Chapter Eleven I Beat Up a Rogue for Ting Jie

  After wandering around the city for a few rounds, Zhao Xing finally found a store that was willing to sell. Although the location was a bit biased, the good thing was that the storefront was spacious and the backyard was large enough to hold the wooden furniture which took up a lot of space.

  After some haggling, Zhao Xing grabbed the bag of silver coins that Li Jin was still holding onto tightly and threw it over to the counter. Half a day later, the original signboard selling cloth was taken down from this shop, and a new signboard with the words "Dafenqi Furniture Store" was hung up.

  Waiting is always a long time. For three consecutive days, not even a sparrow landed at the entrance of Dafenqi Furniture Store, and Li Jinwu and his companions had turned from full of hope to completely desperate.

  Li Jinwu was dozing off, while Li Jinsi chased after Zhao Xing, nagging "You've spent all my money" for three whole days. Finally, the "Dafenqi Furniture Store" welcomed its first customer, and the annoyed-to-death Zhao Xing finally got relief.

  "Who's in charge here?!", a middle-aged man dressed as a butler loudly shouted towards the inside of the store.

  "My humble self is Zhao Xing, the owner of this shop. May I ask what brings you here?"

  "What's so strange about this furniture store? Not a single piece of furniture is on display, what kind of business are you running?" asked the middle-aged manager with furrowed eyebrows.

  "I don't know what kind of furniture you want to buy, but our store only sells 'Dafenqi' brand new-style furniture!" Zhao Xing replied with a proud face.

  "But isn't that the kind we sent to the governor and county magistrate's households a few days ago?" The middle-aged steward's eyes lit up as he hastily asked Zhao Xing.

  "Exactly!"

  "Oh dear, oh dear! I've finally found your store!" exclaimed the middle-aged housekeeper with excitement on her face. "You have no idea, these past few days because we couldn't find the 'Rocking Comfort Chair', 'Youthful Beauty High-Low Cabinet', and 'Inspiration Fountain Desk', our old master was driven mad! Because of this, I didn't escape getting glared at by my mistress, young lady, and young master..."

  Upon hearing this, Zhao Xing's expression remained calm. However, the two Li brothers behind him looked like they couldn't believe it, their mouths were wide open enough to fit in two eggs!

  "Don't know how many sets of new-style furniture the customer needs? All furniture in our store is handmade, and a 30% deposit is required when purchasing!"

  "My husband said we should buy at least ten sets, to give to his eldest uncle, second uncle, eldest aunt, second aunt... Oh, by the way, how much does this set of furniture sell for?"

  "Two hundred stones of grain for a set, and one set has sixteen pieces of four kinds!" Zhao Xing continued to pretend to be cool, "Guaranteed to be exactly the same as those used by the county governor and the county magistrate!"

  In the Han Dynasty, 1 dan was approximately equal to 26.3 kg or 26 jin, and 200 dan would be equivalent to 10,000 jin. To put it specifically, in rural areas nowadays, a family of four with five mu of paddy fields can harvest around 10,000 jin of grain per year, which is enough for three years' consumption under normal circumstances without famine or bumper harvests. As I grew up in the countryside, I am quite familiar with this. According to the agricultural production level during the Eastern Han Dynasty, without hybrid rice and chemical fertilizers, a good mu of land could produce at most 500 jin of grain per year, which is less than one-fourth of today's average level. Generally, a mu of land that produces 400 jin of grain per year would be considered quite good.

  "Clang!" Two chin-dropping sounds came from behind him.

  "Enough to be ruthless!" Li Jin thought to himself, "The wood used for a set of furniture is at most worth a hundred taels, but after being made into furniture, it's increased by ten thousand times. Two hundred dan of grain is equivalent to 24,000 jin (approximately 5,200 kg or 10,400 lbs), and yet they don't even accept silver, only grain. Looking at the chaos in the world, grain is the foundation. Xing Ge actually thought of such a long-term problem, he's really capable of great things!"

  "This merchant is indeed strange, why doesn't he accept the official's large sum of money?" The middle-aged steward continued to ask.

  "There are several hundred people under me waiting for food to be cooked, and although the money is light and easy to carry, it can't be eaten as rice, so it's not as convenient as grain." Zhao Xing started talking nonsense.

  "Alright, let's go with the price you said. In our Zhang household, what we don't lack is food! I wonder how many days it will take to finish making ten sets of furniture?" The steward looked anxious and added, "If your shop can deliver the goods quickly, my master will give an extra reward!"

  "If I send someone to deliver the goods to your esteemed residence tomorrow, and all ten sets of furniture are completed, how much reward can I get? And I'm talking about grain!" Zhao Xing asked with a sly merchant's face.

  "Judging from Master's temperament, I reckon there should be at least two hundred dan of grain as a reward."

  "Alright, it's a deal! The furniture will definitely be delivered to your doorstep tomorrow at noon. I wonder about the deposit..." asked Zhao Xing, the cunning merchant.

