At night, Xu Ling sat in the inn room, closed the doors and windows, and ordered one meat and one vegetarian dish, five steamed buns and a bowl of soup as usual.
While eating, he counted the money he earned under the candlelight.
Today he went to the bank to change the copper coins into silver. Two hundred taels of silver were placed on the table, shining with white flowers.
This amount of money, if placed in an ordinary farmhouse, would already be considered a huge sum of money.
If it were Xu Ling in the past, he would have to sleep with money in his arms at night, his mind full of thoughts of returning home to his wife and children, and he would no longer have the heart to work hard.
But now, as he looked at the money, he was thinking about the day he learned in prison that he was not even qualified to complain for fifty taels of silver, which caused Xu Ping and Xu An to sell themselves.
"Fifty taels..." Xu Ling set aside a quarter. Looking at it this way, two hundred taels of silver was really small.
Xu Ling didn't have much ups and downs in his heart. He had already put the money to some use.
First, keep enough fifty taels to pay off the debt.
Part of it was Wang's forty taels, and he would not give any more copper coins. The remaining ten taels would be reserved for repaying debts if a creditor came to the door.
Xu Ling allocated another ten taels to go out. In order to save him, Gu Daliang's family took out six taels of silver and made a hard trip to worry about him. They also wanted to sell the land. .
Another thirty taels were allocated to build a new house. Xu Ling had already found out that it would cost at least ten taels of silver to build an ordinary farm house. If he wanted to build a house with masonry, brick and wood structure, it would definitely not work without thirty taels of silver.
Xu Ling took a bite of the steamed bun and mentally estimated the structure of the new house. It is difficult to transport wood these days, and the price is also high, not to mention blue bricks and black tiles, which are all sold on a piece-by-piece basis.
After thinking about it, Xu Ling allocated another ten liang. Since he wanted to build a house, he would build a better house.
As a result, he only had a little over a hundred silver left on him.
Spending money is like water, and this is just a rough estimate.
Xu Ling sighed, it seems that selling vegetables can't stop after returning home.
Wait until winter is over and spring begins to make money, otherwise you will end up in vain sooner or later.
After Xu Ling finished eating, he put the money into the space, blew out the candles and went to bed.
At night, Xu Ling was awakened by the strange noise whistling outside. The window was suddenly blown open, and a gust of cold wind swept in. Xu Ling quickly wrapped himself in a quilt and went to close the window. Unexpectedly, the wooden bolt blocking the door broke.
He had no choice but to put on his clothes and go downstairs to find the waiter.
"Take that with a grain of salt!"
Others were woken up, looking out the window at the weird weather and shouting.
Xu Ling called the waiter out of bed. He rubbed his hands and feet coldly and came up to block the doors and windows for him. He cursed, "The weather has been getting weirder every year. Why did it snow so early this year?"
Xu Ling chatted with him, "When did it snow last year?"
"Your guest is not from Quanzhou, right? It snowed only in December last year. It snowed heavily for three days, and the river outside was covered with a thin layer of ice!"
Xu Ling searched through his memories, but he really didn't have much memory. He just remembered that he was cold, hungry, and it seemed like he hadn't been able to go out all winter.
However, Xu Ling took the waiter's words seriously. He got up at dawn the next day, hoping to get on the boat early so as not to delay his return home.
When he went out, he realized that the salt particles last night were like a dream and had not turned into snow at all.
Just then, the temperature dropped a lot, and as soon as I took a breath, my mouth was filled with white mist.
Xu Ling was strong and had plenty of energy and blood. He didn't feel too cold after putting on his winter clothes. He walked along the streets of Quanzhou, wanting to check out the grain stores and fur shops.
Along the way, small vendors were still shouting, and there were many more people selling firewood and charcoal on the streets.
There are many people gathered around to buy.
When he arrived at the grain store, Xu Ling discovered that he was not the only one sensitive to this. There was a long queue outside the grain store, all coming to buy grain.
Xu Ling stepped forward to ask about the price. The price of food had increased by two cents compared with yesterday. A bucket of rice originally cost eighty cents, but today it has risen to one hundred cents.
A bucket of rice weighs only twelve kilograms. How much money does an ordinary family have to spend to save enough food for the winter?
However, no one is willing to eat only white rice. If you buy a mix of rice, flour, brown rice and other grains, you should be able to survive the winter.
Compared with the staple food crops that can fill the stomach, the prices of other beans have not changed much. A bushel of mung beans only costs 30 cents. The price of soybeans is higher, at 45 cents a bushel.
Xu Ling bought a hundred catties of mung beans, a hundred catties of soybeans, and nothing else.
When I went to the fur shop, as expected, the price of furs had also increased. It was too cold early this year, so people began to buy things to keep out the cold and satisfy their hunger. The sales of other things were not so good.
Xu Ling spent seventy taels of silver to buy sixty-one pieces of medium-quality rabbit fur, weighing about two hundred kilograms.
Naturally, the fur shop cannot only have rabbit skins. Xu Ling also saw fox skins, mink skins, and the furs of some other unknown animals. However, fox skins and mink skins are expensive. If a complete fox skin is of high quality, It is estimated that his entire net worth is not enough to buy two.
Pulling a cart of rabbit furs away from the fur store, Xu Ling took advantage of the fact that no one was around to put the things into his room, and then he got on the boat back to Lingbao Town in the afternoon.
We boarded the ship on the last day of October and set off from Quanzhou. When we returned to Lingbao Town, we faced a headwind. The weather was gloomy and gloomy for several days in a row, and the wind was so strong that people could not open their eyes.
Someone set up a stove to cook wine and asked Xu Ling to come twice, but he declined on the pretext of feeling unwell.
When he called him for the third time, Xu Ling lazily got out of the bed, put on layers of clothes, wrapped himself into a ball, and went to drink and chat.
Don’t forget to bring some dried melon seeds and other things.
Among the businessmen this time, there was a man named Niu Decai who knew Xu Ling, that is, he came to Xu Ling every three days.
The two of them went to Quanzhou together. Xu Ling made two trips to Quanzhou. Niu Decai spent all the money he earned in Quanzhou on women before taking a boat home.
The topics they chatted about, apart from business, were women. Xu Ling loved listening to the business talk, and yawned when they talked about women.
Niu Decai laughed at him and said, "He is a monk from the mountain. He grew his hair and joined us to do business."
Everyone laughed, and Xu Ling also laughed.
It's such a horrible weather, the snow can't fall, and it's really cold.
All he could think about was hiding under the covers and sleeping. It would be better if he could warm himself by the fire and eat some hot meals.
But sometimes relationships have to be maintained.
Fortunately, he could rest at home for two months this time. Xu Ling was looking forward to going home.
I don’t know what’s going on at home.
Niu Decai and his party chatted endlessly about women. Xu Ling felt bored, so he stood up with a bowl of hot rice wine and looked at the river, which was as white as light ink.
The mountains in the distance melted into the fog and could not be seen clearly. He took a sip of rice wine to suppress the chill in his body.
Suddenly I heard someone shouting: "Is it snowing?"
A goose-feather-like snowflake suddenly fell into Xu Ling's open collar when he raised his head. Xu Ling felt a chill in his Adam's apple and blinked at the black and white chaotic sky.
In the dark sky, large snowflakes fell.
Sure enough it was snowing.
