Jiang Sheng knew that Zhang Auntie was suffering, and she had known for half a year. In Jiang Sheng's mind, if you get beaten, you run away; if you get scolded, you talk back.
She didn't understand why Zhang Auntie had endured it bitterly all this time - why, after she recovered from her injuries, she stayed on, working diligently and obediently.
Once, little Jiang Sheng really couldn't stand it anymore. She grabbed Zhang Auntie's sleeve and said, "Auntie, why don't you leave? He keeps hitting you - he's a bad man."
Zhang Auntie turned around and stroked little Jiang Sheng's head. "Auntie can't leave. I can't abandon my children, and I have nowhere to go."
From then on, Jiang Sheng understood - a married girl has no home.
Even though Auntie Zhang could endure it, Jiang Sheng felt pained for her.
"Big brother, how can we make it so Auntie doesn't get hit anymore?" she asked.
Zheng Ruqian thought hard about it. "My mother once said that some customers would act inappropriately and grope the girls, so the turtle lords at Yihong Brothel would break those customers' hands and feet so they couldn't do that anymore."
So it was that simple.
Jiang Sheng nodded and clenched her fist by her side.
The siblings went to another house to collect mushrooms. When they first knocked on doors, the villagers were always wary and suspicious, thinking it was the little beggar kids from the village coming to ask for food.
The kindhearted ones would give half a steamed bun, while the stingier ones waved their hands to shoo them away, saying "Go, go, we don't have anything to eat."
But Jiang Sheng was not angry. She poked her head in the door and smiled. "Uncle, we want to buy mushrooms from your family. Can you sell them to us?"
"Buy mushrooms? You kids have money to buy mushrooms?" The villager's eyes bulged wide.
In the village, everyone knew Jiang Sheng was a little beggar who survived by wandering around begging and rummaging through trash.
If she had money, the whole village would be rich enough to overflow with oil.
Jiang Sheng knew they didn't believe her, so she reached out and dragged Zheng Ruqian over. His clean, fine cloth robes and chubby little figure added a sense of affluence.
Jiang Sheng held out both hands, speaking rapidly, "This is my cousin from far away. His family does business, and when he heard our village had mushrooms, he came specifically to buy some through my connection. Uncle, if you're not willing to sell, we'll go check somewhere else."
After she finished, she turned to leave without hesitation.
"Hey, wait!" As expected, the villager became anxious.
A dozen or so mushrooms at home weren't even enough for one meal. Selling them wasn't worth a trip, but leaving them to dry was troublesome too. Since this silly kid wanted to buy them, he might as well just sell.
As for the price, that was up for negotiation.
After a bout of bargaining, they finally bought the mushrooms at the regular market price.
"Uncle, don't worry. My cousin's family is very wealthy, with hundreds of taels. As long as he's willing, he'll come back to buy mushrooms from us in the future."
After weighing the mushrooms on her own scale, Jiang Sheng didn't forget to boast a bit as they left.
Back on the main road, Zheng Ruqian started mumbling, "Why did you say I have dozens or hundreds of taels? I only have twenty copper coins."
Jiang Sheng glared at him. "If we didn't say you were rich, who would sell mushrooms to us?"
That was true. Zheng Ruqian patted the basket on his back, a smile appearing on his face.
Next, they visited five or six more households, filling up a whole basket with mushrooms, spending all twenty copper coins.
Calculating it, the price was about the same as when they had picked and sold mushrooms themselves last autumn.
Jiang Sheng led Zheng Ruqian back to the broken-down temple and spread the mushrooms out to dry.
The winter sun was already weak, and two days of drying here was not as effective as one day had been previously.
"You guys bought these mushrooms back at market price and are drying them again to sell. Even if the price stays the same, the weight will be reduced." Xu Mo couldn't help speaking up, worried the younger siblings would lose money.
Zheng Ruqian looked at Jiang Sheng.
They had discussed this. It wasn't realistic to demand too low a price for the mushrooms. First, the villagers still didn't completely trust them. Second, too low a price meant the villagers would rather dry the mushrooms themselves than sell to these kids. It was better to just pay the normal market price - they could build trust and develop relationships with the villagers.
As for taking a loss...
