“Of course, the boss just needs to do as I say. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll cover the costs.”
After Feng Xinyao said this, she felt a tug at her hem and looked down to meet Shen Yu’s gaze.
Despite his young age, Shen Yu spoke in a low, mature tone of warning, “Stepmother, medicinal herbs are very expensive, and we only have ten taels on us.”
Feng Xinyao couldn’t help but smile at this. Was this kid worried she’d squander the family’s money?
She whispered, “Don’t worry, your stepmother is quite capable.”
Shen Yu: “…”
His father had said that in times of hardship, preserving one’s strength was more important, but his stepmother was clearly doing the opposite.
He wanted to persuade her further, but the cloth shop owner gritted his teeth and accepted the “prescription.”
“Alright, I’ll trust you, madam.”
The boss handed the list to the shop assistant. “Go quickly and come back fast.”
After the assistant left, the attendant muttered coldly, “Let’s hope the young lady’s work is as fine as her looks, or this will all be for nothing.”
“What you should really pray for is that this works out. If it fails, we only lose some silver, but you’ll be paying with your life.”
“You young lady, why are your words so venomous?”
The attendant pursed his lips, feeling a bit deflated, and went to squat elsewhere.
Feng Xinyao then began asking the boss about what kind of dress the young lady wanted.
The cloth shop owner brought out a design—a blue and white Liuxian Skirt, a style that looked ethereal and flowing.
After explaining, the boss sighed. “It’s not that there’s a shortage of plain white or plain blue fabric on the market, but Miss Bai’s batch of Cloud Brocade is precious and hard to come by. Now that it’s been stained, there’s simply no other material that can replace it.”
Anyone familiar with the dyeing process knew that blue was an extremely difficult color to mix and could hardly be covered by any other color. So this batch of fabric—whether it was white cloth dyed blue or blue cloth dyed white—was very difficult to handle.
The boss claimed to trust Feng Xinyao completely, but inwardly he was still uneasy, wondering what she could possibly do.
Hearing the boss repeatedly say how difficult this was, the children couldn’t help but break out in a cold sweat for Feng Xinyao.
They didn’t want to lose their stepmother over some silver.
Shen Yu tugged at Feng Xinyao again, determined to remind her of his father’s teachings no matter what.
“Stepmother, Father said that if you find yourself in a difficult situation, preserving your strength should be your top priority.”
Shen Yu spoke with a grave, serious expression.
Feng Xinyao laughed and pinched Shen Yu’s nose. “Father said, Father said—is Little Yu a daddy’s boy?”
Daddy’s… boy? What was that?
Shen Yu was left bewildered by her words. Just as he was about to speak again, Feng Xinyao patted him on the shoulder and pretended to speak earnestly, “Well then, let your stepmother teach you a saying too: take a gamble, and a bicycle can become a motorcycle.”
Shen Yu: “…”
The young boy furrowed his brows at these words. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to listen to his stepmother—it was that her words were too profound for him to understand.
Feng Xinyao didn’t elaborate further and simply concluded, “Your father isn’t here, so now you listen to your stepmother.”
His father really could talk—spouting aphorisms by the basketful. He must have been a dull and rigid old man.
Feng Xinyao thought: how tiresome.
As she spoke, the shop assistant had already returned carrying a bundle of medicinal herbs.
Feng Xinyao checked the quantities of the herbs and directly soaked them in water.
Noticing the boss’s curiosity about her formula, Feng Xinyao explained the process to him as she worked.
The boss listened, stunned at every step, and ultimately marveled at Feng Xinyao’s ingenuity.
But looking at the sauce-colored dye that came down from the plant ash, the shopkeeper still had doubts—could this really turn out blue in the end?
Feng Xinyao didn’t explain. She simply tore off a piece of white cloth and tossed it in, rubbing it a few times. When she pulled the white cloth back up, it was indeed tinged with blue.
Feng Xinyao said to the shopkeeper, “This blue is more than enough to neutralize all those mottled, uneven blue fabrics.”
