The exhaustion that had weighed down her whole body dissipated by more than half by the second day, and it wasn’t until the sun was high in the sky that the three of them finally got out of bed.
The moment she stepped outside, she was greeted by the sight of the innkeeper’s bright, watchful eyes.
“Is the patron heading out?”
Shi Yin nodded, then handed two taels of silver to the innkeeper, saying, “I should be staying until the morning of the first day of October. Will this be enough to cover tonight’s lodging fee plus last night’s meal?”
“Enough, it’s plenty for today! We can talk about tomorrow’s lodging fee tomorrow! Many thanks to the patron—just shout if you need anything.”
The innkeeper smiled as he took the silver and walked away. Shi Yin put away her provisions, locked the room door, and took the children with her to check out the street market.
Changfeng was an important wharf in Beihai during the Jin Dynasty, with frequent trade exchanges with foreign states.
Originally, it had been exceptionally prosperous, though now it appeared slightly bleak. Even so, its foundation remained here after all, and silver and copper coins were still in circulation.
Shi Yin sought out a blacksmith’s shop, intending to buy an iron shovel or a hoe. To her astonishment upon asking, a single one cost an entire tael of silver, making her draw in a sharp breath. She remembered wandering around Wei County in her youth and seeing agricultural tools sold for a mere one hundred and fifty *wen*, making them dirt cheap.
The blacksmith looked at this woman’s fussing and wide-eyed reaction, furrowed his brow, and said, “The government is currently requisitioning iron everywhere to forge weapons, so iron is precious nowadays. One *jin* of iron costs one tael of silver.”
Hearing this, Shi Yin understood—in a chaotic era, an iron hoe was worth an ounce of silver, enough to buy a bowl of porridge for a year.
Countless commoners had traded their hoes just to keep their families alive for a little longer.
Yet if she wanted to go to Black Mountain Island, she truly couldn’t do without a set of farming tools. After a moment of thought, she said, “Then I’ll commission an iron shovel and a short firewood chopper.”
Only then did the blacksmith look at Shi Yin with a serious gaze; this could already be considered one of the notable wealthy households of the year.
A smile immediately piled up on his face: “The iron shovel and the chopper will take about three *jin* and eight *liang* of iron. Including the labor fee, it will come to four taels of silver. If you prefer, you can pay with four bolts of silk or one *dou* and two *sheng* of rice instead. When does the lady need them?”
“Would tomorrow be alright?”
The blacksmith immediately nodded: “Alright, alright! You can come and collect them at this exact hour tomorrow. Only…”
He then chuckled twice and continued: “I will need a bit of a deposit. After all, these times are unsettled. If I forge them and you don’t come to pick them up, I wouldn’t want to have worked for nothing, right?”
Shi Yin felt around in her sleeve pouch and fished out a one-tael piece of fragmented silver to hand to him: “I’ll pay the remainder when I pick them up tomorrow.”
She had indeed overlooked it; farming tools were made of iron, after all.
In peaceful times, iron shovels and cutting blades weren’t worth much, but once a chaotic era arrived, farming tools could instantly be transformed into weapons, naturally causing their prices to soar along with the times.
Silk and grain were out of the question for payment; the children were still young, and those four bolts of silk wouldn’t even be enough for their own use, while grain was something she avoided trading away unless absolutely necessary.
As for silver, she had managed to save up a fair bit.
Shi Yin had started saving silver very early on. The useless hairpin ornaments and impractical embroideries in her dowry had been pawned away in the second year after her marriage.
And when she served as the mistress managing the household, she hadn’t missed opportunities to misappropriate Li Bi’s official stipends and convert them into silver.
Accumulating it like a mouse moving its hoard over a dozen or so years, she had only managed to save sixty taels of silver in total.
She did have one trump card left at the bottom of her chest—a pure gold hairpin given to her by her mother, passed down through the family as part of her dowry.
That was solid gold, and unless it was an absolute life-or-death emergency, that gold hairpin would never see the light of day.
Subtracting that hairpin, she only had those sixty taels in her hands, and up until now, she hadn’t even properly procured anything yet she had already shelled out four taels merely for two farming tools. It was truly heartbreaking.
Shi Yin remembered how history books recorded this period—the Western Jin, Eastern Jin, Sixteen Kingdoms, and Northern and Southern Dynasties.
In the span of several centuries following the fall of the Western Jin two years from now, this land would be locked in endless warfare without a moment’s pause.
The north had already fallen, leaving no money to mint, no land to till, and no grain to eat.
Two-legged mutton, the slaughter of concubines to feed soldiers—these sights were frequent and commonplace, and human nature had long since ceased to exist.
Noble clans and great families fled south one after another, which was the only reason the heritage of Chinese civilization was preserved.
Originally, Shi Yin had also planned to follow the southern migration when the time came, seeking a peaceful place to spend her days. Who could have imagined that she would instead be forced into exile here?
If it were delayed by two more years, the imperial court wouldn’t even exist anymore. Once exiled, who could care about anyone else?