Jiang Sheng had overheard the tutor say in school that rarity determines value. Mushrooms used to be abundant everywhere, but now they had to go door to door collecting them. They had transformed from an ordinary object into a precious commodity.
Since this was the case, it was not unreasonable for Jiang Sheng and Zheng Ruqian to sell for a higher price.
The next day, the Zheng siblings carried the slightly dried mushrooms to town, with Fang Heng tagging worriedly along.
Wen Zhiyun was somewhat afraid of seeing people, so she stayed at the broken-down temple on the excuse of "taking care of Xu Mo's broken leg."
At the marketplace, the fresh mushrooms did attract enthusiastic inquiries at first. But when Jiang Sheng raised the price from "2 copper coins per jin" to "5 copper coins per jin", the enthusiastic aunties' and grannies' ardor cooled.
One scoffed, "It's just some mushrooms. How dare you sell for 5 coppers a jin? Crazy!"
Zheng Ruqian almost lost heart.
"Did we set the price too high? Should we lower it to 3 coppers per jin?" he whispered to Jiang Sheng.
Jiang Sheng also had some doubts, but thinking of the difficulty of collecting the mushrooms, and the hour they had walked just to get here to this market, her gaze grew firm again. "We'll sell for 5 coppers per jin."
The morning passed, and though many people inquired about the mushrooms, few bought them.
Just as the market was about to end, a middle-aged man appeared at their stall. He checked the freshness of the mushrooms, nodded, and said, "You're selling these for 5 coppers per jin? Can you go lower?"
"Uncle, if you buy it all, I'll sell for 4 coppers," Jiang Sheng immediately responded.
The middle-aged man arched his brows. "I'll take it all."
The morning of waiting had not been in vain.
Zheng Ruqian almost cried out loud.
Fortunately Jiang Sheng kept her composure. She briskly weighed and packed up the mushrooms, saying, "Uncle, look - a full nine jin. That's thirty-six coppers total."
Without any fuss, the middle-aged man threw down thirty-six copper coins.
The man was richly dressed, in fine thin robes finer than Zheng Ruqian's. He spent the dozen-odd coppers casually, not counting them as money.
He didn't seem like a local townsman, but more like someone from the county seat...
Jiang Sheng's mind lit up sharply. Just as the man turned to leave, she shouted, "Uncle! We have a lot more mushrooms like these. Do you want them?"
The middle-aged man paused, then looked back. "If they're just as fresh, I'll take them all."
"Fresh, they're all fresh!" Jiang Sheng was extremely excited. "Uncle, we can even deliver them the same day if you don't need to dry them."
The middle-aged man didn't reply. He had his servant take the mushrooms.
Just before leaving, he leisurely said, "I can buy them, but I won't come to town again. If you kids want to do business, deliver them to Yuanran Residence in the county seat."
Perhaps because he was certain these children couldn't manage the long distance delivery, he left after saying this.
Yuanran Residence.
It sounded very prestigious.
Jiang Sheng had been to the county town before. She had found Zheng Ruqian behind Yihong Brothel, so she was fairly familiar with the town, though not every restaurant and teahouse. But she had never heard of a Yuanran Residence!
"Could it be newly opened?" she couldn't help muttering to herself.
Glancing at Zheng Ruqian, the perpetually silly and happy fat boy had fallen into an inexplicable gloom, evidently recalling some unpleasant memories.
"Big brother," Jiang Sheng had no choice but to hug his arm and coax him. "Big brother, are you scared to go to the county town? Are you?"
Zheng Ruqian turned back with feigned boldness. "Who's scared? We just earned a neat profit of sixteen coppers. Forget a county town, even if it were Knife Mountain or Flaming Mountain, I'd go!"
Jiang Sheng laughed. "Good. I'll go with you, big brother."
Fang Heng didn't understand why going to the county town was being compared to ascending Knife Mountain or entering Flaming Mountain, but seeing the silly smiles on the siblings' faces, he couldn't help quirking up the corners of his mouth.
Although they had left prosperous, wealthy Fengying and their privileged lives behind, meeting these kids didn't seem so awful after all.
Fang Heng lifted his head to gaze in the direction of Fengying and let out a long breath.
Suddenly Jiang Sheng pounced over to grab his sleeve. "Third brother, I have a request for you!"
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