Abandoned Daughter's Beautiful Pastoral

Chapter 282 Dangerous, captive (1)
Zhang Xiaocao invited the shopkeeper Le to go to the house. Under the witness of the patriarch and others, the contract was signed, and the price was also agreed. For poultry such as chickens, ducks and geese, the prices were 25 Wen, 28 Wen and [-] Wen per catty, stewed pork is [-] Wen per catty, stewed mutton is more expensive and costs [-] Wen, and hare meat is the most expensive and costs [-] Wen!

In addition to supplying Wangjiang Building in Shuanghe Town, the stewed meat workshop also transports it to Linjiang County every day. Linjiang County has a greater demand. In these two places, the stewed meat consumed every day is about [-] catties. Moreover, Lejia also operates a delicatessen in Linjiang County, and Le shopkeeper also orders [-] catties per day. If it is not enough, he will increase the amount!
At present, [-] catties of stewed meat per day is still within the range that the workshop can bear. However, she thinks that the sales of stewed meat will gradually increase, especially in winter. Stewed meat is easy to store and can be sold to farther places. Now she is worried about the farm Not enough animals to slaughter!

After a few days, the stewed meat workshop was on the right track, and the date of marriage between Zhang Dashan and Widow Wu was also set. Both of them were remarried. Dashan didn't want to wrong Mrs. Wu, so he wanted to invite the whole village to a wedding. Everyone readily agreed and promised to go that day!

Seeing this, Zhang Xiaocao also planned to go to the yamen with Mrs. Wu to release her from slavery, but she was worried about how to go to the county again, because she hadn't learned how to ride a horse until now!

Seeing that autumn is coming to an end, Lelin came to Zhangjia Village to collect cotton for the last time before the freezing, but Zhang Xiaocao obviously felt that several households brought much less cotton than usual!
This less does not refer to the total weight, but is estimated by mu. In order to prevent someone from privately hiding cotton and selling it on the market, they recorded these data clearly every time. If you are a little careful, you can see the difference Come!

This is the fifth time that Lelin has come to collect cotton. Before that, Zhang Xiaocao would come to help every time. She did the weighing and counting. Lelin mainly paid money and wrote receipts, so she noticed it faster than Lelin. Something went wrong!

Looking at the pile of cotton in front of her that obviously didn't match the area, Zhang Xiaocao didn't directly question the woman in front of her who called Dasheng's wife. Instead, she opened the ledger, turned out the page of their family, and compared it with the cotton they had a few times ago. , asked casually: "Your family's land is rich in soil and fertilizer, and the cotton production is relatively high in the village. Why is the cotton sent this time much less than other people's?"

When Dasheng's daughter-in-law heard this, panic flashed across her face, she didn't dare to look into Zhang Xiaocao's eyes, she lowered her head slightly and said, "It was pretty good before, but it may be that after fertilizing too much, it produced a lot of autumn peaches, most of which didn't bloom. , so this time there is a lot less cotton!"

Cotton has a very long flowering period, usually in late summer and early autumn. The cotton bolls produced during this period are called autumn peaches. Due to the shorter sunshine time and insufficient temperature in autumn, the quality of cotton during this period is not good, and the yield is also very low. It can only be counted as the lowest grade of cotton. Before, many villagers said that they did not plan to sell autumn cotton, and left it to make cotton shoes and cotton jackets for themselves!
But autumn peaches will not affect Futao at all, that is to say, most of the cotton harvested now is Futao fruited in summer.
Le Lin, who was counting money for Dasheng's daughter-in-law at the side, heard the conversation between the two, his eyes flashed thoughtful, stood up and said to Dasheng's daughter-in-law, "Did you bring all the cotton from your house?"

Dasheng's daughter-in-law could barely keep calm when facing Zhang Xiaocao, a fellow countryman, but she felt a little uncomfortable when facing Le Lin, not to mention that she was guilty and dared not speak, but nodded in panic!
Seeing that Le Lin gave her the steps, but she refused to come down, Zhang Xiaocao couldn't help being a little disappointed, so she winked at Le Lin, signaling him not to give her the money yet!
Le Lin understood, smiled and said to Dasheng's daughter-in-law: "You go and wait aside, the money will be given to you later!"

When Dasheng's daughter-in-law heard it, her heart became more and more flustered, and she raised her head and asked tentatively, "Why don't you give it to me when others give it to you?"

When Shopkeeper Le heard it, he felt more and more that she had a problem. If it was someone else, he would definitely ask it with confidence, instead of being a little timid like her.

"You have the wrong amount of cotton. I'll go to your house to have a look after I've weighed everyone else's!"

Dasheng's daughter-in-law was terrified when she heard this, but when she thought that the cotton had been transported away overnight a few days ago, he couldn't find a single thread of cotton even if he went there, so she felt relieved, just looking at Lelin's insightful eyes. She still couldn't help panicking, and said in a trembling voice: "All the cotton is here, and there is some bad autumn cotton left at home, so I didn't bring it. If you don't believe me, follow me to the house now !"

Le Lin smiled, did not speak, and sat down again, ready for the next one!
Dasheng's daughter-in-law stood there in embarrassment, neither to leave nor to stay. She was more afraid. They signed a contract to grow cotton. If he found out that he had sold cotton to others privately, he would not only have to pay A lot of money, next year I can't even grow cotton!

The people who were waiting in line behind her to call cotton saw this scene, and murmured in their hearts, could it be that Dasheng really hid cotton in his home?

These speculations spread slowly, everyone's expressions were different, some were calm, some were worried, and some were just like Dasheng's daughter-in-law-guilty heart!
Zhang Xiaocao glanced secretly for a few times, and took in all their expressions. When she saw several people's eyes averted, her heart sank. It seems that some people still couldn't help the temptation and thought carefully!

In the end, after all the cotton had been weighed, including Dasheng’s wife’s family, there were a total of six families whose cotton counts did not match, and these six families were still relatives, either brothers or cousins. Le Lin didn’t accept their cotton, so naturally No money was given either!

After the others left, Le Lin ordered Le Cai and the others to load the cotton into the car, borrowed the side hall of Zhang Xiaocao's house, and brought the heads of the six families in, ready to ask questions, Zhang Xiaocao also followed , listening on the sidelines, did not speak.

Le Lin is so cautious because he knows what cotton represents. In the eyes of those officials and dignitaries, whoever gets the method to increase cotton production is the great hero of the whole Yuanqing and even the Three Kingdoms. Although he doesn't know why the young master wants to keep this secret , instead of making it public immediately, but since it is the young master's decision, he will definitely follow through. Now that something like this has happened, we must investigate it to the end!
Looking at the people who bowed their heads and said nothing, he looked at Zhang Xiaocao at the side and saw that she was looking out the window, she had no intention of opening her mouth at all, so he had to ask himself: "Are you hiding the cotton to sell it to others at a high price?" ? Do you know that this is a breach of the contract and you need to pay for it?"

The six people looked at each other in dismay, and some people wanted to get away with it, and used loud voices to cover up their guilty conscience: "We don't sell cotton in private, if you don't believe me, just go to my house and see!"

(End of this chapter)