Chapter 43

TRANSLATED BY MYPEN_22

If I hadn't grown a brain, I would have believed you!

"Brother," Hua Ling tugged on Yan Shi's coat again, "I want to go out for a walk."

"Let's go." Yan Shi stood up, took out his handkerchief and wiped his hands, he naturally understood what was going on in the Jiang family.

The old lady stood up and pointed her finger at Jiang Laodao, "Boss, come on, walk with the gentlemen."

"No need," said Yan Shi, "we'll just take a walk."

He said, and went out with Hua Ling. When Old Mrs Jiang saw that the two had gone out, she couldn't say anything, but when she saw Qu Liujing knocking on a melon, her face was full of smiles.

"Officials." Qu Liujing spat the melon seed shells onto the ground, "Please pour a cup of water."

The old lady's eyes lit up when she heard that he was an official, and she busily poured another cup of water, "Any official who can be in the Imperial City is a very big official, right? Can you see the emperor?"

"Naturally," Qu Liujing took a sip of water and continued to get high on melon seeds.

"To be able to see the Emperor, that must be a very, very big official, right?" There was some tremble of excitement in Old Mrs. Jiang's voice that even she didn't notice.

Qu Liujing gave a hmmm.

When they said this, Boss Jiang and his daughter-in-law naturally heard it too, and both of them looked at each other, and there was an unconcealed joy on these faces.

"That Mr. Yan Shi, is the family the biggest official?" Old Mrs Jiang could see that Yan Shi was the centre of their group.

"Right." Qu Liujing laughed lightly, his father Some Mrs. Jiang rubbed her hands on her clothes and continued to ask, "Then he must live in a big house, right? How many servants does he have? Do you have twenty?" The richest person in town was Wang Caiwei, who had a very large house and four servants, the richest person she had ever met. As for these people in front of her, she could not imagine how rich they could be, but if there were twenty servants in the house, that was the maximum she could guess.

Qu Liujing let out a light laugh "Well, there are twenty servants in one courtyard."

"Oh my God," Old Mrs Jiang patted her chest, a little shocked, "one, twenty servants in one courtyard? All serving one person? How many courtyards can there be in that house?"

"Thirty or forty, I think." Qu Liujing blurted out in a smooth manner, he was not idly making fun of the old lady here, what people and how they were treated, and he could also get a lot of useful information when talking with this old lady Jiang.

"Thirty or forty, how many underlings must there be?" Old Mrs Jiang couldn't do the math and turned her head to look at Boss Jiang, "Boss, quickly calculate how many people there can be?"

Qu Liujing said kindly, "Only seven or eight hundred people."

"That's... that's too many." The words that came out of Qu Liujing's mouth had more impact than the others, and the Jiang family members in the room were shocked to hear them, "So, just these servants cost a lot of silver a month, right? How much silver can they earn in a month?"

"Divided among the underlings," Qu Liujing continued with a hint, "some earn two taels a month, some may earn less, but some may earn more as well."

"Two, two taels of silver." Old Mrs Jiang looked at Boss Jiang again. What was the concept of two taels of silver to them? Some people would only get a few taels of silver after a year of work, but the income of this servant in a few months would be as much as theirs for a whole year.

Qu Liujing glanced at them and deliberately said, "When Jiang Jieyuan reaches high school in the coming year, you will also be able to live like a servant."

Instead of making Old Mrs. Jiang happy, her face, which had been excited, turned cold.

There were two explanations for this statement, one was that Jiang Yi was an unfilial son who would not care for his mother even if he became rich in the future, but from observation, Jiang Yi was obedient to his mother's words, so this could not be the reason. The second reason is that Mrs. Jiang would not have thought that Jiang Tang would one day become rich, which is very intriguing. This is a very intriguing reason.

It is not easy for an ordinary scholar to get into the examinations of a scholar, and it is even more difficult to get into the examinations of a scholar, not to mention the fact that he is the first of the local scholar - Jieyuan. He was the top local scholar, the Xie Yuan, and would have won the next year's Spring Exams if he hadn't been surprised, but this old lady's attitude was really puzzling.

(T/N: Jiang Tang and Jiang Xieyuan is the same person, Jiang Tang is the name while Xie Yuan is his scholar post, I am not good at chinese, only trying my best)

He wiped his hands and stood up, patted his clothes and walked to the courtyard with his long legs.

In the courtyard...

Yan Shi stood beside Hua Ling, who was squatting on the ground, playing with Jiang Xiaosan, Jiang's son, in the mud.

That's right, playing with mud.

"Brother, do you think the little rabbit I made looks good?" Hua Ling showed the black ball in his hand to Yan Shi, his face filled with the expression "Come and praise me, come and praise me".

Qu Liujing stretched his neck to took a look, was that shit? There were two long sticks of mud on top of the black mass.

