Chapter 42: Money-making schemes

Everything looks cute when it gets smaller, and the originally scary Rainmaker concubine looks a bit cute when she sits on Pang Ziqi's shoulders with an unhappy face after being scaled down, just a little, of course.

When Lu Qingjiu entered the house, Pang Ziqi stopped arguing and greeted them.

"How are you feeling now?" Lu Qingjiu asked him, taking a seat at a random spot.

"I... I'm feeling pretty good now." Pang Ziqi says, "If it wasn't for the lack of action from above, I'd suspect her body had been disposed of." He was also inspired, and although he couldn't see the Rainmaker concubine, he could feel something. He had felt lighter since last night, as if the weight that had been attached to his body had diminished.

At the time, Pang Ziqi thought it was an illusion, but it was only this morning that he was sure it was real.

Lu Qingjiu said, not mentioning the body, but telling Pang Ziqi frankly that he could no longer see his concubine.

"Out of sight, no," Pang Ziqi said, "they're getting ready to go back down to the tomb."

"Let them not go." Lu Qingjiu said, "I can't feel the curse anymore." Although the body of the Yu Shi concubine had already been eaten by Bai Yuehu, he was really a little afraid that the group would go inside the tomb and touch something else to cause new trouble.

Pang Ziqi wondered, "You really can't see her."

"I can't see it." Lu Qingjiu replied frankly.

Pang Ziqi said, "Well, I'll send them a message, and if I'm really okay, tell them not to go."

Lu Qingjiu nods his head.

The two of them sat in the ward for a while and then decided to leave, but before they left Lu Qingjiu found an excuse to reach out and give Pang Ziqi a pat on the shoulder and squeeze the small, unhappy-looking Yu Shi concubine sitting on his shoulder in his hand, before leaving with Yin Xun as if nothing had happened. Lu Qingjiu's actions were naturally seen by Yin Xun, whose eyes were about to drop when he saw Lu Qingjiu squeezing the concubine.

Out loud, once the two were out of the ward, they said in horror, "Sake, what are you doing bringing this out"

Lu Qingjiu opened his palm, and a small concubine appeared in his palm. The concubine spoke a lot of words that Lu Qingjiu did not understand, but from the expression on her face, she was probably cursing. Lu Qingjiu was very calm about this and said, "It's not safe to leave this with Pang Ziqi, who knows if she'll grow up again, it's better to take it back to Bai Yuehu."

Yin Xun said, "Take it back to Bai Yuehu and eat it."

Lu Qingjiu said, "You don't have to eat it, there may be other ways to treat it."

Yin Xun thought about it and felt that Lu Qingjiu's words seemed to be somewhat reasonable, so he boldly stretched out his fingertips and poked the concubine standing in Lu Qingjiu's hand. She looked at Yin Xun with disbelief, her pupil-less eyes instantly filled with tears and she sobbed straight away.

Lu Qingjiu: "" He gave Yin Xun a silent look.

Yin Xun: "Damn, I didn't mean to do it, why is she still crying?

Lu Qingjiu said, "You caused the crying, you do it." With that he handed the Yu Shi concubine to Yin Xun's hand.

Yin Xun picked it up with a fumbling face, "Crap, crap, I really didn't mean to do that, what should I do?"

Lu Qingjiu thought for a moment, and then took out the little van's favourite jelly gummy from his pocket, and took an apple-flavoured one and put it into the mouth of Yu Shih's concubine. Only when the soft candy was stuffed into a small corner of her mouth did she stop sobbing, reach out and hug the candy, sucking her nose and nibbling on it.

Yin Xun's hand remained stiff as she said in a trembling voice, "If I push harder, will I accidentally squeeze her to death?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "No, she's not that delicate, you can put it in your jacket pocket."

Yin Xun still felt a bit bad, he was afraid that he might squeeze his concubine to death if he didn't put her in his pocket. At this point Yin Xun forgot that just a few days ago they had been hoping that the concubine would be gone sooner.

After visiting Pang Ziqi, Lu Qingjiu went to the city to buy a large electric baking oven and bought a lot of tin foil and moulds, as well as the materials needed to make mooncakes, so he plans to start making them tomorrow.

Lu Qingjiu always felt like he was carrying a child with him when he went to the supermarket with Yin Xun, except that Yin Xun was a very good boy, not daring to say what he wanted to eat, but just looking at it. He is such an easy child to coax.

Yin Xun grew up in the village, unable to leave it since he was a child, and although he became an adult, he was still limited by poverty and hardly ever came to the city, let alone shop there, before Lu Qingjiu arrived.

