Ye Manshu glared at him. “Stop making such a fuss. Don’t tell me the traps are completely full?”
“They sure are! Completely packed! All four traps were full—there’s over ten jin altogether, and even two big fish. Look!”
Sure enough, there were two carp weighing around two jin each.
There was no way they could eat more than ten jin of fish themselves, so Ye Manshu called Cheng Yuan over.
“Go find your little grand-uncle and ask him to spread the word in the village. See if anyone wants to buy fish. We’ll sell them cheap. Carp goes for twenty copper coins per jin in the county, but for villagers we’ll sell them at fifteen. Same for the small fish, shrimp, and loaches—they’re about the same price in the county, so we’ll also sell them at fifteen per jin.”
Li Daoshun gathered the villagers together and asked if anyone wanted to buy fish.
Quite a few families did.
Especially after Ye Manshu had introduced her five-spice powder and “thirteen-spice” seasoning. Although others had already copied the recipes, some ordinary households now kept those seasonings too. Even with very little oil, stewed fish still tasted delicious.
Not every family was dirt poor, after all.
In total, seven households bought fish.
They sold fifteen jin altogether.
Only a small amount of loaches remained.
Just like that, they earned 225 copper coins.
Cheng Yuan’s grin practically split his face. Cheng Kang, however, looked dissatisfied.
“Mom, you sold everything. What are we supposed to eat?”
Ye Manshu kicked him hard.
“All you think about is eating! We’ll just keep catching more fish. It’s not like we can’t catch any.”
None of the villagers found anything suspicious. Everyone already knew Cheng Kang was talented at catching fish—he managed to catch some every year anyway.
This time, he had simply caught more than usual.
Still, after this round of sales, Ye Manshu understood that the village market was basically saturated. If they wanted to sell more, they’d have to go into the county town.
Unfortunately, the private school now tied her down. Her original goal in opening the school had been to find a truly gifted student. Now that she had found one, she couldn’t exactly shut the school down.
But she didn’t trust anyone else to sell the fish on her behalf either.
So she announced that classes would be suspended the next day.
That was perfectly normal. Ye Manshu had already established a rule that students got one day off every week—she just hadn’t specified which day.
The villagers had no objections. After several days of lessons already, one rest day was reasonable.
During the latter half of the afternoon, Ye Manshu went fishing again and caught three more fish, all fairly large. The biggest grass carp weighed over four jin, along with silver carp, common carp, catfish, and others.
Meanwhile, Cheng Kang spent the entire day enthusiastically searching for good locations to place the traps.
They checked the traps four times in total, accumulating more than twenty jin of fish.
Adding in Ye Manshu’s catch, they ended up with nearly forty jin altogether.
Seeing the results, Ye Manshu smiled in complete satisfaction. She borrowed two large water vats from Li Daoshun and kept the fish alive in them overnight so they wouldn’t die before morning.
Even so, by the next morning, some had still died, making her feel a little pained.
Ye Manshu scooped out the dead fish. Since they had only recently died, they were still perfectly fresh. She had the family cook them to eat and also sent some over to Cheng Yi’s household.
The remaining fish—plus another five or six jin collected from Cheng Kang’s traps that morning—were loaded onto Li Daoshun’s donkey cart, and they headed straight for the county town.
This time, she brought Cheng Yuan, Cheng Kang, and Ye Yuze with her.
Since she thought highly of Ye Yuze, she wanted him to broaden his horizons. A scholar’s perspective was extremely important. Otherwise, why would scholars go traveling and studying abroad?
Once they reached the county town, they didn’t head straight to the market to sell fish. Instead, they sought out Li Yong’an, Doctor Li’s son, who worked in the county as a physician.
“Cousin, you’ve been in the county for two years now, so you should know some people. Are there any restaurants or inns that buy fresh fish and shrimp? If we take everything to the market, some of it will probably die before we can sell it.”
