Chapter 4 The Happiest Day
It was much better for the three of them to carry the things together than for him to do it alone before, when he was always worried about the chickens escaping or the jars breaking.
Their home wasn't far from the village entrance, and it was dinnertime, so they didn't encounter any other people along the way.
After finally getting into the house, Grandma Guo carefully closed the gate to the yard. She then asked Xiao Hua to carry the two chickens to the old, vacant chicken coop in the yard.
I don't know how my eldest grandson managed to get so many things from the county town. The once empty room is now piled with stuff.
Guo Baiwen caught his breath and then took the contents of the basket out, along with the large bundle that Grandma Guo had been carrying, and placed them on the table: "These are the things I bought in the county town today. Grandma, take a look and tell me how to pack them up."
The coarse cloth covering the blankets lay on the table, the exposed quilt particularly eye-catching; Old Mrs. Guo had already overlooked the brand-new raincoat. First, she subconsciously reached out and touched the soft, thick new cotton quilt, and then she touched the grains that had been taken out of the basket and divided into several different cloth bags.
Two pounds of bran, ten pounds of millet, mixed flour, and even twenty pounds of brown rice!
No wonder Guo Baiwen looked so strained carrying that basket; the grain weighed over forty pounds in total.
Just as she was about to ask a question, she saw Guo Baiwen take out two more earthenware jars from his basket. "Grandma, I saw that we were almost out of soybean oil, so I bought a new jar. And this is soy sauce for stewing. The shop assistant at the condiment shop told me that this stuff makes tofu taste like stewed meat, it's so fragrant."
Actually, the soy sauce was a reward from the system shop's daily check-in rewards. It was a particularly eye-catching "Soy Sauce for Braised Pork." He specially bought a cheap black ceramic jar from the shop to put it in before taking it out. After pouring the soy sauce, the cleaned glass bottle was still in his system inventory.
Guo Baiwen planned to find some time privately to clean off all the labels and other things from the soy sauce bottle, and then take the brown glass bottle to a larger place to see if there was a pawnshop that could accept it.
After he finished speaking, Old Mrs. Guo remained standing in the same spot without moving.
Just as Guo Xiaohua, who had settled the hens outside, pushed open the door, the old lady, startled by the creaking sound, swiftly lunged forward and slammed the door shut. She then abruptly pulled Xiaohua and Guo Baiwen close, her movements far exceeding what one would expect from a woman nearing fifty, while whispering, "Shh—"
Guo Xiaohua didn't know what her grandmother was doing at first, but when she saw the things on the table and bed, her already big eyes widened. "...Brother, where did you get the money to buy so many things!" The first two words were spoken loudly, but the rest gradually faded into silence under the disapproving look of Grandma Guo.
The little girl instinctively raised both hands and covered her mouth with her palms, unable to speak, but her eyes were still full of shock.
The two girls in the room exchanged glances and then turned their inquisitive gazes toward Guo Baiwen.
He breathed a sigh of relief and repeated the speech he had prepared on the oxcart on his way home. Because he had rehearsed it several times beforehand, although his tone was still a little off, it sounded particularly convincing when combined with all the things he had brought back.
Guo Baiwen said that on his way to the county, he accidentally found some shiitake mushrooms and wood ear fungus growing under a tree while he was relieving himself. He took them to a restaurant in the county and exchanged them for a lot of money.
Thinking that we didn't have much food left at home and that winter was just around the corner, I bought a bunch of things.
The white fungus was unusual at this time, and the manager of Tongfu Restaurant had specifically told him to be careful not to spread the news that white fungus could be found near Guojia Village, otherwise a lot of people would come here looking for it.
Compared to white fungus, wood ear fungus is less eye-catching, although it is not cheap either.
Guo Xiaohua listened without suspicion. She had just held the chicken, and even after washing her hands, she didn't dare to touch the two new quilts. She could only look at them and sigh, "Brother, you're so lucky. I'll look around more next time; maybe I can find mushrooms too."
"Then you'd better be careful, these things aren't so easy to find."
Cotton quilts are very expensive. Even the cheapest quilt with a coarse cloth cover and three catties of cotton wadding costs almost an ounce of silver.
After much haggling with the shopkeeper, he bought the three-pound fine cotton quilt for only one tael of silver. He also asked the shop assistant for some leftover scraps of fabric. Although they were all small pieces of fine cloth, about half the size of a palm, and only about twelve pieces in a bundle, they contained some brightly colored fabric, which was convenient for women to make hair ties, silk flowers, and the like. So, a small bundle of such scraps would normally cost five or six coins.
But he not only bought a cotton quilt worth one ounce, but also a new raincoat worth one hundred and twenty coins, making him a small customer of the cloth shop that day. So the shopkeeper treated these scraps as extras from his purchase and didn't charge him more.
Seeing Guo Xiaohua approaching, he handed her the small bundle of fabric. "Here you go, Xiaohua. This was a free gift from the shop when you bought the quilt. You can use it as a hair tie."
The hair tie she was wearing was faded and didn't look as nice anymore. "If you have time, could you make one for Grandma or for me?"
