Fortunate Life of the Rural Beauty
Chapter 265 - 264: Don’t Want to Know Too Much

Chapter 265: Chapter 264: Don’t Want to Know Too Much

Chen Ming held the silver and laughed, "Who would have dreamed that working for just over two months on these several acres of land would yield so much? However, I also know that we took advantage of Afu again."

Chen Afu chuckled, "The extra silver is just my way of showing filial piety to my parents."

With the family making more money, rewards were also given to the servants and long-term workers. Zeng Shuang and Mr. Lin received the most, with 20 taels of silver each, followed by Wang Laowu with ten taels, and so on down to two taels and one tael. Everyone in Fu Garden was overjoyed.

Thanks to an excellent doctor’s treatment and especially the Yan Chenxiang Wood residues, Dabao’s leg recovered exceptionally well.

By the first half of July, Dabao started to go back to Tang Garden for studying under Mr. Liao. He was carried there and back by Xue Dagui and Chu Xiaoniu taking turns.

The watermelons grown in Tang Garden, along with those of Chen Ye and Chen Ming’s families, yielded a bountiful harvest. Because of the high summer temperatures, the watermelons grew faster than they did in spring.

Only half of the five acres of watermelons grown in Tang Garden were sold, with the rest reserved for family consumption and gifting. The relatives and friends, both in the Capital City and Shizhou Mansion, were gifted melons.

By this time, this type of watermelon had been given a special name: Dingzhou big melon. They were named so because most of these watermelons were shipped from Dingzhou or bought by merchants from there.

The three acres of Chen Ming’s farm brought in more than forty taels of silver. The main house made seventy taels of silver from selling watermelons from its five-acre plot.

Their watermelons were mainly sold to other regions via the Fuyunlai Trading Company in Dingzhou. Although their prices didn’t match those of Chen Afu’s previous batch of watermelons, they were still two Wen higher than other melon farmers’ prices.

This made both Chen Ye and Mrs. Hu ecstatically happy. Previously, they could only earn at most ten taels from five acres of land after a year of hard work. But this time, they made so much more in just two months.

Mrs. Chen, Chen Ye, and Chen Agu brought gifts to Fu Garden to thank Chen Afu. Perhaps they were afraid of Mrs. Hu’s blabbering, so they didn’t dare bring her along for fear of her being a nuisance.

Indeed, Mrs. Hu thought there was no need to thank Chen Afu. In her view, if Chen Afu had allowed them to grow watermelons together the first time, they would have made more money.

Chen Agu instantly rebuked his mother then, "When Afu talked to me about it, it was our house that had no vacant land, so I couldn’t plant with him. Who knew then that these watermelons would make so much money? Otherwise, we would have gotten rid of those worthless crops earlier."

Now, Chen Ye has opened a small grocery store in the county town of Sanqing, named Chen Daguan Grocery. In the beginning, Chen Ye sold some of his watermelons in his own store, but due to the limited purchasing power in Sanqing County, they couldn’t fetch good prices. Finally, they managed to sell higher through Fuyunlai Trading Company.

Both Chen Ye and Chen Agu, who liked farming and neither of whom wanted to or knew how to do business, did not go to the county town to manage the grocery store themselves. They rather paid money for a shopkeeper-cum-server. Running a small store like this, with rented premises and hired personnel, was bound to run at a loss. However, since their goods came from Fuyunlai Trading Company, which offered good quality and low cost, and Officer Xia’s connections preventing others from causing trouble at their store, they made some small profit every day.

In Afu’s view, opening this small grocery store was rather pointless. Half of the profits went to the shopkeeper-cum-server, and what was left in their hands was just less than one tael of silver per month. Rather than this, it would be better to farm diligently, use the saved money to buy more land, or hire workers to cultivate the wasteland, plant good varieties of grains, become a major landlord, and make money all the same.

Chen Ming, however, had spoken to Chen Ye about this, but Chen Ye wasn’t listening. His opinion was that since both of his younger brothers had their own stores, he should have one too. Therefore, Afu was even more cautious and didn’t say much lest the main household think that her Fuyunlai Trading Company was reluctant to provide them with commodities at cost price.

So far, the grain shop that Chen Ming had opened, Chen Er Grains Shop, was still operating at a loss, except for the bit of silver they had made when they first sold watermelons. Because they only sold grains, the product line was single, and the previous grain stores in the county town had been saturated. With the need to pay rent for the shop and wages for the keeper and server, they were losing money every month.

This made Chen Ming consider closing the shop or switching to selling groceries. Chen Afu encouraged him to hold on a bit longer; once they harvested quality grains in their fields, the business would improve. Although not all of the high-quality grains could be sold by them, having high-quality grains could improve the sales of the rest. In this era, a well-operated grain shop could make a lot of money. Moreover, not all grain shops could be opened at will, and Chen Er Grains Shop was opened only through a special approval by the county magistrate obtained by Mr. Luo.

On the evening of July 19th, just as Chen Afu and the others were about to have dinner, Chu Lingxuan visited again.

"Daddy."

"Big brother."

"Daddy!"

Not only Chu Hanyan and Chu Lingzhi were the first to shout excitedly upon seeing Chu Lingxuan, but even Chen Dabao cried out loudly.

Through this injury, Dabao deeply realized not only his mother, grandmother, grandfather, little uncle, sister, fifth uncle, and so on, were deeply concerned about him, so were the people at Animal House, in addition to Daddy Chu. He considered it as the reward for his warmth. Therefore, he now treated Chu Lingxuan much more enthusiastically and sincerely than before.

Hearing the surprised shouts from the children, Chu Lingxuan’s corner of the mouth hooked up. Seeing Chen Afu, who just got up to head into the kitchen, his smile deepened.

After dinner, it was still Marquis Chu who returned to the Tang Garden first, while Chu Lingxuan stayed in Fu Garden with the kids. Since Dabao wasn’t able to move freely, the children sat in the West Wing Room playing with building blocks. Dabao and Chu Lingzhi had spent the day in studies, and now was their most relaxed moment.

Chen Afu and Chu Lingxuan went to the West Room of the upper house. It had been quite long since Dabao’s accident, and she felt it was time to have a talk with him. She also had a feeling that Chu Lingxuan had something to say to her.

The servants were all tactful enough not to follow them inside. Only Chu Huai stood outside the room under the gallery.

Inside the West Room, the two sat at the round table. The sunset outside hadn’t completely faded, and the residual glow of the twilight lit up the room. However, it felt somewhat unsuitable for a man and a woman to be alone in a room, so Chen Afu lit the candle in the lotus jade lamp. The candlelight flickered, illuminating the two faces, now bright, now dim.

"I..."

"I..."

Both opened their mouths simultaneously.

"You go first," Chu Lingxuan said in a low voice.

"No, you go first," Chen Afu responded.

"All right, I’ll go first then," Chu Lingxuan chuckled. He bowed his head a little, moving his face closer to Chen Afu, took her hand that was on the table, and said, "Afu, although we haven’t spent too much time together, I know you are a kind, virtuous, and good girl. Otherwise, you wouldn’t love and care for your adopted ’son’ so deeply, or protect my Hanyan so much. We are engaged and will get married early next year. In my opinion, some things should be explained to you... Even I and my grandfather didn’t know about these things at first. I only found out the day before we got engaged. My second uncle, his wife, even my mother, and my third aunt-in-law don’t know about them. After hearing it, you must bury it deep in your heart, and tell no one."

Chen Afu wanted to refuse to listen. She didn’t want to know too much.