Zhou Shaojin asked Fan Qi: "Do you want to play around in Jinling City?"
"I want to!" Fan Qi didn't know what Zhou Shaojin meant. He looked at Zhou Shaojin timidly, but still told the truth.
Zhou Shaojin couldn't help laughing, and asked Shi Xiang to give him two taels of silver, saying: "If you can travel all over Jinling City, and you know the place no matter where I ask, not only will these two taels of silver be yours, I will also reward you with another two taels of silver!"
Fan Qi didn't dare to answer, and touched his head and said, "What does the Second Miss want me to do?"
"You're going to work for me in the future, so you can't ask me to tell you where to buy things, right?" Zhou Shaojin said with a smile, "Go ask Manager Ma if what I said makes sense?"
"I know!" Fan Qi said hurriedly, "Butler Ma said that the boss only needs to give orders, and we should know what to do and how to do it, instead of asking the boss where to buy this or where to find that."
Zhou Shaojin smiled and nodded.
Fan Qi took the silver and ran away.
Shi Xiang smiled and said, "Miss, you don't have to subsidize Mother Fan like this, right?"
Zhou Shaojin did not explain, but smiled and said, "When you find a son-in-law, I will also support you in this way."
"Miss!" Shi Xiang ran out with a blushing face.
Zhou Shaojin's smile gradually faded, and he sat on the bed in a daze for a long time.
Since he didn't have to go to Hanbi Mountain House to copy scriptures, Zhou Shaojin had a good sleep.
When she went to pay her respects to her grandmother in the evening, her elder sister whispered to her, "Uncle Mian has already told Cheng Lu that there have been rumors recently, and he should put the family property under the fifth branch. But Cheng Lu begged her to wait until he was dead before clearing the family property. Uncle Mian didn't want to force him, so he agreed to wait until August to discuss the matter."
Zhou Shaojin didn't expect that his grandmother and uncle Mian would be so decisive and do what they said.
In fact, if there were no changes, when Cheng Lu passed the provincial examination in June, he would be eligible for exemption from corvée labor, and he would not need the protection of the fourth house. However, Uncle Mian's warning at least made the fourth house's attitude clear, which made him feel uncomfortable.
She was very grateful and expressed her gratitude tactfully when she met Mrs. Guan.
Old Lady Guan smiled and said, "I have watched you all grow up since you were young. You are my granddaughters. If I don't protect you, who will?"
In her previous life, why didn't she look at these things carefully? She missed many opportunities in vain.
Zhou Shaojin thought that he must be filial to his grandmother's family in the future.
The next day, she went to Hanbi Mountain House to copy scriptures as usual, but when she went there, she happened to meet Mrs. Lin's personal mother who came to give a return gift to Mrs. Guo.
The Cheng family's eldest son's family is of high status and not everyone can enter and leave as they please, let alone the Hanbi Mountain House where Madam Guo lives.
She asked Xiao Tan curiously, "Are Teacher Lin's family and the old lady familiar with each other?"
"I don't know." Xiao Tan was now very relaxed in front of Zhou Shaojin and smiled, "I only know that the day before yesterday, the old lady asked me to send some study treasures to Teacher Lin's family, saying that they were for the young master of the Lin family to use in his later years. Today, Teacher Lin's wife sent someone to return the gift... I have never seen the old lady interact with Teacher Lin's family before."
In other words, Mrs. Guo was speaking for Cheng Xu in the open hall of Siyi Building on the day when she was thanking Teacher Lin's family!
Zhou Shaojin forgot about this matter in a blink of an eye.
After a few days, every household began to send Dragon Boat Festival gifts.
Zhou Shaojin noticed that there was no holiday gift from Wu Baozhang for the sisters.
It seems that after that incident, the past life and this life are different.
This makes Zhou Shaojin more confident about the future.
Fan Qi came to her happily and said, "Second Miss, test me and see if I can answer it."
Zhou Shaojin smiled and asked him a few places, and he answered them all fluently.
"In that case, I will give you a task." Zhou Shaojin said with a smile, "Do you know that there is a place called Cunyifang? Master Lu of the Cheng family lives there."
"I know, I know." Fan Qi said hurriedly, "There is a Puxian Temple there, covering an area of only one acre, with a three-room main hall, facing the official street to the east, south and north, and the garden of the Mei Mansion to the west." After that, he continued, "Do you know the Mei Mansion? It is the Mei Mansion with hundreds of plum trees planted at home. In fact, their family name is Liu, but because there are so many plum blossoms planted at home, when the weather is cold, the fragrance of plum blossoms can be smelled throughout the official street. Everyone calls their home 'Mei Mansion'. After a long time, they don't even know that the owner's family name is Liu..."
Although Zhou Shaojin grew up in Jinling City and left when she was 15 years old, she had never been out of the house, let alone familiar with the streets and alleys of Jinling City. But Fan Qi's words "the fragrance of plum blossoms can be smelled throughout the street" sounded familiar to her, and she didn't know when and who had heard it. But she didn't think much about it, but smiled and interrupted Fan Qi's words, saying, "Okay, okay. Just tell me what you know."
Fan Qi chuckled embarrassedly.
Zhou Shaojin said: "I want you to help me find out about Master Lu's family."
Fan Qi opened his eyes wide.
Zhou Shaojin whispered, "But you can't tell anyone about this, including your mother. Can you do that?"
"You can't tell my mother!" Fan Qi hesitated.
