Chapter 20 Quiet Night Thoughts
Qianhuan put the wooden bathtub in her room, and she could finally take a comfortable bath.
After dinner that night, knowing that her daughter wanted to take a bath, Liu took a wooden bucket to the stream to fetch water. She brought back half a bucket each time and poured it into the pot. Qianhuan was lighting a fire in the kitchen. Liu had to run several times before she could fetch enough water for bathing.
Qianhuan saw her mother working so hard to fetch water back and forth, and thought: It is too inconvenient to have only one bucket at home. It seems that she will have to go to Carpenter Sun's house again tomorrow and ask him to make a wooden bucket for her family.
If there were two wooden buckets, her mother could go to the stream to fetch two buckets of water at a time and then carry them back on a shoulder pole, which would save time and effort.
It is inconvenient not to have a water tank at home, but a water tank is not a necessity of life at present. It would be more convenient to have one, but not having one will not affect our life, so I won’t buy one for the time being.
The remaining copper coins in my hand should be spent wisely, and no unnecessary things should be bought. If I think of a small business, this little money can come in handy.
After the water was boiled, Liu poured all the hot water into the bathtub. Qianhuan locked the doors and windows, took off her clothes, got into the big wooden tub and started to take a bath happily.
She discovered that although the original owner's hands and face were black, her skin was really white, almost as white as cream.
Before, I just washed my body casually every day in the old house and never looked at her carefully. Now, when I see her, I can't help but feel secretly happy.
As she was scrubbing her body, she suddenly discovered a red plum blossom birthmark on her left arm. The plum blossom was so lifelike, it looked just like the real thing. If you didn't know, you would have thought she had a plum blossom tattooed on her hand.
After taking a bath, she changed into clean old clothes. Liu helped her carry the bathtub and pour out the bath water. Then she lay comfortably on her wooden bed and prepared to go to sleep.
Before, in the Liang family's old house, because there were too many people, her bedroom was actually separated from Liang Laoer and Liu's room. There was just a wooden board in the middle, and a curtain for entering and exiting, so there was no privacy at all.
She was really not used to living with the young couple, and having just arrived in a strange time and space, she was still a little nervous and did not sleep well every night.
Now she finally had her own real bedroom. Even though it was just a thatched hut, at least she had her own independent space.
The newly built thatched house still exuded a unique fragrance of soil and thatch. She thought she would be able to have a good sleep with her own bedroom, but she was still tossing and turning in bed, unable to fall asleep.
She opened her big eyes in the darkness, and looked sideways at the window propped up by a wooden frame. The bright moon in the sky hung high in the cloudless black curtain like a silver plate. The moonlight poured down quietly, painting everything in the courtyard with silver-white.
The mountain breeze blew in the evening, and the willow branches outside the courtyard wall were gently swayed by the wind. The night in Yunfeng Village seemed so peaceful and beautiful, but all this seemed to have nothing to do with her.
Although she accepted all the memories and emotions of the original owner and tried hard to integrate into the life here, when she really calmed down, her soul felt extremely lonely, as if she was the only one left in the whole world.
It has been more than half a month since she traveled to this strange time and space. She often thinks she is in a dream and everything seems so unreal.
Just like now, she looked at the bright moon outside the window and seemed to think she was in a dream, until she felt a clear pain in her hand pinching her thigh, she realized that all this was real.
Fortunately, she doesn't have too many worries in modern times. Her loving grandmother has passed away, and her mother has already rebuilt a happy new family. Even if she is gone, she doesn't have to worry about her mother being alone. At least she has her stepfather and younger brother to accompany her.
In modern times, her original living environment was also very bad. When she was a child, her parents were always quarreling. Her father was an alcoholic and often beat her mother black and blue after drinking. Her mother had to swallow her anger in order to give her a complete family.
Because she grew up in such a family environment, she was more mature than her peers. When she was only ten years old, she encouraged her mother to divorce and asked her mother to bravely pursue her own happiness.
Later, her parents really divorced and she was awarded to her mother. At first, she lived in the mountains with her mother and grandmother.
In order to help her mother reduce the burden, she started working while studying when she was only a teenager. She worked as a restaurant waitress, a clothing shopping guide, distributed flyers, set up stalls, and did all kinds of hard work as long as she could make money.
Later, her mother got married again. In order not to disturb her mother and stepfather's new life, she chose to live alone with her grandmother.