He lifted his robe and squatted down next to Hua Ling, "Mingting's bunny is really pretty."

"Oh, how did it become so beautiful?" Hua Ling's eyes widened in amazement as he took the clay rabbit from Yan Shi's hand, "Is this the one I just made? Why do I feel a bit different?"

Yan Shi said with his eyes wide open, "Of course it is."

Qu Liujing slowly covered his eyes with his hands, it was impossible to see.

Hua Ling showed the clay rabbit to Jiang Xiaosan, who clapped his hands in delight and shoved the little clay ball into Yan Shi's hands, "Rabbit, rabbit." He was still young and could only express himself in this way.

When Yan Shi picked up the clay dough and started to make rabbits for him, Hua Ling took advantage of his inattention and turned his head to smile at Qu Liujing.

When the two youngsters had finished kneading the clay, Qu Liujing fetched a basin of water for them to wash their hands, and found an opportunity to tell Yan Shi all about the conversation they had with Old Lady Jiang just now.

Yan Shi wiped his hands, "It's okay, let's wait and see what happens."

Hua Ling seemed to like Jiang Xiaosan very much and gave him a piece of buttermilk candy from his sleeve. But he didn't eat the candy, he held it carefully in his two little hands and walked towards the kitchen, looking like he was going to give it to his parents.

"Are you hungry?" Yan Shi took a handkerchief and wiped the mud splattered on Hua Ling's face.

"Fine." Hua Ling inhaled as a nice smell of rice came into the air, guessing it wouldn't take long to eat.

As he was talking, a cry suddenly came from what sounded like Jiang Xiao San.

When they looked at the sound, they saw Jiang Xiaoda and Jiang Xiaodi, the two children of Boss Jiang, standing in front of Jiang Xiaosan and reaching out to push him, Jiang Xiaosan cried even more.

"Why are you crying?" Hua Ling tugged on Yan Shi's sleeve and walked with him towards there.

The Jiang family didn't know if they had heard or not, or if they were just used to it, but none of them came out to take a look.

Hua Ling squatted down and took out a handkerchief to wipe the teardrops on Jiang Xiaosan's face, who was sobbing and sobbing, "Sugar, sugar ..."

A few people immediately understood Jiang Xiaosan's meaning, the piece of candy Hua Ling gave was rubbed by the two brothers ah.

"Take it out." Hua Ling extended his hand towards those two children.

The two children were a bit scared, but they were used to being arrogant at home, so they stuck their necks out, "I didn't take his candy!"

The kind-hearted and weak little princess couldn't think of anything to do, and since Yan Shi's status was already there, he couldn't do anything to the children either.

He let out a bad smile "Little brother, if you take out the candy, brother will give you something good that you have never seen before."

What good thing could be better than candy? But he was a child and was slightly impressed "What good thing?"

Qu Liujing took out a porcelain bottle from his sleeve, and saw the bottle emitting a faint light, which dimmed after a while, and then emitted light again, and so on. This is a treasure, the brighter it is at night, do you want it?"

The two brothers looked at each other, "Then we'll each have one.

"Deal." Qu Liujing snapped, Boss Jiang son held out the candy and Hua Ling immediately took it from him and stuffed it into XiaoSan's mouth.

"You guys close your eyes and put your hands out." Qu Liujing said.

The two brothers obeyed and closed their eyes, only opening them when Qu Liujing said they could open them. There's a bug! It's a big one!"

The two brothers ran towards the house with shaking hands, but before they could reach the house, the Jiang family came out.

"What's wrong?" Old Mrs Jiang wrapped her two eldest grandchildren in her arms in distress.

"Grandma, he put a big bug on our hands, a big one."

Long before the boy was about to run towards the house, Qu Liujing darted down, opened the small porcelain vase and filled it with the two parasites.

"What bugs, it's winter, where would there be any bugs." Qu Liujing looked as if he hadn't really done that just now.

When Old Mrs. Jiang heard this, she agreed, how could there be bugs in this season? She did not take the words of her two grandsons to heart, and let Boss Jiang's daughter-in-law take them inside.

"Just now they both robbed the candy I gave to Xiao San." The little princess was frightened by the two parasites that Qu Liujing had brought out, and leaned softly on Yan Shi's shoulder in need of comfort.

Old Mrs Jiang was full of smiles "Little San is young, so it's only right to give way to her brothers."

"Brother." Hua Ling called out softly, with a hint of imperceptible crying in his voice. Yan Shi was keenly aware of the change in Little Wangfei's emotions, the words spoken by Jiang Laotai (old Mrs Jiang) were too familiar, they were exactly what Little Wangfei used to hear in the Kangle's Manshion, and this moment had even brought up a sad past story of Little Wangfei. The little Wangfei was unhappy, and so was he.