Three days later, Ye Jia rose early to retrieve her frying pan from the town’s blacksmith.
The sky was just beginning to lighten. The rain had finally ceased after two days, though the air remained cold. As she crouched by the well to rinse her mouth, Madam Yu paced restlessly beside her, her mind a whirlwind of doubt.
The family had only one tael of silver left, and Ye Jia had taken it all. What if she sends it to her maternal home? Madam Yu wondered. And even if she doesn’t, can this business of hers really succeed? Why does she keep running to town? Is she truly checking the market, or is she meeting Cheng Lao’er?
Despite her mounting anxiety, Madam Yu couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Seeing her mother’s hesitant expression, Ye Jia spat out the rinse water and turned to her. “Mother, if you have nothing to do today, come to town with me. I can’t run this business alone; I’ll need your help.”
Madam Yu paused, her gaze wavering. Raised as a noblewoman, she had been taught from childhood that a lady should never show her face in public. During their exile, the most she had done was work in the embroidery shop. The thought of selling food on the street was almost unbearable.
But then again, she thought, we’re all about to starve. What use is my pride now?
With a determined bite of her lip, Ye Jia went inside to tie her hair up. She changed her clothes and ate some radish pancake with Rui’er.
The little girl was always well-behaved. In the past, Madam Yu had to leave her at home when she went to work, and the child had been left alone for hours. But at just two and a half, nearly three, a child could be lured away with a single piece of candy. It was only luck that nothing had happened so far, but one couldn’t rely on luck when it came to children.
Even with the advanced communication of the modern world, missing children could be lost for twenty years or more. Who knew if child traffickers would venture into this remote, impoverished village?
Ye Jia took the little girl’s small hand and guided her into Third Uncle’s room, where she gently set her down.
Without glancing at the man sitting up in bed, she told the child, “Rui’er, Grandmother and Auntie both have work to do today. You be a good girl and keep Third Uncle company. Auntie will make you something delicious when she gets back.”
Third Uncle, Zhou Jingchen, could only manage a silent, “…”
Rui’er nodded her small head vigorously.
“Okay!” she chirped.
Only then did Ye Jia turn to face the man on the bed.
Their eyes met. Zhou Jingchen lifted his face slightly, waiting for her to speak.
Zhou Jingchen’s leg was still far from healed.
As the old saying went, it takes a hundred days to recover from a broken bone or a torn tendon.
He had suffered both, and his body was severely depleted. During his time in the western grounds, he had been treated as the descendant of a rebel prince, fed the worst rations, and forced into the most grueling labor.
The western grounds had sent him back that day with the hope that he would die alone, sparing them the trouble of disposing of his body. His survival was a testament to his own sheer will to live.
“You’ll need to look after the chicks while I’m away,” Ye Jia said after a moment’s thought. She lowered her eyes and delivered the order with feigned ruthlessness. “They are our most precious asset after our grain. You must feed them well.”
Zhou Jingchen’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded hesitantly. “…Alright.”
Over the past few days, he had quietly observed the household’s dynamics. His mother, the Imperial Consort, was gentle and had never performed manual labor in her youth. Now, the burden of managing the home fell entirely on Jia-niang. He himself had been away from such duties for so long that he felt completely lost.
“How do I feed them?” he asked.
“The same way you’re being fed,” she replied. “With millet.”
The man fell silent.
Ye Jia nodded, and since Madam Yu was already waiting outside, the mother and daughter-in-law hurried off to town.
The streets were much busier now. With the rain gone, the town had regained its usual bustle. Farmers from the countryside had come to buy tools for the spring planting, and traveling merchants carried their wares on shoulder poles, hawking their goods as they wove through the alleys.
Ye Jia and Madam Yu navigated the crowds, their eyes darting left and right.
More shops had opened their doors today, and Ye Jia discovered that Libei Town even had a pastry shop. Perhaps because of the tile market, the storefronts remained open, but only a few customers lingered inside. After all, the goods in the shops were more expensive than those in the market; people only came here if they couldn’t find what they needed there.
