MTL - The Peasant Girl’s Splendid Manor

 Chapter 1126 Ending Chapter 2

Xiao Ruiyuan made up his mind to get married in the first month of next year. Taking advantage of the fact that he didn't have to go to the Yamen to check in in the past few days, he tried his best to persuade Mo Yan. Mo Yan originally thought it didn't matter if he did it sooner or later, but in the end he couldn't resist Xiao Ruiyuan's strong offensive and finally nodded in agreement.

On the day of Mu Xiu, Mo Qingze returned home with his wife and children, and the two expressed their willingness to get married as soon as possible.

For Xiao Ruiyuan, the son-in-law, Mo Qingze went from being disgusted at first to reluctantly accepting him, and now he treats him as half a son.

　　The purpose of delaying the marriage between the two of them was to give Xiao Ruiyuan a final test. Now everything about Xiao Ruiyuan was to his liking, and his daughter spoke in person again. There was no point in procrastinating, so after some consideration, he happily agreed.

However, Xiao Ruiyuan did not expect that things would go so smoothly. In surprise, without thinking, he took out the old almanac he carried with him, pointed out the three auspicious days in the first month, and respectfully asked his father-in-law to choose.

Looking at this old almanac that was incompatible with the atmosphere, Mo Yan covered her face with her hands and turned her head silently, not wanting to face the teasing eyes of her family.

Mo Qingze's eyes twitched and he joked, "You are well prepared."

Xiao Ruiyuan's expression remained unchanged: "Marriage is an important matter, and Hanzhang dare not be careless."

When Mo Qingze heard this, he didn't know what to say, so he focused on the three auspicious days, and finally clicked on the nearest auspicious day, the twelfth day of the first lunar month: "Just this day, you can make it in time." Prepare?"

This date was completely unexpected by Xiao Ruiyuan. His face, which rarely showed any emotion, showed a rare look of gratitude: "Thank you, father-in-law, for making it possible. My son-in-law will prepare all the necessary matters before the year."

Mo Qingze snorted, the change of mouth went smoothly, but he would never pay for the change!

The wedding date was set, but the etiquette still had to go. Xiao Ruiyuan picked out an auspicious day from the old almanac. After obtaining Mo Qingze's consent, he used this day as a question date and would bring a matchmaker to the house to make it official. Set a wedding date and inform family and friends.

Xiao Ruiyuan got what he wanted, and he walked with wind in his eyes. When he went to the Yamen to order a meal on the first day after his vacation, all the subordinates in the Yamen were shocked to find that their iron-faced general actually smiled at them!

To say it was a smile was actually a bit exaggerated. Xiao Ruiyuan's expression was just much gentler than before, as if the ice that had condensed day after day on the lake had finally melted. Even though the water was still cold, it gave people a gentle feeling.

 Learning that this change was the result of the future general's wife and marquis' wife, these people all lamented that it is difficult for heroes to be beautiful, and even their iron-faced generals were not immune. They were all full of curiosity about the future general's wife.

 As the New Year approaches, affairs in the DPRK and China become more and more numerous, and there are also many large and small matters in the military. But no matter how busy he was, Xiao Ruiyuan would personally prepare the betrothal gifts for the Mo family as soon as he returned to the General's Mansion. Even the wedding room was slowly decorated by Xiao Shiyi and others according to his wishes.

According to the regulations of the Marquis Mansion, the dowry given to the head of the house must not exceed 150 taels. However, Mo Yan has a special status and enjoys the same rights as the princess of the clan. As long as the dowry does not exceed 180 taels, it will not be considered excessive.

Weiyuan Hou Mansion has been passed down for more than two hundred years. In Xiao Ruiyuan's hands, not to mention how much wealth the entire Hou Mansion has accumulated from generation to generation, his own private house alone has reached an astonishing level.

 Therefore, there are less than three months before the wedding, but it is not difficult for Xiao Ruiyuan to prepare a 150 yuan dowry gift. But he wanted to give his fiancée the best, so he searched around in the warehouse of Weiyuan Marquis Mansion and his own private room for a long time, and finally picked out a barely qualified 80 yuan betrothal gift.

With nearly half of the betrothal gift left, he planned to send his idle manpower to various places to replenish the betrothal gift bit by bit over the next two months.

