Chapter Three: The Abacus in the Counter Shop
Time flows like water, passing quietly. In the spring of the fourteenth year of Zhenguan, Liu Bao'er turned five years old.
During her two years at the Dou family's home, she was like a vine struggling to survive in a crack in the rock, silently and tenaciously drawing nourishment from everything. She had grown taller, but remained slender, and the calmness and sharpness in her eyes seemed increasingly out of place with her age.
She seized every opportunity to learn. Eavesdropping was her primary source of knowledge. The servants' idle chatter, the stewards' complaints, and the snippets of conversation from passing guests were all fragments she pieced together to understand the commercial rules of this world. She would even secretly practice writing and calculating on the muddy ground with burnt firewood sticks when no one was around. The mathematical principles she had mastered in her previous life were her trump card, but she needed to "transcode" the rules of this era—those complex units of measurement, currency purity, and accounting symbols—with the knowledge in her mind.
She had also basically figured out the operating model of the Dou family's pawnshop: on the surface, it was a pawnshop and loan business, but in reality, it was involved in shady transactions involving salt certificates, silk, and even canal transport. She knew that the reclusive old grandmother was the true helmsman of this pawnshop.
An opportunity quietly arrived one afternoon.
After the mute old servant brought the food as usual, he unusually didn't leave immediately, but gestured for her to go to the main courtyard. Liu Bao'er's heart stirred slightly, a feeling mixed with wariness and a sense of opportunity rising within her. She straightened her slightly worn blue dress, hugged the memorial tablet in her arms even tighter, and followed him.
The atmosphere in the study of the main courtyard was heavy. The matriarch of the Dou family sat at the head of the table, her eyes closed as she twirled a string of prayer beads, her expression unreadable. Below her stood the head manager of the shop and two accountants, several thick stacks of ledgers piled before them, fine beads of sweat glistening on their foreheads.
"This month's turnover doesn't add up to thirty strings of cash." The head manager's voice was hoarse, tinged with a barely perceptible fear. "We've checked three times, and the discrepancy lies in the accounts for silk transactions in the East Market. But every single transaction has been verified, and the detailed figures are clearly correct..."
The old grandmother didn't speak, but her thumb, which was twirling the prayer beads, paused almost imperceptibly.
Liu Bao'er stood quietly in the shadows of the corner, like an inconspicuous blade of grass. Her gaze swept over the open ledgers, the dense numbers and ancient accounting symbols automatically transforming in her eyes into the balance sheets and cash flow diagrams of her past life.
A professional instinct made her subconsciously begin to do mental calculations and comparisons.
The figures in the accounts before her seemed to come alive automatically, arranging and combining in her mind to generate intuitive charts and logical chains. She was used to this state, as if there was a silent, sophisticated calculator in her brain.
Just as the two accountants were arguing heatedly about whether the character "捌" was miswritten or the ink on the character "拾" had blurred, a very minor discordant detail, like a sharp thorn, pierced Liu Bao'er's keen senses. It wasn't a numerical error, but rather an implicit inconsistency in the units of measurement within the context.
She hesitated for a moment. Being the first to speak out might get her punished, but this was also her only chance to get her grandmother's attention and escape her current invisible state. The risks and rewards raced through her mind.
I gambled.
She took a soft breath, stepped forward, and said in a still-childish but exceptionally clear voice, "Grandmother, may I take a look?"
The room was completely silent.
The head manager and the accountant stared at the young widow who had married into the family carrying a memorial tablet, as if she were a monster. The old grandmother finally stopped fiddling with her prayer beads, raised her eyelids, and for the first time, her cloudy yet shrewd eyes truly and scrutinized Liu Bao'er.
"You?" The head manager's tone was filled with undisguised disdain. "You can even read the ledgers?"
Liu Bao'er ignored him and just looked at her grandmother with a calm expression.
The old grandmother was silent for a moment, then nodded slightly.
Liu Bao'er walked to the table, stood on tiptoe, and pointed precisely to the line in the ledger recording the silk entering the warehouse from the East Market: "Here, 'Received ten bolts of silk from Wang's shop in the East Market, valued at eight strings of cash.'" She then quickly flipped to the next record of what went out of the warehouse: "Three days later, 'Ten bolts of silk were released from the warehouse and sold to a foreign merchant in the West Market, valued at ten strings of cash.'"
The accountant was puzzled: "Both in and out are ten bolts of cloth, what's the problem?"
"The problem is," Liu Bao'er's voice wasn't loud, but it was like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, "that when this batch of silk entered the warehouse, the 'pieces' were the official standard pieces, accurate to the full foot and inch. But when it left the warehouse, the ones sold to the foreign merchants were the 'foreign pieces' popular in the Western Regions, each piece being one foot and two inches shorter than the official pieces. The quantity on the books remained the same, but the actual goods were fewer."
She looked up at the head manager, whose face had suddenly turned deathly pale and was drenched in sweat: "The price difference of thirty strings of cash is exactly the value of that one foot and two inches of silk. It's not that the accounts are wrong, it's that the goods are wrong. Or rather, someone took advantage of the ambiguity in the units of measurement, using coarse silk instead of official silk to enter into the warehouse, and pocketing the price difference."
The study was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The head steward's lips trembled as he tried to explain, but he collapsed under the old lady's sudden, sharp gaze.
The old grandmother waved her hand, and immediately a burly servant dragged the ashen-faced head steward away. She looked at Liu Bao'er again, this time with a stronger scrutinizing gaze, carrying a very faint, almost imperceptible hint of inquiry, and... a trace of unease.
"How do you know all this?" The old woman's voice remained calm, yet carried an invisible pressure.
Liu Bao'er lowered her eyelashes and hugged the memorial tablet tightly—a habitual protective gesture, and also the explanation she had already prepared: "Grandmother, my late husband... Xiao Bao sometimes appears in my dreams and teaches Bao'er some... number games." She attributed everything to that dead "husband." This was the most consistent with her current understanding and the best explanation for her abnormal behavior.
The old grandmother stared at her, then looked at the memorial tablet, and remained silent for a long time, so long that a thin layer of sweat appeared on Liu Bao'er's back.
"From now on, every afternoon, you will come to my room for an hour," the old grandmother finally spoke, her tone leaving no room for argument. "I will teach you how to read the accounts."
Liu Bao'er's heart skipped a beat, a surge of immense excitement and a sense of accomplishment from having "planned everything perfectly" welled up within her. She had succeeded! She had finally pried open a crack in this stagnant pool!
"Yes, Grandmother." She replied respectfully, a slight, barely suppressed smile playing on her lips as she looked down.
As she stepped out of the study, the warm spring sun shone on her. She looked up at the sky, divided into four corners by high walls, and for the first time, she felt that the patch of blue sky held a glimmer of hope.
Capital's keen sense of smell often begins with the smallest loophole.
The Dou family's guild shop would be her first testing ground. And that cold memorial tablet, nestled in her arms, seemed to carry a warmth, a warmth called "hope." However, in a corner of her heart, she vaguely realized that the fleeting glimpse of admiration in her grandmother's scrutinizing gaze wasn't entirely genuine.
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