  "You make a written agreement with me, and then send someone to follow me to the government office to get the grain! Let's talk ugly words first, if the furniture is not delivered by tomorrow noon, just wait for me to bring people to dismantle the signboard of this bird store!"

  "Brother Xing, you're really something! You can sell things just by talking!" Li Jin thought said with a face full of admiration.

  "Xiao Xing, I'm hungry. Shall we go to Funyuan Building to eat something?" Li Jinwu said with a flattering face.

  "No way! Sister Wanting has already gone to buy wine and dishes, her cooking is better than the ones in the wine house!" Zhao Xing directly rejected Li Jinwu's unreasonable request.

  "Huh, right, why hasn't Sister Wanting come back yet? She went to buy vegetables yesterday and only took half an hour. Today is almost an hour past!" Li Jin thought to himself.

  Upon hearing this, Zhao Xing's heart skipped a beat as he suddenly had a bad premonition. "You guys watch the store, I'll go find her!" Zhao Xing grabbed a sturdy wooden stick and rushed out hastily.

  All the way, Zhao Xing followed the place where wine, meat and vegetables were sold. Before arriving at the destination, he saw a crowd of people surrounding the intersection of two roads. Zhao Xing didn't want to go forward to watch the excitement, but when he heard a woman's panicked cry among them, his heart was on fire, and he pushed through the crowd and rushed in!

  The woman's voice was none other than Xu Wanting, a sound that Zhao Xing had grown familiar with and even infatuated with. As he pushed his way into the crowd, he saw several young masters pulling and tugging at Xu Wanting, their mouths spewing out filthy language, and his anger ignited in an instant.

  Zhao Xingfei kicked out with one foot, sending a dissolute young master who was pulling at Xu Wanting flying. He pulled Xu Wanting behind him and held his club horizontally in front of his chest, cursing loudly: "In broad daylight, you group of human-like beasts dare to molest a respectable woman on the street! Don't you think your dog lives are too long?!"

  "Master Zhang, Master Zhang, wake up quickly!" Only to see the young master who was kicked flying by Zhao Xing spitting out white foam, unexpectedly unconscious, and a group of followers were shouting and crying out in fear, having lost their wits!

  "How dare you, you've hit the third son of the Zhang family, disaster is near!" A follower stood up and shouted viciously at Zhao Xing "Brothers, let's work together, capture this guy and send him to the government office, let's see if we can't strip off his skin!" After speaking, he rushed forward like a mad dog.

  Zhao Xing is currently on a roll, and the thing he dislikes the most in his past life was the second generation of officials and the rich bullying others. Now, a group of rascals have actually dared to flirt with his own cousin! What's good about that? Don't look at Zhao Xing's young age now, but the special forces training moves from his past life are still remembered by him. Beating up these little bastards is just one word - "ruthless!"

  After a flurry of kicks and punches, seven or eight turtles were knocked to the ground, crying out for their fathers and mothers. Zhao Xing grabbed Xu Wanting's hand and took off in a sprint towards the city gate.

  Although Zhao Xing didn't hesitate when he took action just now, he was still very calm and listened to what the group of rascals said. It turned out that the person he hit might be Zhang Baiwan's third son from the first big family in Changzi County. Now he was anxious to leave the city, but it was because he was afraid of being discovered that he had a relationship with "Dafenqi" furniture store. He still hoped to go to the Zhang Mansion to pull grain tomorrow.

  They ran out of the city in one breath, found a horse carriage, and Zhao Xing took Xu Wanting to head west for dozens of miles before turning north and circling around until nightfall before returning to Lijiazhuang.

  On the road, after carefully listening to Xu Wanting's account, Zhao Xing's determination to beat someone up was further solidified. At that time, Xu Wanting had bought several dishes of wine and food that Zhao Xing loved to eat, and was walking back and forth excitedly, when she suddenly bumped into Zhang Jia San, the third son of the Zhang family, who was carrying a bird cage, and a group of young dandies at the crossroads. With Xu Wanting's stunning appearance, she immediately caught the attention of this group of rowdy young men. Before three sentences were spoken, they actually started getting physical, just as Zhao Xing happened to arrive, otherwise it's not certain what would have happened.

  "Xiao Xing, today he beat up the third young master of that Zhang family. From now on, we won't dare to go in and out of the city anymore. What should we do with our furniture?" Xu Wanting asked with some guilt.

  "Ting, don't worry, Jin Si and Jin Wu can handle it. Let's hide in another courtyard for now, wait until the furniture is sold, I have a backup plan!" Zhao Xing said firmly.

  "Thanks, Xiao Xing! Actually, I found that when you're fighting, it's really cool!" Xu Wanting said with a slightly red face.

  "Haha, I'm quite satisfied with the beating I gave!" Zhao Xing said with a pleased expression.