Chapter 5: Purchasing Supplies
After earning some money, Zhao An began to shop extravagantly in Changxi County. Having lived through the great cataclysm of the spiritual energy revival, Zhao An had developed something of a hoarding habit. He valued tangible goods far more than money.
His first stop was the general store to buy a variety of seasonings. He had been eating bland, tasteless food for some time now and had long been craving all sorts of strongly flavored dishes—hot pot, barbecue, snail rice noodles—things he could still enjoy frequently even after becoming an ability user. So, he not only bought many seasonings like soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar, but also some Sichuan peppercorns and star anise to make braised meat, as well as some cumin for grilling fish when he had the chance.
His only regret was that he didn’t see any chili peppers, so he had to settle for making some braised meat. He remembered that many novels he had read featured plots about making braised meat. Although this world already had such a dish, he couldn’t get rich from this skill as described in the novels, but it was more than enough to satisfy his own cravings.
All the items added up to one hundred and two wen. The owner said with a smile, “I’ll round it down for you. Just give me one hundred wen.”
Zhao An readily took out a string of coins and gave it to the general store owner. Qin Tong, however, was heartbroken. “Those two small pottery jars for the soy sauce and vinegar are so crudely made. They must have come from a local kiln and couldn’t have cost much. That owner actually charged five wen for them. Even after rounding down, we’re still the ones who lost out.”
Zhao An just smiled at the store owner, then pulled Qin Tong out of the shop. Only then did he say to the pouting, angry Qin Tong, “Let’s go buy meat to make braised pork. Just think of that fatty and lean pork belly, braised until it’s soft and fragrant.”
Qin Tong had eaten braised meat before at the Prime Minister’s residence, and it was high-quality meat like beef and mutton. But he hadn’t eaten anything good recently. The thought of glistening pork belly made his mouth water, and his mood instantly improved.
“Young Master, let’s hurry and buy meat,” he said, then ran towards the butcher’s stall.
They had already spotted the butcher’s location when they were wandering around the town earlier. Despite carrying many things, Qin Tong ran surprisingly fast. By the time Zhao An caught up, he was already standing by the stall, staring unblinkingly at the glistening pieces of fatty meat.
After Zhao An went over and asked for the price, he knew that in this era, fatty meat was indeed more expensive.
Pork leaf lard was the most expensive at twenty-five wen per jin. Pork belly, with its layers of fat and lean meat, was slightly cheaper at twenty-three wen per jin, while pure lean meat was only eighteen wen. Bones were also relatively cheap. Apart from the very flavorful ribs, which also cost eighteen wen, you could buy a whole leg bone for five wen, though the meat on it was scraped very clean.
Firewood in this era also had a high labor cost. Even in the countryside, people couldn’t just stew things casually. So, for something like a leg bone, even if villagers bought it to make soup, they would find it too troublesome. City dwellers had to buy their firewood, so even though the leg bones were the cheapest, they didn’t sell well. When the butcher heard that Zhao An wanted to buy two leg bones, he simply threw in a third one for free.
Zhao An was grateful. He not only bought the three leg bones and had the butcher chop them open, but he also bought two jin of leaf lard and two jin of pork belly in one go. Another hundred-plus wen was spent, leaving him with less than forty wen.
Even though there were many other things he wanted to buy, Zhao An had to stop. This money was needed to buy grain to eat back home. Grain was slightly cheaper in the countryside than in the city, and this amount could buy over twenty jin of rice.
But even so, after leaving the city, he found the ox-cart from Zhaojia Village that had brought people to the market, waiting by the city gate. He gave the driver two wen and rode back with Qin Tong.
Besides the master and servant pair, there were several villagers with the surname Liu on the ox-cart. When they saw Zhao An, they all had a peculiar expression of great interest mixed with fear.
During this time, Zhao An had mostly just walked around the front and back of his house and wasn’t very familiar with these villagers. He only recognized this ox-cart because he and Qin Tong had happened to see them at the village entrance on their way to the city that morning. Zhao An had wanted to hitch a ride then, but the driver said the cart was too full of things the villagers were taking to the city to sell, and there was no room. He told him to catch a ride on the way back. By then, the villagers would have sold most of their goods, and even if they bought a few things, they wouldn’t be carrying much. So, he had promised them a ride back from the city.
The villagers, who had to wear patched clothes even when going to the city, didn’t dare to speak to the well-dressed and handsome Zhao An. But they were somewhat familiar with Qin Tong. A spirited young man among them started talking to Qin Tong after the ox-cart began to move.
The young man first discussed with Qin Tong where the best firewood could be gathered and where the pig-feed grass grew most abundantly. Although Qin Tong wasn’t responsible for gathering pig-feed, he still discussed it very seriously and even shared a few good spots he had observed where the grass was plentiful.
Once the atmosphere warmed up, the man asked him if he had gone to the mountains yesterday and if there were any mushrooms now. Qin Tong told him everything, even mentioning catching the fish yesterday, but he didn’t say a word about the strawberries.
