Chapter 34 – Memories of a Rainy Night

In Tanyu in March, the sea breeze was very gentle, and the scent of spring took over the whole stage, and an unknown small yellow flower bloomed in the mountains, and every family used the petals of this flower to make tea and drink it, while drinking it and chatting with their neighbors outside their homes. So walking in the streets of Tanyu Port, you can always smell that light fragrance, not ghostly and not greasy, just a taste of innocence, calling people’s mood very peaceful and beautiful.

And in the evening, it was the time when the spring rain often came, diving into the night with the breeze, noiselessly moisturizing the land, so that the entire Tanyu City’s black eaves and the street’s green stone pavement, were covered with a layer of misty water.

The pattering rain, gently falling on the tarp outside the grocery store, didn’t make much of a sound, just rinsed away the light layer of dust, making the storefront look much more refreshed. But the grocery store was not open again today, so Fan Xian informed the old lady and sneaked into the store, peeling peanuts on one side and drinking wine with Five Bamboos on the other.

The people in the Count’s mansion should have known that he liked to come to the grocery store, but they all thought that the young master was just greedy for the good wine that the blind man had made himself. This was partly because Fan Xian was really good at wine, and partly because he needed a better excuse. Although it was impossible for him to completely avoid the eyes of others in his dealings with Five Bamboos, he was still more careful.

The chopper was resting on the chopping board, which was dry and had no crumbs on the blade, so it looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time.

The sound of peanut shells being pinched and cracked rang out, and Fan Xian threw one into his mouth, chewing slowly until he had chewed all of the dried fruit into a fragrant paste and mush before he picked up the three small finger-sized porcelain cups in front of him and sent them to his lips to drink with a bared sound.

The wine he drank today was not yellow wine, it was the tribute wine sent over from Kyoto, with a somewhat high degree, allowing Fan Xian to find a hint of Wuliangye.

He was in no hurry to ask questions, for he knew that Uncle Five Bamboo was a very simple man and would not keep himself waiting for long.

Instead of sitting across from him, Five Bamboos sat in a dark corner of the room with a bowl of yellow wine in his hand, and his ghostly voice rang out.

“The young lady’s surname is Ye, and her name is Ye Qingmei. I am her house servant, many years ago, I and the young lady came out of the house ……”

“Ye Qingmei ……” Fan Xian knew his mother’s name for the first time, inexplicably, his heart was warm, smiled and drank another glass of wine, and was very sensible not to ask …… where the home was , if Uncle Wuzhu is willing to tell himself, he will definitely tell himself.

“We lived in Dongyi city for a few years. Miss is naturally smart, knows everything, and has a heart of compassion, so from the age of fifteen, she started doing business in Dongyi City, only because she was too young, she just hid behind the curtain while having the shopkeeper pose as the proprietor.”

Fan Xian’s hand on his wine glass paused in mid-air and couldn’t help but ask, “What does doing business have to do with a compassionate heart?” He wasn’t curious as to why his mother was naturally smart or why she could do business and make money at the tender age of fifteen, because over the years, he had long since guessed that his own mother, for sure, wasn’t a character that could be deduced by common sense.

Five Bamboo’s very cold voice replied, “Because Miss pities the world’s sorrows real much, so she likes to do good deeds, when Dongyi City was flooded, the one who opened the most congee stores was Miss, and if you want to do good deeds, you must have money, so Miss started to think of ways to make money.”

Fan Xian nodded, recognizing the logic.

“The business was doing well, and gradually some people noticed that the owner behind the stores was Miss, so some people started to get ideas, and then they were all killed by me.”

Five Bamboo spoke plainly, but Fan Xian knew that the situation must have been very tense at the time, and since Uncle Five Bamboo said that the business was doing very well, then it must have been doing very well. As the saying goes, a fifteen year old woman with such a large family fortune could indeed easily trigger the ambitions of unscrupulous people in the world. However, it was only when he thought of having a supremely powerful person as a bodyguard for his mother that Fan Xian dropped his heart, which he had no reason to raise.

He suddenly thought of something and asked with a frown, “Old mom’s surname is Ye, could it be that the business firm you opened at that time was the Ye family?”

“Yes.”

“It’s actually the Ye family!” Fan Xian was filled with surprise, “I’ve heard people say this name, and legend has it that more than ten years ago, the Ye family was the number one merchant company in the world, I just couldn’t imagine that it turned out to be mom’s industry.”

“I didn’t realize how big the Ye family’s business was.” Five Bamboo said calmly, “That is not part of my job. Miss thought I was killing too many people, so she ended her business in Dong Yi City, came to Qing Guo, and started living in Kyoto.”

Fan Xian felt that things shouldn’t be so simple, having sold his business in Dongyi City and coming to Qing Guo, there had to be a more palatable reason.

Five Bamboo continued, “After the young lady came to Kyoto, she started doing business again, and again did very well. Later on, she got to know some people, including Sinanbo. Everyone seemed to listen to her, and by following her ideas and preparing to do something and change some things, a conflict of interest arose with the princes and nobles of the Qing Kingdom.”

Five Bamboo paused, “There was a time when the Kingdom of Qing was fighting a war with the west, and the defense force in Kyoto was empty, and it just so happened that a big event happened, and I wasn’t in Kyoto, and something went wrong with the forces that Miss could rely on……. Miss was killed by those princes and nobles who sent people to kill her. When I rushed back to Taiping Buyeon, I only saved you to come, and then I held you to come to Tanyuzhou.”

This matter Fan Xian is very clear, also clear that those “enemies” as early as ten years ago, has been killed, the person who presided over the vengeance, I think it should be with the cheap old man and the Supervisory Yuan can not get involved.

The long silence made the sound of rain outside the grocery store seem particularly clear.

“Finished?” Fan Xian asked with a frown, thinking could it be that his mother’s life was summarized in a few simple sentences like this? What business had she done, what had she done that could bring the entire princes and nobles of Qing to deal with her, and why did the hefty Teacher Fei Jie of the Supervisory Academy seem to respect his own mother the moment he mentioned her?

“Basically …… finished.” Five Bamboo deliberated on his words.

Fan Xian sighed, confirming that Uncle Five Bamboo was indeed not a good storyteller, and a bitter smile appeared on his pretty face, knowing that he still had to ask the question himself.

“What kind of business does my mother do?”

“Luxury goods, armaments, ships, food, basically whatever makes money.”

Wuzhu answered casually, but Fan Xian was shocked when he heard a term, his experience in two lives made him understand very well that people who could do this kind of business usually had a great background behind them, and an orphaned woman like his mother was actually able to start a business from nothing to such a terrifying extent.

“Then what happened to these businesses after mother’s death?” This was the point that Fan Xian was most interested in, after all, according to the laws of Qing, he himself should be the sole heir to this huge inheritance.

“I later heard that all of the Ye family’s businesses were returned to the Qing domestic treasury.”

Fan Xian shook his head with a bitter smile, so it turned out to be a royal business, and immediately cut off the absurd idea of filing a lawsuit to claim his family’s property, and turned to laugh, “The name Ye Qingmei must have been quite a drag back in the day, and I heard that when old mom went into the capital city, she beat up the head of the Kyoto guard division.”

The oil lamp in the room flickered brightly and dimly, and hearing Fan Xian’s words, Five Bamboo seemed to recall something from the past, and the corners of her lips picked upwards somewhat rustily, revealing a gentle smile.

Fan Xian’s wrist stiffened, and the small porcelain cup landed on the square table spinning around bone-deep as he cried out in his heart, “Laughing …… he actually laughed!”