The Thirteenth Day of Finding a Wife

But she understood very well that money alone was not enough to win people’s hearts. The Ye family had made exactly that mistake, which was why they had lost the struggle for influence in Haicheng to her.

Though the Ye family had the prefect for backing, even a prefect could not reach into every corner; he still needed the people beneath him to do the work.

As for those working under him, aside from the truly loyal few, most were just trying to make a living.

They had no reason to offend the Lu family.

The Lu family was generous, and could even serve as their fallback.

Lu Ling had already more than once provided jobs for lower-level functionaries.

So everyone knew exactly where people’s hearts lay.

“Wanxin, do you want to go back, or keep looking around?” Lu Ling wasn’t oblivious to the fact that the woman beside her had been staring at her the whole time.

Shen Wanxin quickly withdrew her gaze and said nothing.

But the way she kept looking around was clearly a sign that she wanted to go somewhere else.

Thinking that this would be the place Shen Wanxin would live in from now on, Lu Ling, as a local, took the initiative to play guide.

“Come on, let’s go see the fish market.” She deliberately chose the place where fish were sold.

Shen Wanxin did not refuse and silently followed behind her.

Lu Ling was fortunate enough to be wearing plain clothes today, but the road was a little muddy, and stepping on it felt rather rough.

Off to one side, people were still hauling sand and gravel in to fill it.

They soon passed into a livelier stretch.

Everyone here wore straw sandals, wading through mud and water as they shouted out their wares.

“The fish and shrimp that come from the market are all fresh, caught and brought back the same day. The quality is good, the size is large, and they’re usually screened before they’re allowed into the fish market,” Lu Ling explained as they walked.

Shen Wanxin nodded.

Lu Ling stopped at a stall selling sea fish. On top of it was a thin layer of straw, covering a layer of somewhat impure yellow salt.

She continued, “Each stall here has a different fisherman behind it. The market sends people to the villages specifically to keep watch over the seafood; the boats used are all sent out by the Lu family, which lessens the burden they’d otherwise have to bear.”

“The Lu family also has special preservation methods.”

After hearing that, Shen Wanxin scooped up a handful of salt from under the straw. Though there were impurities, it was quite fine; it was clearly edible.

She was a little surprised. “Wouldn’t the cost be too high?”

“You noticed?” Lu Ling showed a trace of a gratified smile.

But then she played coy. “Helping the poor has always been my father’s responsibility. The Lu family loses a little money, but it earns my father some political credit.”

“Don’t underestimate this sort of poverty relief. Every year at year-end, the officials sent from the capital are full of praise for my father’s management of local finances.”

Of course, no matter how capable he was, he’d still never get promoted.

The corruption higher up was something even the people of Haicheng knew about.

Officials with high salaries cared even less about a coastal county magistrate.

Lu Ling couldn’t help sneering. “But merchants are lowly, after all. No matter how good the finances are for ten years, anyone tied to merchants will never be heavily used. That’s the rule of the Great Chong Dynasty.”

At that, Shen Wanxin couldn’t help raising a brow; for some reason, she felt a little uncomfortable.

If what Lu Ling said was true, then with finances this good for ten years, there was no way the Imperial Court wouldn’t have noticed such talent.

The Ministry of Personnel might even have taken the initiative to submit a memorial and transfer such a person into the ministry.

It could be said that talent was always being fought over.

For the various ministries, it was also a chance to make a name for themselves.

If something remained mild and unchanged for years, it was only natural that people would begin to question the power and status behind it.

But why was she thinking about this?

Shen Wanxin shook her head. “Then the court truly buried your father’s talent.”

“Not at all.” Lu Ling thought to herself that it was not only her father; they had buried her mother’s talent even more.

Her mother was the face of the coast.

These years, the sea bandits had not dared to come close, all thanks to the three hundred water escorts her mother had spent a fortune training to keep watch.

Don’t be fooled by the number three hundred; almost all of them were among the very best in individual combat.

If she hadn’t feared arousing the court’s suspicion, she could have recruited many more.

“But this salt, isn’t the cost a little too high?” Shen Wanxin pinched the salt between her fingers. She found it novel; she hadn’t expected to see it everywhere here.

Of course Lu Ling would never tell her that her family secretly made salt, and that these yellow batches were intentionally left that way.

She had long since refined pure, snow-white salt without a trace of impurities. But in order not to draw attention, she had never sold it outside.

The prefect’s people watched her family’s salt-making formula every single day.

It was just that there was no evidence proving she could already produce salt at low cost.

Because that would mean she was challenging the salt tax system of the current dynasty.

Even the prefect did not dare take that as his own political achievement, and she certainly didn’t want to lose her head over it. So the salt they extracted in bulk was basically kept for their own use.

Some impure salt couldn’t be sold cheaply to the common people either, or it would steal business from the official salt.

So she used the banner of poverty relief subsidies to issue coupons to Feng County, as well as to all the large and small merchants cooperating with the Lu family, their hired workers, and so on.

Twice a month.

Each time, they could receive at most one jin of salt, with a total of two thousand portions.

The regular price for one portion was set at thirty wen; discounted, it was ten wen.

And these were still the impure salts.

But for the common people here, having clean salt to eat was already good enough.

At the very least, it was much better than the bitter salt from before. It was just a little yellow, which made it look unappealing, but the Lu family’s impure salt hardly had any bitterness at all.

