That afternoon, Madman Tang’s card-playing friends all came over, but he said he did not feel like playing and told Xue Ci to take his place. The others, however, did not want to play with Xue Ci. After all, playing cards with someone who had not yet come of age meant they could not gamble with real money, and without money at stake there was little point.
He Yi spotted Cen Pu among the group and remembered that when the village head had talked about buying lumber, he had mentioned Cen Pu at first, only to change his mind later and tell He Yi to seek out Carpenter Wu Tong in Wujia Village instead.
Perhaps it was some kind of instinct, but since Cen Pu happened to be there, He Yi took the opportunity to ask whether his family had any lumber for sale.
Cen Pu had looked rather listless among the card players. Hearing He Yi’s question, he froze for a moment, then turned toward him. “You want to buy lumber?”
He Yi nodded.
Only then did Cen Pu fully turn around. Under the puzzled gazes of the others, he led He Yi somewhere quieter, found a stone stool, and sat down with him to ask in detail what kinds of lumber He Yi needed and what his requirements were.
The moment they sat down, Xue Ci followed them over. Cen Pu’s expression became slightly strange when he saw him, and he asked He Yi, “You’re letting him listen too?”
“Let him.” He Yi knew Xue Ci was simply bored and curious about everything, eager to learn whatever he could. He just did not know why Cen Pu seemed to mind.
Cen Pu only mentioned it once and said nothing more afterward. Xue Ci had already climbed onto the tallest stone stool and squatted there, hugging his knees.
He Yi needed quite a few different kinds of lumber. First, he needed planks or wooden posts to brace the walls during rammed-earth construction. Second was the timber for the earthen house’s most important internal structure, the beams and frame. A large amount would be needed for that, and the quality requirements were high. Third was lumber for secondary structures such as the chicken coop and pigpen. He planned to buy that portion in batches depending on the cost rather than settling everything at once.
Cen Pu said, “My family brought in a batch of lumber before and it’s all still sitting there. We’ve got everything you’re asking for. Whenever you’re free, I can take you over to have a look.”
“What’s your quote?”
“What’s a ‘quote’?” Cen Pu did not understand.
“The price of the lumber. How do you calculate it?”
Understanding dawned on Cen Pu. He carefully explained the prices for different kinds and sizes of timber, then gave He Yi a rough total of nearly one tael and four hundred wen.
“That feels too expensive.” He Yi had little idea what lumber normally cost in this dynasty, so he had no proper basis for comparison, but it was considerably higher than what he had expected to spend. It seemed he would still have to make a trip to Wujia Village and see what the prices were like there.
“That’s not expensive at all! Our family’s lumber is famous for being good. Sanding it down, brushing it with tung oil, which part of that doesn’t cost money? Plenty of sellers outside won’t even process it for you unless you pay an extra fee! Don’t be fooled by how nicely they talk at first or how low the price sounds. Once they get you into their trap, you won’t be able to back out even if you want to! They keep squeezing our family’s business. This time they ruined another deal for us, and now we’ve got a huge pile of lumber sitting around with nowhere to go!” Cen Pu abruptly became extremely agitated. By the end, he had actually stood up on the stone stool, his voice trembling. He truly seemed furious.
He Yi and Xue Ci, sitting opposite him, both looked up at him in surprise.
After a moment, Cen Pu finally realized he had lost control of himself. He hurriedly sat back down and gave an embarrassed smile. “How about this, then? The price is negotiable. I’ll see where I can shave some of it off for you.”
He Yi quietly studied him before saying, “When you say ‘they,’ you mean Carpenter Wu’s family in Wujia Village?”
Cen Pu immediately grew restless. In the end, he decided there was no point hiding it and admitted it outright. “Yes, I’m talking about their family. They’ve got people backing them. They can’t stand seeing our business do better than theirs, so they’ll think of every possible way to steal our customers, even if it means taking a loss. Because of them, our lumber keeps getting stuck in our hands with no way to sell it! It’s been two years! This sort of thing keeps happening over and over! Customers come asking for large quantities, and if we don’t have enough stock in the warehouse, we have no choice but to cut fresh timber. Every batch takes half a year to prepare. Then when the time comes and we haul it over, those people suddenly say they don’t want it anymore, that they’ve already bought lumber somewhere else. All we can do is haul it back and pile it up! We’re running out of space to store it!”
