Chapter 127: It is true that there is no business without fraud
Before leaving, Sang Yu specifically asked Carpenter Wang what to do the next day.
She felt relieved when she learned that they were going to build the roof and walls. It seemed that the house would be built faster than she had imagined.
The four rooms they built today will serve as a resting place for their family of six. A kitchen and a toilet will also be built next to them, with a courtyard in the middle.
At the beginning, Sang Yu certainly didn't dare to be so bold as to build so many houses, as she couldn't afford the labor and material costs alone.
But things are different now. When people have money in their pockets, they naturally feel more confident.
We will be living here for more than just a day or two, so of course it should be made more comfortable.
However, because the two houses were added later, the work such as wood and drilling will be slower and the progress will be delayed.
The next day, Sang Yu did not go to Qingxi Village. She carried her brand new exquisite little basket and went to Lingnan City alone.
The fish and pork at home needed to be marinated. She was not strong enough, so even if she went to the construction site, she could only help with some unimportant chores. It would be better for her to concentrate on her own business.
This time she entered the city, she had two things to do.
First, buy salt. If you want to preserve food for a long time, you have to use a lot of salt to pickle it.
Second, buy pig intestines and pork to make sausages.
Although there is still a lot of pork belly left at home, it is a bit too fatty to be used to make sausages.
Generally, the hind leg meat and the front leg meat are matched in proportion to make sausages with even fat and lean meat.
Sang Yu deliberately walked a little further east before he found a market town to enter.
Area C was as lively as ever. Sang Yu glanced at the hares and pheasants locked in the chicken coop, and a hint of envy flashed across her eyes. She wondered how great it would be if she could also hunt.
There is a mountain next to her home. Although she has never encountered wild animals such as rabbits and pheasants in the outer part, she will definitely encounter them if she walks deep into the mountains.
If she knew how to hunt, she could easily catch not only pheasants and rabbits, but also muskrats.
Thinking of the muskrat, she suddenly had other ideas.
His eyes scanned the street, finally landing on a large stall owner with three or four chicken cages in front of him.
She slowly walked to the stall and stopped, looking back and forth in the cage, as if she was a little hesitant and had not decided whether to buy a pheasant or a rabbit.
Seeing this, the stall owner smiled and said to her, "What would you like, young lady? The rabbits and pheasants were just caught a couple of days ago. They're very fresh and are top-notch meat."
"Hmm..." After a brief pause, Sang Yu pointed to the cage containing the pheasant and said, "Just one pheasant."
As the stall owner bent over to grab a pheasant, she casually asked, "I see there are no wounds on these pheasants and rabbits. How did you catch them?"
The stall owner thought she was just curious and casually replied, "They set up mousetraps and traps, and these are specially picked out to be intact or only slightly damaged."
The so-called mousetrap is a small animal-catching splint made of bent bamboo strips, which relies on the elastic force of the bamboo strips themselves to squeeze and catch prey.
Generally, it can only be used to catch small animals such as hares and pheasants. It also needs to be tied to a crossbar or fixed to the ground to prevent it from dragging the splint away.
The noose trap is a rope trap that is more commonly used in winter and can catch prey intact.
The position of the wild animals clamped by the splints is not fixed, and they are constantly struggling due to the desire to survive. When hunters go to check the traps, some of them are inevitably seriously injured or even dead.
In that case, you naturally can't sell it. You can just eat it at home or raise it to see if you can grow it well before selling it.
"Mousetrap?" Sang Yu's eyes lit up when he heard the word, and he continued to ask, "Where can I buy this mousetrap?"
The stall owner finally realized something was wrong, stopped what he was doing, and looked at her suspiciously: "Young lady, what do you want a mousetrap for?"
Sang Yu was not at all flustered and gave the excuse she had prepared earlier: "There have been mice stealing oil and rice at home lately. I thought this mousetrap, judging by its name, should be able to catch mice."
There are quite a lot of rats in Lingnan City. Some of the larger ones look as big as hares, which is really scary.
Logically speaking, these big rats are equivalent to meat delivered to your door, but because of the precedent of plague, no one dares to eat these big rats, for fear of accidentally contracting some serious or strange disease. At most, they will be beaten to death and thrown away.
Her words made perfect sense. The initially suspicious stall owner continued to tie up the pheasant, nonchalantly saying, "Why buy a mouse trap? You can't buy that on the market. Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to borrow a cat?"
The board clamp may seem simple, but every hunter has his own ideas on how to choose bamboo with suitable elasticity and how dry the bamboo should be. This is a secret skill that will never be passed on to others.
"That's true. I'll ask my neighbors if they have a cat and borrow it for a few days."
Since he didn't want to say anything, Sang Yu didn't ask any more questions. She paid the money, took the pheasant, put it in the small basket, and continued walking forward with it on her shoulder.
Things were better than she expected. She had thought there were no traps in this era and was still worried about how to catch the naughty muskrat. Now, at least there was hope.
As long as she could buy traps from the hunters later, it would only be a matter of time before she caught the muskrat.
After figuring this out, Sang Yu's mood suddenly brightened and he walked towards the pork shop with brisk steps.
The stalls of the two pork shops were connected. The waist-high tables were covered with thick wooden chopping boards with grooves, and meat racks and horizontal bars were placed on them.
A whole piece of pork with skin or without bones is hung on a horizontal bar with an iron hook. This is what the so-called "three or five pieces of pork hanging in front of the table" should look like.
Before he got close, Sang Yu was shocked by the scene in front of him for a moment, followed by the overwhelming smell of blood and fishy odor.
His sight slowly fell on the pieces of pork hanging on the horizontal bar, from which blood was still dripping.
When she saw the blood flowing onto the chopping board and then falling into the wooden barrel along the groove, she suddenly understood. No wonder the grooves were specially carved on the chopping board. It turned out that it was for the convenience of collecting blood.
But the next second she couldn't help but complain in her heart: Please, knowing that if the pig is not bled, the blood will be everywhere, and even making special drainage grooves, can't you just drain the blood when slaughtering it?
According to the information she obtained from wandering around several markets in Lingnan City, the local people do eat pig blood. They even have special foods such as blood powder soup, blood noodle, and blood paste.
Since the pig blood collected in the bucket will be sold, why not drain the blood when the pig is slaughtered?
This question went around in Sang Yu's mind, and she soon figured out the answer herself - because it would fetch more money if it wasn't bled.
The price of pig blood is much lower than that of pork. When the pig blood contained in pork is cut and sold, it is not sold at the price of blood but at the price of meat.
It is a bit like the rubber bands tied to hairy crabs in later generations. It is not worth much in itself, but it can add weight to valuable things.
"It's true that there is no business without fraud." Sang Yu muttered softly and walked forward to weigh the meat.
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