Regarding their master's tyrant behavior, Xiao Shiyi and others expressed that they were forced to eat dog food, but they rushed to accept this task and made up their minds to find the best things to add to the future mistress's betrothal gift. , if you are lucky enough to catch the eye of the mistress, and if you accidentally anger the master, you will have someone to help put out the fire!

Xiao Ruiyuan never told Mo Yan all this. Mo Yan naturally didn't know that someone had gone to such great lengths to give her the best betrothal gift.

In the blink of an eye, it has entered the coldest winter month of the year. At this time, it has already snowed three times. Fortunately, there was no continuous snowstorm that caused the severe snowstorm last year, but the weather was very cold, not much better than last year's snowstorm. Mo Yan sat in the small room guarding the brazier every day, unwilling to step out of the house.

The five beasts who had put on a thick layer of fur also became lazy. When it was cloudy or rainy or snowy, they did not like to go out. They crowded in the small room to warm themselves by the fire, while waiting for Mo Yan to feed them, and ate delicious food. The roasted sweet potatoes and popcorn made our little life so pleasant!

“Sister Yan Yan, do you think all the accounts I made are correct?” After racking her brains, Li Yan finally prepared the accounts for the vegetables in the greenhouse this month for Mo Yan to review.

After Tang Xin took charge of the rice shop, the accounts of greenhouse vegetables were handed over to Li Yan. This was something Li Zhong proposed to Mo Yan. Compared to Tang Xin, Li Yan seems a little content with the status quo. She usually just does housework and embroidery. She has no plans for the future.

Li Zhong was stimulated by his daughter's unfortunate experience. He felt that it would be better for his daughter's family to know more things and not limit their sights to the world in front of them. Especially after seeing that Tang Xin, who was the same age as her granddaughter, was becoming more and more decisive and capable, she started to think about training her granddaughter.

It happened that someone needed to do the accounting of greenhouse vegetables, so Mo Yan handed it over to Li Yan. Under Li Zhong’s careful guidance, Li Yan got started quickly and is now doing a decent job.

Mo Yan took the account book and looked it over, pointing to a few mistakes in it and said: "It's not a big problem, just check these things out again."

After hearing this, Li Yan quickly checked it carefully, and finally said in annoyance while revising: "Sister Yan Yan, I was too careless. If you hadn't found out, and the money had been distributed according to this mistake, these families would have lost their money. What a loss."

Mo Yan consoled him: "With so many calculations, it's already good that you only made these few mistakes. You can do more careful accounting in the future."

“Hmm, I will check the accounts four or five times after finishing them to make sure I don’t make any more mistakes.” Li Yan clapped her hands and encouraged herself. After going through all the unaccustomed conditions of getting numb and dizzy when she saw the amount, she has been able to fully adapt to it and found a lot of fun in it.

Mo Yan smiled and encouraged Li Yan. After she finished revising, she picked up the account book and looked through it again. Seeing that the family who received the least amount of money last month also received thirty-nine taels, she said happily: " The profits from greenhouse vegetables this year are even better than last year, and everyone can have a good year."

Li Yan said happily: "This year's business is even more prosperous than last year. The previous village chief still regretted not expanding the planting area!"

Mo Yan shook his head: "No matter how profitable greenhouse vegetables are, we can't expand the planting without limit. Only when the supply exceeds demand can we sell them at a good price. If we grow too much, it won't be valuable anymore."

 If you are unfortunate enough to encounter a natural disaster, you will suffer huge losses. Last year, when there was a snowstorm, Dapeng Vegetables was forced to terminate its business only halfway through. At that time, it lost a lot of money to those merchants who signed the supply contract.

 Fortunately, vegetables are very profitable. After losing most of the money, the money we earned was still much more than the income from growing grain. Therefore, after this autumn harvest, Yang Bao asked Mo Yan on behalf of the villagers whether they could continue to grow greenhouse vegetables.

 Mo Yan intends to use greenhouse vegetables as a way for the entire Liuyang Village to get rich. After receiving this modest merit, he is naturally willing to use the Lingquan water to continue to help them grow greenhouse vegetables.

However, she also reminded the villagers involved in the planting in advance to be mentally prepared to deal with various natural disasters at any time. Once a snow disaster like last year occurs, causing greenhouses to be destroyed, vegetable production to be reduced or even impossible to grow, etc., they must not The responsibility is placed on the Mo family.