Madam Yu, always timid in crowds, shrank back and walked slowly. Ye Jia had to stop every few steps to wait for her.
By the time they reached the blacksmith’s shop, the large frying pan was ready. The blacksmith, remembering how Ye Jia had paid him in full the last time, treated her with extra courtesy. He had even forged two iron spatulas—shaped like teppanyaki turners—and refused to charge her for them.
The design had been Ye Jia’s idea; spatulas of this shape were far more practical than the usual household ones.
Madam Yu watched from the side, finding the odd shape of the pan and spatula truly strange. But she had long learned the wisdom of keeping her mouth shut when she didn’t understand, so she refrained from offering any unsolicited advice on the stove.
She stepped forward to hoist the pan onto her shoulder. Fearing it was too heavy for her, Ye Jia helped her lift it.
“We’re missing a lid,” Ye Jia said as they carried it. “We’ll need to find a bamboo weaver to make a basket for the flatbreads.”
“When do we start our business?” Madam Yu asked, her mind returning to the radish-shredded flatbread she’d eaten that morning. It had been delicious, which was precisely why she’d kept quiet the whole way. Good things sell themselves, she thought. “Jia-niang, if we make these flatbreads, how much will we charge per piece?”
The pan was heavy, but not impossible to carry. Still, it was awkward to walk with, and Ye Jia prepared to take it on her own back. “I’ve scouted the town four or five times already. We’ll set the price at six copper coins.”
“Six copper coins?!” Madam Yu’s heart skipped a beat.
After years of hardship, she was no longer the Princess Consort Jing who could casually bestow golden melon seeds as tips. “Libei Town is desperately poor. Will the people here really spend six copper coins on a piece of flatbread?”
She knew she wouldn’t have been able to afford it herself.
“We’ll see tomorrow,” Ye Jia replied, unwilling to explain further. She guided Madam Yu toward the tile market.
Ye Jia had visited the tile market before, but she’d arrived too early to truly take it in. Though small, the marketplace was a microcosm of the world, offering a bit of everything.
This time, she discovered they even sold people.
As she and Madam Yu walked deeper into the market, they saw several groups of filthy children kneeling on the ground, a single blade of grass tucked into their hair. Many were around Rui’er’s age. Most were girls, but there were also scrawny boys, covered in bruises and welts, kneeling with their heads bowed.
Even foreigners were here, locked in iron cages. One had curly hair and blue eyes. The human trafficker, speaking in a thick regional dialect, called them Kunnu from the northwest.
Ye Jia stiffened, forcing her gaze away as she and Madam Yu hurried toward the radish stall.
Radishes were a hard sell. They were heavy with water, making them a poor value by weight, and they didn’t keep anyone full. Most rural families grew their own in large patches, eating what they could and either letting the rest rot in the fields or feeding it to the pigs. Only those in town without land would buy them, and even then, they bought sparingly—a pound or two at most.
When Ye Jia and Madam Yu arrived, the vendor’s two large baskets were still full. The radishes, likely freshly dug, were still caked in earth. The vendor sat on the ground, calling out his wares.
Ye Jia decided to buy both large baskets of radishes.
The vendor stared, certain he’d misheard. “These weigh nearly two hundred jin. You want all of them?”
“Yes,” Ye Jia replied, ignoring Madam Yu’s slack-jawed expression. “Can you lower the price if we take the lot?”
The vendor had grown the radishes himself, bringing them to town only after his own family had eaten their fill. Radishes were common, and at three jin for two wen, there wasn’t much room to negotiate. He weighed the produce, finding it came to just over one hundred eighty jin. He rounded down to exactly one hundred eighty and sold them to Ye Jia for over two hundred wen. The small-time merchant beamed, his mouth splitting into a wide grin.
One whole tael of silver, gone in an instant, Madam Yu thought, her eyes reddening with heartache. With salt and other seasonings, they had already spent three hundred wen. When Ye Jia started talking about hiring an ox cart to haul the goods back and visiting a blacksmith to commission a grater, Madam Yu stopped her.
