Little Miss Fortune: I Will Bring Prosperity to My Tang Family!-Chapter 115: The Chubby Worm and Spicy Pork Sausage Salad
Chapter 109
The Chubby Worm and Spicy Pork Sausage Salad
The head of the guards, seeing that the market owner had arrived, brought in two chairs. However, instead of sitting on one, Xiaolin was lifted by her father to sit on his lap. From this position, she could only see her father’s chin, which was now beginning to show some stubble. The two arguing individuals turned to look at the newcomers as well.
"I am the owner of this market. I would like to know what has happened that you two are standing here shouting in the middle of the market," Tianrong said in an unusually stern voice. Xiaolin turned her head in surprise. Tianrong looked down at his daughter and gave a small, knowing smile.
"Good, I want to seek justice from you. I bought three hundred jin of dried sea fish from her, intending to take it back to sell in Changzhou. But not even halfway through my journey, the dried fish I bought started to rot and were infested with worms. I drove my cart back to demand compensation from her, but she claimed it was my fault for not handling the dried fish properly," the thin merchant said, pointing at the chubby woman sitting opposite him.
"How can you return it since you’ve already bought it? Who knows what you did with the goods during your journey! Once it’s damaged, you come back to demand your money back from me," Miss Niang retorted loudly, pointing a finger back at him.
"I kept those dried fish at the back of my cart the entire time! I never took them out once. It’s your dried fish that was the problem," the thin merchant insisted.
The father and daughter duo looked back and forth at the argument between the two. Then, they looked at each other, silently consulting on what to do. The seller was confident in the quality of her goods, while the buyer was adamant about his claim.
On the buyer’s side, he insisted that he hadn’t touched the goods at all after purchasing them. It was only when he noticed a foul smell and saw worms crawling all over that he realized there was a problem. The two continued to argue and hurl insults at each other for so long that the father and daughter started to get headaches. Xiaolin couldn’t take it anymore; she slapped the table and glared at both of them in annoyance. She had listened to their shouting until her ears almost went numb, and now she had had enough.
"I want to see the dried fish you have, and also the fish you bought," Xiaolin said, addressing Miss Niang first before turning to the merchant.
"You little...!" Miss Niang was infuriated at the child’s behavior but held her tongue when she saw the stern expression of the market owner behind her. She sat back down without saying another word.
"Sure, sure, young miss. I’ll go get them. I only have a few left though, as most of it I had to throw away because of the smell and the worms," the thin merchant said eagerly, hoping the market owner would see the truth and grant him justice.
"No problem," Xiaolin smiled at the thin merchant as he went to fetch the goods. She then turned her gaze to the now-silent woman. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎
Miss Niang fumed, stomping her feet like a child who didn’t get her way before storming out. Xiaolin let out a heavy sigh and leaned back against her father’s chest, feeling exhausted.
Tianrong hugged his soft, chubby daughter and kissed her cheek to his heart’s content. He rarely got to spend time with her, always busy with work, and when he came home, they would just go their separate ways to rest.
"Father, your beard is poking me," Xiaolin pushed her father’s face away with her small hands, but Tianrong, wanting to tease his daughter, leaned in to try and kiss her chubby cheeks again.
"Fatherrr!"
The playful complaints of the little girl made the watching soldiers chuckle. The round little girl struggled to escape her father’s arms, but Tianrong wouldn’t let her go.
The little girl sat with a scrunched-up face, looking at her father, who kept teasing her. She tried to push her father’s face away, but a child couldn’t match an adult’s strength.
“Are you shy about your body now that you’ve grown, hm?” Tianrong put his hands under his chubby daughter’s arms and lifted her up to sit on his lap. The little rascal kept wiggling so much she almost fell onto the floor.
"Well, you won’t shave your beard, father," Xiaolin pouted. Just then, the door opened, and a foul smell wafted in. It was the thin merchant returning with a basket of rotting fish.
Xiaolin pinched her nose with her small hand; the smell was overpowering and nauseating, threatening to bring up the delicious meal she had just eaten. Tianrong and the soldiers weren’t faring any better. Tianrong instructed the head soldier to open all the doors and windows to let the stench out before they all suffocated.
