flstandardbreds Chapter 168 Malicious Competition Among Peers
Chapter 168 Malicious Competition Among Peers
Malicious competition among peers
A plume of smoke, swirling with sparks, rose into the air, and Chef Sun's copper ladle clattered onto the blue brick floor.
Su Yunlan crushed the last spark with the tip of her shoe, and the afterimage of the tiger tally scattered in the draft along with the ashes.
"Master, this stove..." Cook Sun's voice trembled as she was about to say something, but Young Master Xiao grabbed her apron and dragged her into the kitchen: "You've seen wrong!"
Fourth Sister-in-law said she was going to make Poria and Osmanthus Jelly, didn't she?
When Xiao Yuhan lifted the curtain and entered, he saw his wife pouring the jade beads from the glass cup into a copper basin.
The bottom of the crackled celadon basin was filled with snow water that hadn't melted the night before. With a crisp sound as the abacus beads fell into the water, she suddenly pulled a piece of crimson ore from her sleeve.
"Uncle Zhang really went all out, wrapping the saltpeter in fire-resistant cloth and burying it under the stove." Su Yunlan scraped some ochre powder off the surface of the ore with his fingertip. "It's a pity the cinnabar mixed in will turn acidic when heated—Twenty-first brother, have you retrieved the receipts from the pawnshop in the West Market?"
The young man hurriedly pulled out a yellowed mulberry paper. Xiao Yuhan's gaze swept over the words "Golden Silk Soft Armor" on the document, and he suddenly pressed down on his wife's hand, which was about to touch the ore: "Be careful of fire poison."
His rough calluses brushed against the silver bell on her wrist, and her skin, reddened by sodium sulfate the night before, began to itch slightly.
Su Yunlan then slipped the ore into his hand, saying, "Please trouble you, Fourth Brother, to take this to Zhao's Pawnshop for appraisal."
Before the morning mist had dissipated, the signboard of the Fulai Inn across the street suddenly changed to a red background with gold trim.
Boss Zhao stood behind the carved railing on the second floor, watching the oxcart delivering vegetables to Su's Inn suddenly turn around, a wisp of smoke rising from the pipe dangling from his lips.
"Listen up, neighbors!" He swung his jade-inlaid abacus as he walked to the center of the street. "Today, the Fulai Inn offers half-price drinks and free ice in the private rooms!" Several men in short clothes carried baskets covered with black cloth to Grandpa Qian's house, a few glints of silver light leaking out from the gaps in the bamboo baskets.
Grandpa Qian squatted beside the stone mill, holding his pipe, watching Su Yunlan and her assistant set up a pottery jar filled with the aroma of herbs in front of the door. "Young lady, are you trying to learn some kind of witch doctor's ritual by making all this soup and broth?" He deliberately flicked his pipe ash onto the bamboo tray where the herbs were drying.
As Xiao Yuhan passed by carrying a package of pine nut candy wrapped in oil paper, the candy pieces fell into the water splashed up by the earthenware jar and suddenly revealed golden thread patterns.
He casually remarked to a passing peddler carrying water, "I've heard that the sea salt Zhao's shop delivers will glow green when burned on a bluestone slab."
At noon that day, Su Yunlan hung a sandalwood plaque in front of the inn.
Twenty-eight glass jars contained medicinal soups of different colors, each with a bamboo tag bearing a tiger tally pattern pressed against its bottom. "With this tag, you can pick up two loads of new wheat at the Xiao family's estate." As she spoke, a silver bell on her wrist jingled softly, and the sea salt delivered by Boss Zhao gleamed eerily in the hidden compartment of the counter.
Grandpa Qian couldn't resist his curiosity in the end.
He stepped into the shop with the silver coins given to him by Boss Zhao, only to see Xiao Yuhan teaching the children to blow bubbles of medicinal soup with wheat straw.
As the colorful soap bubbles floated to the wind chimes on the eaves, Su Yunlan suddenly dipped a piece of roasted basalt into the medicinal soup in front of him.
"Grandpa, try this invigorating soup." She tapped her fingertips lightly on the rock surface, and an amber liquid seeped out from between the stone's veins. "It's wild ginseng rootlets simmered in cliff honey for three hours."
Grandpa Qian took a sip and suddenly his eyes widened. He could taste the locust honey that his late wife used to make twenty years ago in the soup.
He reached out with trembling hands to touch the silver coin hidden in his clothes, only to find that it had somehow turned into a dried magnolia petal.
As dusk painted the windowpanes red, Boss Zhao looked at the empty inn and smashed his pipe.
Across the street, the aroma of medicine wafted from Su Ji Inn. Grandpa Qian and half the neighbors from the street crowded around an eight-immortal table, watching Young Master Xiao use a jade abacus to print out petal-shaped bills for each dish.
Su Yunlan leaned against the well in the backyard, rubbing her aching wrist. Suddenly, a tall figure appeared in the reflection of the well water.
Xiao Yuhan placed the heated mugwort sachet on the back of her neck. Moonlight swept across the black iron token he had just put on his waist, which was covered with some cinnabar ink unique to Zhao's Pawnshop.
“Si Lang’s hands are warm.” She smiled and turned around, and a drop of water suddenly fell from the jade hairpin in her hair, landing on the scab of his unhealed arrow wound.