This is understandable, and dozens of villagers agreed without even thinking about it. This year has been going well. The vegetables were on the market a month ago. Now that the weather is getting colder, the demand for vegetables is getting bigger and bigger. Most restaurants in the capital have signed supply contracts with greenhouse vegetables in Liuyang Village.

Several towns near the capital enjoyed the benefits last year. Although they were only able to do half of their business due to the heavy snowstorm, they also saw the business opportunities brought by greenhouse vegetables, so this year before the greenhouse vegetables were planted, these people came to visit them again. Sign the contract.

However, this time, at Mo Yan's strong request, a small adjustment was made to the signed contract, that is, if natural disasters caused a reduction in vegetable production and resulted in a lack of supply, Liuyang Village would not be considered a breach of the agreement, and these people were not allowed to recover.

 Last year, in order to open the market as soon as possible, there was an unfair clause that "Liuyang Village will pay double compensation if the supply of vegetables is not caused by any factors." This year it will no longer be used.

Originally, the businessmen did not agree, but Mo Yan’s attitude was too tough and he refused to make any concessions. They were finally tempted by the huge profits from greenhouse vegetables and finally signed the contract.

Perhaps it was this premise that allowed Yang Bao to have the idea of ​​expanding the scale of planting without any burden.

After listening to Mo Yan’s words, Li Yan thought for a moment and said, “Sister Yan Yan, then remind the village chief and ask him to plant according to this year’s scale next year.”

Mo Yan smiled and said: "It's okay to expand the planting area in the past two years, but the limit of my budget is about 800 acres. If it exceeds this limit, the money earned may be less than half of what it is now. Once a natural disaster occurs, there will be serious losses."

"Less than half? No, it can't be..." Li Yan looked at Mo Yan in surprise, not quite understanding. In her opinion, even if the price is cheap, it can be made up for by quantity, so the income will not be much different.

Mo Yan had nothing to do, so she simply explained the truth to Li Yan in detail. As for how much she could learn from it, it was up to her.

Li Yan was fascinated by Mo Yan's explanation in simple and easy-to-understand terms. In the end, she really understood a lot. It also made her very interested in doing business, and she completely developed and improved in this direction.

 In the afternoon, Li Zhong sent over the winery’s account books for October. There are not many ledgers, only three. One is the winery’s income, one is the winery’s expenses, and one is next month’s budget.

At present, the only source of income for the winery is the various fruit wines placed in the wine cellar. In terms of expenditures, in addition to packaging expenditures such as wine bottles, bamboo baskets, and bamboo baskets, the expenditures of the orchards are also included, including Aunt Tong’s family. , 300 retired soldiers last year and more than 500 new arrivals this year.

Of the remaining more than 400 newly arrived and retired soldiers, 300 were placed in Zhuangzi, and more than 100 were placed in Yaoyuan. Their expenses came from Zhuangzi and Yaoyuan respectively.

In this way, the accounts of the three parties do not interfere with each other. However, in the middle of each month, the previous month's accounts, income and next month's budget must be sent to the Mo family for Mo Yan to review. After verification, she will send the next month's budget. The budget was allocated to Li Zhong, Guanshi Zhao, and Mu Bo.

Mo Yan did this not because she didn't trust these three people, but she was going to get married next year. This family property belonged to the Mo family. She had never thought of taking it away, and sooner or later it would be handed over to her parents.

 Having formed such a routine, it will be easier to take over. Furthermore, these three people are all older. Sooner or later, others will replace them. These people may not be reassuring. After all, the human heart is elusive, so Mo Yan has to prepare for a rainy day.

"Girl, there is nothing wrong with Zhuangzi's accounts. It's just that the New Year is coming. According to the old custom, everyone in Zhuangzi will get a new set of clothes. Manager Zhao may be too busy and forgot to add this budget." Uncle Huang took it. The account book from Zhuangzi that Manager Zhao sent yesterday came in and handed the problematic budget account book to Mo Yan.

Uncle Huang has worked as a housekeeper in a wealthy family and is also a good account settler. The Mo family has a small population and doesn't have many daily affairs, so he took the initiative to ask Mo Yan for help. So, Mo Yan asked him to help with the accounting books. The two of them could do the calculations much easier and faster than Mo Yan alone.

Mo Yan took the budget account book and looked at it, and found that Manager Zhao had omitted the budget for New Year's clothing and accessories, so he added it with a pen and added two hundred taels at the end. These two hundred taels are enough to buy new clothes for everyone in Zhuangzi.

