TOFUH – Chapter 137.2 – Going Out to Deliver Pigs

The crowd’s clamor was so loud, Zhao Liu’s head started to hurt. She was still thinking about the money at home, so she was a little too impatient to deal with these people. “That’s my son-in-law. He’s amazing. He made a lot of money on this trip.”

After saying that, she saw the people still wanted to ask her questions, so she immediately said, “I never lied to you before. It’s you that didn’t believe me. Now stop chattering and disturbing me.”

Zhao Liu directly reprimanded people, but none of them were unhappy; instead, they all smiled at Zhao Liu.

They held Zhao Liu’s hand and said many good things, which made Zhao Liu forget about the hundreds of thousands of silver for a while and was willing to talk to them again. “My family’s Jiang Zhen is great and made a lot of money during this trip. In this world, there are really not many people who are as successful as him. The main reason is that he is not only good  to Zhao Jinge but also to us . . .”

Zhao Liu tilted her head and spoke proudly while the people in front of her nodded their heads in agreement.

Zhao Liu calmed down as she spoke.

Even if Jiang Zhen had earned hundreds of thousands of silver, so what? He was still Jiang Zhen, wasn’t he? They would live their lives as usual.

After her mood calmed down, Zhao Liu didn’t bother to talk to these people anymore and went back in.

The yard was crowded, so Zhao Liu simply went back to the house. When she went inside, she saw Zhao Fugui sitting there.

With the people outside, a lot of things could not be said, but Zhao Fugui was different . . . As soon as she saw Zhao Fugui, Zhao Liu said, “As this child’s father, how do you think Jiang Zhen got so much money after going out outside?”

In the past, when Jiang Zhen went to the capital and came back, he brought back a lot of silver, but at that time, neither Zhao Liu’s nor Zhao Fugui were clear about the exact amount. But this time was different. They saw with their own eyes piles of silver, and their shock was extraordinarily big.

“I don’t know,” Zhao Fugui said.

Zhao Liu poked Zhao Fugui with her finger and asked again, “You don’t think he has done something bad?”

“I don’t know.”

Zhao Liu poked again. “With so much money, will others be jealous?”

“I think so.”

 

. . .

 

“Jiang Zhen, is it all right for you to take back so much silver?” Zhao Liu was not the only one who was worried about this. Zhao Jinge was equally uneasy.

“It’s all right. You might not know, but I got a lot of money. In fact, it’s just a small amount,” Jiang Zhen said.

The interest group formed by the Hongjiang Salt Farm was very very large and contained many people, but the Hongjiang Salt Farm itself was just a place where the salt was produced.

Although the people there could earn a lot of money by selling salt, it was not as much as those big salt merchants who took salt from the Hongjiang Salt Farm to sell elsewhere.

After the envoy, Yang Qin, took control of the military power, he raided the homes of many salt merchants, some of whom made millions of silver.

Compared to them, he, who got only a few hundred thousand silver, was nothing. The imperial envoy also would certainly not be jealous. As for the court and the empress dowager . . . they wouldn’t even know about it.

It took two days to weigh all the silver in Jiang Zhen’s yard.

The notes house that came to the Zhao family to pick up the silver was opened by the Hu family, the maiden family of Zheng Yi’s wife, so they could also be considered members of the Zheng family. Jiang Zhen was also very comfortable with them and finally changed all the silver into silver notes, amounting to 450,000 silver.

He got rich overnight . . .

After Jiang Zhen took the money, he immediately contacted Zheng Yi, and then bought a large mansion in Fucheng. As for the house bought by Zhao Jinge, he planned to use it as a dormitory for the guard Jinzhen Escort Agency.

However, although Jiang Zhen bought a house, he was in no hurry to move because he had to go to the sea to send things to Zhu Erlin and others.

The island lacked many things, and the main shortage was the lack of variety in the types of food and medical herbs. This time, Jiang Zhen hired a sea-worthy ship to see them and loaded half a ship with grain and the other half with livestock.

On that day, on the dock of Fucheng, many people stood next to the ship and looked at it while whispering. Within their encirclement, pigs squealed from time to time.

Some people were curious to see the commotion and squeezed in only to see some strong men carrying hog-tied pigs and carrying them on the ship.

“What’s going on?” Although those big ships that went to  the sea were also loading grain on board before and some live animals to raise to kill to eat later, could they really finish eating the many pigs they carried inside while on board?

“We also wonder . . . No one is going to sell these pigs somewhere faraway, right? Can these pigs even fetch a high price? “

“Pigs can be raised anywhere, and even if they can be sold more expensively in other places, it isn’t that much. I don’t know what this person is thinking.”

