TATLC Chapter 101 — Selling Jam Again

Lu Lin went to the village to collect wild berries. Grandma Chen saw him from a distance and hurried over to take a look. When she spotted Zhang Rui, her anger immediately flared up.

Before, Grandma Chen and Old Man Chen had gone to their son-in-law’s house to demand money, but Fast Knife Zhang scared them back home. They lost face badly, so the old woman really hated this son-in-law, and she also started hating Zhang Rui because of it.

Now, seeing her grandson getting involved with Lu Lin, she became convinced that her daughter and that bastard Chen Xiaomi were working together just to spite her.

Grandma Chen sat on the kang, sulking as she complained, “After all, a married daughter is like spilled water. I never thought Chun’er would be so heartless.”

Old Man Chen was also upset. With Chen Jing causing such a big mess, he had hoped his daughter would help share the burden.

If Chen Chun’er had married an ordinary man, the old couple could have made a scene and forced her to contribute something. But she married a butcher, so the Chen family elders got scared and ran back home.

Lu Lin collected the wild berries and returned to town. The thoughts and schemes of the Chen family had no effect on him whatsoever.

As soon as Chen Xiaomai got home, he went to show off his treasure to Chen Xiaomi.

“Da-ge, look! I caught a snake.”

“Not bad, it’s a really big snake, looks very fat!” Unlike Lu Lin, Chen Xiaomi was very supportive.

Chen Xiaomi had lived in the mountains for a while and often caught snakes.

Whenever he did, the three brothers would roast and eat the snake meat right there in the wild. So in Chen Xiaomai’s eyes, snakes were no different from chickens and ducks, they were all things you could eat.

Chen Xiaomai tilted his head and said, “I showed it to Lin-ge, but he didn’t even want to look. Qin Ming said Lin-ge is afraid of snakes. Lin-ge is so amazing, would he really be afraid of snakes?”

Chen Xiaomi fell silent. Lu Lin… was probably indeed afraid of snakes. He remembered once when they encountered a snake, Lu Lin insisted on chopping off its head and repeatedly checking that it was dead before daring to go near it.

Chen Xiaomi rubbed his nose and said, “Your Lin-ge doesn’t like these things. Next time you catch one, there’s no need to show it to him.”

Chen Xiaomai tilted his head again and realized, “So Lin-ge really is afraid of snakes. I never thought he was so useless.”

Chen Xiaomi had no reply.

Lu Lin was busy hauling a large cartload of wild berries into the courtyard, completely unaware that his tall and mighty image in Chen Xiaomai’s mind had just crumbled. Chen Xiaomi walked out and looked at the pile of wild berries in the yard, frowning as he said, “Isn’t this too much?”

Lu Lin nodded, “Yeah, so we need to process them quickly.” The ones that couldn’t be processed in time would have to be stored in the convenience store first. “We probably don’t have enough jars for the jam. Can you go buy some more?”

Chen Xiaomi agreed without hesitation. “Okay.”

Zhang Rui and Qin Ming sat in the courtyard washing the wild berries. Chen Xiaomai was also washing them, munching on a few as he worked.

Zhang Rui said with a headache, “Boss, these wild berries will spoil even faster after being washed!”

Qin Ming glanced at Zhang Rui and replied, “Don’t worry, Brother Lu can sell them all.”

Qin Ming blindly worshipped Lu Lin. Ever since Lu Lin sold a doll for dozens of taels of silver, or maybe even earlier, Qin Ming had admired Lu Lin completely. In Qin Ming’s view, everything Lu Lin did was right. Lu Lin would never do business at a loss.

Lu Lin and Chen Xiaomi went into the kitchen and kicked everyone else out.

Lu Lin had made a batch of jam before, and the sugar from the convenience store was almost used up. The sugar now was all bought separately by Lu Lin, which greatly increased the production cost.

Chen Xiaomi looked at several baskets of freshly washed wild berries and said, “There really are a lot. It won’t be easy to sell them all at once!”

