Guo Ce followed his gaze, spotting a woman with a back-basket and patched clothes, clearly a village woman. He looked back at Lin Dalang. “Do you know her, Brother Lin?”
“Who would want to know such a venomous, snake-hearted person?” Lin Dalang replied, taking a sip of tea with an expression of pure disgust.
You seem far too repulsed for someone who’s only “seen her once or twice,” Guo Ce thought, skeptical.
Li Miaomiao felt someone watching her. She turned, but the street was filled with a diverse crowd. Dismissing the feeling, she tucked her coin purse away and headed toward the local blacksmith.
Young Master He had purchased her box for one tael of silver. She had reached a partnership agreement with Shopkeeper Wang: on the first and fifteenth of every month, she would bring her wooden wares to the shop. Small to medium items like the box would sell for one tael, while prices for other pieces would be determined by their design. The box she sold to Young Master He could have fetched more, but the materials were common, and since the wood hadn’t been fully seasoned, she had been forced to sell it at a lower price.
Seeing that the shop sold carpenter’s rules, she had intended to buy one, but Shopkeeper Wang, valuing their new partnership, simply gifted it to her. Li Miaomiao, being currently destitute, had no interest in playing coy—she accepted it gratefully.
At the blacksmith’s, she sketched out the blades she needed: saw, plane, drill, chisel, hammer, and shovel. The blacksmith studied the drawings. Most were simple, but one left him scratching his head.
“Miss, this serrated blade… I’ve never made anything like it. The cost to forge it will be high.”
“Which one?”
The blacksmith’s soot-stained finger pointed to the saw blade. “This one.”
Li Miaomiao leaned in. It was a saw blade. Without a saw, her work was hindered, so she asked, “Master, how much for a saw blade?”
“At least one tael.”
The blacksmith wasn’t lying; those teeth were difficult to forge. Li Miaomiao raised an eyebrow. She had only just earned one tael, and to spend it all on a single tool was out of the question. She was too poor; she would have to wait until next time.
“Master, let’s skip the saw blade for now. How much for the other blades plus an axe?”
Seeing her poverty, the blacksmith took pity on her. “Give me one hundred coins in total.”
Li Miaomiao handed him the coins from her purse. “Master, when can I come to collect them?”
“Come by after the second quarter of the Hour of the Sheep (2:30 PM).”
Leaving the blacksmith, she went to the butcher’s to buy five pounds of pork. As she reached to pay, she spotted the pig’s offal in a wooden barrel. In this era, pork had a heavy, gamey odor, and the innards were considered filth—most people would rather starve than eat them. They were labor-intensive to clean, and the secret to removing the smell required large amounts of salt and flour. Salt, in particular, was prohibitively expensive; even with the imperial government stable, salt in this northwestern region cost forty coins per pound. With enough money barely covering basic food, who had the resources to waste on cleaning “waste”?
Li Miaomiao bit her lip, debating. It was a chore to prepare, but once cleaned, marinated, smoked with cypress leaves, and hung to dry, the meat could be preserved for months. It could feed them for nearly half a year. After weighing the options, she decided to go for it.
“Shopkeeper, how do you sell the pig offal?”
The butcher, having finished wrapping her five pounds of pork, looked down at the bucket and stared at her in shock. “You want to buy this?”
“Yes,” Li Miaomiao nodded.
The butcher burst into a hearty laugh. “Haha! Someone actually wants to eat… excrement? If you want it, take it. Consider it a gift.”
Li Miaomiao: …When did she ever say she wanted to eat excrement?
Labelled as the woman who wanted to eat filth, Li Miaomiao took the pork, placed it in her basket, and said, “Shopkeeper, I’ll be back for the offal shortly. I need to buy a few other things first.”
“Go on then, go on!” the butcher called out. He assumed she had lost her nerve and wouldn’t actually eat the “excrement,” so he didn’t give it another thought.
Li Miaomiao finished her errands, collected the forged blades from the blacksmith, and returned to retrieve the bucket of offal. Clutching the bucket in one hand and two live hens in the other, she began the long walk back to the village.
Not far ahead, Lin Dalang was traveling in a rented carriage, his deposit paid for with his newfound “fortune.” From a distance, he caught a whiff of a foul odor. Frowning, he pulled back the carriage curtain to look—and recognized Li Miaomiao instantly.
“How unlucky,” he muttered.
With a scowl, he snapped the curtain shut and barked at the driver, “Speed it up! Don’t let that filthy thing soil my clothes.”
Li Miaomiao had no idea the person inside was Lin Dalang. She reached home just as evening began to fall. As she pushed the door open, she saw Xiao Xian sitting on a small stool by the entrance, his long, elegant fingers busy fiddling with something.
Their eyes met.
The day had been a success, and Li Miaomiao was just about to offer a smile and a greeting when Xiao Xian’s eyes narrowed. He looked her up and down, his cold voice laced with a faint, reluctant exasperation.
“Did you fall into a cesspit?”
Li Miaomiao frowned, looking down at her clothes in confusion. Xiao Xian’s gaze shifted to the two chickens in her hand, then to her overstuffed back-basket. His eyes darkened. She hadn’t just returned—she had returned with a haul.
It wasn’t until her gaze flickered to the bucket in her hand and the pungent stench reached her own nose that she finally realized what he meant. She lifted the bucket and explained, “I didn’t fall into a cesspit. I bought some pork, and the butcher let me take the offal for free.”
As she looked up, Xiao Xian’s expression hardened back into cold indifference. “Even a dog wouldn’t touch that stuff. Why would you bring it home?”
He didn’t realize it himself, but his tone had relaxed. Like a hedgehog that had been braced for a fight, he had momentarily tucked away his sharpest quills.
“I bought spices,” she replied. “Once it’s cleaned and simmered, it’ll be delicious.”
Xiao Xian gave no response. He gripped the small stones in his hand, reached for his two wooden sticks, and retreated into his room, leaving Li Miaomiao with a back that clearly said, I don’t believe you.
On the road, she had been too busy to notice the smell, but standing in the courtyard now, she realized it was truly overwhelming. She set the basket and the offal on the steps, untied the chickens, and began unloading her purchases. The blades and meat had cost 250 coins, the hens 100, and three pounds of salt—a king’s ransom—another 120. Between vinegar, spices, eggs, tofu, a pound of low-grade wine, and white radishes, she had spent another 116 coins.
Of the one tael she had earned, combined with the ten coins from the original Miaomiao, only 424 remained.
She tucked the copper coins into her small wooden box, then hugged it to her chest. It didn’t feel safe anywhere. After a moment, she changed course and walked toward Xiao Xian’s room. Since he stayed home all day anyway, his rotting wooden cabinet was as safe a place as any.
He claimed she knew nothing about him, did he? Well, she would just have to learn, one piece at a time.
As she placed the box inside his cabinet, Xiao Xian lazily lifted his eyelids. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll spend your money?”
She had spent the last few days working on that box; it didn’t take a genius to figure out the items she brought back today were bought with the proceeds from its sale.
Li Miaomiao made a point not to look at his legs. Instead, she stared at his handsome, refined face and offered a breezy, indifferent smile.
“It’s marital property. Spend it if you want.”
He was handsome enough that she had chosen him, after all—consider it his compensation for having to put up with her. She turned and walked away, humming, leaving Xiao Xian behind to frown at her retreating form.