Shopkeeper Tian brought a cart driver and took away all the remaining bean sprouts from the Tang Family, including those brought back from the city and two new sieves of freshly sprouted ones from the cellar.
Altogether, this amounted to forty catties of soybean sprouts and thirty catties of mung bean sprouts, for which he paid two hundred and thirty wen.
After seeing off their guest, everyone sat down again, gazing at the small pile of copper coins on the table with somewhat dazed expressions.
This was truly like finding a village beyond the mountains after endless troubles!
Tang Tian happily brought out a wooden box, swept the copper coins into it, and listened to the clinking sound with a beaming smile.
Second Grandpa Li couldn’t help but tease, “This girl is such a money lover! She looks just like those shopkeepers’ wives in the city.”
Everyone joined in the laughter.
As for Li Qiushuang, because she was going to sell bean sprouts in the city today, she had been too excited and anxious to sleep last night, discussing future plans extensively with her daughter.
Now, she quickly said, “Second Uncle, if Meiwei Ju’s bean sprouts sell well, they’ll definitely want to buy more in the future. Other restaurants and eateries will probably follow suit, and even city households might spare a few wen to try something new.
“I can manage sprouting bean sprouts with my three children, but delivering them daily into the city, often one to two hundred catties at a time, would be too much.
“I’d like to ask your sons to help with deliveries, especially Brother Tiezhi who’s eloquent and could even take orders if he encounters potential buyers. What do you think?”
“Of course, that’s fine!” Second Grandpa Li agreed immediately without any hesitation.
Life was hard for every household in the village, and he was happy whenever anyone found a way to earn money.
Moreover, he had witnessed how decently Li Qiushuang had lived all these years – she was kind-hearted and diligent.
If the business really took off, Li Qiushuang might even be able to help other villagers.
Tang Tian stood by her mother holding the money box, and hearing her mother hadn’t gotten to the key point, she couldn’t help speaking up.
“Second Grandpa, our family doesn’t have a cart, so we’ll need to use yours for now. We just need Uncle Jin and Uncle Tiezhi to help deliver the bean sprouts. We’ll need about two trips to the city per day, and we’ll pay each of them fifteen wen per day. If we get busier later, we’ll increase the pay.”
By now, Li Jin and Li Tie had followed them in, and upon hearing this, they refused almost simultaneously with their father.
“No!”
“We don’t want payment!”
Li Qiushuang came to her senses and quickly stood up to bow to Li Erye. “Second Uncle, I know you pity my three fatherless children and are willing to help with everything. But Second Uncle, once or twice is fine. We can’t have you helping for free day after day forever! Every family has to make a living – how can they work for our family without pay?
“Besides, there was already that unpleasant incident before. If more bad rumors spread, I’d truly have no face left to live.”
Everyone fell silent, remembering Zhang Shitou’s wife’s nonsense.
Finally, Third Grandma Tang spoke up to persuade him. “Second Brother, just listen to Qiushuang. Others might not know, but you understand the price of bean sprouts. Spending the equivalent of six catties of mung bean sprouts per day means Qiushuang and her children can have peace of mind, while your Jin and Tie earn some hard-won money. It’s good this way.”
Only then did Second Grandpa Li stop refusing. After thinking for a moment, he added, “I’ll go to the Wei Suo tomorrow. Tell me about your arrangements for exchanging beans for bean sprouts, so I know what to expect.”
Tang Tian quickly responded, “Second Grandpa, our family plans to exchange three catties of soybean sprouts for one catty of beans.”
“Isn’t that a bit too much? Could you be losing money? Beans are cheap goods, only fit for feeding cattle and horses in the camp…” Li Erye frowned, but upon seeing Tang Tian’s cheerful grin, he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Never mind, it’s your family’s business—you must know better than I do. Let’s make the exchange! Tomorrow, you’d better bring some bean sprouts to the Wei Suo so I have proof and others will believe me!”
“No need to wait until tomorrow, we can do it today!” Tang Tian hurried to the cellar again and fetched a sieve of soybean sprouts, dividing them into two portions. She gave the larger portion to Second Grandpa Li and the smaller one to Third Grandma Tang, asking them to take them home and taste how they liked them.
Second Grandpa Li accepted without much fuss, but Third Grandma Tang firmly refused, insisting that Li Qiushuang keep them to sell for money.
In the end, there was no other way. Tang Tian ended up stir-frying them while standing on a stool and then delivered the dish to the old lady.
Old Lady Li had initially been displeased because her husband and his two sons had followed the Tang Family into the city and been gone for most of the day.
But when she saw the old man bring back a good amount of bean sprouts and heard that her son had secured a job earning thirty wen a day—almost one tael of silver per month—she became ecstatic and couldn’t stop praising Li Qiushuang.
Seizing the opportunity, Li Erye gave the old lady a thorough scolding, thoroughly embarrassing her in front of her son and daughter-in-law, and finally forced her to promise never to gossip or meddle again.
With Meiwei Ju as a regular customer now and countless potential clients in the future, bean sprout production needed to be increased. So that very night, Li Qiushuang lit the large kang in the side room.
The heat from the kang raised the room temperature significantly. Sieves for sprouting beans, pottery basins, kettles, and other items were moved in, eliminating the need to fetch water from the cellar, making the process much more convenient and labor-saving.
Tang Tian mixed a high proportion of spring water and scheduled the bean sprouting according to delivery dates, ensuring a daily output of two hundred catties.
As a result, the previously purchased stock of mung beans and soybeans was no longer sufficient, and they could only hope that Li Erye’s business negotiations with the Wei Suo would go smoothly the next day.
Of course, what made Tang Tian happiest for the time being was that she had begged her mother for permission to sleep alone on the large kang in the side room from then on.
Eagerly waiting until it was completely dark and her mother and brothers had fallen asleep, Tang Tian couldn’t wait to enter her Spring Water Space.
In her previous life, although it was an apocalyptic era with constant natural disasters, the country had prepared in advance. After surviving the initial bloody chaos of the first year, most of the surviving populace had entered bases.
She was even luckier—through a jade pendant she had worn since childhood, she awakened a Space Ability.
If it had been someone else, they might have used it to achieve great deeds or dominate the apocalypse, but she was alone, without attachments, and didn’t even have a strong will to live. Thus, the space’s potential had never been fully utilized.
Perhaps because the jade pendant was small, the space wasn’t very large either, covering an area of about three thousand square meters in total. The sky above was perpetually gray, with no sun or moon visible, but the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold—quite pleasant.
In the very center of the space, she had placed a color steel house spanning over one hundred square meters. Entering through the central door, to the left was a partitioned ten-square-meter bedroom, which also served as the living room and study. There was also a five-square-meter bathroom and a simple five-square-meter kitchen. The remaining right side, which took up the vast majority of the space, was the storage room.
Just from this allocation, one could see how perfunctory her previous approach to life had been.
Fortunately, she wasn’t a lazy person. Regardless of whether she might need them or not, she always stocked up on good items when she encountered them, filling this small home to the brim with complete living supplies.
The printing paper that earned her first bucket of gold was found in the storage room, stacked against the wall in seven or eight boxes.
Unlike other areas, the storage room happened to be a stationary Space where stored items wouldn’t spoil.
Therefore, when the base later developed various miscellaneous items—such as high-yield disaster-resistant crop seeds, fabrics tolerant to extreme temperatures, self-defense weapons, various trauma medicines, and even Serum to treat zombie infections—she stored quite a lot of them as well.