Quick Transmigration: Underdog Turns out to be Untouchable

Chapter 1039: Chapter 950: First Rank Official 11

When Murong Shuangshuang brought back the wild boar, it was still alive. She didn’t need to find a butcher; Murong Shuangshuang could slaughter the pig herself, draining a big basin of pig’s blood, mixing it with salt to make pork blood tofu, ensuring nothing was wasted.

Then she boiled water to remove the hair, gutted it, and cleaned the innards. The family was not short of money, so Murong Shuangshuang decided to keep the entire boar for themselves, making dumplings first. The rest, to prevent spoilage, was turned into preserved meats.

Murong Shuangshuang, together with Murong Ting and Mrs. She, worked on making preserved meats. Once they finished and hung the entire pig’s meat out to dry, the whole yard turned into a forest of meat, fully satisfying the human desire to stockpile.

After drying the meat, Murong Shuangshuang planned to give some to families in the village with whom they had good relations. Actually, except for the hunters who rely on this for a living, if anyone in the past succeeded in hunting big game, they would share meat with familiar families as a gesture of goodwill. The Murong family didn’t have many families to send meat to.

The key was that no household in the village had not benefited from Murong Ting, yet Murong Ting owed no favors himself. There were very few households needing Murong Ting’s goodwill; more often, it was others giving gifts to the Murong family.

Despite this, for the households with good relations, Murong Ting still had Murong Shuangshuang deliver some meat, which in return brought back various gifts like eggs and greens, thus enriching the Murong family’s variety of food ingredients.

Too much preserved and smoked meat isn’t particularly beneficial for one’s health, but when meat is scarce, these foods are still beneficial, at least providing sufficient nutrition and helping people gain weight and strength.

Looking at the yard full of preserved meat strips, Murong Shuangshuang decided that next time she hunted a wild boar, she would cut the meat into chunks, fry it in oil, and preserve it in lard. It is said that meat preserved this way tastes better and lasts longer.

After dealing with the pork, Murong Shuangshuang entered her room, where three half-carved jade ornaments lay. These jades also contained impurities, but not as many as the previous piece Murong Shuangshuang had found.

Among the three jade stones, the best piece, about half a person high, was sent by the County Magistrate, along with two hundred taels of silver and a large cart of polished rice, fine flour, and cloth. It’s said the previous Jiangnan landscape jade ornament was given by the County Magistrate to a Shangguan, who was born in Jiangnan, as a gift and received Shangguan’s appreciation.

Because of this, the County Magistrate decided to commission Murong Ting to make another jade ornament. This time, the jade came from the County Magistrate himself, and its quality was vastly superior to that of the piece Murong Shuangshuang found.

The County Magistrate directly gave Murong Ting a two hundred tael craftsmanship fee. The character of this County Magistrate was evidently good. Although the payment wasn’t at market price, with the County Magistrate’s protection, even working for free meant a profit for the Murong family, not to mention the two hundred taels earned.

Having seen the previous jade ornament, besides the County Magistrate, two wealthy merchants also approached Murong Ting to carve a jade ornament for them, each offering a market price and a craftsmanship fee of five hundred taels for a half-person high carving.

This was because Murong Ting was not yet famous. Otherwise, carving a half-person high jade ornament would hardly fetch less than a thousand taels.

It was ironic that while the common people lived in a world where even diligent farmers starved, those so-called upper-class gentlemen lived lives more luxurious than in peaceful times of the past.

At the founding of the country, a person-high jade ornament’s craftsmanship cost only one to two hundred taels, but now, such extravagant playthings have become unimaginably expensive for the common folk.

With the money from the County Magistrate and the two wealthy merchants, the Murong family’s life has thoroughly improved. They need not worry about taxes, nor fret about having no money, eating refined rice and flour with a mix of meat and vegetables at each meal.

Nowadays, Mrs. She’s health improves daily. Her husband has a good reputation, and her daughter has the talent to single-handedly support the family and lead a good life. As for household chores, she is cherished by Murong Ting and Murong Shuangshuang. Father and daughter take turns helping with the chores.

Mrs. She only needs to sweep the floor and tend the small home vegetable garden daily. Murong Ting and Murong Shuangshuang are afraid that the watering and weeding will tire Mrs. She, so they take care of it, leaving Mrs. She without a thing to worry about—a very relaxed life.

With a spouse and daughter showing filial piety and love, Mrs. She feels content and lacks nothing, resulting in getting healthier. Now, Mrs. She looks just like a normally healthy person, completely unlike her formerly frail self.

The women in the village all envy Mrs. She for having a good life, marrying a capable and handsome man who knows how to love his wife. Although she has no son, having such a competent daughter is better than a son.

Compared to large families with a dozen men, who collectively are not as valuable as one competent daughter, all one can do is sigh at how different people can be. Some are born with good fortune; even if they cannot give birth, they are destined to enjoy life.

The villagers do not yet know that Murong Shuangshuang earns several hundred taels from carving jade ornaments. The villagers have limited views; many have never been to a big city; the farthest they have gone is the county. Such expensive items as jade ornaments they dare not inquire about, because they simply cannot afford them, and naturally, they do not understand the market.

Now that Murong Shuangshuang has deep inner strength, if she let go and worked intensively, she could carve a jade ornament in three days, a feat a normal artisan couldn’t achieve.

In these times, without any machinery, the carving, grinding, and polishing of jade ornaments are all done manually. To create a sufficiently exquisite, half-person high jade ornament, even the fast craftsmen would need three months, and the slower ones might take half a year.

So Murong Ting promised at least four months to complete a jade ornament. Fortunately, the County Magistrate and the two merchants were experienced enough to know how long it takes to make a jade ornament, so they all agreed to wait.

While Murong Shuangshuang practiced martial arts, hunted, and carved jade, her neighbor Fang Keixin found another enterprise. The specifics of which Murong Shuangshuang didn’t know, just that it was likely another food business because Murong Shuangshuang, practicing martial arts early in the morning, saw her father Fang Laoer carrying a shoulder pole, lifting two wooden buckets that smelled of food.

Early in the morning, Fang Keixin followed Fang Laoer out. She was still malnourished, only not as severely undernourished with a thin neck and big head; still, her complexion was sallow and her hair like a bunch of messy grass, sparse and stringy. Fang Keixin worried every day when she combed her hair that it might all fall out before she grows up.

Fang Keixin’s house was adjacent to Murong Shuangshuang’s; the two families saw each other frequently, but because Murong Shuangshuang was somewhat aloof, she did not have much of a relationship with the Fang family’s girls, especially not with Fang Keixin, with whom she was even less familiar.

Murong Shuangshuang always had no particular feelings towards Fang Keixin, while Fang Keixin felt both envious and jealous of Murong Shuangshuang, coupled with an inexplicable hostility that even Fang Keixin herself couldn’t quite understand.