The moment they stepped into the main room, Tigerhead darted out excitedly, holding a bookmark high in his hand.
"Uncle Liang, look, look!" He stood on tiptoe, lifting the leaf vein bookmark high up before Steward Liang. "It's so beautiful! Jing gave it to me! Look, all the soft flesh of the leaf has been stripped away, leaving only the veins. It's a leaf vein bookmark, isn't it exquisitely made?"
Steward Liang took it and examined it closely, quite surprised by what he saw. The leaf veins were translucent and lightweight, as if coated in a layer of amber, truly a unique, cleverly crafted elegant trinket. He couldn't help but praise it: "It's truly rare, full of the unspoiled charm of nature, yet made with such fine attention to detail."
Tigerhead puffed up with pride at the praise, quickly tucking the bookmark back into his own hands and holding it like a treasure. "No one else has one! I'm the very first person Jing gave one to. Even my grandfather, my elder brother, and Sparrow haven't got theirs yet!"
"That's truly a remarkable honor," Steward Liang chuckled.
After finishing showing off, Tigerhead zoomed back to Lin Jing's side like a gust of wind, and the two little heads huddled together, whispering over a dozen spread-out bookmarks.
"I want to sell each one for a hundred taels," Lin Jing stated seriously, laying out his grand business plan to Tigerhead. "We worked on them for ages to make these sixteen total."
"Sell them! A hundred taels each!" Tigerhead nodded vigorously. "Such a pretty treasure, a hundred taels is almost a bargain. When I bring them to the academy, my classmates will definitely fight to buy them."
Lin Jing got so excited listening to him that his eyes sparkled, though his little face still kept a serious look. "Hmm... can't make it too expensive, or people won't be able to afford it. How about ninety-nine taels?"
"Ninety-nine taels is great, sounds lucky!" Tigerhead nodded in all solemn agreement. The two little boys leaned over the stack of bookmarks, starting to map out the division of labor for their bookmark business venture.
Over on that side, Lin Wu poured a cup of hot water for Steward Liang. "I apologize for any poor hospitality, Steward. I hope you won't take offense."
"Mrs. Lin, you are too polite. We are the ones who showed up uninvited," Steward Liang took the earthen cup. "I'll get straight to the point. The academy will be holding a three-day lecture gathering starting the day after tomorrow, when scholars from all over Huzhou Prefecture will gather. The headmaster sent me to ask if you could prepare eighty Emerald Cakes every day to serve as refreshments during the event."
Lin Wu nodded. "Thank you so much for the academy's kindness. Eighty cakes a day, I've noted that down. I will definitely have them ready on time."
Steward Liang glanced around the simple, humble little cottage, his voice gentle. "Originally we thought you could make them at home, and I'd send someone over each day to pick them up. But after seeing what happened just now at the C Warmth Courtyard..."
He paused, sipping a little hot water. "If you don't mind the trouble, you could bring the young master straight to the academy's kitchen to make them. For one thing, it saves the hassle of transporting the food. For another, you can move around freely inside the academy, and avoid all those unnecessary disturbances."
Lin Wu froze for a moment at his words, then immediately understood. Steward Liang was thinking of her current predicament. If she could come and go from the academy with Lin Jing for a few days, it would not only solidify her connection to the academy, but also let her steer clear of the ward officers. It was truly a far better arrangement.
"If that's possible, that would be wonderful," she thanked him hurriedly. "I just fear it will cause the academy too much extra trouble."
"No trouble at all," Steward Liang waved a hand dismissively. "The academy already has a kitchen. Any ingredients you need, you can tell me in advance, and the academy will arrange to get them for you. We will never let your recipe leak out to anyone else."
The two of them went on to discuss all the small details, such as the quantities of ingredients and the schedule for each day.
Inside the room, the topic between Tigerhead and Lin Jing had already shifted from the leaf vein bookmarks to the ward officer who had come to their door earlier that day.
"Why do they insist we have to go to that Warmth Courtyard place?" Lin Jing mumbled, lying over the table and staring at the wobbly little block tower he'd built, full of confusion. "There are so many people out on the street whose clothes are all tattered and falling apart."
Tigerhead carefully pulled a small wooden stick out from the base of the tower, frowning deeply. "Exactly! It's so infuriating. They even tried to make my family donate money! But those people take the money, and don't use it to help the people who are suffering the most. Instead, they come force you to move there. They might as well just give all that money straight to you!"