"My apologies, sir. The smell is so strong that I had to throw most of it away; I couldn’t bear to carry it all back,"
the thin merchant said with a forced smile to the father and daughter. But what could he do? He had spent a significant amount of money on this rotting fish. If he didn’t come back, he would lose a lot of silver and have no goods to sell for profit in the winter.
"Ahem! I understand, but the smell is indeed strong,"
Tianrong said, his throat tightening. The little girl, her face turning green, tried to stretch to look into the basket. She saw fat, wriggling worms all over the fish, probably gorging themselves on it. She had a good idea now of where these worms came from and how they got there.
At that moment, Miss Niang returned with her basket of dried fish. Xiaolin smelled it and nodded; what she suspected was correct, but she said nothing, waiting for the woman to sit before nudging her father to inspect her goods.
Tianrong stood up, still holding his daughter. To outsiders, it seemed like Master Tang loved his daughter so much he wouldn’t let her out of his sight, even while working to mediate disputes among merchants.
"Your fish weren’t dried enough," Tianrong said after a thorough inspection, causing Miss Niang to stand up, her face flushed with anger.
"How could they not be dry enough? I’ve been selling dried fish for over twenty years without any problems!" Miss Niang fumed, her breaths coming hard and fast, causing her body to tremble with rage.
Xiaolin could only watch in bewilderment, surprised that a person could get so angry they shook all over. Maybe it was because she had never seen such a thing before that it seemed so strange to her.
"Try breaking your dried fish. It’s only dry on the outside, but the inside still retains moisture. That’s why, over time, it starts to smell, attracting flies that lay eggs, resulting in maggots like this,"
Tianrong explained. He himself dried sea animals and knew that improperly dried fish would end up like this. Dried fish must be thoroughly dried until crisp to be stored for long periods, even if hung outside the house, without attracting flies.
Xiaolin nodded vigorously in agreement, making Tianrong feel a fondness for her chubby, wobbly cheeks. However, he needed to resolve this issue first before he could indulge in playing with his chubby-cheeked daughter.
Upon hearing this, Miss Niang lifted her chin confidently. She believed her products were of high quality because her family had been drying fish since her parents’ time. After marrying into her husband’s family, she continued the business.
She confidently took a piece of dried fish and broke it in half, revealing to everyone that the inside still retained moisture, just as Tianrong had said. This was why the thin merchant had been interested in her product. Most dried fish were thin and completely dried, but her fish still had thick, moist flesh, making him think it would sell well, so he bought several hundred jin.
Miss Niang looked at her dried fish and then at the faces of the men in the room, who were all looking at her, including the lone chubby child with a pale face.
Even though she claimed to have been drying fish for over twenty years, she had never done it herself. She merely sold the fish that appeared visually similar to what her parents had made. Despite warnings from her employees that the fish were not adequately dried, she ignored them. Sometimes, if an employee nagged too much, she would fire them, leading the remaining employees to stay silent.
"Look! It’s just as you said, sir!" the thin merchant exclaimed, pointing at the dried fish in Miss Niang’s hand. She quickly threw away the dried fish and picked another piece, breaking it to reveal the same internal moisture.
"In that case, you should refund this merchant. He’s being generous by not asking for additional compensation for his lost time. If you refuse, I will have no choice but to revoke your right to sell in this market," Tianrong declared, looking at Miss Niang whose spirit seemed to have left her body.
Under pressure, Miss Niang, still in a daze, reluctantly agreed to refund the merchant. When she returned to her stall, her husband was already there, having rushed over after hearing the news from a villager.
Once they were back home and she had rested for a moment, she came to her senses and started screaming in frustration. The several taels of silver she had earned a few days ago were gone, along with hundreds of jin of dried fish. Not only had she lost money, but she was also in debt, causing her to complain for days, much to her husband’s irritation.
The thin merchant, in the meantime, went to buy dried goods from the Tang family’s shop. Despite the higher prices, the quality was assured, with many other merchants vouching for the goods as they had repeatedly bought and resold items from the Tang shop without issue.
The thin merchant returned to his city with his cart full of goods that remained in excellent condition, just as they were when he bought them.
Once the commotion was over, Xiaolin clung to her father and asked him to take her to the noodle shop. Tianrong, knowing his daughter was going to make something delicious, eagerly agreed to accompany her, as the market had calmed down and he could afford to slack off.
