Chapter 37: The Little Shop

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“Big Brother, does your wound still hurt?”

The night was deep and quiet. Lying in bed, Li Chun asked in a small voice.

Li Po grunted twice. He had returned in a sorry state that day, and everyone in the house had fussed over him and asked after his health. It had been heartwarming at first, but by the end, it had become rather irritating.

“I’m fine. Go to sleep.”

“Big Brother, are you going out to kill someone again?”

In the darkness, Li Po frowned. However he heard it, the question sounded wrong. He scolded, “Do you think killing people is child’s play? Do you think we have too many lives to spare?”

In the darkness, Li Chun pursed his lips unhappily and muttered, “If you go out at night again, take Little Chun with you, all right? Waiting here alone is frightening.”

“Go to sleep. Your big brother isn’t some immortal who can butcher everyone who crosses him. Some people can be killed, but others can’t, no matter how much you want them dead. Enough. In a couple of days, start practicing the saber with me. The world is truly not peaceful.”

Li Chun nodded fiercely in bed, his heart dancing with delight. He thought that once he had mastered the saber, anyone who dared offend his big brother would be quietly butchered by him, so that Big Brother would not have to trouble himself. In this world, apart from his big brother, who could there be that could not be killed?

In truth, when Li Po had returned covered in wounds, who could possibly understand the fury burning in that child’s heart?

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At last, life settled into calm.

The tax official sent someone with two strings of cash, and the man had acted with reasonable generosity.

Li Po accepted the money, but he never again went to the city gate to deal with the tax official. Keeping too close to such a person brought little benefit and considerable danger.

Still, those two strings of cash solved his most urgent difficulties.

A small shop opened in the market, and a food banner was raised outside the large house.

With several men, Li Po dug a properly constructed drainage ditch in the rear courtyard and connected it to the market’s channel. At least they no longer had to haul filthy water outside in the bitter cold.

Several days later, the Shi brothers came looking for him. To their astonishment, they discovered that the merchant to whom they had once forcibly sold firewood now belonged to Li Po. The brothers could not stop praising him.

Their arrival also brought a smile to Li Po’s face.

The matter of firewood was entrusted to the brothers, and the problem of finding workers was solved as well.

A few days later, several burly men smelling strongly of the mountains entered the city and came straight to the market. They not only carried in a considerable load of firewood, but also stayed behind instead of leaving.

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It was rather unavoidable. There were quite a few people under one roof, yet they were still short-handed. What else could be expected from a crowd of the old, the weak, women, and children? They were practically a charitable institution.

Any other household would have been eaten out of existence by so many mouths. That was no way to run an eatery.

But Li Po’s enterprise was an unusually clever one. He could keep them all well fed while also providing for the people living in the refugee camp. As a result, the area around the porridge shed in the northern city was deserted, lending it a desolate appearance.

These burly men became the shop’s enforcers. They did not need to perform any other work; they merely had to guard the establishment. In Li Po’s opinion, the market was no kind place. Without someone strong to keep order, sooner or later someone would come there looking for trouble. They would not care whom he knew, nor whether the place was rumored to be haunted.

After all, he himself had once been a destitute refugee, yet he had dared bring people there to sell firewood—and had succeeded. That alone said enough.

The two strings of cash from the tax official also spared Li Po a great deal of effort.

The main hall of the large house became the heart of the shop, and it looked much like an inn.

Once a few tables and chairs had been brought in, the large house became a proper shop.

All the permits and documents required to open a business were waived as well. This was not because Bai Xunshi possessed any remarkable abilities, but because they had the tax official to thank.

The large house had been taken over without cost, so Li Po could do as he pleased without too many concerns. He did not even have to pay taxes.

Li Po had prepared thoroughly. He did not really understand business, but there was little he had not seen or heard of. When it came to the principles of trade, there were truly few people in this age who could speak more knowledgeably than he.

After receiving some instruction from Li Po, three older children—one boy and two girls—became the shop’s servers and greeters.

The opening was not a grand affair. Before anyone knew it, the food banner had simply been hung outside.

As for business, it was mediocre at first. Most of what they prepared ended up being eaten by the people running the shop themselves.

Before long, however, two market inspectors and several minor officials who guarded the market began frequenting the shop. As they grew increasingly familiar with its young owner, the shop’s reputation spread throughout the market.

At last, there were more customers, though not by much. Li Po had never concealed the main ingredient in the shop’s food, and many people were put off as soon as they learned what it was.

Even so, the shop’s earnings rose day by day, and an increasing number of customers began returning.

Time gradually reached the end of the eleventh month of the sixth year of the Daye era.

Mayi entered the coldest season of the year.

By then, Treasure Soup had finally found a place on the menus of the various establishments in the market north of Mayi.

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The food available at this time of year was extremely monotonous, and Treasure Soup added considerable variety to the menus.

Many people had gradually grown accustomed to rising in the morning, going out for a steaming bowl of Treasure Soup, and eating it with the shop’s freshly made flatbread for a fragrant, satisfying breakfast.

Naturally, the shop’s business was improving not only because the mutton-offal soup suited northern tastes or because its reputation had spread.

Another reason was that the price of rice and flour had begun to rise that winter.

In an age such as this, rising winter prices for rice and flour—the staple foods of ordinary people—was a terrifying matter.

The authorities generally tried to keep grain prices stable during winter, lest the people grow resentful. Moreover, after the autumn harvest, everyone, whether inside or outside the cities, faced a long period of waiting for the next harvest to arrive.

If grain prices rose in winter, what would happen in spring?

And in summer?

Indeed, this was precisely why the northern regions were far less capable of resisting famine than the south.

Yet in the autumn of the sixth year of the Daye era, Mayi had suffered neither disaster nor warfare, and grain prices had nevertheless begun to climb in winter. The consequences for Mayi’s common people would be profound and immense.

Li Po, of course, did not think that far ahead. He was simply delighted to see the shop’s business improving day by day. His only slight frustration was that selling the newly introduced flatbread was becoming less and less profitable.

As a result, he abandoned the idea of making soup noodles later on.

In truth, it was precisely because sheep offal was cheap and could fill a person’s stomach that it attracted so many customers.

Now that the price of rice and flour had risen, the men living at the very bottom of the market were the first to feel the pressure.

The great granary system of storing grain, established during Emperor Wen’s reign, had once made Emperor Wen, Yang Jian, proudly declare that there was enough to feed the people of the realm for ten years—in other words, everyone could eat for a decade without doing anything at all.

This showed how abundant the great granaries had been at the end of Emperor Wen’s reign.

Yet by the Daye era, after only six years, the authorities were already powerless to restrain grain prices.

Of course, this was not merely because the emperor had exhausted the treasury through six years of reckless undertakings. It was also because no one dared open the granaries lightly anymore.

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