Lu Lin nodded, “Yeah, if we get stuck with so many wild berries, it will be a real problem. We can send a batch to Liu Town to sell.”

“Let’s make jam first,” Chen Xiaomi said.

He licked his lips. It had been a long time since Lu Lin last made jam, and thinking about it, he really missed it.

Lu Lin nodded, “Okay.”

He poured a large amount of wild berries into the pot, and Chen Xiaomi helped watch the fire.

Once the jam was ready, Lu Lin brought it directly to the shop to sell, pricing it at one tael of silver per jar.

He also introduced a promotion: anyone who bought goods worth over three taels of silver would receive a free jar of jam. Many people in Lin Town had already tried the jam Lu Lin previously consigned to the restaurant, so they were very receptive to it. As soon as the jam went on sale, a lot of customers came to buy it.

Thanks to the promotion, sales of other items in the shop also increased quickly.

When Yang Hengzhi saw the jam for sale in the shop, he bought eight jars in one go. “Lu-xiong¹, you’re finally selling jam again.”

Old Lady Yang was a big fan of the jam and really liked the jam Lu Lin had sold at the restaurant before.

Lu Lin sighed. “What else could I do? Business has been slow. If I don’t develop new products, I won’t be able to put food on the table.”

Yang Hengzhi smiled helplessly, “Lu-xiong, you’re being too modest. Everyone knows your shop has the best business on this entire street. Customers float in like clouds.”

Lu Lin smiled, “You flatter me.”

Three days later, Lu Lin followed the convoy to deliver goods. Lu Lin was afraid the jam would spoil on the road, so he placed a few empty jars on the cart as a decoy and stored the real jam in his convenience store to keep it fresh. Then, he set off with the team for Liu Town.

Chen Xiaocai was very excited to see Lu Lin come.

“Lin-ge, did you bring jam?” Chen Xiaocai asked.

Lu Lin looked at Chen Xiaocai with suspicion, “How do you know about the jam?”

“Because Lin Town has that promotion where you get free jam when you buy a lot of stuff. So yesterday someone asked me if we sell jam here,” Chen Xiaomi explained.

Lu Lin raised an eyebrow, thinking, I didn’t expect the news to spread so fast, it even reached here.

“I brought you a batch, but jam has a limited shelf life. If you can’t sell it all before the expiration date, don’t keep it, just throw it away,” Lu Lin instructed.

Chen Xiaocai nodded, “I know.”

Chen Xiaocai thought, Throw it away? How could he even suggest that? If we can’t sell it before the expiration, of course we should eat it ourselves.

Lu Chengyu failed the spring exam again. After the family made a fuss for a while, he went back to school.

He had been studying for so many years, and the family was counting on him to pass the imperial exam and bring glory to the family. Under these circumstances, unless things got really difficult, the Lu family wouldn’t easily give up on him.

However, the Lu family’s circumstances weren’t as good as before. Although Grandma Lu loved Lu Chengyu, she gave him less pocket money than before.

Having no money at school meant losing face, and Lu Chengyu’s personality became much gloomier than before.

“Lu-xiong, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Brother Chen. Do you know what happened to him?” Liu Feng asked.

Chen Jing often cheated money from Grandma Chen and went out to fool around with his bad friends from school. Liu Feng was one of them. Chen Jing’s disappearance made his old friends feel a bit sorry.

Lu Chengyu replied indifferently, “His family had some trouble, so he’s not studying anymore.”

Liu Feng sighed, “Was it really because of the loan shark money he borrowed before?”

Chen Jing had previously asked Liu Feng for money too, but they were just drinking buddies. When it came to actually lending money, Liu Feng naturally avoided it.

Lu Chengyu nodded, “That’s right.”

Lu Chengyu used to find Chen Jing quite annoying, but when Chen Jing suddenly stopped studying, and there was no one left in the village to be at the bottom, Lu Chengyu actually felt a bit uneasy.

