You are unlucky and I am tough

Chapter 181 Brother Xiuwen is better at studying than him

It took Wei Changgui, his two sons, a day and a half to plow one acre of land each. They were so tired that their backs ached and their hands were blistered.

Cheng Shuang kept her word and bought all the land of their family. After receiving more than 39 taels of silver from the sale of the land, Wei Changgui took his two sons and rushed to the city to find ways to do business.

Cheng Shuang immediately started to build a soap workshop. They directly found the manager of the craftsman team that was building a house for Cheng Lao Xiucai across the street and contracted out the entire workshop.

The workshop is entirely built with blue bricks. There are ten rooms of about 40 square meters arranged in two rows. The five in the front are used to make soap, and the five in the back are used as warehouses for storing finished products.

The next day, the manager brought a team of craftsmen into the village to start laying the foundation and making adobe bricks. According to their requirements, they first built a circle of wall on the outer circle.

With a professional construction team, all you have to do is pay the money and you don’t have to worry about anything else.

On the third day, Cheng Shuang asked Peng Jiang to get the mold and buy lard early in the morning. Then she went up the mountain with a few sisters to pick mushrooms. They went to Yunxi Mountain, their own mountain.

Now is the warm and humid monsoon climate. Several nearby mountains and forests have abundant rainfall and lush vegetation. There are a large number of pine trees, fir trees, mulberry trees and cypress trees, all of which are suitable for the reproduction of shiitake mushrooms, so a lot of shiitake mushrooms grow in the mountains.

However, the common people call the shiitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, porcini mushrooms, chicken leg mushrooms and other common mushrooms in the mountains "jungles".

The four of them went up the mountain and carefully searched for mushrooms in the forest, using sticks to push aside the grass and pull away fallen leaves.

Yunxi Mountain is not very steep, and there are various wild fruit trees halfway up the mountain, but they are not ripe yet.

Cheng Shuang and her three sisters walked slowly along a damp path, occasionally using branches to move the vegetation on the roadside, but they couldn't find any mushrooms after searching for a long time.

Cheng Pan was carrying a backpack, "Sister, we should go to another mountain. There are more mushrooms there, but not here."

Cheng Shuang looked around and said, "Let's look for it again. This is our own hilltop. If we can find it, we can enclose a piece of land, get some rotten wood, and grow mushrooms ourselves."

Qiuyan asked curiously, "Can these mushrooms be cultivated by themselves?"

"of course."

Dongyun picked up a stick and turned over the fallen leaves. "Cousin, I wanted to ask you yesterday, how did you know that the mushrooms we picked up were called shiitake mushrooms?"

"Of course my master told me that." Cheng Shuang brought up the master she had made up out of thin air again, "My master is not only a miraculous doctor, but he also knows everything about astronomy and geography. He knows everything and can do everything."

Dongyun was full of admiration, "How amazing, like a god."

"That's right, my master is not only a god but also a treasure." Cheng Shuang was proud. It was so wise of her to invent a master in the first place. She could push any problem to him.

The few of them chatted while searching in the mountains for about half an hour. Finally, Cheng Pan found a few mushrooms under the roots of a tree.

She first gently brushed away the weeds and fallen leaves around with her hands, then squatted on the ground and gently pinched the stem of the mushroom with her thumb and index finger, twisting it with a little force, moving very gently for fear of damaging the mushroom.

Qiuyan and Dongyun also went to help and picked six or seven.

After walking a little further, they came to a small basswood forest. There were many fallen trees scattered on the ground. They had all rotted, and mushrooms were growing all over the rotten wood.

"It really exists, I found it, I found it!"

The three sisters were very excited and ran over to see that the mushrooms on the ground were big and plump.

Cheng Shuang was also a little surprised. She originally just wanted to try her luck, but she didn't expect it to really work.

Looking at the mushrooms scattered all over the ground, Cheng Shuang said to her sisters, "Pick the mature ones. Wait a few days for the ones that are still growing. Pick the mature ones and dry them in the sun, otherwise they will rot. Be careful not to damage the mushroom beds."

"Yeah, we get it."

"There are so many here, and if we dry them, they will be enough for our family to eat for a year."

"Yes, and they are quite big."

Each person had a backpack, and the four of them were so busy that their backs ached. They had not yet picked all the fruits even though the four backpacks they brought up the mountain were full. But since there was nothing left to carry, they had to go down the mountain first.

They couldn't finish so many mushrooms at once, so they had to wash them and drain the water before drying them. The four of them carried the things down the mountain and washed the mushrooms with running water in a stream near their home.