Upon arriving at the shop, Xiaolin supervised the women and her uncle Chen as they wrapped and steamed the pork rolls. Once cooked, the chubby child prepared a salad with onions and cilantro, seasoning it to her taste, and made a large plate of pork salad. There were still two large pork rolls left, which she planned to take home for her mother and grandmother to try.
"Delicious! Let’s sell this!" Tianchen exclaimed.
"You can’t sell everything, Uncle," Xiaolin responded, taking a bite of the pork roll her father had fed her.
"Why not? It’s delicious, Xiaolin."
"We don’t have enough workers, Uncle. Auntie and Grandma at the workshop behind the house just got a few days off. They were up all night making dried noodles for Master Long," Xiaolin recalled the scene of the women waking up in the middle of the night to make noodles in their backyard, only going home after the sun had set.
"Then we’ll hire more people. And the oysters! You hired those four boys to shuck them, and your grandma is chopping and preparing the sauce all by herself."
Xiaolin considered this and nodded in agreement before turning to her father, who was eating the pork salad with enthusiasm. Even the onions and cilantro, which he usually avoided, were now disappearing because he found them so delicious together.
"Father, are there any suitable people in the village? We need about two men and three women. The pork rolls need to be finely chopped, and men’s strength would be better for that."
"I’ll see who I can find," Tianrong said, patting his daughter’s head and feeding her another bite of pork roll.
In the past, he had quite a few friends, but as they grew older, they all had their own responsibilities. After becoming an orphan, he grew distant from many of them, though they still exchanged greetings whenever they met. The workers at home were people with good relationships with both him and his in-laws.
One plate of pork salad was not enough to satisfy the gluttons, and now Qi Ye had joined their ranks. Xiaolin had to prepare another plate of pork salad, stressing that it would be the last one as she wanted to save the remaining roll for her mother and grandmother. Her uncle, currently managing the barbecue restaurant and the dried goods shop, also deserved a share.
"I would like to visit Auntie, Father," the chubby child said after finishing her meal. She clung to her father’s back as they returned to the seafood restaurant, leaving her gluttonous uncle to enjoy his spicy pork salad at the northeastern food shop.
"In that case, I’ll take you tomorrow. In the evening, we’ll buy pork to make pork sausage as a gift for the governor. What do you think?"
"That’s great! I will make the spicy sauce. We just need to mix it with the pork sausage before eating. Uncle will surely love it, but Auntie might not be able to eat it since she’s still in postpartum confinement. Xiaolin doesn’t know what food is appropriate for someone in confinement because when Mother was in confinement, Xiaolin was too busy at the shop to see what she ate," Xiaolin said, resting her small chin on her father’s shoulder. During that time, she only saw her mother in the mornings and evenings due to her busy schedule at the shop.
"Just visiting is enough. Most of the gifts will likely be for the governor and his son." Xiaolin nodded vigorously in agreement.
When they reached the shop, Xiaolin greeted the regular customers from the entrance to the inside of the shop. By the time she could sit down and rest, the chubby child was so exhausted that she collapsed onto the cushion prepared for her afternoon naps. Tianrong, seeing his daughter’s condition, laughed and let her rest while he went to manage the shop.
"Brother Rong, there’s an order for food delivery to the Tan household," Wu Zhe said as he walked up to Tianrong, who had just come out of the resting room with a list of food items. Tianrong took the list and gave instructions.
"Take this to the kitchen and find someone to deliver it. You should go too. Use the cart to make it faster," Tianrong said, handing the list of food items back to Wu Zhe.
"Yes, sir. Also, we’re running low on several spices. Should I buy more while I’m out?"
"Write down exactly what we need so I can see how much to buy."
"Right away."
Tianrong walked out of the shop and went next door to the barbecue restaurant. He instructed the staff to check the spices and seasonings, noting what was running low so Wu Zhe could buy everything in one trip. The staff at the barbecue restaurant worked quickly since they didn’t have to constantly take food orders from customers like at the seafood restaurant.
After sleeping for about two hours the chubby child woke up, crying for food, prompting Tianrong to order seafood fried rice and seaweed soup for his chubby daughter.
"Nom nom, Xiaolin loves big shrimp. Slurp!" she said, eating her rice and loudly sipping her soup.
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