With a creak, Aunt Hong opened the door, holding a string of dried salted fish.

“Come, come, no one’s using the latrine.” Aunt Hong greeted warmly.

Lin Yuchan slipped inside the door, feeling a bit embarrassed.

“This time… I’m not here to relieve myself.”

“Ah?” Aunt Hong had sold fish all day and lifted her tired eyes to look at her, smiling, “Does Young Master Minguan have orders?”

Lin Yuchan didn’t know why Aunt Hong automatically assumed she was Su Minguan’s follower. She shook her head and pointed to the dried fish drying in the courtyard.

“I… I want to buy your fish.”

Aunt Hong didn’t understand. “Who’s the buyer?”

“Me.” Lin Yuchan pointed to herself. Her flat little belly then let out a rumble. “I… want to eat fish. Do you have a stove here? Can you cook it now?”

Aunt Hong showed a troubled expression, then smiled: “You haven’t eaten, have you? Eat with me—tonight we have fried salty rice cakes!”

Aunt Hong’s home was full of fish, but she couldn’t bear to eat them herself. Each meal was just a bit of rice with pickled vegetables.

Only then did Lin Yuchan realize she’d forgotten the most important thing, hurriedly saying: “No, no, I’m not here to freeload. I… I’m buying.”

One genuine Buddha head silver coin. Round and gleaming, radiating Buddha’s light.

Lin Yuchan didn’t plan to save this money for redemption. With her sickly frame, surviving on one bowl of leftover thin porridge daily, before she could save much money, she’d be dead first.

The moment Aunt Hong saw the silver dollar, her eyes seemed scalded as she frantically waved her hands.

The other women in the courtyard also gathered around, amazed and clicking their tongues.

“Where did you get so much money? It’s not… not stolen, is it?”

“Tips from foreigners.” Lin Yuchan felt justified.

Only then did Aunt Hong beam with joy: “How come I’ve never seen such generous foreigners? This much money could buy thirty pounds of fish!”

“Thirty pounds of fish.” Lin Yuchan silently memorized this price point.

“Then keep this money here as my advance payment.” She happily requested, “I want to eat fish!”

With half a plump mackerel in her belly, Lin Yuchan finally tasted the long-missed feeling of fullness.

Aunt Hong’s hands were rough and calloused, but her cooking skills were superb. The mackerel was just lightly steamed, cut with a section of scallion, and sprinkled with soy sauce she usually couldn’t bear to use much.

Fresh-killed fish needed no superfluous seasoning.

Lin Yuchan took a big bite. Half the fish belly lingered with her tongue, fat fragrance filling her mouth, combined with the fresh aroma of soy sauce. Her whole being felt ethereal, and closing her eyes, she had the illusion of being in a grand Cantonese restaurant.

This fish alone could serve as a full meal. Aunt Hong also stir-fried two small dishes plus her salty rice cake strips. Since Lin Yuchan had already established an “unlimited buffet card” here, she wasn’t polite and tasted everything.

Lin Yuchan knew her body was too weak. She was in her prime growing years—she needed to grow taller and stronger, requiring large amounts of calories.

Just eating porridge wasn’t enough. Even if she scraped together all the leftover porridge from the tea house, it wouldn’t suffice. She did heavy physical labor daily, and this high-glycemic pure carbohydrate food was completely inadequate.

Protein could build immunity, giving her a higher chance of surviving future plagues and diseases.

Moreover, she calculated that from her “soul transmigration” into this world, recuperating in the British church, then muddling through days in the Qi family garden and Defeng Tea House—it had been a month at least.

In this entire month, there hadn’t been the slightest sign of menstruation.

So this girl was fifteen years old and either had irregular periods or hadn’t even had her first period!

Probably malnourished from the womb, requiring double compensation.

With this mindset, Lin Yuchan decided to put “improving physical condition, surviving the Qing Dynasty” as her top short-term priority.

Seeing how she ate, Aunt Hong just laughed: “Watch out for fish bones!”

Lin Yuchan carefully gnawed the fish tail, saying indistinctly: “Aunt Hong, can I come every day from now on?”

One Buddha head silver wasn’t small money, but it couldn’t be split in half either. Without much hesitation, she paid Aunt Hong in one lump sum. She instinctively felt this big sister was trustworthy and wouldn’t take the money and run.

Aunt Hong said heartily, “No problem! I go to the market every morning. When I’m not here, just find the other sisters in the courtyard—don’t be polite!”

Shopkeeper Wang Quan felt like he’d seen a ghost. That Lin girl had originally been like a half-dead little dog lying at the door, but within just a few days, she’d visibly become rosier. Flesh had grown between her bones and skin, her hair had darkened, her voice had gained strength, and when climbing up and down moving tea, she was more capable than several of his able clerks.