“Maybe these people plan to kill a pig for food every day when they are at sea.”

There was a lot of talk, and they were all very strange. However, they only wondered for a short while and left the matter alone, talking about something else. “The price of salt has finally come down.”

“Yes. Before, a kilo of salt surprisingly cost one hundred coins . . . It was really too expensive.”

“My mother’s family didn’t save salt before, so I didn’t have anything with salt for half a month!”

“I heard that the price of salt was so high during this time because those salt merchants have teamed up not to sell salt. What a bunch of bastards!”

“Fortunately, Yang Qing has arrested all those salt merchants!”

 

. . .

 

The ordinary people of Hexing Province did not know anything about the Hongjiang Salt Farm and the changes in salt prices and just thought it was the work of some businessmen.

No one explained the reason to them, and the court was even more unwilling to explain. At this time, a new salt farm was being prepared in the area of the former Hongjiang Salt Farm.

The new salt farm was named Changhe Salt Farm and would be taken care of by Yang Qin in the future.

The Changhe Salt Farm could not be built for a while, but fortunately, when Yang Qinq raided the salt merchant’s houses, he found a lot of salt , which finally stabilized the price of salt.

Jiang Zhen knew all of it, but he could not interfere, and did not bother to do so.

He was going out to sea again to deliver food to Zhu Erlin and the others.

It took them a long time to get all the living livestock on the board, so they set out in the evening.

Jiang Zhen was not a sailor, so he didn’t need to do anything on the ship. He was supposed to sleep at night, but the pigs, chickens, and ducks on board were so loud that Jiang Zhen could not sleep.

But Zhao Mingzhu didn’t care at all. No matter how noisy her environment was, she could fall asleep quickly and sleep well when she was tired. Sometimes even wetting her bed didn’t wake her up.

Seeing Zhao Mingzhu sleeping, Jiang Zhen did not hesitate to touch Zhao Jinge. “Jinge, come Sit on me!”

Zhao Jinge glanced at Jiang Zhen and then sat down obediently.

Jiang Zhen had night entertainment, so he could completely ignore the constant sounds of the livestock, but others couldn’t.

Not long after returning from the capital, Dr. Hu, who was lent by Zheng Yi to Jiang Zhen, was lying in the ship very depressed.

Every time he managed to get a little sleepy, the pigs on board would suddenly cry out . . . They clearly did not let him sleep!

Can’t Jiang Zhen just kill these pigs and  take it with him as bacon?

The ship sailed slowly into the sea.

Zheng Yi built some houses on that island in advance to accommodate Zhu Erlin and the others, but those houses were not enough for everyone to live in.

Zhu Erlin arranged for the old and weak to live in houses, but he and the young and strong, built some houses and dug out several caves in the past few days.

A few days later, they finally were able to take shelter from the wind and rain.

Early that morning, they got busy starting a fire to cook.

Zheng Yi left a lot of food, so Zhu Erlin let people cook some dry rice to eat; as for the next meal, it would naturally be the salted fish.

Salted fishes were very popular in places like Hecheng County, and everyone liked them, but in Zhu Erlin’s group, no one liked them.

Everyone was holding their rice bowl and wolfing it down, but no one moved their chopstick to take some salted fish.

Rice was fragrant and delicious; they didn’t want to use  fish to cover up its wonderful taste!

After dinner, Zhu Erlin took the people around the place where they lived.

Many of the people they brought with them were sick, and many others did not look very well. In addition, the original inhabitants of this island seemed hostile to them.

“This island is a little small. We have to go somewhere else to find a way to live in the future,” Zhu Erlin said to the people beside him, his face full of worry.

“Yes.” The man nodded and said, “Didn’t Jiang Zhen say we could join the Jinzhen Escort Agency? We’ll just join in the future.”

It . . . Zhu Erlin thought about it and suddenly realized that his worries were superfluous.

They will certainly not live on this island in the future.

It’s just . . . when will Jiang Zhen pick them up? Also, when will the chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep promised to them be delivered? He really wanted to eat pork!

Zhu Erlin looked to the sea in anticipation, and then saw a ship slowly coming from afar. That ship was quite familiar to him. After all, he had sailed on it before . . . Jiang Zhen’s ship was coming! His pig was coming too, right?

 

Edited by: Faro

Proofreader: Xiao Hua

 

Support translation:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is kofi3-3.png

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Meeram

    I caught up

  2. White Whale

    It made me smiled to think that there are some people who wants to eat pork and disregard salted fiah and vice versa. I want them to eat as much food as they want.

  3. GiL

    Who can blame them? Meat were delicious.
    Thanks for the chapter

Leave a Reply