CH 32

The smell of the fried pancakes and pork oi permeated throughout the house, and even Mo Yan’s two grandmas could smell it from the rear courtyard.

This elicited two different reactions. Mo Yan’s second grandma was overjoyed, as she loved it when Mo Yan got to eat well. On the other hand, Mrs. Ho was furious that she wasn’t the first person to receive the delicious food that was being made.

Mrs. Liang roughly understood what was going on when she saw the items piled on the table. She poured out the contents of the wallet and counted them with the help of Mo Feng. There was a total of a hundred and twenty-two dollars left.

There was still a lot of money left after they bought so much, and it was just the first day of them doing business! Mo Ling took the opportunity to say, “Mum, this business is profitable, and I think we can do it every day. We don’t have to wait for every market day if our target customers are the passersby on the main road.”

“Then what about our fields?”

“There’s still a lot of time before the harvest! We might be able to make enough money to buy some livestock, in which case we can harvest our two acres of land in two days.”

Mo Yan said from the side, “My ducks will lay their eggs in autumn too.”

Mrs. Liang and Mo Ling smiled in tandem, “Yes, and that’ll be another source of income.”

Even Mo Feng was infected by their enthusiasm. “After we make it big, we could buy a trailer.”

“Then, we could even build a new house!”

The entire family was submerged in thoughts of a better future. Mrs. Liang saw the half dozen fried pancakes Mo Yan made and said, “Feng’er, send a fried pancake to your grandma.”

He said unhappily, “Why do we need to give it to her? She’s not lacking food.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not she’s missing food, but it’s our fault if we don’t give her a fried pancake. Just send it over!”

Mrs. Liang placed a fried pancake on a plate when Mo Yan said, “We should give one to my second grandma too.”

“We can’t, Mrs. Ho is your biological grandma.”

“But she’s so mean to us!”

“She’s still our dad’s biological mother. We have to pay our respects to her.”

Mo Feng quickly took the plate and ran to the rear courtyard. When he arrived, there was an ugly expression on his face. It went without saying that Mrs. Ho gave him a hard time. Mrs. Liang didn’t say anything about it and just told him to sit down.

Mo Feng couldn’t hold it in and started complaining, “Next time, we’ll only give her the ones left over. No, we won’t even give her that, we’ll save it for later!”

Mrs. Liang has long grown accustomed to it, and she smiled and said, “She already has one step in the grave, you just have to tolerate her a little longer.”

After eating, Mo Ling washed the pot to boil water while Mrs. Liang procured ingredients to make salted eggs. Mo Yan sat by the side and watched.

“Mum, I told the person who sold me these duck eggs to sell me a hundred every market day. Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs and are also cheaper, so we can exclusively salt duck eggs in the future and leave the chicken eggs for frying.”

A hundred eggs every five days is equivalent to twenty eggs every day. Who would even think of outselling them in salted eggs now? They’ll never have to worry about selling out.

“We don’t have enough clay jars for them! We only have two.”

“Then I’ll buy a few more in town tomorrow.”

Mrs. Liang gestured with her hands, “If we pick clay jars that are roughly this big, they’ll be able to hold a hundred salted eggs. I’ll use a clay jar per batch of salted eggs, so I won’t need to mark them anymore.”

“Ok, then we should buy four more for now. If they sell well, we can buy more later.”

Mo Yan reminded them about something crucial, “We also need clay jars for salted vegetables too. We eat a lot of that throughout the year.”

Mo Ling said, “That’s right, when the vegetables we can salt are grown, mum, you should salt a bit more. After all, salted vegetables have a long shelf life.”

“We need clay jars for sauce too!”

Mo Ling and Mrs. Liang poked her forehead simultaneously as they said, “That’s right, we need to make sauce now, otherwise it won’t ferment well when it isn’t as hot.”

Speaking of sauce, Mrs. Liang remembered the sauce she had put on the wall was probably done. She flipped open the lid and stirred the contents around with a chopstick. It was still a little too thin, and she had to add some more flour.

When she returned to the kitchen, she steamed some flor in preparation to add it to the sauce. Mrs. Liang sighed, “We don’t have much flour left after making the sauce. Why do we have to buy everything!”

Mo Ling smiled, “Businesses have incomes and expenses. How can you make any money without an initial investment?”

Mo Yan chimed in, “That’s impossible!”

Mrs. Liang smacked her on the shoulder, “What do you know? Go take a nap!”

Mo Yan stood up, “Alright. I’ll go tell stories at the threshing field tonight too.”

Since it didn’t cost the Mo family any money, Mrs. Liang let her go. She was too lazy to stop her.

It would take twenty days to make salted duck eggs, so they wouldn’t be able to sell any for now. Mrs. Liang thought of the tea eggs Mo Yan was talking about. She had never eaten or made them before, but according to Mo Yan’s description, she had to boil the eggs first then marinate them.

She decided to make a few to try first. She decided to make five and soak them in the marinade. They had all the ingredients except for tea leaves.

She cracked the steamed egg’s shells and placed them in the marinade. She’d see how they turned out the next morning.

Mo Yan hadn’t been to the threshing field to tell stories for three days now, and the villagers were discussing whether or not she’d come today when she arrived.

Cao Zhang and Mr. Tian hadn’t come today, probably because they thought she wasn’t coming today either. So the table wasn’t there.

However, Mo Yan didn’t let that deter her and just sat down on a hay bale to tell a story. The villagers crowded around her so they’d be able to hear the story more easily.

They asked, “What story are you telling tonight?”

Mo Yan was in a good mood today because the Mo family was able to make a lot of money today and the entire family could have a good meal.

“Let’s talk about Lu Buwei then!”

“Who’s that?”

Most of these people didn’t know who he was, so Mo Yan started with the Emperor of Cao’s father and Zhao Ji.

This story was very long and a lot of the details were omitted, but it still took her two hours, and she only finished talking about the Emperor of Cao unifying the kingdoms.

“But what happened to Lu Buwei after that?”

“He died, killed by the Emperor of Cao.”

“So is he the Emperor of Cao’s father or not?”

There weren’t any records about that from the distant past, so who knew? Mo Yan lightly shook her head, “Only Lu Buwei and Zhao Ji knows.”

She got up and went back home, but she hadn’t seen Lu Junming the entire time. Speaking of, she hadn’t seen him since two days ago. Mrs. Liang went to the Lu family to cook their meals as always, but she never said anything about Lu Junming leaving.

When she went back home, she smelt something good emanating from the kitchen. Mrs. Liang was making meat jelly from the pork skin they had brought back. It’d take a long time to make, however.

The next day when she woke up, Mo Ling and Mrs. Liang were already making flatbread, so she went for her morning run. When she went past the Lu family, Sir Lu was still practising tai chi and Lu Junming’s white horse was still there, so he hadn’t left.

Mo Yan loudly called for Sir Lu, but Lu Junming didn’t come out from the house, which was strange.

When she ran over on the second lap, Sir Lu had sat down to drink tea. Mo Yan couldn’t help but ask, “Sir Lu, where’s Lu Junming?”

He gestured towards the house, “He’s sick.”

“Sick? Have you asked a doctor to treat him?”

Sir Lu shook his head, “He’s not letting a doctor tend to him.”

“How can you do that, you have to take medicine when you’re sick! Can I go and see him?”

Sir Lu yelled towards the house, “Junming, Yan’er came over to visit.”

Post-edit notes: I feel like this chapter was mostly filler I’m not going to lie.