Lu Qingjiu is now in a good financial position, having spent only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Zhang Chuyang gave him, and Zhu Miaomiao has recently told him that she has some new ideas to help Lu Qingjiu generate income, the details of which she will discuss with Lu Qingjiu when she comes over for her mid-autumn break.

Having bought a large bag of snacks and various ingredients, Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun returned to the minivan satisfied.

When she got into the car, Yin Xun looked in her jacket pocket and saw that the Yu Shi concubine had fallen asleep in it and that the jelly soft candy was only half eaten, but although she hadn't finished it, she was still clutching it tightly, looking as if she was afraid someone else had snatched it away.

Yin Xun said, "She's so cute."

Lu Qingjiu said: "Is it cute?"

Yin Xun says: "Lovely."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Imagine her back to normal human size."

Yin Xun: " He shivered and closed his jacket pocket silently, not to think about it, the thought of her chin on Pang Ziqi's shoulder gave him goose bumps.

When he got home, the first thing Lu Qingjiu did was to show Bai Yuehu a small version of his concubine. As soon as the concubine saw Bai Yuehu, she started to shrug her shoulders and cry, not even daring to cry out loud, as if she was trembling with fear.

Bai Yuehu About the time he remembered the smell of the Rainmaker concubine, his brow furrowed at the sight of her.

"How did she get so small," Lu Qingjiu said, "and will the curse continue to spread?"

"The corpse is powerless without her." Bai Yuehu says, "It shouldn't affect humans anymore."

Lu Qingjiu said, "So was it necessary to eat her?"

Bai Yuehu was silent for a moment, "No, I guess." It seemed he really didn't want to taste the Yu Shi concubine again, and he paused for a moment before adding, "If you don't like it, I can eat it too."

Lu Qingjiu couldn't help but laugh at Bai Yuehu's embarrassed look and said, "Well, don't force it, she looks cute too, so since she's harmless, let's keep her at home and give her company to the lady ghost in the backyard."

Bai Yuehu nodded in agreement with Lu Qingjiu's statement.

The little Yu Shi concubine was very well received by the animals in the house, especially the little fox who seemed to like her very much and started to lick her as soon as she saw her.

Although Lu Qingjiu found it quite amusing, he stopped the little fox from acting and told it not to bully the Yu Shi concubine. The little fox chirped and stared at Lu Qingjiu with those beautiful blue eyes innocently, as if to tell Lu Qingjiu that it just liked her.

Lu Qingjiu said, "Then don't lick her too much, if you make her cry, she won't like you."

The little fox nodded in response.

Lu Qingjiu then wiped the drool off of the Yu Shi concubine and placed it around the neck of the little fox, who also liked the furry, warm things and hid in the little fox's pretty scarf and disappeared.

After settling down at home with the Yu Shi concubine, Lu Qingjiu took a sieve to the courtyard to pick some luxuriantly blooming osmanthus flowers with the intention of making osmanthus cakes.

Lu Qingjiu beat the cinnamon flowers, strained the dregs, then stirred them together with lotus root powder and added flour to ferment them, steamed them in a steamer for 30 minutes and they were ready. The freshly steamed cinnamon cake is still steaming and has a rich fragrance of cinnamon.

Lu Qingjiu dried the cinnamon cakes and made a pot of tea to serve as afternoon tea.

As the three of them sat in the courtyard eating osmanthus cakes, Lu Qingjiu said they should go to the mountains on a nice afternoon to pick the wind and have a picnic.

"And you can fly a kite." Yin Xun, who had a cinnamon cake in her mouth, said vaguely, "I haven't flown a kite for a long time."

"Isn't flying a kite something you do in spring?" Lu Qingjiu said.

"It's okay in autumn." Yin Xun said, "It's also very windy in autumn."

Lu Qingjiu shrugged his shoulders and let Yin Xun go.

The freshly made cinnamon cake was delicious, soft and sticky, and because the cinnamon was also fresh, the fragrance was so strong that you could smell a faint fragrance just by setting it aside. The tea, although ordinary, was enough to cleanse the sweet and greasy taste from the mouth and add a little refreshment.

Lu Qingjiu told Yin Xun not to eat too much as he had to have dinner in the evening.

Yin Xun's mouth says yes, but her hands don't stop moving until she burps and realises she's eaten too much.

In the evening Lu Qingjiu made a stewed pig's foot with seaweed, which was made from pork from the village and the seaweed was bought today, and the way they eat pig's foot here is different from other places, usually with a hot and spicy condiment dish. After the fatty pig's feet have been stewed softly, they are wrapped in the spicy and sour condiment, which takes away all the greasiness and is very good for eating. The pig's feet soup was also exceptionally tasty, and Lu Qingjiu drank several bowls before he was satisfied.

