Chapter 97

On the second day, as soon as the rooster crowed, Liu Tong woke up. After he got up, he went to clean the stone mill and carried the well-prepared soybeans in the buckets to the side of the mill one by one. Then he went to bring over several buckets of water. After everything had been readied, Xu Ran woke up from the noise from outside.

Initially, he wanted to stay in bed for a while longer, but when he thought that he still had something to do, he sat up on the bed immediately and got dressed before washing his face to help Liu Tong.

Of course it was Liu Tong who did the grinding, and Xu Ran was responsible for adding soybeans and water.

After a while, Xu Ran requested to exchange duties with Liu Tong but was rejected.

After another short while, Xu Ran strongly requested to exchange positions with Liu Tong and Liu Tong reluctantly agreed.

The two of them took turns exchanging their work. It was only at first light when they finally finished grinding a bag of soybeans. Both of them were exhausted, but they couldn’t rest and had to finish the work.

They didn’t cook any breakfast in the morning and they ate bean dreg instead.

And because Liu Tong had been busy soaking the beans last night and he hadn’t yet mowed and cooked the pigweed. The work was simply too much.

By the time the family finished the work at the house and were about to go work on the field, it was almost ten in the morning.

As the field was planted with radish, there were pits here and there. However, it was lucky that it had been raining recently at night, so the ground was relatively loose and was easier to dig.

There were still a lot of rotten leaves on the field, so they only needed to row them over and let them rot on the field and served as fertilizer.

Since they had raised pigs at home, fertilizer was easy to find now. With ash, it would definitely be much better than what they had scattered on the field back then.

Tangtang and Guoguo went to the strawberry field to see if there were any grass or insects. They even took four dogs and kept wandering on the field every day.

The four dogs were very familiar with their own territory. As long as they saw someone by the side of the strawberry field and tried to do something, they would bark crazily and only stoped after they left. And if they didn’t leave, they would run over in a pack, which would certainly scare anyone away.

Liu Tong said it was all taught by Tangtang and Guoguo.

Xu Ran gave his compliment with pride. ‘They are indeed my good sons.’

At noon, Xu Ran’s family had lunch with the construction team. Now that they were busy, they couldn’t find any time to cook, so eating together should do.

During lunch, the group finally found a chance to ask Xu Ran about the He Shui Town. Since they were eating and wouldn’t waste much time, Xu Ran picked a few anecdotes to share.

After lunch, they started to work on the field again.

It was five days later when the two of them came to their senses.

The soybean at home had almost been ground. The first batch of tofu had been cut into big chunk and put on top of the fire while the other half had been cut into small pieces and covered with dry grass to prevent it from molding.

Mr. Hu had helped to feed pigs and horses with the pigweed at home, which Xu Ran didn’t let him do at first, but as Mr. Hu said they were so busy while he had nothing to do and he could still do something like this.

Xu Ran thought about those various and interesting activities of the old men and women in the modern era. Compared to the present, what old people could do was far less. Xu Ran thought to himself that when he had time, he might as well form an old people’s Yangko Dance team or something like that.

After a few more days’ work, it finally reached the end of March, and the work on the field was finished. The corn had been planted one by one, and batches of dried bean curd had been smoked at home; the fermented bean curd had mildewed and needed to be put in jars. Xu Ran felt that he needed to go in town to buy some jars.

In addition, vegetable seedlings could also be taken out for sale.

Thinking that there was nothing urgent to do at home, Xu Ran asked Liu Tong to go to the mountain and see if the bamboo shoots had been growing and to mark the place so that it could be easier to dig in the future.

Since in April, the transplant of rice seedlings on the field could commence, and no one would go dig up those bamboo shoots at that time anyway.

The busy days passed very quickly while people were exhausted from the work also!

For the first time, Xu Ran drove his carriage to the town. Big Black had been raised very well recently and was quite close to Xu Ran. The trip had been a smooth ride along the way without any troubles.

After arriving in town, Xu Ran stopped the carriage before he went to Zhuo Yun’s seed shop to get a few seeds and then rushed to buy jars. He was so busy that he didn’t even have time to visit Zhuo Yun’s house.

Xu Ran ran back and forth from home to town, then from town to home in the morning. When he got home, he started to put the fermented bean curd into the jars nonstop.

After he was done, he washed and stashed the dried bean curd, piece by piece.