Lin Jing nodded along vigorously, thinking that the idea of "just giving the money straight to them" made perfect sense.
Tigerhead waved the little wooden stick in his hand, shaking his little head. "My grandfather says this is just like the homework the academy master assigns. The original intention is good, right? It's supposed to help everyone improve. But when it gets to the students, the ones who know how to do it work hard on it. The ones who don't know how to do it, and are scared of getting punished, just scribble all over the paper to turn something in. And then there are people who just keep writing the few lines they already know over and over, so it looks all neat and perfect, just to avoid making mistakes."
He set the little wooden stick down on the table, and sighed in a deliberately grown-up way. "Anyway, once the homework is handed in, the master writes a 'graded' note on it, and the whole thing is done. There are so many students, how could the master go ask every single one if they actually understood the lesson?"
Lin Jing blinked his eyes, half understanding and half confused. "Then... what happens to the people who really never learned how to do it?"
"Then they just never learn, I guess," Tigerhead said, also flopping down to rest his head on the table. "The homework's still handed in, anyway. And the masters don't really care much about what the worst students are doing. As long as the top few students have beautiful homework, and the academy gets a few more people to pass the provincial exam, and maybe one or two to pass the national exam, the academy's reputation will be super great. Everyone only looks at how amazing the top students are. No one cares how bad the worst ones have it."
Lin Jing scratched his little head, his little brows furrowed. "Then your academy is kind of mean. Why do people who can't keep up with the studies even bother going there?"
At those words, Tigerhead immediately sat up straight. "Not everyone has to take the exam to become a top scholar! Look at my elder brother. He's super good at studying, but he doesn't like taking the civil exams at all. He loves doing business instead. Now he travels all over the country, and makes so much money. When they built the C Warmth Courtyard in town, my family had to donate money for it, right? That must mean we're pretty awesome ourselves."
He leaned closer to Lin Jing, whispering quietly. "I'm not going to take the civil exams later either. I'm going to be just like my elder brother, travel far and wide, do business, and make tons and tons of money!"
Lin Jing's heart burned with excitement after hearing that, and he sat up straight too, clenching his little fists. "I'm not going to take the exams either! I want to do business and make lots and lots of money too!"
He suddenly remembered something, his bright little voice ringing out. "And my bookmarks are going to sell for ninety-nine taels!"
"Right! Ninety-nine taels!" Tigerhead smacked the table excitedly. "Not a single tael less!"
Lin Wu, listening to them chattering off to the side, couldn't help but find it funny. The two little ones had gone around in a huge circle, and still somehow found their way back to those ninety-nine tael bookmarks they were so committed to.
And Tigerhead was already fully immersed in his grand bookmark business plan, continuing to discuss the sales strategy with Lin Jing.
"First we give Sparrow one," Tigerhead said, setting one aside. "The rest we can sell."
"I still need to keep one for myself, and I have to give one to my brother and one to my sister too," Lin Jing leaned over, carefully picking out three more bookmarks.
Tigerhead nodded, his little fingers tapping on the remaining bookmarks one by one as he counted. "Then that leaves... eleven."
"Sell one to my grandfather, one to my elder brother," Tigerhead mumbled as he went, arranging the bookmarks out properly in front of him. "One for my mother, one for my aunt, and then one for Brother Xuan..."
Lin Jing started counting along on his fingers, and his eyes suddenly lit up. "That means we can sell five of them!"
Tigerhead tilted his head and thought for a moment, then suddenly clapped his hands. "Oh no, I almost forgot! I still need to sell one to my dad, so that's six pieces, and another one to the academy headmaster, that makes seven!"
"They're almost all sold out," Lin Jing replied. "But how much money will that make?"
"How much will that be?" Tigerhead and he stared blankly at each other.
Lin Jing knitted his little brows and thought carefully for a while. "Seven pieces, seven times ninety-nine taels. That's seven hundred taels minus seven taels in total."
"Six hundred and ninety-three taels!" Tigerhead's eyes sparkled.
"Wow—" The two let out a gasp at the same time.
After this one-sided forced sale calculation that landed them a staggering revenue of nearly seven hundred taels, their confidence soared, and they felt they were about to make a huge fortune.
