"Nonsense! This is clearly your family's pickled vegetables. Even the taste is the same. I'm telling you, kid, your family is really unscrupulous in doing business. Black-hearted merchants like you only care about money. The elderly, women, and children can't stand being ripped off like this!"
"Yeah, right!" the others chimed in. "A heartless merchant!"
A few people who hadn't bought Niu's braised dishes and pickles before asked, "Is there really something wrong with this stuff?"
"Sister, Aunt, we are honest and law-abiding farmers. We would never do something like falsely accusing someone and framing them unjustly. We can swear on the lives of our wives and daughters."
I swear on my wife and daughter...
This sounds very serious, but it also feels awkward.
"Oh, then we really can't eat that!" a few people jeered.
With the mindset of avoiding direct conflict as much as possible, Xiao Fubao and the others kept trying to reason with them.
Xiao Heng said, "Ours is made with fine salt, but the salt you brought is made with coarse salt. Look, folks, the salt in his jar hasn't even dissolved yet. Everyone knows that it takes two or three months to make pickles."
"What are you babbling about? What's with all this talk about coarse and fine salt? If you don't pay us back today, we'll smash up your shop! Pay us back!" Zhuang said loudly.
The other men chimed in, "That's right, pay up! Brother, let's not waste our breath arguing with them!"
Xiao Fubao said, "We will definitely not compensate for things that are not ours. Even if we are sued and go to court, we will not pay! Why don't we ask Lord Liu to judge this matter?"
Lord Liu is the newly appointed county magistrate.
The leader of the men said, "Of course you won't admit that it was made by your family! We won't see the officials, we won't pay compensation, we'll just smash up your shop!"
“Since you don’t trust my family, you can invite others to try it,” Xiao Fubao said. “But what if you get diarrhea after eating this dish, and it’s not from Weixiangzhai?”
"We're willing to taste this poisonous pickled vegetable to prove Boss Niu's innocence! We want to see if it really came from Weixiangzhai!"
“That’s true, we should at least try it before we can say anything,” one of the men who had been egging on the tall, burly man said after a moment’s thought.
After everyone tasted it, they said:
"This isn't as good as Boss Niu's pickles, it's not Boss Niu's pickles!"
“You’re all their shills,” the tall, burly man said.
Little Fu Bao's grape-like eyes were slightly narrowed:
"Halt! Judging by your clothes and appearance, you can't possibly afford my pickles, so you've mixed in other brands' pickles and added something to them to pass them off as mine."
“How do you know we can’t afford it? This is a new fine cloth garment, and a mere jar of pickled vegetables costs only twenty or thirty strings of cash! Several families bought it together. Are you looking down on poor people or what?” the burly man said.
Xiao Fubao said, "Everyone, it's not that my family looks down on people, but he's passing off inferior goods as superior ones. This jar is indeed from my family. The pickle jars we sell not only have seals, but also have the four characters 'Wei Xiang Zhai Fang' branded on the bottom."
"But that doesn't mean the pickles inside are from our family." "First, please look at what these four are wearing."
"It's clearly ill-fitting. If it were a child like me wearing clothes a little too big so I could grow taller next year and wear them again, that wouldn't be a problem. But these are adults, and it's obvious that someone made the clothes for them, but they don't fit properly, hence this scene."
Everyone looked at the burly men; their clothes did indeed seem a bit ill-fitting.
"Look again, their exposed undergarments are made of the lowest quality linen! And their hands are so rough. It's not that poor people can't afford pickled vegetables, but that jar used to hold dried fish."
"Furthermore, because the dried fish has been marinated for a long time, its flavor has permeated the jar." "If this jar belongs to them, then they should have bought our marinated fish not long ago."
"Given their economic situation, they can't afford the slightly more expensive pickled fish and vegetables, and besides, our pickled vegetables aren't 30 coins a jar." "Only those who have bought our pickled vegetables and sauerkraut know that our sauerkraut is 30 coins a jar."
"Speak, who ordered you to cause trouble?"
The little girl's words are reasonable and well-founded.
"No wonder I felt the taste was different. When did Weixiangzhai's pickles stop tasting like that?" the surrounding people chattered.
The four burly men looked displeased. The leader said, "Why are we wasting time talking to a little girl? Let's just smash her!"
"You'd better get out of here!" Little Fu Bao said menacingly. "Otherwise, you'll be in trouble."
Zhao Cai once said that anyone who goes against her family will suffer great misfortune.
Moreover, his senior brother and master are there.
The four burly men had barely taken a step when Xiao Heng grabbed the hands of the tall, strong man and the thin man, squeezing their wrists.
"Try moving again!"
Xiao Heng is fifteen years old this year. He is tall, with a fierce expression, and quite charming...
"Wow, that guy is amazing! He's the best!" She knew she had to flatter him properly, and just then she saw Gu Yu with both hands around the necks of the tall, thin man and one of the short, dark-skinned men. "Master is amazing too!"
Little Fu Bao propped her chin up with her hand, looking at the two men in front of her with eyes full of admiration, like a well-behaved little rabbit.
"Hero, hero, I was wrong, I was wrong, let go!" The tall, burly man, whose tendons were being held down by Xiao Heng, frantically grabbed Xiao Heng's hand with his other hand while begging for mercy.
The other man was in so much pain that he couldn't even speak.
"Tell me, who sent you? If you don't, I'll cripple you right now!" Xiao Heng said.
“I’ll talk, I’ll talk! It was Young Master Tao from the Tao family. He gave us ten taels of silver and promised to give us another forty taels later. That’s why he sent us!” the tall, burly man said.
Xiao Heng released them and said, "Give me the silver!"
The tall, burly man hurriedly took out ten taels of silver from his pocket and said:
"This is it! Spare me, sir!"
Gu Yu put the two men down, and they immediately started coughing. Their already dark faces became even darker.
Xiao Heng took the silver and saw one of the short, dark-skinned men who had fallen to the ground trying to get up and run away. He quickly kicked him to the ground and stomped on the man's hand, making the man's joints crack and causing him to be in so much pain that he couldn't speak. Only then did he say:
"If you dare to cause trouble again, you'll suffer the same fate as him!"
He stepped on the short, dark-skinned man's hand, but instead of looking at the silver coins, he turned them over, examined the bottom, and whispered, "Official silver."
Xiao Fubao overheard this and immediately mocked, "Tsk tsk tsk, you guys are so pathetic," "You've been tricked and don't even know it!"
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