Jiang Zhen was so busy communicating with Zheng Yi and the craftsman that he inevitably ignored Zhao Mingzhu. Zhao Mingzhu immediately grunted discontentedly, making Jiang Zhen stop what he was doing to coax his daughter.

Zheng Yi had long been accustomed to all this, but the craftsman couldn’t react for some time after seeing this. He had never seen a man who loved his child so much!

While Zheng Yi and Jiang Zhen were at home drawing sketches with their children, the  county magistrate of Fucheng kept wandering around in his own house.

After tasting the jar of wine sent by Zheng Yi yesterday, he was totally conquered by the wonderful taste of the wine. There was originally just a little bit of wine in the jar, so he originally wanted to keep it and drink it slowly, but he couldn’t help himself.

He locked up the wine, but thought of just taking one sip, so he finally released the lock and took a sip.

Then he took another sip, and after a while, he took another sip . . . the palm-sized wine jar became empty just a moment later.

If this was some one-of-a-kind treasure, he wouldn’t look back after drinking it and wouldn’t think too much about it, but he couldn’t help himself now . . . He knew that the Zheng family had more!

Although Second Master Zheng was an official in the capital, he was still a magistrate, and the Zheng family had to respect him. So as long as he asked, wouldn’t Zheng Yi give him more? But if he had a close relationship with Zheng Yi . . . the imperial envoy Zhou was still here!

The magistrate of He Cheng County was not the only one entangled this way. The few others who had been deliberately given wine by Zheng Yi also acted in the same way as the magistrate. They couldn’t let go of this wine, so they let their people inquire where Zheng family wine was sold. However, the Zheng family wine was not sold anywhere.

Finally, someone could not hold back and found Zheng Yi, wanting to buy some.

“The Zheng family has only brewed a batch of this wine. I just kept some and sent the rest to the capital as a gift to the empress dowager . . .” Zheng Yi looked at those in front of him with a complicated expression. “If I want to brew the second batch, I guess it will take a few months. Gentlemen . . . still want to wait?”

The expressions of the people who came to ask for wine immediately froze.

The wine had been sent to the empress dowager. They couldn’t have any opinions about it and could only have nothing to drink. But . . . after being unable to drink the wine, they thought about it even more!

After leaving Zheng Yi, these people immediately inquired everywhere. After some inquiry, they learned that Zheng Yi had actually gifted twenty jars of this wine and the vast majority of it was given to the Hu family that, in turn, sent a few jars to others.

After learning about this, someone immediately went to the Hu family.

In this world, not everyone liked drinking good wine. There was no one in the Zheng or Hu family like that, so usually, they drank wine just for fun. At first, no one took the wine sent by Zheng Yi seriously, either because they thought that the wine was too strong or they just didn’t like it.

But as it turned out, just a few days later, surprisingly, some people came to buy wine . . .

This unremarkable, strong wine was so valuable? The Hu family was startled and then decisively felt something.

The people who came to buy the wine were quite important, so they naturally sold them a few. Then they quickly sent for the rest of the wine and the people who were originally not good with wine.

When someone came to buy wine again, they informed those people that the wine they had was already sold.

Now, these people could only go to the people who received wine from the Hu family to buy.

In this way, the number of people who knew that someone was looking for a good wine everywhere naturally increased, and the fame of the Zheng family’s Qingfeng wine spread rapidly in the upper circles of Fucheng. In fact, not everyone loved to drink, but rich people drank not for the wine itself but for the prestige it signified.

The Zheng family’s Qingfeng wine suddenly became famous and was highly respected, so everyone was naturally curious. But they currently couldn’t have it to drink . . . how could, not scratching an itch not feel uncomfortable?

At this time, the Zheng family that bought a piece of land in the capital city, began to build the Qingfeng House. At the same time, Zhao Jinge also bought a piece of land and was ready to build a brick kiln.

Zhao Jinge found some people from Hexi Village who had already learned to burn bricks, so it didn’t take him long to build the brick kiln, and as soon as the brick kiln was built, big business came to the door—Zheng Yi needed a lot of green bricks to build Qingfeng House!

However, even if the brick kiln were built quickly, raising chickens and ducks was not something that could be done quickly.

First of all, there was not enough manpower, and secondly, there weren’t enough chicks and ducks; it was winter, so in the absence of artificial hatching, no chickens and ducks were hatched, and the hens were laying fewer eggs.

Zhao Jinge was busy, but he still helped Jiang Zhen handle some things about the Jinzhen Escort Agency and in the end gained a small reputation in Fucheng.

As for Jiang Zhen . . . he took care of Zhao Mingzhu every day, and in time, Zhao Mingzhu’s closest person became him.

After such a busy period, it was time for the New Year.

Last year, Jiang Zhen and Zhao Jinge stayed in Fucheng for a few days and didn’t go back until the New Year. They didn’t know if it was a coincidence, that when they went back, they caught up with the villagers of Hexi village catching and sharing fish.

Last year, Zhao Jinge got them fish, but this year, after catching fishes, Jiang Ping asked Zhao Fugui to pick first and take a lot.

The Zhao family built a dock in Hexi Village, which benefited every household in the village. This year, basically everyone in Hexi Village worked for the Zhao family and made some money, allowing everyone to have a good New Year. Under such circumstances, they naturally didn’t mind that the Zhao family got more fish to eat.

“There are only a few people in my family, so how can we eat so many fish? Just a few will do.” Zhao Fugui declined and finally picked a little bit of each kind of fish.

“We caught a lot of fish this year. There are many people working at your dock, so get some more,” Jiang Ping said again. In order to show how grateful they were to the Zhao family, they deliberately caught more fish.

“Then how about this: send the extra fish to the canteen and get someone to prepare them, so that the children studying at school and the people working at the docks can each have a bowl of fish soup.” Zhao Fugui finally made the decision.

When Jiang Zhen came back, he saw that all the people on the dock were drinking fish soup.

Winter fish tasted the best. It didn’t have that muddy smell, so they didn’t have to put any seasoning and the fish could be directly steamed and it would be delicious. Not to mention that the canteen people prepared the fish soup very deliciously.

The fish soup was made from a few large fish. The meat of the bone-rich fish was sliced thinly while its belly, bones, and head were fried with little oil for a while before they were added to the soup. After boiling it for a while, they then added some tofu before adding some fish slices inside. . .

A bowl of fish soup was soon served out.

Children could easily choke on the bones when they eat fish, so the fish soup given to them contained the belly  part of the fish only. In winter, it was a happy thing to have warm fish soup to drink.

The education of the girls and the gers in the village was handed by Jiang Zhen to Liu Qianqian and the others who worked in Qingfeng House. This day was Liu Qianqian’s turn to work as a teacher, so when she came to receive fish soup, she got a big bowl.

Liu Qianqian was happily drinking the fish soup when she suddenly heard someone shouting that Jiang Zhen and Zhao Jinge had returned.

The students in the school couldn’t care less about their classes and ran to the dock, not to mention the people of Jinzhen Escort Agency—they all forgot what they were originally doing.

This was not the first time Jiang Zhen and Zhao Jinge had seen such a scene, but it had never been as lively as before, so they were stunned in surprise for a while. Immediately, their mood improved.

Edited by: Faro

Proofreader: Xiao Hua

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