That was simply reality. Even when stored in large vats at home, some fish had died overnight. Now they had been transported all the way here in small buckets.
If they didn’t sell them quickly, the fish would die even faster.
And dead fish sold for only half price.
Li Yong’an smiled. “I do know someone. I recently got acquainted with a manager from Drunken Immortal Tower. Let me ask if they’ll buy them.”
“That’s wonderful. Cousin really is the best.”
Li Yong’an led Ye Manshu over to inquire.
Ye Manshu looked up at the three-story Drunken Immortal Tower. The building was magnificently decorated. The people entering and leaving were dressed in silks and fine clothing. Some wore scholar robes, while others wore refined cotton garments—the attire of servants or household stewards from wealthy families.
In other words, the customers here were definitely not ordinary poor commoners.
Li Yong’an only had enough standing to ask because a few days ago he had treated the mother of the restaurant manager, Steward Zou.
Steward Zou personally came out to greet him.
“Physician Li, what brings you here?”
Li Yong’an looked somewhat embarrassed. If Ye Manshu hadn’t asked him, he honestly wouldn’t have bothered.
“It’s like this. My cousin’s family caught some fresh fish. Earlier, I heard you mention the restaurant needed fresh fish, so I wondered whether you were still looking.”
Steward Zou glanced at Ye Manshu, then at Cheng Yuan, Cheng Kang, and Ye Yuze.
“Who’s in charge here?”
Cheng Yuan and Cheng Kang answered in unison:
“Our mother!”
Ye Manshu smiled. “You can discuss it with me.”
Steward Zou called over the purchasing manager, Kang Shan.
“Little Kang, go take a look at their fish. If they’re fresh, buy them.”
Kang Shan agreed readily. This was a minor matter. The restaurant required seafood and game every day. While they had regular suppliers, they also occasionally bought from independent sellers.
When he saw the lively fish and shrimp still flopping around inside Ye Manshu’s buckets, and estimated the quantity at only around forty jin, he immediately nodded.
“Alright. Sixteen copper coins per jin. What do you think?”
“Manager Kang is straightforward. Deal!”
Being able to sell everything at once made sixteen coins per jin perfectly acceptable.
After weighing everything, the total came to forty-six jin, earning them 736 copper coins.
Ye Manshu handed thirty-six coins back to Kang Shan.
“You can just give us a round number. I only wanted to ask—if we catch fish in the future, can we continue selling them here?”
Kang Shan pushed the money back.
“No need to be polite. Since the manager personally approved buying your goods, of course I’ll accept them. If you bring more later, we can still buy them. But these small fish and shrimp aren’t in very high demand. Large fish are what we really need.”
Ye Manshu mentally noted this.
“Alright then. In the future, I’ll mainly bring big fish.”
“Fine—but make sure they’re fresh,” Kang Shan reminded her.
“Absolutely.”
Li Yong’an chatted with Steward Zou for a bit longer before taking his leave after the transaction was completed.
Before leaving, however, Ye Manshu looked at Steward Zou once more. Finally unable to hold herself back, she quietly asked:
“Steward Zou, forgive me for being presumptuous, but… do you usually eat a lot, urinate frequently, tire easily, experience eye discomfort, and keep losing weight?”
Steward Zou froze.
“How did you know?”
“I noticed you constantly drinking water, and every little while you’d step into the back room. I guessed you were going to the toilet. Your body is also quite thin, and you keep rubbing your eyes and scratching at your skin unconsciously. Your complexion is flushed, your skin rough, and your dark circles and eye bags are heavy. So I boldly guessed you might have wasting-thirst disease.”
Steward Zou frowned.
“Isn’t this normal once you get older?”
He had deliberately avoided seeing a doctor seriously about it because he feared they would diagnose him with kidney deficiency.
After all, from what he knew, kidney deficiency supposedly caused similar symptoms.
And no man wanted to hear that his kidneys “weren’t working properly.”