Bang, bang, bang——
"Little Shitou, get up and eat!"
"Xiao Langjun, it's time to eat!"
…
Yang Zhen was woken up by a knock on the door. When she woke up, she was still a little confused and didn't know what happened.
Opening the door, Tie Zhu and the maid named Caisi were outside. Tie Zhu was wearing a short coat, and his body was still steaming. He had obviously just finished exercising.
Yang Zhen followed the two of them to the middle of the yard. Breakfast was already placed on the table, including sesame seed cakes, steamed buns, porridge, etc. Although it was simple, it was large and filling.
After the two of them finished their breakfast, Caisi saluted them and said, "Madam said, you will stay in this courtyard today. I will call you if anything happens. You can also walk around the courtyard, but don't go there." It’s far away.”
After Caisi left, Yang Zhen had completely recalled what happened last night, as if it was a dream. He was a little unsure if it was true, so he casually exchanged a few words with Tie Zhu and then returned to his room.
After a search, the cloth bag, as well as the copper coins, wood carvings, and spiritual drops in the cloth bag were gone. Yang Zhen remembered that she fell asleep next to the seedling last night without holding the cloth bag in her hand.
"Did all these things fall into the stone?" Yang Zhen looked at the small stone she picked up from the bed and pondered secretly.
In addition to the stones, he also found a purse, which his wife had given him yesterday. When he came back, he put it on the table without even bothering to open it. He opened it and looked at it. There were ten silver coins inside.
"Madam is so generous! Even if the spirit drops are gone, I can survive for a while with these silver coins." With money in hand, Yang Zhen felt much more at ease.
The whole morning was spent studying stones. During this period, Yang Zhen and Tiezhu walked around the yard. This is a place halfway up the mountain. Under the cover of trees in the distance, you can faintly see some pavilions and pavilions, scattered in an orderly manner. There are also strange rocks and cliffs nearby, and various unknown flowers and plants are blooming in the mountains.
"What a great place!" The two of them exclaimed in the same breath.
…
Cai Si brought lunch again at noon. After the meal, Tie Zhu was called away.
About half an hour later, Tie Zhu came back. He knocked on Yang Zhen's room and his voice was slightly excited:
"Xiao Shitou, I'm going to live somewhere else. The housekeeper has arranged a job for me."
"Really?" Yang Zhen was also overjoyed.
"Yes. In the morning, they sent people to Xuanyang County to retrieve my body deed and confirmed that my identity was correct. Just now the housekeeper in the house asked me what I could do. I thought about it for a long time and finally chose the medicine garden. "
"Medicine garden? Have you ever planted flowers and plants before? Can you do it?"
"Yes, our Tianjia Village used to be rich in various medicinal materials, and the people in the village knew how to grow flowers and grass."
"That's good. Tiezhu, you must work hard! Remember our goal, earn money to buy the elixir... and get a wife as soon as possible!"
"Okay." Tie Zhu nodded vigorously, smiling a little shyly.
"When my matter is settled, I will go to you." Yang Zhen also said with a smile.
…
Not long after Tie Zhu left, Cai Si came again and said it was Madam's invitation.
Has your own matter also come to an end?
Yang Zhen followed Cai Si to the hall anxiously. Inside were Madam, Cai Yan, and an unfamiliar face.
This is a middle-aged man in his forties, slightly fat, with a beard, sitting in front of a low table.
The lady waved Yang Zhen forward and took out a stack of manuscript paper, which was the "Numerical Preliminary" written by Yang Zhen yesterday.
"I took a look at this thing, and it's very interesting. According to what it says, if you use digital calculations, the speed can be improved a lot?"
"Yes, the biggest advantage of using these numbers is that it is quick and easy..." Yang Zhen glanced at the middle-aged man and found an abacus placed in front of his case, and quickly added: "But if someone uses utensils, it may be faster. .”
