Wang Meng: “…”
Alright—his fault.
He went to brew tea. Li Feng took the chance to ask Chen Jiu about his plans going forward.
Chen Jiu said, “We’ll go to the prefectural city. Haven’t set a time yet—we’re waiting for Wang Meng to save up some money.”
He glanced outside, then spoke a bit more than usual.
“He told me about it a long time ago, but I never agreed. You don’t know what people out there say about me—they say the Chen family raised a ge’er who’s sly, only knows how to ask for gold and silver. He even bought a small horse for Tiantian—I was furious. The child’s still young, there’s no need for that. When he buys things like that, people won’t say our child is fortunate—they’ll say I’m vain and competitive. That’s not what I want.
“He told me that’s what he wants. Before the little horse grows up, he’ll take me to the prefectural city. But I never really wanted to go.”
He paused, then continued.
“We still need to save money. He just told me to wait. Last time he came back from the stronghold, he told me Li Fei had gone to the prefectural city to study. That same day, I agreed—I said we should go too. I want to give this child a different path.”
A place too small cannot nurture a broad heart.
Chen Jiu used to live under others’ scrutiny, like a startled bird, suspicious of everything, sharp and defensive toward people and situations. But the one who never let him go was himself.
Now, he had stepped out of it. He was free.
Hearing this, Li Feng suddenly had a flash of insight. He knew how to deal with Ertian.
He would have Ertian follow the delivery team on a trip to the prefectural city—let him go out and see the world, broaden his perspective. If the prefectural city wasn’t enough, then let him go further, follow merchant ships to the provincial capital.
Cooped up in the stronghold, fixated on the narrow matters of a single household, trapped in it from childhood to adulthood—he might improve for a day, only to fall back into the same patterns the next. Better to let him go out and see.
Li Feng thanked Chen Jiu.
Chen Jiu looked at him strangely, then said, “Cousin, you’ve been married these past two years—you’re not as irritable as before. Sister-in-law has made your life comfortable. You should thank him properly.”
Li Feng raised a brow—he hadn’t expected to be lectured by Chen Jiu.
Chen Jiu added, “Before, whenever I saw you, I felt like you’d scold or lecture me—so I’d scold you first.”
Li Feng: “…”
Well, at least his temperament was better than Ertian’s.
Li Feng said, “Uncle worries about you a lot. I stayed a night in Chenjia Bay yesterday—he asked about you many times, couldn’t stop worrying. They asked how Wang Meng is, what he does, whether he’s often away from home. They want him to pursue opportunities with the guild, but also want him to stay home and help you. I couldn’t answer. When you have time, you should go back and visit. Since you married out, you’re too far from Chenjia Bay. Whether it’s the stronghold or the county, it’s inconvenient for them to find you. You care too much about appearances, afraid people will say you visit your natal home too often—but how can that be right?”
Chen Jiu nodded, committing it to memory.
Wang Meng came in with the teapot and cups—no one knew how much he had overheard. He chimed in, “There are plenty of empty rooms in the workshop. It’s the slack season now—why not bring Father-in-law and the others over to stay for a while?”
Chen Jiu lowered his gaze. “You go bring them.”
After finishing his business in the county, Li Feng was ready to return to the prefectural city. He explained his plan for Ertian to Wang Meng.
Right now, it wasn’t suitable for him to meet Ertian again—he left it to Wang Meng to handle.
Though Wang Meng looked rough, he was actually quite thoughtful. He said, “You can’t tell him it’s to broaden his horizons, and you can’t say it’s for delivering goods. Give him a job—let him earn money to support his family. You have to say you miss him, say Aunt wants to see him. He’ll agree at first. But once he’s on the road for a few days, he won’t be thinking about that anymore. After seeing more of the world, next time you can use the same trick. Once he dares to face things, this will pass.”
Li Feng stared at him. “What exactly do you know?”
Wang Meng said, “He hates me. Probably because people always say we’re closer than real brothers.”