"Wow! Brother, you brought back this great thing!" Guo Xiaohua's eyes lit up as she hurriedly took the bundle of fabric. "Making a hair tie is no problem at all! I'll make one for each of the three of us tomorrow!"
"I have extra fabric, can I make myself a flower?"
"Go ahead and tie it, I'm not wearing flowers anyway."
"Thank you, brother!"
Seeing that the little girl had already started choosing fabric patterns and matching, Guo Baiwen cleaned out the grain bags.
Brown rice is priced second only to white rice and polished rice. He looked at the most expensive polished rice in the rice shop. Although it was much whiter and cleaner than brown rice, its quality was still not as good as the bag of rice he had drawn from the system.
The price is also high; a pound of fine rice like this costs sixty coins.
There are still thirty coins for polished rice, twenty coins for polished rice, and then ten coins for white rice and five coins for brown rice.
He also noticed that the brown rice, which cost five coins a pound, still had some bran that hadn't been completely removed. It was yellowish in color and looked somewhat rough, but it was quite filling, similar to modern mixed grain rice.
So he picked and chose and bought twenty catties of brown rice and ten catties of millet and mixed flour, which cost him a total of two hundred coins.
The bran used to feed chickens is just cheap rice bran, and the two pounds he brought back were a gift from the shopkeeper because he bought so much grain at once.
Grandma Guo watched him bustling around, feeling a pang of heartache. "This—how much money must have cost?" The quilt looked expensive, and there were two hens in the yard. But her eldest grandson had said he'd earned the money by trading mountain produce himself. She'd been worried about how they'd make it to next year's harvest season, but this had relieved a lot of her stress.
But she couldn't help herself and reached out to touch Guo Baiwen's shoulder, which had some marks from the straps of the basket. After a long while, she could only sigh and say, "Good boy, you are really Grandma's good boy."
"Grandma, I made quite a bit of money from selling my mountain goods, so don't worry too much."
Two hens cost 300 coins, half a catty of soybean oil cost 20 coins, and two earthenware jars cost 5 coins. All these miscellaneous items added up to one tael of silver and 655 coins. He took out the remaining 845 coins from his cloth bag, counted them, and handed them to Old Madam Guo, saying, "Grandma, this is the rest of the money. Please keep it for me."
"No, no, no, this money was all earned by you, Wenzai. You should keep it for yourself."
“Grandma, I’ve spent a lot of money on medical treatment and medicine. We just paid the annual tax, and it’s going to get cold soon. We need to buy some coal to stock up on. And cotton-padded clothes too,” he said, stuffing the money bag into Grandma Guo’s hand and trying to persuade her. “I went to the clothing store, but a ready-made cotton-padded coat is too expensive. Why don’t you buy a bolt of cloth and a few pounds of cotton and make your own? Maybe you can even make an extra pair of shoes with the extra cotton.”
“These things all cost money. We need money for meals and the New Year. When your father was alive, he also had to pay your share of the household expenses. You can keep this money, Grandma. Just consider it my share of this year’s household expenses.”
"Wen-zai, how about we split it in half?"
"Grandma, please keep it."
He had money on him, and the remaining two taels of silver were stored in the system's warehouse, which was much safer than leaving them outside.
This was also something I discovered unexpectedly before taking the oxcart.
He had so much stuff that, seeing that there was space in the system's warehouse, he originally wanted to store all the rice, flour, and cooking oil he had bought in the warehouse.
But he couldn't put rice or flour in it, nor could he stuff quilts or hens in. Just as he was wondering what was going on, he saw a small notice at the very bottom of the warehouse.
Aside from currencies of different denominations, the warehouse can only store items from the system's in-game store.
It's not good to store things from the outside world, but it's good to be able to store money, at least you don't have to worry about losing it.
Grandma Guo could not refuse after many attempts, so she had to accept the money bag. It was heavy; she hadn't seen so much money in a long time since her son had passed away.
"Then Grandma will keep it for now. As for the extra money, Grandma will save it for you, Wenzai, so you can use it to get a wife in the future."
Guo Baiwen was both amused and exasperated upon hearing this, "Grandma, I'm still a child."
"You're not a kid anymore! Wenzai can earn so much money now, you're an adult!"
"Grandma! What about me? I'm an adult too!" Guo Xiaohua came over to join in the fun.
“Yes, Xiaohua is all grown up now. Wenzai has earned so much money this year. In a few days, when we go to the market, Grandma will pick out two pieces of good fabric and make a dress for each of you adults to wear for the New Year. Also, Wenzai’s quilt needs to have the cotton inside fluffed up again.”
"Great! Grandma, you should make one for yourself too!"
"Alright, alright, Grandma knows." Grandma Guo's hunched back straightened up considerably, and she pushed the person out the door with a smile on her face. "If you don't eat dinner now, we'll have to light the lamps to eat it when it gets dark. Hurry up, hurry up."
With the family raising hens again, her brother bringing back so much grain, and the upcoming New Year bringing new clothes, Guo Xiaohua felt that today was the happiest day of the year for her!
A note from the author:
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This is a fictional dynasty; prices are set by the author and don't need to be based on historical facts. (Heart emoji)
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