The Eldest Daughter of a Rural Family
Chapter 198 Malicious Intent (7)_1

Chapter 198: Chapter 198 Malicious Intent (7)_1

"The day after tomorrow!" Pei Qin replied to him. Tomorrow, Fang Li and the Feng family would come over for a family visit.

The next day, people from the Fang family and the Feng family all came over for the visit.

Because there was no main hall, the house couldn’t accommodate everyone.

Grandma Fang stayed at home to prepare the meal, while Pei Qin led the younger ones to Back Mountain Village to tend to Lady Fang’s grave and burn paper offerings.

With Lady Yu and Lady Ruan there, and even Fang Hui, without needing Pei Qin and Pei Yuan’s help, they quickly prepared the meals.

Fang Fang clutched a handful of savory twisted dough strips, not even putting them down to eat, "Your family still has so many left! After eating, you must give me some to take away!"

"One bag for each family." They resolved whatever they could as swiftly as possible.

After the meal, Fang Li and Feng Shouxing stood in the courtyard, suggesting how the house should be built. The location, not too far from the market, was quiet amidst the hustle and bustle, and convenient for running a small business—everyone agreed that the house was well chosen.

Scholar Fang advised Pei Qin not to rush, suggesting to build gradually if it couldn’t be done all at once. They could start with the main hall and then build the side chambers later when finances allowed.

But Pei Qin disliked inconvenience: if they were going to build, she preferred to get it over with all at once to avoid the hassle of doing it in stages.

After sending the group on their way, Pei Qin immediately laid out a training plan for the three of them, "Starting from tomorrow, basic training three times a day, totaling one and a half hours. After the fifteenth, I’ll teach you combat techniques and skills!"

Indeed, it was she who taught them how to fight. Pei Qian thought she was just fussing over nothing, wasting their time that could be spent on studying and practicing calligraphy.

Pei Qin, meanwhile, took out paper and measured the size of the family courtyard. After contemplating how to build the new house, she decided against a quadrangle with its one courtyard receiving limited sunlight. Eventually, she settled on a U-shaped design: four central rooms with two side chambers on each the east and west sides, with the main gate on the east and extra space on the west side for a carriage shed.

Yet building such a structure, using brick, tiles, stone, and wood, wouldn’t be possible without at least fifty or sixty taels of silver.

Pei Qin scoured the household’s silver, not counting the trivial amounts—there were forty taels from selling off the Clearing Device abacuses, plus ten more taels received from Sun Tiezhu and Zou Xing as a gift for the slipboards, and by the end of the lunar month, they’d have seven or eight taels. The money from the hand carts and the first push carts wouldn’t come until after March, amounting to another eight or nine taels. With fifty taels in hand, it was just barely enough. But Pei Wendong would need to pay his school tuition, and the others also needed food and clothing. Once construction began on the new house, they’d have to rent another place to live for a few months.

Upon further consideration, Pei Qin realized the noodle stand must continue to operate. But that would have to wait until after the fifteenth.

Pei Qin looked over the household silver, took out twenty taels, and went out to buy several bags of peanuts and white sugar.

Pei Qian, seeing the pile of goods in the house, widened her eyes in surprise, "Why did you buy all this again!?"

"To make sugar-fried peanuts, to exchange for some money! We don’t have enough silver for the house-building as it is!" To save money, Pei Qin didn’t even buy the already-shelled peanut kernels.

Pei Yuan cast a stealthy glance at Pei Qian, "Sister! Shall we start shelling the peanuts?" She efficiently grabbed a basket to begin.

"Yes!" Pei Qin moved a small stool over, and the siblings gathered around the bag, shelling peanuts and reciting their books, while Pei Qin occasionally explained some difficult meanings.

After they had shelled a whole bag of twists and filled a basket with peanut kernels, the shriveled ones with less appeal were sorted into another small bamboo basket.

For several days, people continued to bring bags of peanuts. When Grandma Sun found out, she came over to help shell them for a few days.

They prepared the pots and firewood in advance, ground the sugar into powder, and also bought starch. The siblings got up before dawn and fried several pots of sugar-fried peanuts.

After the peanuts were ready, Pei Qian tasted one; they were crunchy, sweet, and fragrant—she was indeed satisfied at heart.