Li Feng: “…”
Annoying. A grown man not focusing on earning a living, but tangled up in all these messy thoughts—too much free time.
Wang Meng grinned. “Understanding men’s thoughts is important. Look at us—we’re mostly men. If we don’t understand men, how do we run this guild?”
Li Feng rolled his eyes. “By your logic, all officials are men—so the person who understands men best in the world must be the emperor.”
“Hahahahaha!!”
Wang Meng burst out laughing.
At the end of October, the general store owner’s family moved out, leaving the shop vacant. Preparations for the bookstore could begin.
The shop needed repainting, and both the front and back areas had to be tidied up. This was handed over to the Luo brothers.
Old Master Lu cleared out an empty room at home for printing books, telling Lu Yang there was no need to find another workshop—they could work nearby at home.
They had always lived like this in the county; suddenly going out to work every day felt unfamiliar.
Lu Yang came to take a look—the space was too small. He thought about renting a small house nearby as a printing workshop.
Old Master Lu felt it wasn’t necessary. Since several families lived close together, they could divide the tasks—one household doing this, another doing that—saving some money.
They had just arrived in the prefectural city, and expenses were high. They didn’t want Lu Yang spending more.
Lu Yang agreed on the surface, but inwardly decided that if there was money, renting a place would still be better.
Keeping workspaces centralized and separate from living areas was better for everyone. It would reduce unnecessary trouble and prevent endless work from piling up at home.
Their family shop was registered under someone else’s name.
Lu Liu planned for Zhuangzhuang to study and take the imperial exams, so they wouldn’t change their household registration. The trading guild was registered under someone in the stronghold, and the snack shop was under Lu Erbao’s name.
After consideration, Lu Yang decided to register the bookstore under his own name.
Xie Yan had scholarly status, and a small family business counted as a side occupation for livelihood. A bookstore was considered refined, not inappropriate—it could be kept under their own name like farmland.
If the business expanded in the future, they could follow Lu Liu’s approach and register under others’ names.
On his way home, Lu Yang stopped by various households, wearing the embroidered cotton boots his mother had made, walking through the entire alley.
At three months pregnant, his belly was just beginning to show. He often asked Lu Liu and his father to take a look, wondering if it might be twins.
Twin pregnancies showed earlier—the belly would be bigger. His didn’t seem that large.
Lu Liu and his father both told him to relax. Carrying twins would be too exhausting—a heavy burden on his body. It would be better to have one child first, then another in two or three years.
After the child was born, there would be many responsibilities—raising a child was already troublesome. One child was easier than two.
After hearing that, Lu Yang looked at his belly and shook his head, no longer dwelling on it.
Recently, the experienced shopkeeper Hong Chu had found for him arrived. Every day, Lu Yang attended an hour of lessons in the morning.
Teaching one person or teaching a group made little difference, so Lu Yang gathered anyone who had time to listen. Those who couldn’t attend would hear secondhand accounts, then ask questions the next day.
Besides learning business and bookkeeping, they also studied arithmetic—being able to calculate most accounts without an abacus, making accounting faster.
Lu Yang also requested to develop a kind of memory for account books—not memorizing them word for word, but gaining familiarity and an overall grasp.
That way, like Hong Chu, he could flip through different ledgers and still recall details, picking up subtle clues to extract useful information.
The old shopkeeper increased the difficulty, asking random questions about specific pages.
At first, everyone was confused and performed poorly. After a few days, they adjusted and gradually improved.
Lu Yang was good at remembering spoken words—if someone told him something once, he could recall it immediately. It was a skill he had trained since childhood.
But for written records, he needed more time and deliberate effort to achieve the same fluency.
Lu Liu performed quite well. After learning to read, he reviewed character cards daily. In the beginning, he had memorized them in sequence, training himself to recognize written words.
He also kept accounts and often reviewed ledgers when free, forming a habit of remembering figures. Unlike Lu Yang, who relied on his confidence in his memory and overlooked such details.