Her mother's new husband was a nice guy, and her mother didn't have much energy to take care of her after giving birth to her younger brother, but fortunately her stepfather funded her to go to college.
It’s a pity that her grandma passed away before she could make a name for herself.
She has always worked very hard, because a child without an umbrella can only run in the rain by himself, and a child who is not spoiled by anyone must learn to grow up on his own. If she is not brave, no one will be strong for her.
She pulled herself back into her thoughts, trying to break through the loneliness that was like darkness enveloping her body. She told herself firmly that she must not only live well in this time and space, but also live a wonderful and beautiful life.
She lay in bed and began to think of ways to make money. She thought of many ways, but in the end she found that those ways basically required capital. Given their current situation, they were only suitable for small businesses with a cost of less than a few hundred copper coins or no capital.
She also thought of many things that could make a lot of money, such as making ice from saltpeter, or turning coarse salt into fine salt. These things are often shown in modern time-travel TV dramas. She has watched many TV dramas of this type. When she was bored, she even searched for the production methods on Baidu. These two things should be able to make a lot of money.
But ideals are full, but reality is skinny. These things are easy to say, but very unrealistic to put into practice.
Take saltpeter for example. Although saltpeter can be reused, the ratio of saltpeter to ice is 1:1, which means that you need one pound of saltpeter to make one pound of ice, so you need at least a large amount of saltpeter to make a large amount of ice to sell.
But the reality is that they simply do not have the manpower and financial resources to find saltpeter mines.
The toilet at home was also newly built, so there was no saltpeter to scrape.
You can go to other people's toilets or scrape the corners of pig pens. If you scrape off the toilet wall plaster of 100 households in Yunfeng Village, you can probably collect about ten kilograms.
But the problem arises again. The villagers’ toilets are all built in their own yards. How can you go into 100 households and scrape the saltpeter?
Even if we go to great lengths to scrape off the saltpeter soil, it's already autumn and who wants to drink iced tea?
As for turning coarse salt into fine salt, first of all you need to have a large amount of coarse salt. In this era, just like those dynasties in history, official salt is very expensive, and ordinary people are limited in purchase.
A pound of brown rice costs 5 cents, a pound of white rice costs 8 cents, but a pound of salt costs 50 cents, and this is just the price of coarse salt.
If it was fine salt, it would be even more precious. The original owner had never eaten fine salt since she was a child, so she didn't know how much a pound of fine salt cost.
There was a small jar of coarse salt in the kitchen of the old house, which was probably less than half a pound. When Mrs. Liang divided the family property, she gave them about one or two ounces of salt.
One ounce of salt, if a family of three follows the modern salt consumption, it will be finished in a few days at most. But this is ancient times, her mother would definitely not be willing to put so much salt in cooking, so it can probably last a few more days.
Moreover, the dynasty severely cracked down on private salt sales. If anyone bought and sold salt privately and it exceeded 5 kilograms, they would be beheaded. If she made fine salt to sell, the government might arrest her as a private salt dealer and behead her.
Therefore, making money by turning coarse salt into fine salt is not feasible.
When she makes money in the future, she will buy some coarse salt and purify it into fine salt for her own consumption. As for selling it, forget it. She still cherishes her life very much.
She couldn't use these two things ostentatiously for the time being because they were too conspicuous.
The man is innocent, but he is guilty of possessing a treasure. She doesn't want to become the target of public criticism when she is still young and weak.
The original owner had never read a day of school since she was a child, nor had she learned any special skills. She didn't want to be regarded as a monster, nor did she want to arouse suspicion from the original owner's parents.
When she thought of a low-key way to make money, she had to find some reasonable reasons to ensure that she could hide it from her parents before she could use it.
Singing and dancing are her strengths, but in ancient times, ordinary people could not even get enough food to eat and worked in the fields every day. Who would have the time to watch you play any musical instrument? I guess even those who watch for free don't have the time to watch, let alone pay to watch.
Of course, there were also wealthy families who hired performers, but they would hire a troupe to set up a stage to perform, or invite some musicians to play at home, and these performers were all low-caste people, and everyone looked down on them. It was impossible for her to become a low-caste person.
After thinking about it, she couldn't come up with any good solution for the time being.
She could only comfort herself: Forget it, forget it, don't think about it for now, I'll find a chance to go to the town and the county town and investigate the ancient markets. Only by understanding the market first can I come up with ways to make money faster.
She had overloaded her brain tonight and was so tired from thinking that she fell asleep soon.