"You mean abacus!" The lady smiled and pointed at the middle-aged man: "This is the accountant of my house, surnamed Jia. I asked him to come here just to test your arithmetic."
When the clerk saw that she was a young child, he didn't take it seriously. He cupped his hands in front of his wife, but he didn't even look at Yang Zhen.
Yang Zhen didn't care, and bowed respectfully: "I've met Mr. Jia, hello Mr. Jia."
"Okay." Madam frowned slightly, showing that she was not satisfied with Accountant Jia's attitude: "Caiyan, please give them a few questions first and let them calculate them."
"yes"
Caiyan then reported a multi-digit multiplication.
The accountant took out the abacus with a loud bang, and with a crackling sound of beads, he quickly reported the answer.
Yang Zhen asked for paper and pen, listed the vertical formulas on the paper, and it took a while to calculate the answer.
Caiyan asked two more questions, and Jia Accountant came up with the answer first. His abacus was indeed very smooth, and his fingers could be switched quickly and freely. Yang Zhen also secretly admired him.
Later, Caiyan asked to put the abacus aside, but Jia Accountant was quite reluctant. After arguing for a while, he finally took out the abacus and started calculating.
Yang Zhen continued to calculate on paper with a pen.
This time, Yang Zhen was much faster. After he finished a question, the accountant over there was still slowly fiddling with his calculations.
The lady knew it well, and clapped her hands: "That's it. Mr. Jia, what do you think of this numerical calculation? Is it fast?"
"It's just a pretense." Jia Accountant was quite disdainful: "Compared with my abacus, it's in heaven and on earth."
"Hey!" Yang Zhen smiled brightly and was too lazy to pay attention to him.
"Mr. Jia, let's not talk about the pros and cons of numbers for now. Please comment, how is this child's arithmetic? Is it still passable?" the lady continued to ask.
"Not bad." Accountant Jia thought for a long time before reluctantly spitting out these two words. Although he looked down upon Yang Zhen's figure, he couldn't deny that Yang Zhen was right about the questions he just asked.
"That's very good." Madam smiled and said: "This son has just entered my house, and I am worried that I have no way to arrange it. Since he has such a talent for arithmetic, how about letting him learn bookkeeping from you?"
"What?" Accountant Jia's expression changed slightly, and he felt something was wrong.
"What? Is there a problem?" the lady asked coldly.
"This, this, this boy is too young, it will take another two years." Jia Accountant gritted his teeth and replied.
"You are young?" Madam suddenly slapped the table: "When Jia Sheng entered the accounting office as an apprentice, you were only ten years old! How come you are so young when you join him? I also heard people say that when you first entered the accounting office, you were not even a hundred years old. I can’t even count. Is this guy not as good as you back then?”
This lady, who usually looked gentle and courteous, became angry and her eyebrows stood up. Not to mention Jia Sheng, even Yang Zhen was startled. Caiyan also had a straight face and became serious.
Jia Sheng immediately flinched: "What Madam said is that I didn't think well. I..."
"Then you agree?" Madam pressed forward step by step.
"Yes." Qian Sheng lowered his head and responded, secretly complaining in his heart.
"That's good. Caiyan, you will send two people to the accounting room later to find some old account books and let Xiao Shitou take them and learn how to keep accounts."
The madam finally revealed her true purpose - the ledger!
…
"Sister Caiyan, what do you want me to do, madam?"
Caiyan and two maids brought a large stack of account books from the cashier's office and placed them in a side hall next to the yard. At this time, his wife was no longer in the courtyard. Seeing that there was no one else, Yang Zhen quietly asked about Caiyan.
He actually saw some clues, but he definitely didn't understand it like Caiyan.
Caiyan probably got instructions from his wife and knew that Yang Zhen couldn't be kept in the dark, so she told Yang Zhen the whole story.