“So we end up having to sell some of it dirt cheap. All the effort and painstaking work our whole family put into it, forget earning it back, we can barely even keep ourselves fed. My father keeps telling me to stop doing this. My wife says the same thing… I…” The more Cen Pu spoke, the more overwhelmed he became. At last, he simply covered his face, too choked up to continue.
He Yi thought for a moment. “The customers who change their minds and refuse the order don’t have to compensate you?”
Cen Pu paused. “Everything’s agreed on verbally, and the deposit is only ten wen. We do this kind of business through personal relationships and trust. That’s how this trade has always worked, and nothing like this used to happen. It only started happening all the time after those people in Wujia Village got into the lumber business!”
“Have you ever wondered why those customers still place orders with you?” He Yi asked slowly. “If the Wu family has already built up its reputation, why wouldn’t they simply buy from them in the first place? Once or twice could be explained away, but if this keeps happening, could the Wu family be giving certain people some kind of benefit and deliberately sending them to place orders with you?”
“What?!” Cen Pu was utterly stunned. Then he fell into deep thought, and after thinking it over, he seemed to understand something. The astonishment on his face gradually transformed into extreme fury.
Xue Ci tilted his head as well, looking rather curious.
He Yi said, “If you want to stop getting cheated like this, I suggest drawing up written agreements with your customers. If they refuse the lumber afterward, treat it as a breach of contract and require them to compensate you with twice the value of the lumber.”
“Would they agree to that…? Isn’t that too much compensation?”
“If they really are people sent by the Wu family, they’ll agree no matter how outrageous the terms are. If the connections backing the Wu family are in town, then they probably won’t take a contract like yours seriously anyway.”
“Then I still wouldn’t be able to collect the compensation, would I?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” He Yi told him plainly. “But if a customer refuses to sign an agreement like that, you can filter them out before doing business with them. Maybe you’ll eventually come across someone who genuinely wants to buy lumber from you.”
“Who would there even be after all these years…?”
He Yi leisurely pointed at himself.
Cen Pu stared at him, dumbfounded. “Aren’t you afraid of offending them?”
“I was born in Chongzi Village, and you’re from the same village. If your family’s lumber business does well, it benefits our fellow villagers too. They’re engaging in vicious competition, and you certainly can’t be the only person unhappy with them. Sooner or later, they’ll run into someone they can’t push around and ruin themselves. Why should I waste my time and energy dealing with people like that?”
“More importantly, buying from someone in the same village is convenient. Whenever I need more lumber, I can simply buy it from your family. You’re nearby, so you can deliver it quickly too. Going all the way to Wujia Village is troublesome. It’s nearly as far as going to town.”
Cen Pu could not quite describe what he was feeling. His chest simply felt full. After calming himself, he and He Yi continued discussing the price, working out where lower-grade timber could be used and where the quantities could be reduced.
“If you think that works, then let’s go look at the lumber now,” Cen Pu said with a sincere smile.
He Yi agreed. He turned and lightly patted Xue Ci, who looked as though he was about to fall asleep from listening, and asked whether he wanted to come along.
“I’m sleepy.” Xue Ci rubbed his eyes.
“Then go lie down in my room for a while. I’ll come back and find you after I’ve looked at the lumber.”
“Okay… ao.” Xue Ci answered through a yawn, then turned, passed through the moon gate, and headed straight for He Yi’s room.
He Yi was amused by the sound he made. Only after Xue Ci disappeared from sight did he leave the Tang residence with Cen Pu.
Along the way, Cen Pu told him a great deal about the feud between the two families, leaving He Yi even more convinced that he had made the right choice. Cen Pu did not hide his emotions very well, so his temperament was fairly easy to read. He was somewhat impatient, but honest and genuinely kindhearted.
