CHAPTER 246: CHAPTER 245: A DIFFERENT PRICE EVERY DAY

Yu Xiaolian interrupted Mrs. Sun, "Mother, in any case, you can’t just make promises or agree to anything with them, and we can’t just support them for nothing at our home either.

We’ll discuss the details together when my father gets back tonight."

Mrs. Sun nodded, "Mother understands."

Recently, salt is expensive, grain is expensive, cotton is expensive, everything is expensive, Mrs. Sun is aware.

Before, it was always Yu Xiaolian who went out to buy things, so Mrs. Sun didn’t feel it, but with Yu Xiaolian being away these couple of months, Mrs. Sun has watched the prices rise day by day. Grain, salt, and some essentials almost have a daily-changing price.

In less than half a month, all the grain in their shop was sold out.

With so many people suddenly coming to the Sun Family, just feeding them every day takes quite a lot, and Mrs. Sun is starting to feel a bit of a headache.

Old Master Sun and Fourth Master Sun sent a few daughters-in-law to help with the cooking and even told Yu Xiaolian that if there was any work, she could go ahead and have them do it.

The family was already too busy, so Yu Xiaolian was not shy about it.

She arranged for them to light fires, cook, fetch water, wash clothes, feed horses, and chop firewood.

Yu Xiaolian squeezed in some time to take a quick, efficient bath, changed clothes, and then headed to Taotao Residence.

Zhao Erya saw Yu Xiaolian and was so shocked that her jaw almost dropped, "Girl, why have you lost so much weight? Did you come back so early because you didn’t receive the Sun Family members?"

"We received them. I ran into them in Weicheng; otherwise, it would have taken over a month, almost two months, to return.

We came back by carriage; if we were walking, there would have been no end."

Yu Xiaolian gave each shelf a glance, noticing that aside from some daily chemical goods, everything else was sold out.

"Let’s close up for today and restock tonight."

Even with restocking, she didn’t plan to sell food anymore. She had seen too many shortages of grain along the way, and the Government was now stringent about checking the source of grain. They had no procurement channels, yet they kept selling grain, wouldn’t that invite suspicion?

As for food pastries or snacks, she planned to stop selling those for now and only sell some daily necessities and items with a longer shelf life.

Yu Xiaolian opened a jar of shampoo and saw that the edges had solidified into hard clumps, so she said to Zhao Erya, "Take all these items off the shelves, throw away what’s inside later, clean out the jars, and they can be reused."

Zhao Erya exclaimed, "Throw them away? How can we? We’ve struggled to fill the jars and painstakingly labeled and sealed them."

"Things kept for a long time don’t work as well. We can’t sell them to customers, or it’ll affect our brand’s reputation later.

We don’t have to throw them away. You could pour them into a large jar and save them for the Sun family daughters-in-law to use."

Zhao Erya took a scoop with her hand and found that the stuff had indeed deteriorated a bit; the paste wasn’t as silky as when it was freshly packed and had hardened slightly.

"But we still have some unsold stock in the backyard."

"No worries, pour it all out!" Yu Xiaolian walked to the counter and checked the ledger.

Although Zhao Erya had followed Yu Xiaolian to study characters for a few months, she would draw circles or pictures whenever she encountered a word she couldn’t write.

Yu Xiaolian flipped through while asking, "How much have we earned these two months?"

Zhao Erya actually did not know. She had counted but hadn’t figured it out.

She took out a piece of white paper pressed inside the ledger, pointed it to Yu Xiaolian, "Aunt Yu took sixty taels of silver’s worth of cotton and fabric from the store; Uncle Yu took some for green bricks for building a house...

Besides what they took, the remaining is all here."

Zhao Erya pulled out a money box from under the counter, which contained a few scattered pieces of broken silver and some copper coins.

Yu Xiaolian frowned. These silvers probably weren’t even enough for small change in the store; her mother had left too little in the shop.

Yu Xiaolian tallied up the silver taken by her parents, totaling over four hundred taels in two months.

Yu Xiaolian sighed, "Let’s close up and come with me back to Xiangyang Lane. It’s chaotic over there, and I need someone close by my side."

When Yu Xiaolian brought Zhao Erya to Xiangyang Lane, Xiaohu and Su Jingyue had already returned from school.

Su Jingyue went to whisper with Su Jingchen, while Xiaohu kept waiting at the door for Yu Xiaolian.

"Sister Xiaolian, where’s my master?"

Yu Xiaolian naturally couldn’t say that the Li Family brothers were taken away by Prince Jin, so she made up a reason, saying the Li brothers encountered their relatives, and she let the brothers reunite with them.

Xiaohu looked disappointed. He had been diligently training every day, waking up early and staying up late, just so his master could see he wasn’t lazy and had made progress.

Recognizing his master for only two and a half days, and after a trip with Sister Xiaolian, he’s gone, leaving Xiaohu quite unhappy.

Sun Manzhi came over to pull on Xiaohu’s hand, "Brother Hu, let’s go build a snowman?"

Xiaohu glanced at the thin layer of snow on the ground, "What kind of snowman can we build with this little snow? More like a pile of poop!"

Besides, he still had homework to do; after finishing his homework, he still had to train with Su Jingyue!

"You go ahead, I have to practice my calligraphy." Xiaohu walked away dejectedly.

Xiaohu ignored him, and Sun Manzhi felt a bit sad. They were the best of friends before, but why had Brother Hu changed?

Yu Xiaolian had Zhao Erya take a large portion of pork to the kitchen.

Then she returned to her room, although she often stayed in the back courtyard of Taotao Residence, she also kept a room in Xiangyang Lane.

Seeing the door open, Yu Xiaolian thought it was Gao Qiao who came to pour her bath water and forgot to close the door.

But unexpectedly, it was Sun Manyu and a few other little girls in her room.

The little girls were sitting on her bed, chatting and laughing.

When they saw Yu Xiaolian enter, the others stopped laughing, got down from the bed, put on their shoes, and stood carefully to one side.

Only Sun Manyu sat cross-legged, unmoved.

She didn’t intend to move. Her Aunt Chunfang had told them to choose rooms for themselves to stay in, and the moment she pushed open this room’s door, she knew she wanted this one.

There were pink curtains in the room, a fragrant smell, and the patterns on the bed were ones she had never seen before. She liked this room.

Sun Manyu didn’t immediately decide to stay in this room, she checked the other rooms first and confirmed this was the best room, only then did she decide to stay here.

As for the other girls, it was Sun Manyu who had invited them over to show off, as none of the rooms they had chosen were as good as hers.

Yu Xiaolian coldly eyed Sun Manyu, "This is my room!"

In fact, after seeing the other rooms, Sun Manyu had guessed a bit in her heart, but she didn’t intend to let Yu Xiaolian have this room.

Putting up with her on the road was another matter, but now they had arrived.

What was there to be afraid of?

Sun Manyu swaggered as she angered Yu Xiaolian, "Aunt Chunfang told us to choose whatever we wanted!"

Yu Xiaolian sneered, "Did my mother say choose any room in the side building? Don’t you know the difference between the main house and the side building? Besides, you don’t intend to sleep in a room by yourself, do you? We don’t have that many rooms in my house."

Sun Manyu jumped off the bed, "Who are you trying to fool? Earlier, I heard Aunt Chunfang say that this residence has four courtyards this size, enough for each of us to have our own room."