Yin Xun, who had eaten too much in the afternoon, finally got a taste of his own medicine. He wanted to eat, but his stomach couldn't hold it any longer, so he had to watch Bai Yuehu finish the pot of soup by himself, and had no place to cry.

Lu Qingjiu could only reassure him that the stew would be ready in a few days and that he need not be too sad.

At 9pm, Lu Qingjiu received a call from Zhu Miaomiao, saying that she was coming early for the Mid-Autumn Festival and asking if there was anything Lu Qingjiu wanted to bring.

Lu Qingjiu asked her to send more crabs and to buy jellybeans that he couldn't get here, and Zhu Miaomiao agreed, saying it was no problem.

Mid-Autumn is supposed to be a time for family reunions, but unfortunately Lu Qingjiu is alone in the world. But in this small courtyard, he has Bai Yuehu and Yin Xun to keep him company.

On the day Zhu Miaomiao arrived, Lu Qingjiu started making the mooncakes, his first time making them and he wasn't very good at it, but the process wasn't too difficult, it was the filling that was a bit tricky. Lu Qingjiu wrapped the salted egg yolks he had bought into the lotus seed paste, calculating that he would like to pickle some duck eggs himself this year.

Yin Xun is helping Lu Qingjiu by pressing the finished mooncakes into the moulds and taking them out again.

Lu Qingjiu also makes some fresh meat mooncakes, which are not quite the same as the sweet ones, but usually have a crispy crust and are the best when freshly baked.

Just as he was about to put the mooncakes in the oven, Zhu Miaomiao's phone call came in, saying she had more than half an hour to arrive at the station.

Lu Qingjiu then left the job of watching the fire of the mooncakes to Yin Xun and asked him to keep an eye on it, and then drove his minivan to town to pick up Zhu Miaomiao.

When Lu Qingjiu asked her why she had so much luggage, she patted her suitcase and laughed, "It's not luggage, it's all food, I was afraid you wouldn't be able to buy some things in town, so I bought it all for you."

Lu Qingjiu smiled at that and said, "It's been hard work."

"What's so hard about it?" Zhu Miaomiao said. Zhu Miaomiao said, "I have you to thank for that. Did you say something to Wu Xiao after you returned last time?

Lu Qingjiu was a bit vain when it came to Wu Xiao, but he hadn't been contacted much since then and seemed to be getting on well with the old tree. Lu Qingjiu doesn't know exactly what effect marrying a Tree will have, but so far it seems to be a positive one.

When they arrived home, the mooncakes were still hot from the oven. Zhu Miaomiao was hungry after the long train ride, so he grabbed a mooncake with lotus seed paste and egg yolk and ate it, complimenting Lu Qingjiu's workmanship. Each mooncake is stuffed with two egg yolks, which are thinly wrapped in lotus seed paste, and the yolks sip away in the mouth, filling the mouth with a salty-sweet flavour.

"Delicious" Zhu Miaomiao raved.

Lu Qingjiu smiled and said, "If it's good, you can have some more." He took the mooncakes to Bai Yuehu, who was sitting in the courtyard, and left some to give to neighbours in the village who were close to him.

The fresh meat mooncake also tastes great, a bit like a pie but with a crispier crust than a pie, perfect for a carnivore like Bai Yuehu.

As Zhu Miaomiao ate the mooncakes, she talked to Lu Qingjiu about her intentions for her return.

"O wine, have you ever thought of using other methods to make money?" Zhu Miaomiao said vaguely, "I don't see you making money from this kind of land, there are still two mouths waiting for food at home"

Lu Qingjiu: ""He felt like laughing at Zhu Miaomiao's words, so he pretended to be sad and said, "Yes, half a big boy, eating poor old me."

Zhu Miaomiao: "Yeah, yeah, that handsome guy can really eat, I've never seen leftovers in your house."

As she said this, she and Lu Qingjiu looked at each other and they both couldn't help but laugh.

"Well, just kidding." Zhu Miaomiao said, "How are you considering my previous proposal?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "Well, that's a good idea, but I don't know if the well water will work or not."

Zhu Miaomiao said, "Just try it, we have so many people waiting for it."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Let's try it then."

Zhu Miaomiao had mentioned this on the phone, saying that he wanted Lu Qingjiu to develop the well in his backyard to contribute to the hair loss cause. If the water from the well in the backyard was effective, Zhu Miaomiao could help Lu Qingjiu set up an online shop to sell hair regrowth water.

Lu Qingjiu, of course, did not forget to consult Bai Yuehu whether the well water would have any after-effects, and Bai Yuehu said that there would be none, that it was the woman's obsession that gave birth to hair in the well, and that the obsession was not bad for the body, but even beneficial in a way. In a way, it is even good for the body. Of course, this is only if the well water is really effective for hair growth.