"Madam only came to the county this spring. Although the clan leader agreed to let her take over the affairs of the county, many elders in the family objected. Some people here were not happy and even secretly went to the clan to complain. , Madam was recalled to the clan yesterday because of this, and she almost refused to come back!"
"What! What happened next?"
"I heard that Miss Yue'er lost her temper on the spot, and with the support of grandma, those people didn't dare to push too hard, so they had to continue to let Madam manage this place..."
Yue'er? That yellow-haired girl who is less than ten years old! Yang Zhen felt a little incredible.
"Miss Yue'er? She, she has a high status in the family?" Yang Zhen asked.
"Oh, what are you asking about, you little kid!" Caiyan probably realized that she had made a mistake, and she stretched out her finger in embarrassment and tapped Yang Zhen's forehead three times.
It’s true that good people don’t learn from others, while bad people just pick up examples. Since listening to "Journey to the West", these women have developed the bad habit of knocking on people's foreheads.
"Hey, Sister Caiyan, please be gentle. If you break it, there will be no story." Yang Zhen protested quickly.
"Hey, look how proud you are, you're great at telling stories." Caiyan knocked on Yang Zhen's forehead again, this time much softer.
She continued:
"Madam wanted to check the old account books several times, but Jia Sheng always refused. Not long ago, a clerk in the accounting office had an accident, and Jia Sheng wanted to recruit someone else, so madam pushed you out. This time Jia Sheng really couldn't stop him. "
"Now that the account books are here, take a good look at them and do some accounting in some places to see if there are any problems."
"But I haven't been exposed to these things before?" Yang Zhen said with a bitter face.
"Madam said she doesn't really want you to find out what the problem is. As long as this account book is left here for a few days, if Qian Sheng has something in his heart, he will naturally come to beg Madam." Caiyan said with contempt.
…
Yang Zhen stayed in the side hall to look through the ledgers, and even had dinner here. To paraphrase Mrs. Caiyan, if you want to tell stories here at night, there is no need to go back and forth.
The accounting methods in these books are still very crude. Many of them are in the form of running accounts, and they are only summarized once every ten days and a half. When summarizing, many items were unclear, and the classification of items was also confusing. Yang Zhen frowned and remembered the two financial training classes he had taken when he joined the company in his previous life. He simply took a pen and paper and looked at these accounts one by one according to "borrow", "loan" and "assets". , "liabilities", etc. are transcribed again.
Soon it was getting dark, and a maid lit a candle nearby. Yang Zhen continued to copy, and the more she copied, the more she discovered that there were many problems.
Suddenly, a maid lit all the lanterns in the yard, and there was a sound of soft footsteps. Yang Zhen raised her head and found that her wife, Yue'er, and grandma were all back.
The madam quickly called Yang Zhen over. After a while, Yang Zhen continued talking about "Journey to the West" following yesterday's plot:
"The Monkey King was named Bimawen, and he went to take office happily..."
Yang Zhen controlled the rhythm, neither fast nor slow, and talked for about half an hour. It happened that Sun Wukong was pushed into the Bagua furnace by Taishang Laojun, and he stopped talking again, smiling and saying nothing.
"You baby, you always stop at critical points. It's really uncomfortable!" Grandma joked with a smile.
Na Yue'er knew from yesterday's experience that this was a common tactic used by storytellers. Although she wanted to know the plot behind it, she resisted asking and just pouted to express her dissatisfaction.
"That's it for today. Brother Yang has worked hard too." Madam knew that Yang Zhen had been busy all afternoon, so she asked Caiyan to reward Yang Zhen again and prepared to tell everyone to rest.
At this moment, a gust of breeze blew by. Grandma stretched out her hand and a paper crane fell into her hand.
"It's a message from the county government." Grandma opened the paper crane.
After reading it, Mammy silently handed the paper crane to Madam, then turned to look at Yang Zhen, her eyes full of pity.
"Brother Yang, come with me to Zhu's house tomorrow morning!"
(End of Volume 1)