While washing things, Cheng Shuang was thinking about whether the humidity in the forest was suitable and whether she should cultivate some other mushrooms. Then she looked up and found a carriage entering the village.

The old scholar's family had not moved back yet, and her family was the only one in the village with a carriage, but Cheng Shuang could tell at a glance that the carriage was not hers.

From a distance, I saw a carriage parked under the locust tree at the entrance of the village. A man dressed as a servant went under the tree and asked the villagers a few questions, and then the carriage continued into the village.

Cheng Shuang only guessed in her mind whether he was here to find Zhao Xiuwen, and then she didn't take it to heart.

The carriage finally stopped at the door of Mr. Cheng's house. Hu Chunhua and her daughter Cheng Xiaohe were wrapping hay at the door. When they saw a man in his forties or fifties wearing an indigo robe getting off the carriage, they looked around curiously.

The man stepped forward and asked, "Is this the home of Cheng Caijun, the student?"

When Hu Chunhua heard her beloved son's name, she stood up and said, "Yes, yes, this master is looking for my son?"

The man stroked his beard and said, "My surname is Song, and I am the headmaster of Yunhe Academy. I would like to meet Cheng Tongsheng."

"Yun...Yunhe Academy!" Hu Chunhua couldn't help but exclaimed.

Ever since she moved to the new village, she has been worrying about Cheng Caijun's choice of academy. She has asked around in the county and provincial capital, but Cheng Caijun said he doesn't like any of them. He knew that Zhao Xiuwen wanted to wait until the results of the college entrance examination came out before choosing a academy, so he had the same idea and wanted to wait until he was on the list before trying to get into Yunhe Academy.

Recently, Cheng Caijun had been making frequent trips to the capital to make friends with local scholars, hoping to establish a good reputation among the scholarly community. Hu Chunhua also inquired about Yunhe Academy. As a village woman, she knew little else, except that it had produced many high-ranking officials and that it required a monthly salary of eight taels of silver.

Although the price scared her so much that she almost had a nightmare at night, when she thought that her son would become a rare talent in the future as long as he entered Yunhe Academy, Hu Chunhua decided to spend any amount of money as long as he could get in.

"My son is reading in the room. Please come in." Hu Chunhua excitedly pushed open the door and shouted inside, "Dad, bring the tea, the best tea. We have a distinguished guest."

After shouting, she ran straight to her son's room, "Jun'er, my dear, people from Yunhe Academy are here, come out quickly."

Cheng Caijun spent a lot of money from his family to make friends with the literati and students in the city. Hu Chunhua now thought that the reputation of his son, the star of literature, had spread in the city, so the talents from the academy came to him in person.

The village became lively in the afternoon. Hu Chunhua was shouting throughout the village that her beloved son had been selected and enrolled in Yunhe Academy.

After showing off in the village, she ran proudly to Feng Tiegen's house to find her daughter.

The monthly tuition fee for Yunhe Academy is eight taels of silver. Hu Chunhua does not have so much money at the moment, but she has already made up her mind.

The Feng family is rich, and her daughter is pregnant now. It is not difficult for her to ask the Feng family for one or two hundred taels of silver.

When Cheng Shuang heard the news, she was grinding dried soapberries and soapberries into powder with a mortar and pestle at home. When she came back with the news, Cheng Chen asked her, "Sister, is Yunhe Academy that great?"

"That's probably the case. The teachers are good and the reputation is great. Anyone who can read wants to get in."

Cheng Chen blinked his eyes in confusion, "For such a good academy, why would he choose my cousin over Brother Xiuwen? Brother Xiuwen is more knowledgeable than him. I even heard Master Shen tell Brother Xiuwen that it would not be difficult for him to take first place in the academy exam."

Cheng Shuang paused and asked in surprise, "Master Shen also said this?"

"Yeah." Cheng Chen nodded. "That's what Master Shen said the day I went to say goodbye. Xiao Si was running around so I went to look for him. I heard them talking by the pool. Master Shen also said that only by holding the power of decision-making can the scales of fairness tilt in the direction we want. This is my lifelong wish, and I am willing to dedicate everything to it.

He also gave Brother Xiuwen a jade pendant. The pattern on the jade pendant is..."

"Chen'er..."

Cheng Shuang covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish, looked back and saw that the two cousins ​​closest to him were drying mushrooms and didn't pay attention to this side, so she turned back.

She looked at her brother seriously and lowered her voice, "Chen'er, remember what I said... You can't tell anyone about what Master Shen and Zhao Xiuwen said. Also, don't mention the jade pendant either. Forget it all."

Cheng Chen, with his mouth covered, looked at the serious expression on his sister's face and nodded repeatedly.