"Uncle Huang, the accounts of the winery are a bit complicated. Please do some hard work and go over the accounts of the medicine garden!" Mo Yan took out the account book of the medicine garden and handed it to Uncle Huang: "If there are no problems, you can come to my place tomorrow. Withdraw the budgeted money and send it to medicine gardens and farms."

 The winery’s orders surged in October, and accounting was more troublesome than Zhuangzi and Yaoyuan combined. Mo Yan really couldn’t spare the time to read Yaoyuan’s account books.

"Yes, big lady!" Uncle Huang agreed quickly, stepped forward, took the account book, and stepped back respectfully.

 Mo rubbed his swollen forehead, and Mo Yan continued to hold the pen in one hand and the beads in the other, calculating the accounts at an astonishing speed.

"Yan Yan, just let me cast a spell on them. I promise I won't do any harm to them." Seeing that Mo Yan was too busy to speak to himself, Xue Tuanzi shouted in dissatisfaction.

“Even if it doesn’t hurt, it’s wrong to do this. Don’t think about it again.” Mo Yan refused Xue Tuanzi’s proposal without even thinking about it.

This guy can be said to be the embodiment of merit, but he has learned all kinds of "crooked" techniques! Okay, it's a bit serious to say that he is crooked, but his ability to control people's thoughts is a terrifying thing in itself.

In Mo Yan's impression, it seems that only the villains in mythical stories have this ability, and use this ability to harm others at will.

“Hmph, I offered to help you and you’re still not happy, so don’t ask me for help next time.” Xue Tuanzi hummed arrogantly, deciding not to talk to this ungrateful master for ten years.

What happened to the spell? There are good and bad spells! Could the spells used by Xue Tuanzi be the same as those crooked ways?

Seeing that Xue Tuanzi really didn't want to take care of him, Mo Yan was quite helpless. He wanted to patiently explain it clearly, but he didn't know how to tell it.

The spell the little guy mentioned is indeed harmless to the human body. Only when the person being cursed turns his back on the master will he be punished by the curse and will be noticed by the master. If you are loyal, you can share in the master's luck. Of course, if the owner is unlucky, so will they.

She didn't want Xue Tuanzi to cast a spell on Li Zhong and the others. Firstly, she couldn't get over it psychologically. These are real people, and their thoughts, good and bad, should not be controlled by others.

Secondly, she knew very well that it was better to find ways to control a person's heart than to control a person's thoughts. She has space, and living a long life is not a problem, but what about a hundred years later?

Hundred years later, she is no longer alive, and Xue Tuanzi will go with her, but there are still descendants of the Mo family. At that time, how can they control other people's thoughts once and for all?

If this kind of thing goes too far, will her descendants think that people's hearts will not change and that their own people will always turn toward themselves? If they are allowed to have such thoughts, then a family is not far from annihilation.

She sincerely hopes that the Mo family can last for hundreds of years, a thousand years or even longer like the Cui family, but the continuation and prosperity of a family can never be supported by external forces such as spells.​

Perception that Xue Tuanzi was still sulking, Mo Yan shook his head and laughed, simply ignored it and turned his attention to the accounts.

Previously, more than ten kinds of fruit wine were loved by most people at the full moon banquet of the emperor's eldest grandson. After more than two thousand boxes of wine were delivered to the ministers' houses, it didn't take long for the winery's orders to start to surge. In one month, more than two thousand boxes were sold, and one-tenth of the inventory was reduced.

 After entering November, the popularity has decreased slightly, but the sales volume is very stable, with an average of 80 boxes sold every day. In addition to buying them to drink for themselves, most of them are used as New Year gifts for relatives and friends.

Fruit wine is a new thing, and its quality is hard to choose. It will only be a matter of time before it becomes popular in the capital. If this continues, the batch of fruit wine brewed this year will be sold before the end of the year, and next year there will be no wine to sell before the new wine comes out.

 Although good business is good, being without wine for ten months is not good either. Mo Yan thought about it and decided to limit the purchase. Only ten boxes of wine would be sold every day. Buy on a first-come, first-served basis. Firstly, it can ensure that there will be wine to sell before the new wine comes out in the coming year. Secondly, this kind of "hungry sales" can keep the freshness and mystery of the fruit wine.

 (End of this chapter)