Lin Yuchan asked the boatman to moor the boat and returned to the cotton field that Zheng Guanying had his eye on.

The cotton-picking women workers took turns resting, hurriedly stuffing steamed buns into their mouths and gulping down cold water. Then, while chewing, they ran back to the fields to continue working, bending over and mechanically picking.

Their hands were as rough as tree bark, with dark blood seeping from the cracks. Taking advantage of mealtime, they quickly wrapped their hands with coarse cloth to prevent blood from staining the white cotton.

The overseer had also gone to eat lunch temporarily. A servant in the pavilion was cleaning up the remnants of the wine table.

Lin Yuchan took the opportunity to approach a female worker gnawing on a steamed bun.

“Sister,” she offered a jiao silver coin, saying quietly, “I’ll buy a pound of cotton from you.”

The worker was so startled she dropped her bun, quickly picking it up and dusting it off, shaking her head blankly: “My cotton needs to be weighed for money! I can’t give it away!”

Lin Yuchan had no choice. Seeing the overseer hadn’t returned, she asked softly: “How much money do you get for picking one pound of cotton?”

The worker turned sideways, skillfully picking cotton while keeping a wary eye on her, hesitating for a long time before saying: “Eight wen, meals included but no lodging… Why, miss, do you know anyone who pays more?”

Lin Yuchan pressed the jiao silver coin into her hand: “I’ll buy one pound of cotton from you. No need to weigh it, roughly is fine. By the way, a jiao silver coin is worth about eighty-five wen.”

Only then did the worker realize she was paying ten times the price!

Lin Yuchan hugged a clump of cotton, found a cloth bag to put it in, and quickly left the scene like a thief, tossing it into the boat.

Aunt Hong took it, examined the cotton, grabbed a piece, and bit it – the cotton seeds were crisp.

“It’s good cotton. Just a bit dewy, but after drying, it could sell for a good price.” Aunt Hong and Aunt Nian both gave their preliminary assessment, “But that overseer said this cotton yields sixty pounds per mu? I don’t believe it.”

Lin Yuchan was quite inexperienced in this, asking: “How much cotton does one mu usually produce?”

“Fifty pounds would be considered a good harvest,” Aunt Hong answered. “But Jiangnan has good soil and water, maybe it can produce a few more pounds.”

She asked again: “In your opinion, what’s the yield of this field?”

Both Aunt Hong and Aunt Nian smiled and shook their heads: “Who could know that? You’d have to wait until after harvest to weigh it all. Experienced cotton farmers might be able to estimate, but we’ve only picked cotton, never grown it, so we can’t say.”

Lin Yuchan lowered her eyelashes and calculated carefully.

Although Zheng Guanying was a genius big shot, this was his first year handling cotton, so his experience might not be much richer than hers.

Ordinary compradors didn’t need to go to the countryside to personally order goods. How much cotton to collect depended entirely on a scale in the shop.

If Zheng Guanying was misled by the overseer and overestimated cotton yield per mu, that meant his Xiangsheng Company might not collect the anticipated quantity of goods.

He’d have to supplement from other cotton merchants.

She only needed to achieve “equivalent quality to his.”

The question was, how to calculate yield per mu?

Even the most experienced cotton farmers could only “estimate.” Not to mention Lin Yuchan, who was touching Great Qing period native cotton for the first time today. It was completely different from the varieties she’d seen in modern times.

Lin Yuchan borrowed some small hemp ropes from the boatman and jumped out of the boat: “Wait for me!”

She nervously looked around – in the distance, the overseer was walking on a field path, giving orders to female workers in another field.

Lin Yuchan stepped into a pit, buried the hemp rope in it, and pulled out a line about two meters long.

Another hemp rope of the same length was pulled into the field, forming a right angle with the first.

Third rope, fourth rope, forming a square.

Then she counted the cotton bolls with open cotton inside.

96 bolls.

Using the same technique again, she sampled another plot – 113 cotton bolls per unit area.

During the third sampling, the overseer spotted her from afar and came shouting to drive her away.

Lin Yuchan quickly finished counting and packed up. In her haste, she counted nearly 90 bolls. Call it 90.

She jumped back into the boat, caught her breath, and ordered: “To Zhoupu.”

Then she took down the duty roster hanging on the wall, requisitioned a piece of paper, and began calculating.

