Novel Bin Chapter 70.1 - Life on board
Chapter 70.1 – Life on board
When a man went out to do business, how could he bring his ger with him?
When Jiang Zhen previously took Zhao Jinge out with him every day, Zhao Liu never stopped him because she was afraid that someone would try to seduce Jiang Zhen . . . because He Qiusheng acted like he still had his heart set on Jiang Zhen. With her Jinge following Jiang Zhen, that little goblin should have known when to retreat, right?
Because of this idea, Zhao Liu had never stopped Zhao Jinge from following Jiang Zhen before, but now that they would travel so far away, how inconvenient would it be for Jinge to travel so far away?
“Of course, Jinge is going too,” Jiang Zhen did not hesitate to say. It would make no sense for him to go so far away from home only a month after their marriage. In modern times, there were a lot of women going around and doing business, and Zhao Jinge, as a strong man, was no worse than them.
Jiang Zhen also knew that, in other people’s eyes, Zhao Jinge was a ger who only needed to marry and take care of the children at home. But in his opinion, Zhao Jinge was not inferior to those men. Even Zhao Jinge himself was working hard to master various skills and strived to become even better! In that case, he definitely had to give Zhao Jinge a chance.
“Mom, I want to go,” Zhao Jinge said too.
If he had been raised as a ger at home all this time, he might not have those shocking thoughts, but for a long time, he had been living like a man. These days, when he went out with Jiang Zhen and trained with Jiang Zhen’s men, he was actually having a good time. Of course, the most important thing was that he hoped to become as powerful as Jiang Zhen and do something for him, and not appear so useless.
Zhao Liu nervously looked at the two people in front of her and didn’t try to stop him.
After Jiang Zhen and Zhao Jinge left, she looked for someone to chat again and started sighing. “You said that Jiang Zhen was alright, but he even had to take my Jinge with him when he left. He can’t bear to leave him even for a moment . . .”
Don’t think we don’t know how smug you are when you make a face like that! The people listening to Zhao Liu were very depressed, but they actually . . . somehow liked to hear Zhao Liu talk like this. In this village, Zhao Fugui was an exceptionally good man. Which one of them did not envy Zhao Liu? Now there was another one, Jiang Zhen . . . Even if they were just listening, they were happy in their hearts.
Listening to Zhao Liu talk about Jiang Zhen and Zhao Jinge, someone suddenly mentioned old lady Jiang.
“Did you know that the second son of the Jiang family has also gone to do business?”
“I heard something. What about it?” Zhao Liu asked.
“Old lady Jiang has been boasting about her second son every day recently. Her second son borrowed a boat from the village head’s house, saying that he would earn a lot of money when he came back with plenty of seafood.”
“So he went to buy seafood too . . .” Zhao Liu sighed. At the beginning, Jiang Zhen had also started his business selling seafood. Now unexpectedly, Jiang Chengwen had also gone to buy seafood.
“Can you really make money by buying and selling seafood?” the man asked again.
“I think so? But Jiang Zhen said it was very hard. You see, he only did it because he only had little capital and has already quit doing it,” Zhao Liu said.
She didn’t know much about Jiang Zhen’s business, but she heard Zhao Jinge saying it was too tiring to do the sea goods business.
“So . . .”
Hearing Zhao Liu’s words, some people who had heard that it was a good business to sell sea goods before and also wanted to sell sea goods like Jiang Chengwen immediately fell silent. They had better first see how Jiang Chengwen would do with this business and then decide whether they want to do this business too.
The Jiang family was very lively at the moment. Jiang Chengwen had come back with a large ship filled with sea goods. He had already calculated that, if he could sell everything, he should be able to earn double! He had bought twenty silver of goods, that was to say, he could earn back twenty silver!
For a while, when Jiang Chengwen was walking, he was very angry. What about Jiang Chengxiang? After reading books for so many years, he could only earn two silver a month? If it were Jiang Zhen . . .
Thinking of all the things that people in the village said that Jiang Zhen had done, Jiang Chengwen did not dare to say he would become more powerful than Jiang Zhen. At least he couldn’t defeat Jiang Zhen in a fight. But he still felt that, one day, he would be able to surpass Jiang Zhen, the eldest brother who had always been ignored by him.
Old lady Jiang also felt the same way. Seeing the people she knew coming to her house to buy salted fish and kelp, she was very happy and couldn’t close her mouth. Her second son was the best!
Jiang Zhen didn’t know about Jiang Chengwen. At that time, he was already on his boat, ready to leave Hecheng county. Most of those small merchants went along with them, and only a few, like Li Mingzhe, sent other people with them. With so many people and more goods than Jiang Zhen had thought there would be at the beginning, Jiang Zhen rented another boat to fit everyone in.
The cargo had been checked and loaded on the ship long ago, and that day, Jiang Zhen was just checking again the merchants and the belongings they carried on board.
Jiang Zhen inspected everything carefully and said that it was for the sake of everyone’s safety, so naturally, these merchants were not the least bit displeased. What merchants cared the most about, apart from money, was security.
At about nine o’clock in the morning, the two ships left the dock and headed for Fucheng.
After the ship started moving forward, Jiang Zhen was not idle. He went to see how the sailors operated the ship and also asked Wang Haisheng, the He brothers, and several other people he trusted to learn from them.
As a matter of fact, the more than thirty people Jiang Zhen took in were all picked by him. If there was something wrong with their conduct, he would exclude them from the very beginning. In fact, Liu Heitou was the most unstable element in the whole group. But this Liu Heitou . . . it was impossible for Jiang Zhen to kill him. If he let him go, he would probably secretly make trouble for him . . . After thinking about it over and over again, Jiang Zhen simply kept an eye on him observing him. With him watching, it would be impossible for Liu Heitou to play any tricks on him.
However, although there was nothing wrong with these people except for Liu Heitou, Jiang Zhen was still unable to trust all of them, which was reflected in the way he arranged their work for them. Of course, these people probably didn’t see it. The people he arranged to patrol the deck because of his mistrust were even a little proud . . .
The people on the two boats, wherever they were thugs or merchants, were all natives of Hecheng county. They had basically all been on boats, and they were used to small boats that were unstable. Therefore, although some people were not feeling well, no one was seasick.
At noon, everyone ate on boat. When Jiang Zhen talked to the merchants before, he also talked about food expenses. They had their meals on board, and these merchants could arrange it ahead of time. They could have the kitchen prepare meals for them, or they could eat what they had brought.
That day, because it was the first day, almost everyone ate the food they had brought, and only a few people asked for onboard meals.
Jiang Zhen had asked two women who cooked for them in Qiaotou Village to prepare the meals on the ship. The taste was average. However, because of his requirements, there were two kinds of vegetable dishes and a meat dish, and there was also soup to each meal, which was considered rich.
Currently, the most common vegetables in Hecheng county were cowpeas, green beans, cucumbers, eggplants, lucerne, and so on. On that day, the noon meal consisted of fried cowpeas, pickled cucumbers, lucerne, and pickled vegetable soup; as for the meat dish, it was braised pork.
Some merchants who had brought their own food regretted not eating on the boat, so when someone came to ask later, they said that they would eat the onboard meal that night. They also learned that they could order some extra dishes on the boat, and so the others ordered a stir fry.