“Let’s be thrifty. Let’s just be thrifty,” she pleaded, terrified Ye Jia would squander their last tael. “We’ll buy a grater after we’ve made some money.”
Ye Jia sighed. Cutting all those radishes by hand would take forever. A grater would save time and drastically improve their efficiency. Still, she knew keeping not a single wen on hand was a dangerous gamble.
The two women spent the entire morning getting everything home, where they immediately set to work with feverish energy.
They had to leave for the tile market early the next day. That meant the shredded radish and pancakes had to be prepared now, or they’d never make it in time.
There was so much work to do—scrubbing the radish, blanching it, and mixing the filling. One person couldn’t possibly handle it all. Even Rui’er had come out to help, squatting by a small basin and scrubbing the vegetables with her tiny hands.
Ye Jia wiped her hands on her clothes and went into the east room. She practically hauled the injured man from the bed and carried him out into the courtyard.
Madam Yu, still scrubbing radishes, stared agape as Ye Jia marched Zhou Jingchen into the yard.
“Everyone’s working,” Ye Jia said. “You can’t just keep resting.”
Zhou Jingchen fell silent. Since waking up, his wife—whose memory was clearly fragmented—had shattered his expectations time and again. It had taken him only four days to go from being dragged around in confusion to calmly accepting his fate.
He didn’t feel offended. He simply sat on a stool. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can you shred radish?” Madam Yu’s knife skills were poor, so she could only scrub the vegetables. Ye Jia’s own hand ached at the base of her thumb from the chopping. She brought over a plate of the shredded radish she’d already prepared and presented it to the able-bodied man. “Cut them like this.”
The spring sunlight spilled over his broad shoulders, illuminating the elegant lines of his face.
“I can,” he said.
“Perfect.” Ye Jia handed him the heavy cleaver and turned to the stove to blanch the radish.
The vegetable had to be blanched, wrung dry, and then seasoned to fully absorb the flavors. This was their first trial run, so Ye Jia didn’t dare make too many—just around a hundred.
As it turned out, Zhou Jingchen—the great villain—was probably more accustomed to hacking heads with a blade than anyone else. He shredded the radish even faster than she did.
That evening, they had radish pancake for dinner. The ones fresh from the pan were far superior to the rest. After eating a piping hot pancake, Madam Yu’s lingering doubts finally vanished. The family each enjoyed a fragrant pancake, while Zhou Jingchen, as usual, continued to sip his plain congee.
“I should be able to drink something else now, shouldn’t I?” Zhou Jingchen asked.
“Of course,” Ye Jia replied, her conscience finally pricking her. She poured him a bowl of goat’s milk. “Drink this.”
Zhou Jingchen stared at the bowl. “…”
The next day, Ye Jia and Madam Yu rose before dawn. The tile market filled up early, and arriving late meant losing the best spots. Ye Jia had managed to borrow a single-wheeled pushcart the night before. They loaded their wares onto it and set off for town in the dark.
As luck would have it, the tile market was even more crowded than last time. A dense throng of people pressed against the deer fence, waiting for the burly gatekeeper to strike the gong.
Madam Yu cringed slightly, but the thought that their family’s entire future rested on this venture forced her to straighten her back. She had been about to tell Ye Jia to push the cart further inside so they could secure a prime spot once the gates opened. But when she turned, she saw that Ye Jia had already parked the wheelbarrow by the roadside, unloaded the stove, and lit the fire.
“Jia-niang, what are you doing?” Madam Yu hurried over, stunned by her daughter’s haste.
“Doing business, of course,” Ye Jia replied. She had already started the stove and was now ladling oil into the frying pan. As a breeze swept past, the savory aroma of hot oil wafted through the air. She opened her back basket, took out the shredded radish pancakes she had prepared the night before, and laid them onto the sizzling oil.
The crackle of frying starch released a mouthwatering scent, drawing the hungry gazes of the merchants waiting by the deer fence.
“Mother, hurry,” Ye Jia said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Set out the money bowl and the bamboo baskets. We’re open for business.”