First, measure the hemp rope length. The boat had ready-made tools for measuring water levels. One hemp rope’s effective length was about seven chi. Unit area was 49 square chi. Call it 50.

In Qing dynasty land measurements, five square chi made one bu, 240 bu made one mu. One mu of land area was six thousand square chi. Equivalent to 120 unit areas. Cotton bolls per unit area, sampled three times, average of 100.

So cotton bolls per mu, roughly estimated, would be twelve thousand.

12,000 cotton bolls – how much would they weigh?

There was a large bag of samples ready in the boat. But no scale. When they reached Zhoupu town, they could borrow a steelyard, weigh out one pound, then count how many cotton bolls it contained and work backwards.

Lin Yuchan wrote out the final equation to be solved, put her hands behind her head, leaned back comfortably, and under the admiring gazes of Aunt Hong and Aunt Nian, closed her eyes and yawned.

This was just the difficulty level of a high school math fill-in-the-blank question. Could it stump her?

……………

Arriving at Zhoupu town, they borrowed a scale and calculated that the cotton field Zheng Guanying favored averaged one qian and three fen per cotton boll – about five grams.

Working backwards for yield per mu: 12,000 cotton bolls, exactly sixty pounds.

Lin Yuchan was stunned. The overseer hadn’t lied?

Aunt Hong immediately reminded her: “After cotton is harvested and weighed, they still deduct for moisture and impurities. In Guangdong, it’s usually 10%. When you meet unscrupulous merchants who exploit you, they might deduct 20%. Today’s cotton was picked early with heavy dew – after drying for a few days, it might be even lighter.”

Lin Yuchan nodded. She didn’t know how unscrupulous Zheng Guanying was, but he certainly wasn’t a pushover. So, assume a 15% deduction for moisture and impurities.

In summary, Zheng Guanying’s cotton field had an estimated yield of 51 pounds per mu.

Entering the Zhoupu town countryside, Lin Yuchan’s trio used the same technique, paying for intelligence, then splitting up to sample and measure in the fields.

Running until their legs ached, with the sun burning the backs of their necks, the results were very disappointing.

Although still rough calculations, most cotton fields couldn’t match Zheng Guanying’s reserved plot in either yield per mu or cotton boll weight. Some were poorly cultivated with yellow and gray bolls that she wouldn’t even consider.

When they finally found a few good fields and inquired, they had already been reserved by Shanghai Xiangsheng Company.

The big shot truly had good judgment.

Both being newcomers in their first year, Lin Yuchan relied on precise calculations while Zheng Guanying relied only on intuition, yet had already monopolized the highest quality raw cotton fields in the Pudong area.

The sun moved to the west. The four people in the boat were exhausted and sweaty, with mud on their feet, returning empty-handed and disheveled.

Returning to the Yixing dock, the girls were startled.

Several burly men were gathered around the entrance, standing under the “Huguang Hometown Association” plaque. Several clubs lay on the ground.

Aunt Hong and Aunt Nian’s legs went weak on the spot. Lin Yuchan also felt cold all over.

The labor gang bosses were back again!

Aunt Nian was timid and hastily backed away: “Girl, let’s wait a moment.”

But the labor bosses weren’t here to cause trouble this time. The several big men with fierce faces were now all servile smiles, clubs dragged behind them, constantly bowing and scraping.

“Having eyes but not recognizing Mount Tai… flood waters washing away the Dragon King Temple… hehe, haha, thank you for your magnanimous mercy, hahaha…”

Then, with their backs turned, they slowly shuffled away bit by bit. One person accidentally stepped on the earth god shrine at the entrance, quickly crouched down to set it right, then bowed twice with cupped hands.

“Sorry, sorry for the offense…”

Then they lined up and disappeared in a flash!

Lin Yuchan looked at the labor bosses’ fleeing figures, her eyes sparkling with delighted laughter, half her fatigue from the day instantly swept away.

Su Minguan emerged from inside, standing tall and straight, eyes looking ahead, not even glancing at those men, turning to greet Lin Yuchan and the others:

“You’re back?”

The girls, young and old, were filled with solemn respect, their faces all showing embarrassment.

Lin Yuchan happily approached him, asking quietly: “They won’t dare come again? You taught them a lesson? Used guns?”

Looking up at him, his expression was unchanged, and his pulse steady; his knuckles weren’t red either – he didn’t look like someone who had just beaten up big thugs.

