Six hundred coins, one coin for a naan bread, was half the rations for half of their soldiers before Ling Qi and Ling Ba arrived.
Previously, the Yuan captain's daily budget was ten taels of silver.
That's right. In the beginning, the two thousand soldiers each had an average of only five coins per day.
Unable to get enough to eat, they foraged for wild vegetables, fruits, and game in the mountains to make ends meet.
Now, all he has left is a little over a hundred taels of silver.
The soldiers had long since run out of money.
Previously, most of the soldiers' pay was sent back to their hometowns.
Before they left, General Gu used all his persuasion to extort 10,000 taels of silver from His Majesty, which he then distributed to the soldiers.
Ten thousand taels, if divided among everyone, would only amount to five taels of silver.
So they ate only coarse food and wild vegetables along the way.
Fortunately, General Gu gave him three thousand taels of silver out of his own pocket, telling him to focus on finding saltpeter.
Otherwise, they would have starved to death by now.
To put it bluntly, the soldiers have been living off the three thousand taels of silver given to them by General Gu ever since they arrived here.
According to the previous estimate by Captain Yuan, it would be ten taels of silver per day.
Three hundred taels of silver a month, three thousand taels in ten months.
Even disregarding the losses suffered by the soldiers, this amount of money is still insufficient.
Because they need money for their return trip.
After calculating the expenses, Captain Yuan realized that there wasn't enough food, so he reduced the cost per person to three coins, which was only five or six taels of silver per day.
After all the calculations, Lieutenant Yuan still had less than a hundred taels of silver left, which he had saved for his return journey.
He was a captain, and life almost forced him to become a butler.
There's no way around it; we have to plan.
After buying a leg of lamb, Qiu Yan also bought a set of lamb bones and some offal from the lamb stall owner.
Afterwards, she went to a grain and oil shop and bought some sesame seeds, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, black pepper, cumin, and other items.
Commander Yuan looked at the silver in Qiu Yan's hand. Although it wasn't his money, he felt genuine heartache seeing it.
When he came out again, Captain Yuan saw a small shop selling jade on the street and went in excitedly, but came out looking disheveled.
"Language barrier is a real obstacle."
Having been away for a long time, more than a year, he wanted to buy some gifts for his beloved wife back home.
But when he spoke, those people couldn't understand him.
Seeing this, Qiu Yan glanced around and said, "What does Lieutenant Yuan want to buy? This afternoon, I'll find you a translator."
"Does Miss Qiu know anyone here?"
"Yes, there are." Qiu Yan thought of Mayi and Jiang Nian'er.
"Okay, then I'll trouble you."
Now that he has Miss Qiu and the Eighth Deputy General, he no longer needs to scrimp and save.
In reality, Qiu Yan didn't have much money left either.
Qiu Yan had no idea how much money she would need for the upcoming expenses.
When she and Qin Susu arrived, they had been gone for several months.
The expenses for clothing, food, housing, and transportation may seem small individually, but when you do the math, they really don't last long.
After deducting the money given to Ling Qi and Ling Ba, she and Qin Susu only had a little over four hundred taels of silver on them when they left Qin County.
They carefully calculated that they had spent over a hundred taels on the journey and still had three hundred taels left.
Compared to the first half of the journey in Western Qin, this expense is already quite small.
But after arriving, although the food and lodging didn't cost much, the twenty taels of silver were gone in just two or three days.
You have to understand, there are over six hundred mouths to feed among the soldiers. With so many people, there's strength, and their appetites are huge.
Even if prices are low, people still can't resist eating.
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