Lin Wu, who had been listening on the side, could not help but tease them. "Tigerhead, why are you only targeting your own family members? What if they refuse to buy?"
Tigerhead puffed out his chest and swayed his head smugly. "My grandpa said that when doing business, you have to start with people you know. That's called 'the proximity of water towers gets the moon first'. If even our own family doesn't buy our stuff, how can outsiders believe it's any good?"
"But a hundred taels for a single bookmark is really too expensive," Lin Wu said with a smile. "As soon as people hear the price, they'll probably turn around and leave immediately."
"No problem," Tigerhead waved his hand generously. "My grandpa is rich, and my elder brother is rich too. They definitely will buy it! Besides, these are the first batch of bookmarks made by A Wu and Jing, how rare is that!"
Steward Liang, who had been listening nearby, also chimed in with a smile. "Do you two know what you can buy with a hundred taels of silver?"
The two little ones turned their heads to look at him in unison.
Steward Liang said slowly, "With a hundred taels, you can buy a fine horse, and even set up a tavern in a bustling part of the city to run your own business."
"Ah..." The two stared at the tiny bookmarks in their hands, then thought of the tall, strong horse and the livable tavern, and suddenly felt a little guilty.
"Fifty taels?" Tigerhead tentatively suggested, cutting the price in half. It seemed like an incredibly generous concession to him.
Lin Jing stretched out his fingers and counted. "Five coins can buy a piece of cake, nine coins can buy two pieces of cake, fifty coins can buy an ink block, and a hundred coins can buy a good, smooth-writing brush..."
The two huddled their heads together and whispered for a long while, before finally reaching an agreement and settling on a price of thirty-five coins. The number was even a little odd, showing how carefully they had adjusted their calculation.
"At this cheap price, we'll definitely sell everything out very quickly," Tigerhead was quite satisfied with the new pricing.
Even though the price had plummeted straight from a hundred taels to just thirty-five coins, little shopkeeper Lin Jing took it in stride. He nodded seriously. "Thirty-five coins can buy so many pieces of cake."
Shouldered with the heavy responsibility of sales, Tigerhead did not linger to play in the small courtyard this time. Instead, he urged Steward Liang to hurry back to the academy. He could not wait to show off his precious new bookmarks to his classmates, and also go home to get his grandpa's support for their big business venture.
After seeing the two off, Lin Wu went back to tying decorative knots for the bookmarks.
"A Wu," Lin Jing asked as he put the small wooden strips on the table into a cloth bag, "am I really going to study at the academy?"
Lin Wu paused her work and looked over at him. "What's the matter? Does A Jing not want to go anymore?"
Lin Jing shook his head. "What if I go and can't learn anything? What if I turn into someone like the people Tigerhead talked about, who can't do their homework and just scribble random things?"
Lin Wu chuckled softly. "That's impossible. Our A Jing is so smart. Besides, we're just going to the academy to learn as much as we can. You don't have to be as good as the top few students. Even if you only learn to recognize a few more characters, that's still a good thing."
Seeing his little face full of worry, she asked again, "If you really encounter something you can't figure out, will you just fill it in carelessly like those people?"
Lin Jing tilted his head and thought carefully for a moment, then shook his head. "I probably won't. I have to let the master know that I don't understand. Otherwise, the tuition fee A Wu paid would be wasted, and the master has to teach me properly."
He took out his own bookmark again, his face full of earnestness. "It's just like our bookmark business. When people give us money to buy a bookmark, we have to give them a bookmark in return. Since A Wu paid the tuition, the master should teach me to read and write properly."
"A Jing is right. But what if the master punishes you because you don't know the answer?"
"If I don't know, then I deserve the punishment," Lin Jing said, spreading his little hands helplessly. "Everyone else knows it, only I don't. That just means I'm learning slower than them."
He suddenly seemed to remember something, and asked, "Those yamen clerks didn't go ask their master for advice, but instead tried to trick us into going to that... Warmth Home place. Were they also afraid of being punished by their master?"
Lin Wu froze for a moment. "Probably."
She could roughly figure out the logic behind this. The new emperor had just ascended the throne, and everything was supposed to take on a new look. Orders came down from above, and the people below had to put on a show of compliance. But if they really rounded up all the vagrants and homeless people, the risk would be far too great. There was no rigorous household registration system in place here, not to mention that not everyone had a registered identity. There was also no systematic public health management. A crowd of unregistered people would be hard to control, and it would be easy for diseases to break out. If something bad happened in the Charity Home, they would gain no credit at all, but end up in trouble instead.