“Spare me, A’Mei,” Su Minguan glanced at her sideways, his eyes curving, “leave me some secrets.”

Then he stepped forward, warmly greeting Aunt Hong and Aunt Nian: “Stay for dinner.”

Lin Yuchan: “…”

She gave this performance full marks.

Since he invited them, that meant he was paying. The girls all said “thank you, Boss Su” in unison, and their remaining fatigue disappeared.

Yixing’s clerks were already taking inventory of account books and boats, preparing to close up.

Su Minguan smiled at Lin Yuchan again: “A’Mei, your package. From Ningbo.”

Lin Yuchan was overjoyed and ran to find scissors under the counter, cutting open the hemp rope seal.

“Manager Chang’s honeymoon is quite efficient!”

The Great Qing didn’t yet have a civilian postal system. Officials could use the courier system to send letters, but for common people to mail something was troublesome. They had to rely on acquaintances or merchant caravans and fleets.

Yixing’s sand boats frequently docked at Ningbo port and could conveniently help Chang Baoluo deliver a package, a matter of two or three days round trip.

Meng Sanniang’s hometown cotton fields were also beginning to ripen at this time. Following Lin Yuchan’s instructions, Chang Baoluo had collected samples of different grades from his new wife’s family and neighboring village cotton fields – over thirty pounds total, divided into small cloth bundles.

Chang Baoluo wasn’t particularly efficient, but his attitude was earnest and meticulous. The cloth bundles were all labeled with harvest dates, weights, and the names of farmers and villages – very thorough.

Lin Yuchan was like those modern women after Double Eleven, surrounded by packages, excitedly unpacking.

Su Minguan’s gaze followed her face, watching her with a smile.

Lin Yuchan felt a bit embarrassed and gave him a look: “Is there something dirty on my face?”

She said to the watching Aunt Hong and Aunt Nian: “You go eat first. I’ll inspect the cotton.”

The small-scale peasant economy was like this – no standardized cultivation. Ningbo’s cotton was the same as Shanghai’s suburbs, with uneven quality. Some were white, bright, and plump; others were grimy. Lin Yuchan borrowed a balance to roughly estimate cotton boll weight, ranging from one qian to two qian, quite a large difference.

She recorded the data and picked out several packages that she felt could compete with the cotton fields Zheng Guanying favored.

But… it was still the same difficult problem.

Zheng Guanying’s challenge to her was: only cotton of higher quality than Xiangsheng Company’s would he consider accepting.

But this “quality” was determined by Zheng Guanying himself.

He had given her a game entry ticket. But in this game, both the referee and player were surnamed Zheng.

Lin Yuchan had no chance of winning.

She frowned and pondered for a while without any ideas.

Suddenly looking up, there was an elegant face very close above her head, eyebrows lazily raised with an ambiguous smile.

“A’Mei, you worked hard today.”

Yixing’s clerks had all left, leaving the empty shop for her to spread out and display cotton.

Lin Yuchan held two clumps of cotton bolls in her hands – she couldn’t retreat or push forward, gritting her teeth and saying quietly: “Hard work, hard work, let me go eat.”

Still blocking her way, showing concern with his mouth, while his eyes were laughing at her. She thought angrily that people with “guan” (official) in their names were all big merchants, all making her life difficult in various ways.

Su Minguan continued looking at her and laughing, suddenly reaching out to gently scrape her nose tip.

A tickling sensation. He had just been inspecting new boats, his fingertips carrying the scent of wood.

Lin Yuchan protested: “…Your hand is cold, don’t.”

Su Minguan laughed out loud this time, taking out a small mirror from the bottom of the counter drawer and placing it right in front of her.

Lin Yuchan looked in the mirror blankly, then suddenly understood.

The girl in the mirror was quite pretty with bright eyes and white teeth. Only her little nose tip was red!

Then she saw her cheeks slowly turning red, too.

Su Minguan laughed softly: “You need a hat? You should have said so earlier, I’ll give you one.”

The hottest season had passed. Lin Yuchan had gone out today without wearing a hat because it seemed troublesome, only draping a gauze scarf over her hair. But she hadn’t expected autumn UV rays to be so strong – her face and neck weren’t sunburned, only her nose!

She had been arguing with Zheng Guanying for half the day with this Pinocchio-like red nose!