Chapter 75 Making Money
It was already noon, but the sky was still overcast and the wind had even picked up.
Wan Qiqi was so cold that she huddled in a corner.
She missed the trench coat in her closet; she desperately needed a jacket to ward off the cold wind.
However, she couldn't conjure up a strange outfit out of thin air.
People in this era were too superstitious and paid great attention to the concept of ghosts and gods.
All inexplicable oddities will be treated as outliers, thus being labeled "monsters" and dealt with accordingly.
Chen Yongliang and the others seemed quite composed, as if they were already used to it.
They grew up in this environment for ten years, and they endured it every year at this time of year without feeling anything was wrong.
Chen Yongliang did not doubt Wan Qiqi's reaction, because his sister-in-law would complain about the cold every year at this time of year, saying that the Chen family wanted to freeze her to death and then find new mothers for Pingping and An'an.
The cold weather came later than usual this year, and they were still unprepared.
Floods and plagues have made it difficult for many people to even get food, let alone survive the winter.
Chen Yongliang glanced at the sky and sighed inwardly.
I wonder how many people won't make it through this winter!
He turned around and saw his sister-in-law shivering. He asked someone for a cup of hot water, took the baked flatbread and went over to her. "Sister-in-law, drink some hot water to warm yourself up."
In the past, if Wan Qiqi had heard this, she probably would have cursed him as a "scumbag"! She believed that only scumbags and straight men would tell girls to drink more hot water.
However, at this moment, this cup of hot water was more comforting than anything else. Together with the bread she had baked herself, it went into her stomach and gradually warmed her icy limbs.
With only two days until the start of winter, Wan Qiqi already felt the malice of winter in this world. She had to hurry up and earn money to buy everyone winter clothes.
Thinking about it, she got up and started selling honey pomelo tea with Chen Yongliang.
One afternoon, even fewer people bought it because there was no hot water available.
People prefer to buy steaming hot buns, or have a bowl of hot soup, or even hot tea.
There were no oxcarts to take them back to the village, so the two had to walk.
Fortunately, they had emptied the water from the bucket beforehand, which greatly reduced the weight and made walking easier.
Traveling by oxcart, it only takes half an hour to return to the village; walking takes twice as long, a full hour.
The cold wind blew into my clothes, gradually taking away the warmth from my skin.
As they walked through Lianhua Village, a light drizzle began to fall.
The cold rain soaked their clothes, and a gust of cold wind made even Chen Yongliang, who was not afraid of sweat, shiver.
His teeth chattered uncontrollably. He turned to look at his sister-in-law, who had her head buried in her hands, and said, "Let's... hurry... almost there!"
Wan Qiqi also wanted to walk faster, but her legs were already stiff. It was already a miracle that she could walk at all. Asking her to walk faster was simply impossible!
At that moment, she desperately wanted to forget everything, go to the mall to buy a coat and an umbrella, so that she could get through this difficult time.
However, there was another person beside her, and if she did that, she was afraid it would frighten them.
In the Chen family home in Lianhua Village, Chen Yongnian stood in the courtyard for a long time, but the two people did not return. He went back into the house, grabbed an umbrella, and ran outside.
"Brother, where are you going?" Chen Yongxing chased after him for a few steps, but stopped under the eaves when he saw it was raining.
Chen Yongnian didn't turn around, but answered loudly, "I'm going to pick up your sister-in-law and third brother. You boil some water first and wait for me to come back!"
Before Chen Yongxing could answer, Chen Yongnian had already disappeared.
Li Chongniang came out wearing last year's padded jacket. Because her belly was too big, she couldn't button it up and could only wear it draped over her shoulders.
"Oh dear, my wife, why did you come out? What will happen to the baby in your belly if it gets cold?" Chen Yongxing hurriedly led the people inside.
After settling the people in, he started a fire to boil water for the two who had gone out.
When Wang returned from outside, she looked at the vegetables sprouting in the garden and sighed, "It's getting cold now, I don't know if the vegetables will be able to grow."
Chen Yongxing replied, "Mother, don't worry. Didn't my sister-in-law and third brother go to do business? Even if we can't eat the vegetables from the garden, we still have the money we earned from doing business to buy more rice and flour, and we can get through it."
Wang looked back at her second son and sighed again.
Of the three sons, Chen Yongxing was the laziest and least ambitious. If only he had his eldest daughter-in-law's brains, he could have done well in business. Unfortunately, his few words were useless to him.
Fifteen minutes later, Chen Yongnian returned with Wan Qiqi and Chen Yongliang, all three of them soaking wet.
Wan Qiqi didn't care about anything else. She took a shower, secretly bought a cold medicine at the mall and took it, then mixed another one into water and gave it to Chen Yongliang to drink before she felt at ease.
Wrapped in a quilt sewn together from straw and reed catkins, she sat in the main room, holding a cup of brewed honey grapefruit tea, watching the others sit together counting copper coins.
Several people counted for a long time, but still couldn't get the exact number.
Pingping lay on the table, staring at the copper coins laid out on it, and exclaimed, "So many coins!" He had never seen so many copper coins before.
An'an took one, held it in her palm, and kept looking at it, as if it could grow into a flower.
"Sister-in-law, you guys are amazing! You made so much money. There must be a few hundred coins here, right?" Chen Yongxing's eyes lit up as he looked at the copper coins.
Wan Qiqi said calmly, "More than two hundred coins, most of which were sold by Yongliang. He brought in the business by shouting."
When Chen Yongliang heard his sister-in-law say that, he scratched the back of his head embarrassedly and lowered his head. "That's because your jam is so good, otherwise no one would buy it."
“Yes, sister-in-law, you know all this. Why didn’t you say so before? If you had gone into business before, we wouldn’t be starving and freezing!” Chen Yongxing said, picking up the copper coins and counting them again.
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