When the higher-ups assigned a task, the people below would naturally pick the safest, easiest way to get through it. The emperor was far away, and information traveled slowly. The way things were done in practice was entirely up to the local prefectures and counties to decide. Not to mention now, even in her old world where information traveled instantly, incidents of people paying lip service to orders and doing as they pleased still happened from time to time, let alone in this era.
In those days when news always lagged, the letter Lin Wu had sent finally made its way all the way to Nanya.
At that very moment, the cargo fleet of Zhi Yun Hang was slowly approaching the Nanya pier.
Unlike the major prosperous port cities like Huzhou, there were no neat stone-built embankments here. Only rough wooden posts supported a boardwalk. Scattered along the shore were low bamboo huts, and a few boats with straw roofs bobbed gently on the river.
It was nearly noon. The weather in Nanya was much warmer than in Huzhou, with a hint of damp, sweltering heat. The cargo ship steered away from the shoal and drew closer to the pier.
Shen Guanting stepped off the ship. The long days of travel by water and land had left him a little dusty, with a trace of tiredness in his eyes.
A green-canopied carriage was parked by the shore. Next to it stood a young man in a brown tight-fitting outfit, who raised his hand and waved towards them.
"How are things over there?" Shen Guanting stopped in front of the carriage and asked immediately.
Shen Qi lowered his hand, his smile fading away. "They had to cross mountains at night, when the dew was heavy. Their clothes were thin, and many of them have come down with colds."
He shrugged his shoulders as he continued. "Now that we're close to the Nanya territory, the escorting officers have become even more negligent. They just keep rushing the group forward, not caring if they live or die. Whatever happens to them will just be counted as the responsibility of the Nanya prefectural government."
Though he had expected this, Shen Guanting's heart still sank. "Can they arrive tomorrow?"
Shen Qi shook his head. "I'm afraid not. The journey is slower than planned. The earliest they can get there is the day after tomorrow, and they'll be taken straight to Huibei County. They're currently blasting mountains to build roads, quarrying stones and felling trees there, and they're in dire need of labor. Those sick, weak people will be thrown straight into that kind of backbreaking work as soon as they arrive. How cruel that is."
Shen Guanting was silent for a moment, looking out at the green mist-shrouded mountains in the north, and did not say anything more. "Let's head back to the residence first."
"Oh, right!" Shen Qi suddenly remembered something. He turned around, leaned into the carriage, rummaged around for a moment, then pulled out several letters and held them out. "These just arrived this morning, all the way from Huzhou. This one here is extra heavy, and something rattles inside it. Could someone have stuffed a stone in it?"
Standing nearby, Shen Qi gave him a firm but not harsh jab with the hilt of his sword. "Mind your own business when it comes to the young master's affairs."
Shen Qi flinched and grinned sheepishly. "I was just checking things out for the young master first! What if it's some kind of dangerous hidden weapon?"
Shen Guanting paid no mind to the two of them bickering. He took the letters, lifted the carriage curtain, and stepped inside.
Shen Qi's curiosity did not fade, though. He sidled up to Shen Quan and began counting on his fingers. "That's strange. Normally there are only three letters total: one for the old master, one for the madam, and one co-written by Young Master Hutou and Miss Que'er. Why is there an extra one this time?"
He nudged Shen Quan with his elbow and lowered his voice. "Don't you think... the young master has some female confidante out there, writing secret letters back and forth?"
Shen Quan swung himself up onto the horse, leaving only a calm remark behind. "Mind your own business when it comes to the young master's affairs."
Shen Qi pouted, then hopped onto his own horse as well.
Inside the carriage, Shen Guanting was indeed curious about that unusually thick letter too. He opened that one first, and tilted the envelope. Several round, smooth copper coins rolled right out with a clink-clink sound onto the table.
He picked one up for a closer look. It was an ordinary copper coin, with neatly trimmed edges, looking like a brand new one that had been picked out specially.
Shen Guanting had traveled all across the country with his father and grandfather since he was little. He had seen rare treasures, received all kinds of account books, contracts, confidential letters and secret dispatches, but this was the very first time he had ever gotten copper coins sent to him by post. It was quite a novel experience.
