TATLC Chapter 39 — The Return of Spring

The mule cart moved slowly along the mountain path, and Lu Lin pulled his clothes tighter around himself.

They were almost at the town, so Lu Lin took out several jars of wine from the convenience store and stuffed them into the mule cart.

With all those wine jars suddenly crammed into the cart, it became much more cramped, and Chen Xiaomi had to pull his feet up.

Lu Lin was already well-acquainted with Manager Wang of Hongyun Restaurant, so after the mule cart reached the restaurant, they went straight to the back courtyard.

Manager Wang was somewhat interested in the new wine Lu Lin brought, but he offered a lower price, only three hundred wen per jar.

Although it was quite a bit less than the beer, the profit was still pretty good, so Lu Lin happily agreed.

He sold ten jars of beer and thirty jars of sweet potato wine to them, and Lu Lin collected another seventeen taels of silver.

Getting the silver made Chen Xiaomi happy. He held the silver and felt like it wasn’t real. Before Lu Lin came into their family, earning silver seemed really difficult, but after Lu Lin joined them, making ten or so taels at once didn’t seem like such a hard thing anymore.

At first, when they started selling alcohol to make money, Chen Xiaomi would get excited for several days. Now he was gradually getting used to it.

After selling the wine, Chen Xiaomi went to the fabric shop to buy some cloth.

Chen Xiaomi felt like he’d been influenced by Lu Lin, this spendthrift, and was starting to like buying things randomly too.

Chen Xiaomi looked at Lu Lin. “Why did you make me buy so much cloth?”

Lu Lin inspected the cloth and said, “This cloth is good stuff! We can take it back and have someone make a few new clothes.” Lu Lin had essentially been kicked out by the Lu family. When Lu Lin was carried out of the Lu house, he didn’t have time to pack his clothes either.

After Lu Lin joined Chen Xiaomi’s family, all the clothes made for him were thick winter clothes.

In his current situation, it was impossible for him to go back to the Lu house to get his old clothes, so naturally everything had to be made new.

The original owner’s clothes were all patched up anyway, and Lu Lin looked down on them to begin with.

Chen Xiaomi rolled his eyes. A young master would always be a young master. Most farming families wore the same clothes for years, mending them over and over. Who else but Lu Lin would be so extravagant?

But since Lu Lin could make money, being a bit extravagant was fine.

“Spring is still far off, there’s no need to make clothes so early.”

Lu Lin smiled. “Everyone’s free right now, but once spring comes, it’ll be busy spring season again.”

Chen Xiaomi blinked. “That’s true!” Grandma Shen’s family also had several acres of land, so when busy spring season came, she probably wouldn’t have time to make clothes for them.

The winter days passed peacefully and uneventfully.

Lu Lin didn’t have much to do, so he spent his days researching different foods.

Lu Lin made a dish of braised pork with bamboo shoots, and the Chen brothers were practically drooling over it.

Chen Xiaomi found it strange that a young master like Lu Lin preferred lean meat over fatty cuts. Even when buying meat in town, he always picked the leanest pieces.

Chen Xiaomi’s little treasury unknowingly grew to one hundred and thirty taels.

Their business with Hongyun Restaurant became more secretive. The villagers knew Chen Xiaomi was selling alcohol, but they didn’t know how much silver he was making.

The Chen brothers had a very comfortable winter, and their faces became much more rosy.

The villagers here rarely got to eat meat all year round, and most of them looked somewhat sallow. When Lu Lin first transmigrated here, he also looked malnourished. After one winter, all of them looked much healthier.

When the weather got a bit warmer, many farmers started heading to their fields.

They didn’t have land, so they stayed home and brewed sweet potato wine together. During winter, Lu Lin had been lazy and hadn’t brewed sweet potato wine many times, so there were still lots of sweet potatoes stored in the convenience store.

“Should we go hunting now?”

Chen Xiaomi shook his head. “Hunters basically don’t go hunting at this time.”

Lu Lin asked in confusion, “Why?”

Chen Xiaomi looked at Lu Lin and suddenly realized that even this scholar Lu Lin had things he didn’t know, which felt kind of amazing. “It’s spring now, wild animals are having babies. Hunting has to wait a while longer.”

Lu Lin suddenly understood. “Oh, right!”

Chen Xiaomi looked at Lu Lin, thinking, This scholar can be pretty clueless sometimes.

Lu Lin and Chen Xiaomi made several trips to town to deliver sweet potato wine. These few times they went to town, they sold more sweet potato wine. The beer was selling one bottle less each time, which made Chen Xiaomi feel reluctant. Once the beer was gone, there’d be no more.

At first, when villagers saw the two of them going to town, they thought it was a bit strange, but after a long time, they got used to it.

With more and more silver around them, Chen Xiaomi would also ask around about farmland in the village. However, Lu Lin was more interested in shops in town. Dashi Village had no farmland for sale, and while other villages had some, those plots would basically be sold to people from their own village, and it was very hard for outsiders to get in.

Seeing this situation, Chen Xiaomi could only continue saving silver and wait for an opportunity.