The day of the imperial examination result was released on the 1th of April. Xu Ran planned to rush to He Shui Town before that and bring with him things like tofu curd and chili paste.

Since the trip would be short, Xu Ran didn’t send Mr. Hu to the town but had invited Wu Mei to stay at home. Liu Tong was too busy these days and didn’t have time to talk to other brothers so he was seizing the opportunity to chat and communicate with them .

On March 27th, everything was finally readied. The chili paste had been prepared at home before since they got no time to make the new paste. Xu Ran tidied himself up and drove to He Shui Town alone.

The jar and the bamboo tubes had been fastened to the cart; therefore, they remained where they were through the bumpy roads. On March 29th, Xu Ran went to the inn where they had agreed before and waited for Lin Hua and Zhao Chen to come. After handing them the things, Xu Ran went back to his room and planned to sleep as long as he could. He was really tired.

Lin Hua and the rest knew that he had been tired from the journey, so they did not disturb him. Instead, they ask someone else to help move the things and were planning to find a place for further look.

After Xu Ran woke up, it was already April 1st, and this was an extremely lively day. There were people who had already set firecarckers early to celebrate before they even saw the exam result. There was no telling whether these people were confident or conceited.

When Xu Ran was walking downstairs, he saw that Lin Hua and Zhao Chen were already waiting for him. He didn’t waste any time and asked the waiter to pack a few steamed buns for him and ate them as he walked with Lin Hua to see the exam result.

It was a lie to say that he didn’t care. Regardless of the ranking, it was good as long as he could pass.

After passing the test could he take the following exams. Only after he was able to pass the imperial examination at the county level could he be able to become a Xiucai exempt from taxation.

Xu Ran thought that he had really made his effort to fit himself in the tax exemption policy. It was unavoidable since his family had so many fields and it would continue to grow in the future.

The three of them followed the people who came to see the exam result and waited outside the door. People came here with all kinds of emotions. Besides self-confidence, Xu Ran was also worried, and the other two were all worried.

After standing for a while, an official finally came, beating gongs along the way to ask the people to give way, and eventually stuck the final four pieces of paper on the wall.

Xu Ran looked up one by one from the bottom. At the last one, he saw Lin Hua’s name, and at the second last, he saw Zhao Chen’s name. Xu Ran’s mood was a little complicated. Both of them had passed but they would right at the bottom. That was indeed  a close call.

But these two didn’t care about their rankings at all; they just felt that passing the exam was all that mattered, and they were all happily hugging each other.

Xu Ran shook his head and continued to look for his name.

He failed to find his own name on the last three papers, while now there was only one left. Xu Ran couldn’t help feeling a little flustered.

However, Xu Ran was still looking through the list one by one from the bottom. When there were only three people’s names left, Xu Ran was about to give up. However, he found his name at the third place. He was even not sure if this person was himself. He quickly browsed these pieces of paper a few times and there was really only one person named Xu Ran.

In the case of repetition of name, there would be town name marked specifically with them. Xu Ran thought if there was no mistake, the third place should be him.

He breathed a sigh of relief before he got overjoyed. The third place was good, although it was just a regional test.

After Lin Hua and Zhao Chen calmed down from the excitement, they immediately came to Xu Ran. Lin Hua poked at Xu Ran’s shoulder, “Hey, Xu Ran, have you found your name? What’s your ranking?”

Before Xu Ran could answer, Zhao Chen had called out, “You’re amazing, bro! You’re actually the third place.”

Zhao Chen’s voice was so loud that many people had heard it and they all looked towards them.

The two people ranked before him were both local from the He Shui Town, and they were the proud students of the He Shui Academy master so it was almost a certainty that these first two spots would fall on them.

As a result, all these people were actually competing the third place. Apart from the two people ranking before him, there were still many students who had both prestigious family background and social status. Nevertheless, all these people got were the fourth, fifth, sixth place, and none of them got the third place which was taken by an unknown person.

Not to mention the students who had both prestigious family background and social status found it hard to accept, even some famous people from other places found it hard to swallow; thereby, more and more unkind looks were cast on Xu Ran.

Xu Ran could tell that as well. He didn’t want to cause trouble. He only wanted to go home as soon as possible to prepare for his money-making business, so he pulled Lin Hua as well as Zhao Chen and were about to leave.

However, there would always be people who was unwilling to let them have their way.