Chapter 48: Flourishing
Yun Ye hid in the backyard and looked at his five corn plants. Each one was tall and strong, with purple bare roots gripping the ground powerfully. Corn had already sprouted on both sides. He remembered that it seemed better to have one stalk on each corn plant, but he wasn’t sure, so he just let it be.
He shook the corn stalks, and a lot of pollen fell from the flower spikes on his head. Corn is a monoecious plant, so pollination is very convenient. Although it is a bit perverted, Yun Ye likes it very much. If you don’t count the consequences of inbreeding, people should be like this. It’s so convenient. What wife or husband are you looking for? It seems good to have a big belly and give birth to children.
Marrying a wife costs money, and marrying a daughter costs money. It’s pure money for trouble. I met Li Anlan last time, and I fell in love with her, but I almost got fed to the dogs. I’m still angry.
In contrast, Huangshu is enviable. His plump wife is said to have taken half a day to go from the proposal to the bridal chamber. She is hardworking and capable, keeps the house clean, and has a good business sense. She has set up a stall selling fermented rice wine at the entrance to the academy, and is very popular. The utensils are clean, the water is boiled together, and the fermented rice wine is delicious and fragrant.
At this time, the disadvantages of a noble identity became apparent. Watching Yuchi Dasha and his siblings, Huozhu, gulping down bowls of moro on the stall, Li Tai and Li Ke could only swallow their saliva. Liu Xian strongly refused the brothers’ desire to drink moro, saying that if they wanted to drink it, they should ask the cook in the kitchen to make it.
“I don’t want to eat leftovers, I don’t want to eat leftovers anymore. Every time I’m given a bun, it’s been bitten, and every time I’m given porridge, it’s been drunk. I’m a prince, not a dog that eats leftovers. Next time someone dares to bite my bun, I’ll bite him.”
This is good. Li Ke, who is a clean freak, is suddenly angry. These days, the child has never been in a good mood. Today, not letting him drink the mash completely ignited his bad temper. He didn’t think before he spoke, and he didn’t see that Li Tai was already frowning next to him. His buns were often bitten, and he even broke the buns to taste the filling.
“Third brother, don’t be too harsh. Although I hate leftovers too, I don’t mind you calling us the tyrannosaurus rexes of leftovers. Don’t mention dogs, okay?”
Since Yun Ye had people dig up the ground on the edge of Rongzhou and gather a large cartload of stone bones, which arrived yesterday, seeing the huge bones, Yun Ye said that they were dragon bones, mutated dragon bones. Isn’t it said that dragons have nine sons, each different from the others? This is a dragon bone. Standing in the mouth of the skull, Li Tai felt that the imperial family was really wise to use the dragon as a symbol.
Look at this big mouth, it can swallow a cow in one bite. From then on, Li Tai would talk about the tyrannosaurus rex, as if he were the one that could swallow a cow in one bite.
Along with the bones came a letter from the emperor’s grandson, scolding Yun Ye for being so full of himself, for deceiving the officials of Rongzhou into wasting state funds, and for digging up useless things. Since he likes bones, he’ll give them to you, and by the way, he’ll pay for the cost of digging them up, 2,000 strings of cash!
Changsun had never shown the legendary virtuous queenly demeanor in front of Yun Ye, but instead was mean and harsh, taking everything to the extreme and talking about character and morality.
It’s just a dinosaur skull, isn’t it? The government of the future dug up all the bones in Zigong, built a house to store them, and even let people visit. They charged a lot of money for admission, so why can’t they be happy here?
As the saying goes, all dragons have nine sons, and each is different. Why are you picking on it? Isn’t the tyrannosaurus rex just a bit ugly? It has its merits. Look at those two teeth. How big are they? They’re a foot long. Can ordinary things have teeth that big? It can only be a dragon, and it must be a dragon. Otherwise, the officials of Rongzhou will be in big trouble. They can’t betray their colleagues, can they? Two thousand strings of cash? It’s nothing. I’m poor, but I have money. I have piles of copper coins in my house. I don’t know where they come from. I always see old ladies leading their aunts and sisters to pile up money. Her favorite thing to do is sit on a pile of money and smile. Money isn’t meant to be piled up. It’s meant to be spent. Otherwise, it’s just a pile of rotten copper.
A spendthrift like Yun Ye spent two thousand strings of cash on a single bone, and then built houses all over Yushan. While others used wood, Yun Ye used stone. Stone masons from all over the 100-li radius gathered in Yushan, and the sound of hammering never stopped. As soon as the vagabonds arrived in Lantian, they didn’t even have to need to say a word, and immediately a government official’s errand boy would lead the able-bodied to Yushan, where they would be given a simple thatched hut to live in. Once they had finished the task of delivering the grain given by the imperial court, naturally there would be a manager in charge of recruitment, who would take both men and women, even children as young as 11 or 12 years old, to hammer stones.
The farmers on Zhuangzi’s farm were all jealous. They had never seen so many people taking advantage of the host family. Except for the elderly and children, the family needed to raise pigs, chickens, and ducks. They used a new plow to plow their land hard and put it under the sun to dry, and then they all devoted themselves to the great cause of building a house.