The villagers were actually very interested in the game from the mountains, but they cared more about the harvest from their own fields. Going up the mountain consumed a lot of energy and required eating more to replenish it. Apart from a few professional hunters in the village, other villagers rarely went up the mountains.
For most people, unless they were skilled hunters, the harvest from the mountains simply couldn’t offset the energy consumed. So, they would only organize large groups to go up the mountain to pick things like mushrooms and pine nuts during their free time after the autumn harvest, as a sort of supplementary harvest.
Now was the busy farming season after the start of spring. Apart from taking some chicken and duck eggs to the city to sell for oil and salt, or selling the linen yarn and cloth they had spun to prepare for the head tax, basically no one was out and about.
Although the government stipulated that the head tax was to be collected after the first summer corn harvest, the local government office, fearing they wouldn’t complete their task, would often start collecting the tax in the villages after late spring. Therefore, the villagers would often sell the cloth they had accumulated over the past year in the spring, to avoid suffering losses from selling it at a low price when the tax deadline drew near.
When Zhao An heard the young man complaining to Qin Tong about his mother, who was unwilling to sell their linen cloth too early, leading to the price dropping now, he began to consider how much head tax he himself had to pay.
As the son of an official, the original body had never considered this problem. But according to this young man, every adult male had to pay five hundred wen. Underage boys and women who had given birth did not have to pay, but unmarried girls had to pay a tax of two hundred wen. This was why most women in this era married at a very young age—to avoid the tax. It was also a national policy to promote childbirth.
When the young man brought up the issue of taxes, the other silent villagers also began to discuss whether they had enough money to pay. Qin Tong fell silent and looked down at the basket in his arms, drooling.
But Zhao An was only concerned with the tax issue. As soon as he got home, he immediately asked Hai Bo about the head tax.
Hai Bo said, “Our family no longer has any fields, so we don’t need to pay the grain tax. There is only the Young Master as an adult male, so we only need to pay five hundred wen each year.” He had originally been worried about this issue, but now that the Young Master had earned so much money in one trip, he was relieved.
“So that means you and Qin Tong don’t have to pay taxes?” This was what Zhao An was really concerned about.
Hai Bo nodded. “We are both the Young Master’s servants. Why would we need to pay taxes?”
So this is the government’s way of encouraging people to sell themselves into servitude? Just like encouraging women to marry early.
Zhao An recalled fragments from the novels he had read, policies like “distributing the head tax into the land tax” and the “Single Whip Reform,” which were aimed at cracking down on large landlords annexing land and absorbing the population. However, throughout the entire feudal society, the problems of slavery and land annexation were never resolved.
By this time, Hai Bo had already started braising the meat. He prepared the two-jin piece of pork, pricked holes in the skin with a bamboo skewer, and placed it in a braising liquid of soy sauce, rock sugar, Sichuan peppercorns, and star anise to stew. After the water boiled, the aroma wafted out. The fleeting thought in Zhao An’s mind about reforming the tax policy instantly vanished into thin air.
Even if the current policy of collecting both a head tax and a grain tax was wrong, he was currently just a person who had to spend a lot of effort just to eat his fill. These problems were not something he could consider right now. So he put the issue to the back of his mind. He just needed to save up enough money to pay the tax as soon as possible.
It was only then that Zhao An remembered he had originally intended to make the braised meat himself, but Hai Bo had clearly left him no opportunity to do so.
After finishing the braised meat, Hai Bo took the thirty wen Zhao An had given him and went to the village to buy rice. Zhao An was given a piece of steamed fish, which Hai Bo told him to eat for fun.
Zhao An took a fierce bite of the fish. This wasn’t fun at all, nor was it very tasty. With the aroma of braised meat lingering at the tip of his nose, this piece of fish, which was only seasoned with a little salt and baked, seemed fishy and dry.
Zhao An thought for a moment, then tore off the piece of fish he had bitten, gave the rest to Qin Tong who was staring longingly at the meat pot, and went out himself.
He stood under his courtyard wall, looking at the wall that was nearly two meters high. He took a deep breath, pushed off with his feet, squatted slightly, and then jumped up. His hands grabbed the top of the wall, and his feet simultaneously pushed against it. With great difficulty, he finally pulled himself onto the wall.
The action of getting onto the wall looked quite smooth, but Zhao An’s face was already flushed red, and his forehead was beaded with sweat. He took several deep breaths. The wind on top of the wall felt good, and his mood was excellent. He couldn’t jump up to a four-meter-high second floor in one go, but he was still perfectly capable of climbing a wall.
He had once been a peak eighth-rank ability user, able to walk like the wind and easily jump three meters high. Even though he knew the spiritual energy in this world was not enough for him to recover to his peak state, if he trained diligently, perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad.
However, Zhao An’s good mood was soon ruined by a pair of shifty, rat-like eyes. When he looked down, he saw a person hiding by the back wall of his kitchen, watching him furtively. Upon meeting his gaze, the person turned and fled.
Seeing the clothes he never seemed to take off, Zhao An knew it was Ah Wu, the long-term laborer from the bamboo forest behind his house. Zhao An ignored him, only thinking that he should find an opportunity to put a sack over Zhao Tongming’s head.