Ever since Lu Qingjiu quit her job and returned home, Zhu Miaomiao has been worried that her friend is not doing well in the village, unlike Lu Qingjiu, who grew up in the city and has never seen such a remote village where a trip to the supermarket takes two hours. watering the land, weeding the vegetables in the sun and so on. The heaviest work Lu Qingjiu does is cleaning the weeds in the yard and making pig food for the two little pigs in the house.

"Oh yes, sake, do you have any extra produce that you can sell online?" Zhu Miaomiao was still giving Lu Qingjiu ideas at dinner time, "Didn't we have a lot of grapes at home that we couldn't finish?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "They've all been taken away." Chao Qianyu keeps an eye on his land every day, and whenever he has more vegetables than he can eat, he makes sure to call a month before they are ripe to make an appointment.

"Took it away," Zhu Miaomiao said in surprise, "Who took it away?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "A man who runs a restaurant."

Zhu Miaomiao said, "What's the price they're offering?"

Lu Qingjiu says: "It's not bad, it's about the same as the market price. I thought about buying online, but Shuifu Village is too remote and it's difficult to transport, and the shelf life of vegetables and fruits is quite short, so it's not easy to guarantee the quality."

Zhu Miaomiao stroked her chin, "Then you could consider developing other side businesses, like this mooncake." She thinks Lu Qingjiu's food-making skills will be a big hit.

Lu Qingjiu laughed, "We'll see." These things are homemade in the end, and making food still requires a licence to quarantine and other procedures, so it's still more trouble than it seems to really want to make them.

The two talked for a while and finally decided that Zhu Miaomiao would test the well water after it left Shuifu Village to see if it could produce hair, and then consider the Tao Bao shop if it could.

The Mid-Autumn Festival was just two days away and Lu Qingjiu planned to cook a big meal for everyone on the day. Since Zhu Miaomiao was coming over, Lu Qingjiu asked Bai Yuehu if he could catch two more fish to cook on the Mid-Autumn Day.

Bai Yuehu agreed and brought Lu Qingjiu a fresh manta ray the next day, along with one skinned and cut off.

Extra parts of the processed lamb.

Of course, although Bai Yuehu said it was a lamb, Lu Qingjiu felt that something was not quite right about it. The lamb did not have any of the fishy smell that meat should have, instead it had a faint fragrance and the meat was very good.

The meat, Lu Qingjiu, was partly used in a soup and partly in a stir-fry, which turned out to be very tasty, fatty and lean, neither too greasy nor too lean, making it impossible to stop eating.

Another reason why Zhu Miaomiao likes to go to Shuifu Village so much is that the food here is so good that whatever she eats here is better than what she gets outside.

"Oooooooooooooooo delicious." Zhu Miaomiao's chopsticks didn't stop, and he ate with a bulging stomach and took a sip of soup.

Lu Qingjiu said, "Don't eat too much, watch out for your stomach."

Zhu Miaomiao shook his head and said, "I've never eaten such delicious fish in my life, what kind of fish is this?"

Lu Qingjiu muddled through, "It's just a normal grass carp."

"I will definitely come and live here when I retire." Zhu Miaomiao swore, "Definitely."

Lu Qingjiu laughed: "You can't get a courier here." The courier has to be picked up at the town's outlet, so the traffic can be very difficult.

Zhu Miaomiao shook her head, "It's worth not receiving a delivery if I can eat fish like this every day." She ate so much that she wanted to stand up and walk for a while, but felt as if her stomach couldn't support the movement, so she tried and then sat down helplessly.

"What's that?" Zhu Miaomiao, who was resting, suddenly turned her gaze and noticed a small white ball of fluff hiding in the doorway, "Sake, you have a dog?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "No, it's a fox." The little fox was timid and a bit skittish, and as soon as Zhu Miaomiao arrived, he hid in the bedroom, but now he was probably hungry. When Lu Qingjiu saw her cute appearance, she waved at her and slowly walked over to Lu Qingjiu's side, sticking out her tongue and licking the palm of her hand.

"Fox" Zhu Miaomiao looked at the suspicious shape of the fox in front of her and was puzzled, "Then why is this little fox's fur cut like a poodle"

Hearing Zhu Miaomiao's question, Lu Qingjiu, who had done something bad, looked away sheepishly and coughed stiffly to get rid of the pot: "Oh, Yin Xun cut it, it's my first time, I don't have much experience."

Zhu Miaomiao was thoughtful: "Oh, so, I thought you did it if you didn't tell me."

Lu Qingjiu laughed dryly, "Hahahahaha, why not."

Yin Xun, who was washing dishes in the kitchen, suddenly and inexplicably sneezed, rubbed his nose and muttered, "Who's bad-mouthing me?"