Han Jingchen looked at her and said, "You tell me."

Pei Manning asked Han Jingchen the same question that Xu Saozi had asked her before, "I want to ask, when will the army recruit soldiers again tomorrow? What conditions are required to join the army?"

In fact, Pei Manning didn't want to ask about this. After all, Han Jingchen didn't trust her at all now. If she asked him about the army again, who knows what he would think?

But she had already promised Mrs. Xu to help ask.

Besides, this kind of thing is not a secret of the army, right? They don't always recruit soldiers secretly, do they?

Han Jingchen frowned again: "You want to join the army?"

Pei Manning shook her head. She wanted to stay away from the army and never have anything to do with it again. "Not for me, but for Mrs. Xu next door. Her son is about to graduate from high school and wants to apply for the army, but she doesn't know if he can make it in time for the next conscription."

If they could not catch up with the conscription time or meet the conscription requirements before being assigned to the countryside to join the production team, it is estimated that their family would find another way out as soon as possible.

Han Jingchen said something ambiguous: "...You have a good relationship with your neighbors!"

He "rented" a house for three days. Although he knew the details of all the people nearby, such as the so-called Mr. Liu, who was actually a lame old man, and Mrs. Xu, who actually had a younger brother who worked in a meat processing factory, he rarely spoke about it.

"We will know these things when the conscription notice comes out. Regarding the conscription conditions, there is no change in the policy. Not only will we examine his political background, but also his physical fitness..."

Han Jingchen only told Pei Manning some public rules. Now the news is blocked, many things may not be remembered clearly by everyone even if they are not public, otherwise Mrs. Xu would not be at a loss.

Pei Manning wrote all this down and prepared to pass it on to Mrs. Xu.

"Pei Zhi," Jiang Ye quickly washed the dishes and came over. After all, he had eaten a meal with someone else, so he had to help out. "I saw that the base of your stove was a little unstable, so I put a piece of wood underneath. Be careful not to pull the wood out."

"Okay, thank you, Jiang Yezhi," Pei Manning couldn't help but smile and handed him a few more bags of red bean paste cakes. It was much easier to deal with someone like Jiang Ye than Han Jingchen. "I saved this for you. I wonder if you can handle sweet. This one I made is not too sweet."

The last time Han Jingchen and Jiang Ye helped with the move, she hadn’t even had time to thank them properly before she made some food that could keep for the winter and saved it for them.

"Okay, okay, I like to eat this." Jiang Ye took it happily. He liked anything that was edible.

Not to mention, Pei Dongzhi's dishes are so delicious, so his pastries must be good too!

Han Jingchen glanced at it with the rest of his eyes. Even if he was slow, he found that Pei Manning had different attitudes towards him and Jiang Ye, not to mention that he was very sharp.

Pei Manning was very enthusiastic towards Jiang Ye, but she was nervous, stiff and reserved around him.

…

After going out, Han Jingchen and Jiang Ye asked some more questions about Pei Manning's parents before driving away.

Pei Manning returned to the main room and tidied up the house. She then found several grain coupons under the bamboo basket where she had put the cakes.

She was stunned for a moment, then took out the food coupon and looked at it.

They used military ration coupons, so Han Jingchen and Jiang Ye should have taken the cakes and compensated her.

Maybe he knew that she had used up all her ration coupons and gave her some?

Pei Manning was in a strange mood. She flipped through the account book in the Xumi world and wrote down all this, preparing to return it to them later.

Without the money and notes of this era in her hands, Pei Manning didn't feel safe at all.

Although Han Jingchen would help her send the drawings, there might not be a response.

Pei Manning couldn't pin all her hopes on this, she had to make preparations for both scenarios.

Taking advantage of her free time, she reorganized all the things she brought from the Pei family's secret room, hoping to see if there was anything she could use.

Ten boxes full of gold bars, ten boxes full of silver ingots, boxes full of gems, more than three dozen pieces of jade, seven volumes of classics, two dozen paintings, four pieces of porcelain, more than a hundred pieces of calligraphy by famous calligraphers, twenty-four boxes of silk and satin, and more than seven hundred sets of jewelry...

Unfortunately, none of them can be used.

Apart from these, the most valuable are the various prescriptions.

The Pei family's caravans traveled to the northwest desert and the Western Regions. Their merchant ships sailed south across the South China Sea. They had branches all over the Great Zhou. In the thirty-three prefectures and more than one hundred counties, they had their own branches of restaurants, silver shops, cloth shops, embroidery shops, money houses, pharmacies, wine shops, grocery stores, and docks...

As the largest imperial merchant, it can even be said that they were the emperor's private purse. Every few days, they had to hand over 60% of the profits to the national treasury, 20% to the emperor's private treasury, and 10% to various local officials and wealthy people, and finally they could barely keep 10% of the profits.

Who says that merchants are of low status and can only rely on the powerful?

Logically speaking, with His Majesty as her greatest backer, her father would not have to marry her off to the Marquis's Mansion.

Unfortunately, the emperor of the Zhou Dynasty was already in power, and the new emperor took the throne and somehow found a way to seize the Pei family's wealth for himself.

Her father wanted to take the initiative to join the Third Prince's faction and use the "Follow the Dragon" strategy to protect the wealth of the Pei family, while the Marquis's Mansion preferred people from the Third Prince's faction.

If she didn't know that her mother and father had slowly poisoned her to death, she wouldn't have been so determined to run away from the marriage, and she wouldn't have jumped into the river and come to this strange era.

Pei Manning counted the things and felt something was wrong.

Logically speaking, even if only 10% of the profit can be kept by each person, the Pei family has so many branches and is rich in the south of the Yangtze River, it should not be able to leave only this little.