Guhu Lake is now a hot potato in the hands of Village Chief Zhao. He can't wait to sell it off, so when he saw someone willing to spend two hundred taels of silver to sell it, he sold it off without hesitation.

He spent two thousand taels of silver when he leased Guhu Lake.

Niu Da spent 200 taels to resell it, and then spent 400 taels to take over Guhu from the four major clans.

When Zhao, the village chief, used to raise fish, he was reluctant to hire someone to manage Guhu Lake. His own family was also lazy, and the lake was overgrown with weeds and rotten fish, which they ignored.

“Let’s hire three people, each for twenty coins, and they’ll take care of everything!” Niu Dadao said.

Xiao Fubao said, "We can catch the fish that just died and eat them." Fish that just died can be eaten, but they are not suitable for sale because they affect the quality of the meat.

Niu Da led three strong men from the village who knew how to swim to clear the weeds in Guhu Lake. Xiao Heng, Niu Yong, and Niu Cuihua were responsible for spreading lime in a small boat.

Meanwhile, three-year-old Xiao Fubao and Niu Baolan were lying on the other side of Guhu Lake, picking up several lake shells with their little hands as if they were free.

"Little Fu Bao, what are you doing picking up these seashells?" Niu Meihua asked.

"Sell it for money!" Little Fu Bao said mischievously, her hands covered in mud.

She wrapped the shell in the coarse cloth shirt that Xiao Heng wore for work, but she still couldn't lift it. Niu Meihua, who was five years older, picked up the shell in one go.

Shen Yu saw a large bag of seashells and asked, "Where did all these seashells come from?"

"We found this," Xiao Fubao said, "to sell it for money!"

As she spoke, Xiao Fubao washed all the seashells in the wooden basin.

Chen Yu chuckled:

"Some of those shells have gone rotten; they're not even edible anymore, let alone worth selling!"

"Mommy, can't we sell those for money?" Xiao Fubao asked with some disappointment. She had thought that the seashells could be sold for money.

“It’s worthless,” Shen said.

Little Fu Bao felt even more disappointed.

She thought she could sell them for money. Although her family was not short of money, she knew that pearls were very valuable, and her older sister said that pearls came out of shells.

Little Fu Bao angrily threw the seashell in her hand to the ground, "Hmph, I can't sell it for money, and I can't eat it, I don't want you anymore!"

The little one was a bit angry. She rummaged around and washed for a long time, but it turned out that it might not be edible at all!

Xiao Fubao used all her strength to throw it. The two lake shells were already dead, and some of them had opened. After being thrown like that, they opened up a large hole, revealing two pearls weighing four or five grams each.

Although the clam was dead, the two pearls were very smooth and round, indicating that the clam had only recently died.

"Oh my! This...this is a pearl!" Madam Shen broke open another clam shell, her face full of disbelief. Inside the clam shell were several pearls, each slightly smaller than a soybean.

Most of the dead lake shells did not contain pearls.

“These shellfish are still alive! I might be able to raise the dozen or so that are still alive,” Chen Yu said.

Pearls are more valuable the larger, purer, and rarer they are, but those are usually sea pearls, while lake pearls are more abundant.

Lake pearls are considered the least valuable type of pearl, but pearls are inherently precious. Although these pearls are much smaller than the pearl jewelry I found that day, they are still pearls.

The pearls that Chen Yu extracted were exactly fifty, and they were of excellent quality, naturally round. If sold, they could fetch the price of river pearls.

One string of them can sell for about twelve taels.

As soon as Niu Da returned, Chen Yu told him about finding the pearl. Niu Da pondered for a moment and said:

"We don't know anything about aquaculture, so why don't we try raising it in the pond in our backyard first!"

"Daddy, can pearls be raised with fish?" Little Fu Bao asked.

Niu Da laughed and said, "I've never seen anyone raise pearls in Jiangzhou before! So I don't know."

“However, we can think about it more ourselves,” Chen Yu said. “It would be a waste to use such a large lake as Guhu Lake just for raising fish!”

"There are still some live clam shells left on the shore after we've finished eating!"

After the family finished eating, they picked up some tightly closed lake shells and put them in the water to see if they were alive or dead.

They also discovered about a hundred pearls in the live lake shells.

"Big sister, let's sell these hundred-plus lake pearls tomorrow! We'll keep the smallest ones for now, and buy some oyster shells after we sell the rest," said Xiao Fubao.

"Our little Fu Bao, at only three years old, already has so many ideas for doing business!" Niu Cuihua affectionately patted little Fu Bao's cute little pigtails.

Little Fu Bao was praised and turned her head away shyly, saying, "Big sister, if you touch me again, I'll feel embarrassed!"

Chen Yu said, "Her father, since we adopted Xiao Fubao, life has been getting better and better!" "I've been thinking that although life in the village has improved a bit in recent years, it's still quite impoverished. Why don't we help the villagers out more? Firstly, it will help Xiao Fubao build good karma, and secondly, it will help our fellow villagers. It's a good thing."

“But what should we do?” Niu Dadao asked.

Many of his businesses don't require many people, and he can manage a limited number of people. He thought about the pearls in Xiao Fubao's hand and thought, "If only these things could be nurtured!"

In fact, people in the Great Zhou Dynasty had been cultivating pearls for a long time, but it was a top secret technique that was not passed on to outsiders, and very few people even knew that pearls could be cultivated.

“It will happen!” Little Fu Bao said.

In mid-September, the sky was overcast when a torrential downpour suddenly began. The rain came quickly and suddenly, and Chen Yu stood up and said, "Why is it raining so hard?"

She quickly closed the doors and windows.

After taking care of Xiao Fubao and Niu Baolan's washing up, the family went to bed early.

The rain stopped the next day.

Niu Da drove an oxcart loaded with dozens of jars of drinks, taking several children with him to the county.

After arriving in the county, Niu Da started selling drinks. Although autumn drinks didn't sell as well as summer drinks, he could still sell dozens of jars a day.

Two more juicers, which Niu Da had been making for half a month, were sold to him. He wouldn't sell them to anyone else until April of next year.

The largest jewelry store in the county was run by a manager surnamed Baili, and it was called Zhenbaoge. In fact, Zhenbaoge was not a very high-end jewelry store.

The jewelry sold there is also divided into different grades.

"Shopkeeper, do you buy pearls here? We sell pearls!" the little boy, who wasn't even as tall as the counter, asked in a clear voice.

The shopkeeper, wearing an amulet, was sorting the jewelry when he heard the sound. After searching for a while, he finally spotted Xiao Fubao. He bent down, rested his chin on the counter, and said:

"It's you, you little rascal!"

The Niu family and Manager Baili weren't exactly close, but Manager Baili was a regular at the cold drink shop. "You're selling pearls again? How many pearls do you two sisters have to sell?"