Yet precisely at this awkward, middle-of-nowhere juncture, she could neither rebel nor flee—the Shi family had put their very heads on the line just to secure her independent exile sentence.
Shi Yin lamented her ill-timed fortune and felt helpless in her heart.
Since Black Mountain Island was a place she had to enter whether she liked it or not, those farming tools were indispensable.
She feared that two years from now, let alone farming tools, even three taels of white silver wouldn’t be able to exchange for a single tael of raw iron, while the price of rice and flour would undoubtedly chase right after gold.
Heartbroken as she was over the expense, she settled the schedule with the blacksmith and continued strolling through the street market.
Shi Yin still wanted to search around in the sundries shop to see if she could hunt down things like cotton seeds.
Didn’t the female leads in those novels always discover things like chili peppers and cotton that were unrecognized in this era through sheer luck?
As someone who had transmigrated as an infant in an old-fashioned novel, she was a female lead too, right? Maybe there were some rare and exotic items just waiting for her to discover.
Yet after wandering around a full circle, Shi Yin was utterly disappointed. There was no such good fortune; with winter approaching, not even vegetable seeds were being sold.
“This damn transmigration—no system, no spatial dimension, and they didn’t even bother to arrange a single cheat code for me!”
Shi Yin grumbled and cursed inwardly. Rong’er seemed to sense her mother’s discouragement, wrapping her tiny hands around her mother’s neck and pressing a loud kiss to her cheek.
“Mommy, no, no.”
Rong’er was a bit late in speaking and right now only knew these few sounds.
Yet Shi Yin understood that it meant telling her not to be angry.
“Mommy isn’t angry. With such a well-behaved darling like little Rong’er, Mommy is too happy for words!”
After saying that, she didn’t leave out Cheng Zhou beside her: “Cheng Zhou is Mom’s big darling. Big darling and little darling are both right by Mom’s side, so Mom is extremely happy.”
“Heehee.”
Having rested up, both Rong’er and Cheng Zhou had regained their spirits, smiling cheerfully as they continued strolling along with their mother.
After a long while, Shi Yin finally managed to find some mustard seeds in a grain shop. Grinding that stuff into powder produced mustard, which was an important food source for people of this dynasty to fend off the cold. Planted in spring, what grew from them would be mustard greens, which were also common vegetables of that period.
After some hard bargaining, Shi Yin exchanged half a tael of silver for five *sheng* of mustard seeds and a small bag of Sichuan peppercorns.
She even forcefully demanded two large ginger roots and two heads of garlic from the shopkeeper.
“Hey, let me tell you, little lady, if you trade for any more than this, I’ll be taking a huge loss!” The shopkeeper watched as Shi Yin stuffed those roots of ginger and garlic into her pouch, his heart aching.
“You won’t lose out on this. Times are tough right now, and every household is squeezing every drop to get life-saving grain. Your ginger and garlic are already shriveled up anyway; if you leave them sitting around a few more days, nobody will want them. You might as well just gift them to me today.”
Shi Yin brushed the shopkeeper’s hand aside and forcefully jammed the ginger and garlic down into the pouch.
Amidst the tug-of-war, her eyes caught sight of several varieties of beans still on display by the shopkeeper, and she thought about how she still needed to prepare three months’ worth of food—the millet and wheat she had left were still a bit too scarce.
So she spoke up again: “Don’t worry, you won’t lose out. How are you selling these soybeans?”
Hearing this, the shopkeeper paused his tugging.
Taking advantage of that exact gap, Shi Yin swiftly cinched the mouth of the bag tight and clamped it under her armpit—now the other party wouldn’t be able to untie the bag and fish things back out.
Seeing this, the shopkeeper let go with a helpless sigh and put his smiling face back on: “Soybeans are one *shi* for one tael, mung beans are one *shi* for two taels, and black beans only cost half a tael. What would you like to buy?”
Shi Yin rolled her eyes and said, “I’ll take one *shi* of soybeans and one *shi* of black beans, but you mustn’t measure them level for me; you have to pile them up high.”
The shopkeeper repeatedly agreed: “Deal, deal!” As he spoke, he nimbly turned around to fetch the balance scales.
Just then, however, Shi Yin stopped him: “Please wait a moment, shopkeeper.”
Two *shi* of grain! In modern terms, that would weigh over a hundred catties. Putting aside whether storing it at the inn was safe or not, she wouldn’t even be able to carry it onto the boat herself!
“Shopkeeper, I don’t need this grain right now. The day after tomorrow at the *yin* hour, I’ll wait for you at the wharf. Cash on delivery, sound fair?”
“Ah? This…” The shopkeeper’s movements slowed down by a fraction.
The only ships setting sail at the *yin* hour the day after tomorrow were the ones heading to Black Mountain Island.
The little lady before him…
He raised his head to look at Shi Yin, already guessing a thing or two in his heart.
Shi Yin met his gaze in silence.
She knew the shopkeeper was weighing the standing of herself, an exile, but wasn’t she also sizing him up in return?