Chapter 98: Er Ya's storyline - The male lead is a prince picked up from the back mountain.
With a deadline looming, Yao Xiaoyu wasn't particularly bothered by staying home; in fact, she even felt a strange sense of nostalgia.
During the pandemic when she was forced to stay in seclusion, she impulsively wrote 10,000 words as an extra chapter for her readers. Then, under the readers' praise, she started her daily routine of writing 10,000 words. While others were at home and killing time with 800 activities a day, she was in a rush to write 10,000 words as soon as she opened her eyes. Every day was a race against time!
Life is so good now. Travel is slow, letters arrive slowly, and there are only a few ways to urge someone to finish a manuscript. She can comfortably stroll around the yard during her writing breaks, buy snacks from the vendors at the gate and savor them slowly, without any guilt about missing out on finding money in a sack.
Yes, simple flattery can temporarily blind Yao Xiaoyu, but to truly get her to willingly and consciously enter the "little black room" to produce a large volume of articles, it still depends on the mysterious power of money—Yao Xiaoyu doesn't actually want to work hard, but they give her just too much.
Although she is working hard now, she is far from working herself to the bone. Of course, this is Yao Xiaoyu's own perspective. Compared with most writers of the same period, her output is more like an octopus than an octopus. The manuscripts that were originally on the verge of collapse in the Ming Dynasty have increased rapidly. The 10,000 words that Pi Kangxiu takes away every week have not had much impact on the thickness of the unpublished manuscripts.
It's a bit of a shame that Dream Town is a later plot point, and it will take some time before we get feedback from the newspaper. But it's not a big problem; she only plans to write this one book this year, and the battle for supremacy is still a long way off.
Yao Xiaoyu took a sip of the fish porridge, squinting her eyes in enjoyment. This porridge was made in Guangzhou style, with fish and various seasonings mixed together, then added to the porridge and brought to a boil before serving. The vendors made it right at the door, and it tasted quite good.
After swallowing the last mouthful of porridge, Yao Xiaoyu went upstairs to write with satisfaction. She had already finished outlining her work, and she hardly encountered any pauses while writing.
Selling cold noodles allowed Zhang Erya's family to save a small amount of money, but it was still far from enough to build a house. In addition, Erya's family had almost nothing left and no land. So after achieving daily sales of a thousand packs, Zhang's parents counted the money and began to soften their attitude towards moving to the town.
There were a thousand steamed buns, some with meat and some with vegetables. There was no butcher in the village, but every family had more vegetables than they could eat. Zhang Erya wanted to unite some people, so she bought vegetables from the villagers she was on good terms with at the market price. When the news got out, it aroused the dissatisfaction of the Zhang family, and then the process of being slapped in the face was repeated again.
Zhang Erya's parents were heartbroken by the Zhang family's repeated troubles and finally decided to avoid them and rent a house in town. That was their official statement, but what truly made them decide was that the doctor who was treating their health said that town was a better place for their child to study.
Their son was supposed to be educated and literate, so that he could bring honor to their ancestors. But the thought that their son might end up as a peasant made them lose the will to stay in the village.
Houses in town cost rent, so Er Ya's family picked and chose, finally renting a small courtyard with two rooms. Er Ya was finally able to have her own room and bed, instead of having to rely on her parents.
After Er Ya's family moved to the town, they continued to make steamed buns. However, since they no longer needed to set aside time to push their cart from the village to the town, they introduced many new products, such as shumai, flower rolls, fried dumplings, savory pancakes, spicy soup, and hot dry noodles. Zhang's parents also cooked a large pot of porridge every day, which they sold along with their own pickled vegetables. They sold out every day.
By the way, all these products are sold at the same time. Don't ask how Er Ya's family can prepare so many things every day, or how such a small town can absorb such a large production capacity. Asking is just a small fish lacking common sense and making things up. Asking further is just the author's wishful thinking.
The official explanation for the power of thought is that it ignores the logic of reality, the laws of physics, and common sense to achieve a goal; it's commonly known as "If I think it can work, then it really can."
Zhang Erya patted her head, thinking that if it could be done, then it really could be done; if it could be sold out, then it really could be sold out. In plain terms, the article implemented the law of "consciousness determines matter," giving those who didn't want to admit that Xiaoyu lacked common sense but still wanted to continue reading a way to temporarily put their minds at ease. However, Yao Xiaoyu thought that probably no one would understand this joke, and she would still be labeled as lacking common sense ninety-nine percent of the time.
But that's fine too. If a story is to be impressive, it needs to be grounded in the beginning, but not in the end. Farming isn't realistic enough, but fighting for supremacy needs to be realistic!
With a smug smile on her lips, Yao Xiaoyu wrote furiously, already imagining the explosive feedback in the newspapers—that group of women, even those who get divorced, could be touched by something that touches sensitive skin, and now they're seeing her as the empress... If it could infuriate a few of those feudal remnants who are wasting food and air, that would be a good deed on her part!
Especially the Empress's last move, which was both reasonable and absurd, made Yao Xiaoyu really want to see those people's left and right brains fighting each other!
The rest of the plot is nothing special; it's just about making new food, slapping the faces of thugs who come to freeload, swindlers, merchants who think they're competitors despite their poor skills, and the Zhang family who keep jumping around.
Yes, in farming novels, aside from encountering new toxic characters when leveling up and changing maps, many toxic relatives can persistently dart around until the finale before meeting a bad end, and even then, they don't suffer any particularly bad treatment. Authors like Yao Xiaoyu, who take down toxic characters before the story is finished, are already considered to be decisive and swift.
