"If we don't see you today, we'll run out of these ingredients."
“I’ll be here at least once every five days, that’s been the routine lately.” Qiao Lian’er lowered her voice: “How are the preparations going, Boss Cai?”
Boss Cai had the ingredients weighed and then led her aside.
“Miss Qiao, you’re right. Just yesterday, those people came to my restaurant and started looking at the accounts and making records.”
"Fortunately, I had another ledger. I redid the accounts from the previous few years and even aged the ledger so that no trace of the previous years could be seen."
"But don't worry, Miss Qiao, the prices of your ingredients are exactly the same as before. They haven't changed and won't affect you."
Qiao Lian'er knew that these business people were much more cunning than she was.
After weighing the ingredients, Boss Cai looked at them and said, "Do you have any chili peppers for sale? Give me 300 jin of dried ones and 200 jin of fresh ones."
"Our guests are used to spicy food, and they're finding it a little hard to adjust to not having chili peppers these past few days."
"Yes, Mr. Cai, please wait a moment." Qiao Lian'er drove the carriage away again.
When they stopped at a less crowded place, Qiao Zhizhi ran off the carriage.
"Sister Lian'er, I'm going to buy two sugar figurines over there."
Qiao Lian'er smiled knowingly; the little girl was giving her some space.
She prepared the dried and fresh chili peppers, and then Qiao Zhizhi came over holding two sugar figurines, one a tiger and the other a wolf.
Qiao Lian'er licked the sugar figurine and drove the carriage to the back of Jiuweilou.
Dried chili peppers cost 20 coins per pound, while fresh chili peppers cost 10 coins per pound.
Adding the thirty-eight and a half taels of the ingredients sold earlier, the total came to forty-six and a half taels, and Qiao Lian'er generously waived the half-string of cash.
Having completed her task for the day, Qiao Lian'er went to check on A Da and the others one last time.
The kitchen was clean and tidy, with some ingredients and a piece of pork belly in the cupboard, and the water tank was full of water.
The firewood in the woodshed had been replenished, so it seemed the children would be going up the mountain to collect more.
The children's lives are back on track.
"Sister Lian'er, nothing much lately, just those officials registering shop locations everywhere. I don't know what they're up to," said A-Da.
"Okay, I understand. I have something for you to do."
"Sister Lian, give the order quickly, we have work to do again."
"I want you to spread a message everywhere that the Shi family, the village bully of Lingjia Village, has a son who is an idiot and can't find a wife, so he wants to forcibly take a girl. He deliberately uses a worthless porcelain piece to trap the girl's father, and then makes an exorbitant demand, extorting fifty or sixty taels of silver. If the family can't pay, he'll force them to marry the girl off, making life miserable for the girl's family."
“Such a thing is happening! Isn’t this the behavior of animals? Let’s go and teach that family a lesson.”
The children were furious when they heard this; it was simply beyond the bounds of basic human decency.
“No, this won’t solve the problem,” Qiao Lian’er said. “You just need to go and spread the message.”
"The wider the spread, the better; the greater the discussion, the better."
These, when brought to court, become a source of support.
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