After looking over the lumber, He Yi found that it really was excellent quality. At this price, Cen Pu truly had not been trying to cheat him, and the amount was not unreasonable at all. Cen Pu also knew what other places charged and told He Yi those prices as well.
With something to compare against, Cen Pu’s price seemed even fairer.
In the end, Cen Pu lowered it further, bringing the total down to one tael and one hundred twenty wen. He also helped He Yi refine some of his plans for the materials needed to build the frame and carry out the rammed-earth construction. He Yi was naturally very grateful. Just like that, the two of them genuinely became friends.
Afterward, Cen Pu really did start keeping himself busy. He rarely came to the Tang residence to fool around with the other card players anymore, unless he happened to have some free time and deliberately came over to chat with He Yi for a while. But that was a story for later.
Late that afternoon, He Yi went to the fields as usual. There, he heard some villagers working in a neighboring plot say that earlier that morning, Zhang Lanlan’s husband had called her a thief and slapped her hard enough to swell her face. Her father, who had come over from another village, just happened to witness it. The two families had gotten into a terrible argument, and because their house happened to stand right in the middle of the village, half the village had rushed over to watch the commotion.
Someone from another village? He Yi’s first thought was, It couldn’t possibly be that much of a coincidence. Surely it wasn’t Zhang Xing.
Then the villagers mentioned that Zhang Lanlan’s father had arrived driving an ox cart. Who else could it be? Nine times out of ten, it had been Zhang Xing.
He heard that although the atmosphere at the time had been extremely tense and Zhang Xing had nearly beaten his son-in-law several times, in the end, he had held himself back.
“How could he really hit him? If he beat the man now, what would happen to his daughter? The moment her father left, she’d probably get an even worse beating.”
“Her father too, honestly. He came without even giving them any warning! Otherwise, they definitely wouldn’t have hit his daughter today.”
“If it were me, I couldn’t bear it either. His daughter’s such a good girl. How could her father not be anxious?”
“With so many people from our village standing around them, it would’ve been hard to clean things up if he really started fighting!”
“…” He Yi did not know what to say. Only last night, Zhang Xing had been telling him how obedient his daughter was and how much she cared for both her mother and him. Then, remembering that she had married and no longer lived in the same village, he had sighed. It was obvious Zhang Xing loved his daughter dearly. It was not difficult to imagine that he had endured it for her sake, afraid that once he returned home, his son-in-law’s family would only treat her even worse.
Under the Qian Dynasty’s marriage customs, once a woman married, she was essentially regarded as belonging to her husband’s family. As for divorce by mutual agreement, only women of relatively high social standing could realistically manage it. Zhang Xing might be able to protect his daughter for a time, but not forever. Without enough influence behind him, even if his teeth were knocked out, he could only swallow them with the blood.
He Yi sympathized, but this was ultimately someone else’s “family affair,” and for the time being, things had not yet deteriorated beyond repair. So after hearing about it, he let the matter pass.
He wondered whether his younger sister from his previous life might, after her own death, have transmigrated to an ancient society just as he had. His own circumstances had turned out all right, and he had managed to survive the worst of it. But he could hardly imagine how miserable his sister’s life would be if she ended up like Zhang Xing’s daughter, married into a heartless family.
Hopefully not…
He Yi had no intention of interfering in the matter. As an unmarried man, getting involved in another family’s affairs would already be difficult to justify, let alone when the person concerned was a young woman who had already married.
Still, from that day onward, He Yi began wandering around the village more often. Sometimes he would chat with the villagers about gossip and ask around about this and that. In the past, he had rarely taken the initiative to speak with the villagers, and hardly anyone had been willing to talk to him either. Things were different now. Although some people still avoided him, more and more villagers were no longer afraid of He Yi. Every so often, someone would greet him and stop to exchange a few words.
That was about all he could do: keep an extra eye on things for Zhang Xing.
*
That night, the snow leopard arrived as promised and once again barged into He Yi’s room. This time, however, there was no one else around.