The night wind carried the noise from the front yard past the well, but no one saw half a charred fragment of a tiger tally floating in the culvert.
As moonlight spilled over the moss along the well's edge, paulownia leaves rustled against Xiao Yuhan's shoulder.
Su Yunlan's fingertips still held the warmth of the medicine pot when she was suddenly pulled into an embrace filled with the scent of pine needles.
The man's cloak had a hidden pocket that was digging into the back of her hand, and the outline of half a fragment of a tiger tally was faintly visible beneath the fabric.
"My twenty-first brother said he collected three cartloads of herbs today." Xiao Yuhan gently brushed his chin against the top of her hair, his Adam's apple brushing against the water droplets clinging to the jade hairpin. "The grain shop in the south of the city suddenly tripled its prices, was that Zhao's doing?"
Su Yunlan smiled and pulled out a glass bottle wrapped in gold thread. The spiritual spring water inside reflected their intertwined figures. "I had my twenty-first brother exchange aged mugwort leaves for the job of pest control in the granary." She suddenly tiptoed closer to her husband's ear, "But Fourth Brother, the cinnabar ink on the Xuan Tie token..."
The unfinished words were interrupted by a sudden bark from a dog.
From the front yard came the furious shout of Young Master Xiao: "Where did this stray dog come from that snatched the account book!" As the two hurried through the corridor, Su Yunlan caught a glimpse of half a piece of indigo clothing flashing against the wall—it was the cloud-patterned brocade that Boss Zhao's personal servant often wore.
Xiao Yuhan's movement of leaping onto the roof with his wife in his arms was even lighter than the night breeze.
Under the moonlight, the newly built low wall in Grandpa Qian's backyard gleamed with a strange bluish light, and the basalt shards soaking in the twenty-eight medicine jars all turned toward the direction of Fulai Inn.
The silver bell on Su Yunlan's wrist moved without wind, and the spiritual spring water seeped into Xiao Yuhan's collar along the hairpin, fading the last trace of purplish-black from the old arrow scar on his shoulder blade.
"Si Lang, can you sense..." Before she could finish speaking, the man suddenly grabbed her by the lower back, spun her around, and landed on the ground.
The moment their fingers intertwined, a dull thud came from the shadows of the sycamore trees as something heavy fell to the ground.
Young Master Xiao rushed over with a lantern in hand, and saw half a piece of moldy Poria cocos mixed in with the broken porcelain on the ground.
"The Kitchen God has appeared!" the boy exclaimed, holding up the blackened mushroom. "Just now, this Poria cocos suddenly exploded in the steamer..." Su Yunlan used her silver hairpin to pick up the mycelium and sniffed it. Frosty ice crystals instantly condensed on the hairpin tip—it was the unique cold poison from Boss Zhao's pawnshop cellar.
Xiao Yuhan took off his cloak and wrapped it around his wife's trembling shoulders, the warmth of his palm seeping through the mugwort sachet into her back: "Tomorrow, have Twenty-First Brother set up a medicine stall in front of the inn." He traced the newly cracked lines on the glass bottle with his fingertips, "Just say that the Xiao family wants mugwort roots that are over twenty years old."
When the second watch gong sounded, Su Yunlan was grinding ink by the window of the accounting room.
Suddenly, several Kongming lanterns floated in from the direction of Zhao's Pawnshop, each lantern shade painted with a crooked Pixiu pattern.
Her brush, dipped in ink, paused on the rice paper, the ink spreading out to resemble the missing right half of the tiger tally.
When Xiao Yuhan came in carrying the medicine bowl, he saw his wife folding the ruined Xuan paper into paper boats.
The boat, soaked in the spiritual spring water, floated in the copper basin and drifted southwest against the current.
He reached out to grab it, but the paper boat suddenly burst into flames of bluish-green, revealing a broken copper coin pattern in the ashes.
"Does Silang remember..." Su Yunlan's words were swallowed by a sudden embrace.
The man's calloused hand covered the back of her neck, the scent of medicine mixed with his body heat silencing all unspoken words.
The copper bells on the eaves suddenly rang, and a red firework exploded in the southwest sky, a signal used when the border was in dire need of reinforcements.
The moonlight suddenly dimmed by a third.
When Xiao Yuhan released his wife, his sleeve accidentally knocked over the glass cup containing pine nut candy.
The sugar-coated nuts rolled to the bottom of the display shelf, stopping right where Grandpa Qian had sat yesterday.
Su Yunlan bent down to pick it up and found half a piece of indigo brocade stuck in the gap between the legs of the stand—the edge of the cloud pattern was stained with the agarwood that Boss Zhao loved most.
From the front yard came Young Master Xiao's panicked shouts, saying that the wooden frame of the medicine stall was suddenly crawling with poisonous ants.
As Su Yunlan ran out, lifting her skirt, the jade hairpin in her hair suddenly fell to the ground.
Xiao Yuhan bent down to pick it up and saw that the tiger-shaped pattern engraved on the end of the hairpin matched the fragment in the hidden pocket of the cloak perfectly.
The night wind swept withered leaves across the stone steps, and no one noticed that at the base of the wall in the southwest corner, fresh moss covered twenty-eight pinhole-sized holes.
The medicinal liquid seeping from the hole glowed with an eerie phosphorescence, gradually forming a crooked "Zhao" character.