Don't ask why, the answer is that we're all going to make dumplings together.
Yao Xiaoyu didn't really understand why eight out of ten farming novels featured awful relatives, but that didn't stop her from writing according to the usual plot. Apart from Zhang Erya working hard all year and, although her daily life improved, she still couldn't save enough money to buy a house—most of her money was sent to the clinic by Zhang's parents and exchanged for bitter medicine, just to give Zhang Erya a child to rely on.
Yao Xiaoyu is, in a sense, a very conflicted person. She doesn't intend to limit her perspective to sweet romance novels about getting rich, but she also doesn't intend to tear off the veil of sentimentality from farming and food novels right now. However, she's unwilling to leave no hint at all. These contradictory thoughts are tearing at Yao Xiaoyu, making her seemingly normal return to the Ming Dynasty at first glance, but upon closer inspection...
What's that saying again? The devil is in the details.
As the days went by, Zhang Erya climbed the ranks, dragging her parents along. Her parents never learned to do math, and money flowed into the pharmacy like water. She thought that her temporary responsibility as the accountant was now firmly attached to her, and her suggestion to go to the prefectural city was always taken as a child's joke.
Two years later, Zhang's mother still had no children. The doctor suggested that she go to a bigger place to seek medical advice. Zhang's family came to cause trouble again, almost causing Zhang's mother to lose all the progress she had made in her health. Finally, Zhang's parents decided to move to a more prosperous county town.
When you don't have much money.
This time, instead of setting up the familiar carb stall, Zhang Erya brought out another classic element from farming novels: pig intestines!
As everyone knows, in almost every farming novel, large intestines have a role. The only differences are the cooking methods, the number of times they appear, and the ingredients used for cleaning them. Yao Xiaoyu, a girl who lacks this kind of knowledge and is considered wealthy by outsiders, would of course not know that wood ash can clean large intestines. Therefore, Zhang Erya used flour to scrub and wash them.
In short, the large intestine was cleaned very thoroughly, and just like in many farming novels, everyone was initially reluctant to eat it, but after tasting it, they were amazed by its texture and gave it unanimous approval. Thus, Zhang Erya's braised food stall successfully started with the large intestine.
New territory, new villains, new face-slapping moments—Yao Xiaoyu skillfully repeated the scenes in the small town, and Zhang Erya thus gained a firm foothold. Pig liver, chicken feet, beef tripe, and duck wings all became braised dishes on her stall, and diners constantly repeated the scenes of "surprise/frowning/rejection—it seems interesting—it's too delicious!"
But the Zhang family still hadn't saved any money.
Don't ask. The answer is that the new doctor prescribed a new medicine, and the expensive herbs will cost more money. As for whether all the money was really spent on medicine and praying to Buddha, children shouldn't concern themselves with adult matters, and they shouldn't ask so many questions.
Oh, by the way, Zhang Erya still took on the work of bookkeeping and collecting money. Her parents never learned to read, and they could only recite the multiplication table as 3 x 7 = 48.
Zhang Erya had given up on the idea of letting the two of them stand on their own. She only treated them as helpers. Thinking that the family couldn't spend all their money on medical treatment, she took advantage of the fact that the two of them couldn't count. She secretly cut off a portion of their income every day, thinking that if something happened to the family, they would have someone to rely on. If everything was peaceful, she would use the money to buy a house and let her parents become landlords.
Zhang Erya didn't intercept much money, and she kept excellent accounts. She exchanged copper coins for silver, and then exchanged the silver for silver notes that were easier to store. Her family never discovered it, and three years passed in the blink of an eye.
Zhang Erya has lived through many springs, summers, autumns, and winters, growing from a six-year-old girl in tattered clothes into a tall girl who looks pampered—but she doesn't like fine clothes and wears only a plain silver hairpin year after year, doesn't get her ears pierced, and changes her clothes a few times.
Twelve-year-old Zhang Erya began her third move. This time, they were moving to the prefectural city. Before going to the prefectural city, the three members of the Zhang family returned to the village. Zhang Erya found her future husband in the all-powerful back mountain—the seventh prince who was coming to the prefectural city to take up his fief.
Don't ask why the Seventh Prince ended up in such a godforsaken place and happened to run into Zhang Erya, who was picking people up. The answer is that the back mountain is a magical place where you can find snow lotus from the plateau and also find important figures who are seriously injured. It's just that Yao Xiaoyu doesn't plan to give Zhang Erya any medical skills, otherwise Erya would have picked up an old man/old woman with a white beard/white hair/old man/old woman on the mountain.
In short, that's how it happened. Zhang Erya took the amnesiac seventh prince and her parents to the prefectural city. As soon as they landed, Zhang's mother fainted and was taken to a clinic. After taking her pulse, she discovered that she was pregnant!
It's said that pregnancy makes you stupid for three years, but it was the opposite for Zhang's parents. Ever since they found out that Zhang's mother was pregnant, their learning progressed by leaps and bounds. In the short time they spent renting a place and looking for a shop, they learned to recognize words and calculate money. They could even say "fifty-six" off the top of their head. By the time they officially opened the shop, they had already taken over the work of managing the accounts and collecting money.
When Yao Xiaoyu wrote this, she had been at home for a whole month and had accumulated more than two months' worth of manuscripts. The thick stack of manuscripts made her feel very confident. The impact of Xiao Bainiao's story not only did not diminish over time, but intensified.
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Author's note: A small detail: Twelve-year-old Zhang Erya's full name is still Zhang Erya.
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