take a look—this is your white moonlight.
The ox cart rocked and swayed, arriving in the city after half an hour.
Su Yaoguang jumped off the ox cart with her back basket, greeted Uncle Wang who drove the cart, and left.
“Don’t you all feel like there’s something off about Yaoguang girl?”
“She seems sharper-tongued than before, her eyes fiercer too—kinda intimidating.”
Su Yaoguang’s main purpose for coming to the city this time was procurement. First was grain—she didn’t like sorghum flour, so she mainly bought cornmeal and broken rice.
Broken rice is also rice, just with lots of little stones mixed in, and poor quality. Ordinary rice costs five copper coins per catty, broken rice only three.
Flour and ordinary rice are the same price, five copper coins per catty—she bought ten catties. Twenty catties each of cornmeal and broken rice, totaling fifty catties.
Additionally, passing the pork stall, she took a liking to large bones—which had little meat, so three copper coins for them. She also picked half a catty of pork, had the boss process the pig trotters, pig heart, and lungs all for her—totaling twenty-five copper coins.
She had another purpose this time: to procure some tools. To make money, she had to spend costs. Of course, most raw materials could be gathered from the mountains. What she needed to buy were essential tools and some important raw materials.
Rice and flour cost one hundred ten copper coins, meat twenty-five copper coins, but the materials she bought cost three hundred copper coins.
In this short time, half a string of coins was gone.
Su Yaoguang endured the heartache, her desire to make money growing stronger.
She turned around and saw Zhong Lanhua and Jiang Yihuan coming out of the ready-to-wear clothing shop. Zhong Lanhua was counting money—a big string of copper coins, her face beaming with joy.
This was one reason Jiang Yihuan and Zhong Lanhua always had the edge over their mother and daughter. Zhong Lanhua and Jiang Yihuan did embroidery work, supporting themselves with their embroidery skills. Zhang Zhaodi was a midwife, seen by the world as a bit lower than Zhong Lanhua.
The reason Zhang Zhaodi and Zhong Lanhua didn’t get along was because when Zhang Zhaodi was young, she was very skilled with her hands and applied for an apprenticeship at the embroidery shop. But just when she got the opportunity and went home to pack to report to the embroidery workshop, Zhong Lanhua scalded her right on with boiling water brought over—those hands could never do needlework again.