Zhou Shaojin smiled and said, "If your mother asks you what you are doing, just say that I told you not to tell her, and she will definitely not ask you."
Fan Qi said: "If my mother doesn't ask me any more questions as the Second Miss said, I will definitely not tell her."
Zhou Shaojin smiled slightly and said, "I know that Uncle Lu's great-grandfather and the fifth branch were brothers. Can you help me find out when Uncle Lu bought the house he lives in now? How many years have they lived in Cunyifang? Who does the family usually interact with most closely? What do the neighbors say about Uncle Lu and Mrs. Bai? Do you remember everything?"
What child doesn’t have curiosity
Fan Qi was very interested and repeated Zhou Shaojin's words, saying, "Second Miss, am I right?"
"Yes, yes, yes." Fan Qi was more clever than Zhou Shaojin expected. Her eyes turned into crescents as she smiled and she gave him two taels of silver. "These are for you to drink tea. If you do a good job, there will be a reward!"
"Second Miss, you have already rewarded me!" Fan Qi did not take the two taels of silver, but said embarrassedly, "Second Miss, I, I want to learn to read with Sister Shi Xiang... Why don't you just reward me with this?"
Zhou Shaojin was stunned, then he laughed and said, "Okay, I'll tell Shi Xiang to teach you how to read. When you've learned all the characters that Shi Xiang knows, I'll tell Master Gao or Master Yi to have you help them carry paper and ink, and go to the clan school to listen to the teachers' lectures."
Fan Qi was so excited that he almost jumped up and kept thanking Zhou Shaojin. On his way out, he almost tripped over the threshold, causing Shi Xiang, who was serving outside, to cover her mouth and laugh.
Zhou Shaojin's mood also became much brighter because of this.
She lit a lamp at night to help her sister and herself make summer clothes, and also made a dark green horse-faced skirt for Old Lady Guan.
When the invitations to flower viewing and poetry gatherings came in, Fan Qilai replied to Zhou Shaojin: "The house of Uncle Lu's family was passed down from his ancestors. It was bought by Uncle Lu's great-grandfather when he separated from Jiuru Lane. When it came to Uncle Lu's father, Master Bai, Master Bai also bought the house next door, which led to the current scale of the seven-acre base. Master Bai died in the year of Yiyou, which is the eighth year of Zhide. I heard from the neighbors that Master Bai lay in bed for almost half a century before he died. In the past year, she was like a different person in the past six months. Not only was she irritable, she also scolded the maids and kicked the servants, and almost caused a murder. If it weren't for the help of Jiuru Lane, Mr. Bai would have been sent to the government office before he could see the King of Hell. Perhaps because of this, after Mr. Bai passed away, Mrs. Bai felt ashamed and rarely interacted with the neighbors. Except for going back to her parents' home, she would visit Jiuru Lane and keep the door tightly closed. When the neighbors mentioned her, they all thought that Mrs. Bai was loyal and polite, and a virtuous person.
"As for Uncle Lu, he has been a good student since he was young. On weekdays, he would study at home except for attending classes at the clan school. Even when he went out, he would follow his classmates at the clan school or the uncles of the Cheng family. People in Cunyifang said that Uncle Lu was a good student and might even become the top scholar. Everyone envied Mrs. Bai and said that she would be blessed in the future."
After he finished speaking, he swallowed his saliva and continued, "I heard that Master Lu's family only had 120 mu of paddy fields and two shops, which were rented out to others and they lived off the rent. It was not until Master Bai passed the imperial examination that Master Bai did not continue his studies and began to sell goods from the south to the north, and the family became prosperous. Not only did he add a farm of more than 200 mu in Pukou, but he also bought six more storefronts on Guan Street, two of which were rented out to others, two were for lacquerware business, and two were silk shops, all managed by the shopkeepers left by Master Bai. Every year, the harvest from just a few shops was more than 1,000 taels..."
Zhou Shaojin thought about it.
When her biological mother Zhuang passed away, her great-grandmother and grandfather had already passed away. The Zhuang family's calligraphy and paintings, calligraphy and stone carvings, and some cash were left to her biological mother, and the real estate and land were left to the step-uncle who was five generations away from her. At that time, her father Zhou Zhen had not yet passed the imperial examination. After her biological mother passed away, the step-uncle came to ask for her biological mother's dowry. Her father did not want to ruin her mother's reputation, so he took out two thousand taels of silver and signed a document at the government office, which was considered to be a settlement with her step-uncle.
But her uncle is not a peaceful person.
Just two years ago, which should be seventeen years in total, her aunt found her and said that her uncle had lost all the family property passed down from his ancestors in gambling. Now "even the old lady's dowry, that small house with two sq. ft. is going to be sold... It's such a good place, the streets are full of the fragrance of plum blossoms in winter, and I don't know how many scholars want to buy a house there. If the second young lady doesn't take care of it, these things left by the ancestors that can't be bought with money will be sold at a low price. The second young lady should at least take out a few hundred taels of silver to help your uncle out in an emergency"...
She lost her father when she was young, and she didn't know her grandfather's family at all, let alone have any feelings for the things left by the Zhuang family. She felt embarrassed at the time, and she was so poor that she even cheated her niece who lived under someone else's roof. She didn't want to do it and didn't know what to do, so she handed everything over to her sister...
※
Today's update, sisters.
O(∩_∩)o
The additional update for pink tickets will be around 1pm tomorrow.
PS: Keep asking for pink votes...
※(To be continued)