Seeing this, the shopkeeper, with his years of dyeing experience, naturally knew Feng Xinyao was telling the truth.
“Then what do we do about the white fabric?”
The shopkeeper asked. Feng Xinyao had easily mixed up the blue dye, but that only solved the problem of the blue fabrics—the white ones wouldn’t be so easy to re-dye.
Feng Xinyao calmly took out a piece of white cloth that had been stained with blue, folded it casually, twisted a few knots into it, and submerged the entire cloth into the blue dye vat.
The shopkeeper nearly dropped his jaw at the sight.
“Th-this… this is the only bolt of white cloth that wasn’t damaged too badly!”
If it was ruined, his business would be ruined too.
Seeing the shopkeeper’s eyes redden with anxiety, Feng Xinyao finally explained, “Miss Bai originally wanted to use blue-and-white patterned fabric for her dress. Isn’t it even better if I can achieve the blue-and-white pattern on a single piece of cloth?”
With that, Feng Xinyao adapted several styles of traditional Chinese clothing from her memory, quickly sketching out a few ingenious designs and laying them before the shopkeeper.
Looking at those dress designs, the shopkeeper couldn’t help but rub his eyes, saying in disbelief, “Miss, you can design clothes too? Wonderful, wonderful! These clothes are even more beautiful than the ones I originally planned to give Miss Bai.”
The shopkeeper was an honest man and didn’t hide his delight at the new designs.
“So pretty.”
Shen Jiaojiao, seeing how shocked the shopkeeper was, also tiptoed over out of curiosity about the little dresses and couldn’t help but exclaim.
Shen Yueyue nodded along, her face flushing slightly just from thinking about how amazing Feng Xinyao was.
Shen Yu, naturally, hadn’t expected Feng Xinyao to pull this off either. He was a bit curious—was this really the same stepmother who had been so meek and simple in the Shen family, only good for cooking and feeding the pigs?
“Madam, I was truly blind earlier.”
The fabric shopkeeper was still marveling, his heart filling with anticipation for the white cloth soaking in the dye vat.
Dyeing took time, and Feng Xinyao, seeing it was nearly noon, said, “I still have things to buy. Why don’t you keep an eye on things here, shopkeeper, and I’ll take the children to do my shopping, then come back.”
“No, no, madam, don’t leave. Whatever you need to buy, I’ll have my assistant get it. No need for you to run around yourself.”
“There are quite a lot of things to buy…”
Feng Xinyao was mainly worried the assistant wouldn’t buy things well. The shopkeeper might be making a good profit here, but the days ahead were long—she still needed to compare prices at different shops.
The shopkeeper, having been in business for years, was a shrewd man. He immediately saw through Feng Xinyao’s thoughts and said, “No worries. I’ll have him shop carefully and go straight to the east market—good goods at fair prices. Buy as much as you like, madam, and tonight I’ll have the shop’s carriage take you all home.”
Feng Xinyao felt too embarrassed to accept, but the shopkeeper added, “Madam, don’t stand on ceremony. I can tell that your talents go far beyond what you’ve shown today. I’m hoping to work with you more in the future—this little gesture is nothing.”
With him putting it that way, declining further would only make Feng Xinyao seem petty. She thanked him and handed a list to the assistant.
The assistant took the list and the corner of his mouth twitched. Good heavens—this wasn’t just buying a few things; this was furnishing an entire household from scratch.
She didn’t have a single thing she needed.
Feng Xinyao felt a bit embarrassed as well, but the shopkeeper was understanding and, while urging the waiter to hurry along, said:
“Life is full of twists and turns—how could it ever run smoothly? Thinking on it, when you were about to enter the shop just now, Madam Feng, you must have been planning to pick out some clothing and bedding, weren’t you?”
Feng Xinyao was about to say she wanted to buy a few things, but the shopkeeper waved his hand grandly and summoned a seamstress: “Take these pretty little ones and pick out two sets of warm, nice-looking clothes for them, and also have the bedding selected and matched according to the number of people.”