Of course, all of this was because Lu Ling had deliberately made the salt look bad.

“I told you it was for political credit.” Lu Ling gave no further explanation.

Shen Wanxin did not ask more either.

But in truth, she understood very well that the texture of this salt was very similar to the top-grade salt she had seen in Kyoto. Fine as sand, it slipped through her fingers.

Calling it snow salt would not be an exaggeration.

Ordinary people could not possibly fail to know what that meant.

There had to be something more to it.

Afterward, the two of them wandered to the river embankment entrance.

There were many laborers waiting to be hired here, each holding a shoulder pole or bamboo rod, eagerly watching for people coming in from the sea.

Yet several days had passed, and aside from official boats, there had only been official boats.

The laborers hated how the official boats repeatedly and mercilessly cut off their livelihood.

Some even had relatives who had tried to go out to sea at night and had been capsized by official boats.

There had not even been an explanation.

Just as the laborers looked on with open hostility at the boats near the islands, someone suddenly whispered, “The eldest Miss Lu is inspecting the dock.”

“Is she here to look out for us?”

“Forget it. No matter how good her business is, can she really stand against the authority of the officials?”

“But she treats us laborers very well. That much can’t be denied.”

The docks run by the Ye and Shen families paid low wages and loved docking workers’ pay. If anyone complained even a little, they got whipped and thrown out without even being paid, leaving everyone angry but unable to speak.

The Lu family’s dock was different. It even included lunch, and on holidays it would provide two meals that day, with meat in them too.

And every lunch came with a boiled egg for each person. Most people usually ate things with little nutrition; that one boiled egg was often the only good thing they got all day.

Even the eggs were specially collected by the eldest Miss Lu from farmers and handed out free to everyone.

Because of this, most people held this eldest Miss Lu in great respect.

Unfortunately, the Lu family’s hiring standards were extremely strict; they insisted on people who could recognize a hundred characters, so the threshold for working at Water Manor was very high. Of course, the benefits were good too.

Those who could get in and work for Water Manor could save enough in five years to buy a tiled house on the outskirts built by the Lu family.

And internal employees also got a thirty percent discount, plus the benefit of one jin of snow salt.

By the time Lu Ling came over, quite a few laborers wanted to approach her but were afraid of offending her.

They could only pace back and forth where they stood.

How could Lu Ling not know about their situation? She took the initiative to ask, “Have you had any work in the past three days?”

“Is there still rice at home to cook?”

“Have you gone to the Lu family grain shop to receive relief rice once? It’s old rice and broken rice, but it’ll keep you from going hungry before work comes.”

With just those three sentences, the laborers’ eyes immediately turned red. They hurriedly stood up, as though they had found a living bodhisattva, and began pouring out their troubles.

“Miss, when will the official boats leave?”

“Have those lords been making things difficult for you again?”

“I heard you have to lose a lot of money. Will you still keep hiring more people in the future?”

Most of them were worried about their own livelihoods, and even more worried that the Lu family would not be able to hold on because of this.

Over the years, everyone had eyes. The Lu family was an honest family.

Even if they were merchants, the Lu family had never shortchanged the people who worked for them. So in Haicheng these days, a saying had started to spread: it was better to serve the Lu family than to be a watchdog.

Watching the Lu family’s gate earned five qian a month, not to mention gifts during the New Year and other festivals.

At year-end, they even got a bonus; that bonus was at least three taels of silver.

Which people working for the Lu family wouldn’t be envious?

“Don’t worry. The Lu family can handle it,” Lu Ling promised. “In a few more days, the boats will arrive.”

After speaking, she told Wang Xianglan, who was following behind her, to later instruct Water Manor’s canteen.

Have them make more food so these laborers could eat their fill until the end of the month.

They could talk about work once they had it.

“Understood, Miss,” Wang Xianglan said.

When the laborers heard that their complaints had been taken in and that their food and clothing could be handled through Water Manor’s canteen, their eyes all reddened at once. The crowd grew a little excited.

“Miss, you’re truly a little bodhisattva.”

“You still remember us poor mud-legged folk.”

“We don’t have anything else to give you; there’s no way we can repay you, so let us kowtow to you.”

As they spoke, the laborers were about to kneel.

In this day and age, they had to bend their dignity just to have a bite to eat. It made Lu Ling very sad.

She hurriedly waved them off. “Stop, stop. Save your strength for when work comes.”

“Later on, if you can’t find work, you can try applying for Water Manor’s delivery jobs. The pay isn’t high, and it’s all physical labor, shuttling between the various counties of Haicheng.”

“But at least it counts as being half an employee of Water Manor.”

At that, the laborers seemed to have found a chance to rise above their station, and their eyes filled with hope and gratitude.

“Thank you, Miss.”

Though it was only half an employee, the pay was still three qian.

That was a little better than being a regular waiter at an inn.

As for why Lu Ling did not hire them full-time, she was distributing wages according to a reasonable allocation; even that alone was already enough to draw envy.

After all, the pay at other places was low and often withheld. So the Lu family’s helpers had always been highly sought after.

If the Lu family kept expanding its full-time workforce, not only would it become too prominent and attract trouble, but the quality might also become uneven.

She could pay high wages, but the helpers also needed the corresponding standards and ability.

Part-time labor not only provided some extra jobs; one full-time position could also give two households a basic livelihood.

She had considered all of this very carefully.

Helping others without harming herself; that was the only long-term way.