He first thought this girl was stealing food. He quietly had people watch for several days and discovered she only entered the kitchen once daily to scavenge leftovers. Moreover, she mostly didn’t eat those leftovers herself but fed them to a stray street dog. That little dog had crouched on Shangxiajiu for several years, skin and bones that everyone despised. Now with regular meals, it had also become spirited, chasing a little hoodlum who kicked it all over the street.

Wang Quan thought, could this girl know foreign magic tricks, surviving on air alone?

Otherwise, why didn’t she need to use the latrine either?

Having seen many strange things in business, he didn’t dwell too much on this supernatural phenomenon, as long as it didn’t affect his money-making.

He even intensified, assigning this girl additional work.

Guangzhou tea merchants had a guild responsible for coordinating commodity buying and selling prices. Every morning around mao hour, based on tea inventory and order quantities, they calculated a daily buying and selling price range, written on boards. Each trading house had to consciously send people to copy it as reference.

Every afternoon at Wei Hour(13.00 – 14.00), each trading house sent people to summarize daily transaction totals, simply calculating a “closing price.”

This was equivalent to a bulk commodity exchange, with trade guild functions. If there were disputes between shops and customers, the guild usually mediated.

Defeng Trading House was far from the guild—a good half hour’s walk. The daily copying of “opening prices” and reporting “closing prices” had always been done by clerks in rotation.

But Wang Quan had long discovered the clerks were lazy. Sometimes arriving late, the “opening price” board was already taken down. To avoid blame, they dared write random numbers from experience. Sometimes when reporting “closing prices,” they didn’t personally go to the guild but met fellow clerks from other shops on the road and, with a cup of wine and a basket of dim sum, asked them to relay the message—of course, whether the other trading house clerks were reliable and whether the transmitted numbers were accurate was anyone’s guess.

Originally, Wang Quan turned a blind eye. The clerks’ wages weren’t high, and they suffered daily hardships. Some stubborn ones, if oppressed too harshly, would rather forfeit their monthly wages than continue working.

But in recent years, with the Taiping Rebellion’s chaos, most tea-producing areas in South China were difficult to access, intensifying tea price fluctuations. If the clerks continued this nonsense, the shop might lose money without knowing how.

Wang Quan had issued repeated orders, and the clerks had sworn oaths, but he still wasn’t reassured. Today, he had a flash of inspiration and suddenly thought: wasn’t there a ready-made laborer available?

She was an indentured servant who couldn’t possibly quit; to have a place to stay, she worked without complaint, doing any job.

Moreover, she was quite clever. Several times when compradors came asking prices, while clerks were still working their abacuses, she’d answer immediately, making everyone stare at her.

Wang Quan suddenly remembered that day she mixed with porters hauling goods—she’d also estimated tea quantities pretty accurately.

At the time, he didn’t take it to heart, figuring she must have accidentally overheard warehouse workers calculating. A poor family’s child, and female at that—how many numbers could she know?

But as she repeatedly showed her edge, Wang Quan’s mind wavered: could she have numerical talent?

Anyway, “running errands” didn’t count as “doing business”—having a woman run errands wouldn’t ruin his feng shui either.

So Lin Yuchan gained two additional long-distance tasks daily, massively consuming physical energy. Fortunately, she could run to Aunt Hong’s for extra meals midway, making her physique even more robust.

Every night, returning to Qi mansion, she’d collapse and sleep soundly.

But occasionally, dreams brought disturbances. Seeing her grow stronger daily and even seemingly taller, Xiao Feng naturally couldn’t understand, constantly discussing with Qiu Lan: “Big-footed girl is always greedy—she must be stealing food! Let’s report her to the housekeeper!”

Xiao Feng worked in the kitchen and felt bringing back some leftovers wasn’t wrong. Besides, after crouching and kneeling to serve people all day, her feet nearly fell off—eating one extra bite wouldn’t make the masters say anything.

But big-footed girl was different. Xiao Feng couldn’t imagine what she did daily—wasn’t she just mixing with men, selling her face? How tiring could that be? Yet she dared steal food, truly not knowing her fortune, cunning to the extreme.

Servants in wealthy households all lived similar lives. Without the masters’ favor and care, whoever had more energy and strength, whoever hadn’t been drained of their last drop of sweat, was an outsider deserving of exclusion.

Lin Yuchan turned over in her dream, vaguely hearing Qiu Lan speaking softly with Xiao Feng.

“…You’ve followed for three days now. Any discoveries?”

Xiao Feng said frantically in a low voice: “No. But I know she must be stealing food! She’s just very careful about it! Maybe stealing several days’ worth at once. Tomorrow I’ll follow her again.”

Qiu Lan muttered “meddling in others’ business” and yawned.