Liu Feng sighed again. “I didn’t expect Chen Jing to give up like that. Chengyu-xiong, I heard you have a cousin named Lu Lin who married into Chen Jing’s Shuang’er cousin’s family.”

When Liu Feng mentioned Lu Lin, Lu Chengyu couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. Nowadays, most people in the village had nothing but praise for Lu Lin, which left a sour taste in Lu Chengyu’s mouth.

“There’s an old scholar in our village who spent his whole life taking the imperial exams but never even managed to pass the first level. He opened a school in the village to teach people to read. The tuition was expensive, so not many people from the village went. I heard that last winter, he was invited to Huaxia Trading Company.”

Lu Chengyu asked curiously, “What does he do there?”

Liu Feng played with the folding fan in his hand, “Apparently, he’s teaching a few kids there how to read. According to him, his main students are Chen Xiaocai and a young Shuang’er. The owner must have too much money to waste, hiring a tutor for a Shuang’er too. Isn’t that just ridiculous?”

Lu Chengyu asked suspiciously, “Is that Shuang’er the simple-minded one?”

Liu Feng shook his head. “I heard there is a simple-minded one, but that one just listens in and often runs away halfway through. There is a Shuang’er who seems to be engaged to the master’s son, so they’re training them together.”

Lu Chengyu immediately thought of Shen Chi. For a while, many people in the village were spreading rumors that Shen Chi and Chen Xiaocai were having an affair. Just when Shen Chi’s reputation was about to be ruined, it turned out that Chen Xiaocai and Shen Chi really got engaged. It’s said that many girls in the village envied Shen Chi’s luck. A few years ago, Lu Chengyu would never have imagined that Chen Xiaocai, that nobody who grew up without a mother, could become such a catch.

Liu Feng shook his head, “What does a Shuang’er need to learn to read for? That old scholar said the master was too unreliable, but the pay is good, so he reluctantly took the job. Chengyu, is your brother that wealthy? He can actually afford to hire a tutor for a Shuang’er?”

Lu Chengyu replied gloomily, “I’m not sure either. I just heard that he works for a big boss at Huaxia Trading Company, and this big boss hasn’t come back for a long time.”

He thought, This Lu Lin and Chen Xiaomi must have taken a lot of kickbacks, otherwise where would he get the money to do so many things? The fact that Lu Lin actually hired someone to teach Chen Xiaocai to read really surprised Lu Chengyu.

Lu Chengyu had always prided himself on being educated. Seeing that Chen Xiaocai and Shen Chi were now receiving the same treatment made him feel deeply unbalanced.

Liu Feng said enviously, “This Huaxia Trading Company must be making a lot of silver. This boss behind the scenes is also big-hearted, actually feeling comfortable leaving everything to a Shuang’er.”

Lu Chengyu contemplated. Even though rumors about Lu Lin embezzling had spread all over the village, the mysterious boss still hadn’t shown his face. He wondered what was really going on.

He heard that Chen Xiaomi was raising goats and children in the estate, practically running the place single-handedly.

Shen Chi sat across from Chen Xiaocai, eating jam, a troubled look on his face.

“Is it really okay for us to eat this jam? It’s so expensive,” Shen Chi said uneasily.

Chen Xiaocai waved his hand. “Just eat it. Before Brother Lin left, he said if we can’t finish it, we should throw it away. We can’t let such good food go to waste.”

Shen Chi said hesitantly, “We could probably sell it if we lowered the price.”

Chen Xiaocai shook his head. “We can’t lower the price. Brother Lin said we’re going for the high-end market.” Besides, Lu Lin didn’t leave much jam. Even without lowering the price, it was almost sold out. Chen Xiaocai told Shen Chi that just so Shen Chi wouldn’t feel bad about eating it.

Shen Chi scooped a spoonful of jam into his mouth and said happily, “It’s really delicious.”

Chen Xiaocai took a bite and thought to himself, It is tasty, but maybe a bit too sweet. He was startled to realize that his own tastes were starting to align with Lu Lin’s, that picky eater.