Li Ke was very busy, so busy that he couldn’t even find time to drink water, so he didn’t have time to lose his temper. Yun Ye told him that building a house was his final exam. How to minimize costs and how to use the least amount of materials while still ensuring that the house was good. If one of the two things went wrong, he would get zero eggs. Yun Ye said that he would really cast an iron zero egg and hang it around his neck, and then parade through the streets.
The precocious twelve-year-old was so scared by the appointment that he ran back to Chang’an with a dozen guards overnight, smashed open the palace gate, and complained to his father, asking for his father’s help. He didn’t want to parade around with a zero egg.
The father did not say anything comforting, but after a long period of deep thought, he suddenly laughed and only gave him a few officials from the Ministry of Works. Finally, he patted his son on the shoulder and said that if he got zero eggs and paraded through the streets, he would take Yang Fei to watch with him. This made Li Ke’s back sweat.
When he left, he was the main character, but when he returned, he was accompanied by a large group of people. Yang Fei was afraid that his son would be paraded through the streets, so he asked several former officials of the Sui Dynasty to help his son.
The drawings were drawn by Yun Ye, which were just exterior drawings, with nothing inside. The officials of the Ministry of Works pointed at the sky and cursed, furious, saying that it was ridiculous to use stone to build a house, and that no one could lift 2,000 catties of stone more than a zhang high. It was also said that the construction would be completed in three months, which was difficult, and it would not be completed in three years, so the prince’s zero egg was doomed.
Li Ke led them to the construction site with a bitter smile. In the stunned faces of the officials from the Ministry of Works, Li Tai used a set of pulleys to lift the huge stone, seemingly leisurely. Someone next to him helped change the direction of the crane, and the stone was easily placed on the pillar. There were many such cranes, one for each house, busy and constantly moving.
The officials of the Ministry of Works were about to kneel down, asking for drawings and a crane to study back at home. They were scolded by Li Tai, who said that this was his final exam question. If my father saw this, he would beat me to death.
Li Gang was also very busy, sending dozens of letters to all directions by the post, as if he was calling his friends to join him.
In the distant Jinyang, two middle-aged scholars are leisurely playing chess. You play one hand, I play the other, and we are having a great time. A boy is pouring wine for the two of them. The warm wine goes down the throat, and a sigh of relief is extremely comfortable.
“Brother Wenjie, you must have read the letter from Master Li. What do you think?” the white-clad scholar asked the middle-aged man in blue.
“If Master Li has a plan, of course I will go. You and I have wasted many years, and in the blink of an eye we have reached the age of knowing our destiny. How much time do we have left to waste? I have come to bid farewell to my younger brother Jin Zhu. In three days, I will set off for Yushan.”
“I agree. In his letter, Master Li described Yushan as a paradise, so why wouldn’t I go? Besides, Master Li has even prepared a place to stay and household goods for us. He said that we only need to bring our luggage and move in. We don’t need to worry about trivial matters like settling down, as someone else will take care of it. I’m very curious about the young master. Where did he get the ability of Tao Zhu Gong to bid thousands of strings of cash without blinking an eye? If someone else had said that, I would have thought it was nonsense.
“In that case, how about the two of us traveling together three days later?”
“That’s great.” Such conversations were not only taking place in Jinyang, but also in Chuzhou, Chuzhou, and even the most remote Yangzhou.
While Yun Ye was frantically building stone houses, there was a crazier monk who wanted to build a house with iron. He had already come up with a name for it: Tiewa Temple. It was a sensation at the time, and Yun Ye decided to go and ask him how he had managed to prevent rust.
Seeing the family’s money being carried away in baskets, Grandma’s heart was cut like a knife. At dinner, she ate half a bowl of rice and said in a long tone, “I’m old, so I’ll save half a bowl of rice and eat it when I’m hungry at night.”
Auntie was laughing at the bottom, and a chopstick flew over and knocked on the door of the brain, and it was quiet.
“Grandma, money is for spending. If you don’t spend it, it’s just a pile of scrap metal that takes up space. Only money that is spent is real money. Think about it. Our family spent 10,000 taels of silver. That means the 10,000 taels of silver were earned by the victims of the famine. They will use it to buy grain, and then the money will go to the rich. Our family will then buy perfume for the rich and sell them some other random stuff. In this way, the money will not only go back to our family’s coffers, but also to the rich. What is the difference? A large academy that has never existed in history, more taxes for the country, more food for the victims, perfume for the rich, everyone gets what they want, and our family has lost nothing, but we have gained an academy. With this academy, you want to pass down the Yun family for generations for generations. This is the foundation of our family, not those useless coins. If you like, my grandson will go to Chang’an tomorrow and get you a lot of coins, fill the house with them, and pile them up on your bed. Would you like that?”
The old lady was a little embarrassed.
“You are the best grandmother in the world. There is a reason for my grandson to do this. Money is something that you cannot bring with you when you are born, and you cannot take it with you when you die. You don’t like to see the refugees everywhere, do you? You used to tell me that it is better to accumulate virtue than money. How come you are so worried at the end?” Yun Ye asked the old lady with a smile. She must untie the knot in the old lady’s heart. She always wants to save money. This is the name of the rich and powerful. No one except the royal family can wear this hat. Whoever wears it will die.