The next morning, Su Tang and the orange cat stayed inside the space and had red jujube milk porridge for breakfast. Meanwhile, dawn was breaking outside, and Hu Sande had happily purchased some breakfast foods before going to look for Su Tang.
“Miss Su, you haven’t had breakfast yet, right? You should try some of our County Seat’s famous wontons.” When he finally saw her, he immediately began speaking in an ingratiating manner. In fact, Hu Sande’s wife had really gone back to her maternal family home the previous night in order to try to feel things out. Thus, he had come over now, very early in the morning, to let Su Tang know that he was working on the matter she had entrusted him, but that it might still take some time.
“Since you’ve said so much I’ll go ahead and have a try.” Seeing how proactive Hu Sande was being, Su Tang guessed that the price of the two farms might really have some room for negotiation, so she was in a good mood from the thought of saving more money and agreed readily.
Su Tang sat down at the table, picked up one of the wontons, and slowly made a show of sampling them. From the side, Hu Sande continued to talk, telling Su Tang that his side would still need more time to finish communicating with the Zhang family.
Su Tang, of course, didn’t make things difficult and promised to wait, and after that, the two people happily chatted for a while. After breakfast was done, Hu Sande once again took Su Tang out to have a look at the remaining smaller farms. Most of the owners of these pieces of land had come out themselves to introduce their farms, and only one had sent a servant girl in their stead.
Su Tang assumed that this servant girl should be the personal maid of that mistress who was trying to increase her private wealth and quietly noted it down in her heart. Once they had all been introduced, Su Tang started her day-long journey to inspect all these various pieces of land.
The several farms that were being introduced to her today weren’t as big as the ones she had seen the day before, and Hu Sande was very straightforward with introducing their merits and shortcomings. However, they could all be said to be fertile farmland that were suitable for Su Tang’s purposes, so in the end, she picked three of the most suitable ones and directly agreed to buy them once they came back the same day.
Because Hu Sande still needed time on his end, Su Tang decided to continue staying at the Xingyue Inn. The next day, Hu Sande came to find Su Tang for the money needed to buy the plots she had indicated the day before and also to help her with the miscellaneous matters regarding the land deeds.
After finishing everything, Su Tang became the official owner of three plots of land that were relatively near to Qinghe Town that were each roughly 100 mu in size. However, these farms all generally hired itinerant farmers and didn’t have any slaves attached to them who worked them all the time. The only exception was the plot that was sold by the rich-looking servant girl, which had a group of slaves who usually worked the land. However, Su Tang was wary of future troubles, so she didn’t buy them.
While Hu Sande was busy helping Su Tang secure the land deeds, his wife suddenly came back in a jubilant mood. Very soon after that, with Butler Zhang’s son and his wife acting as the middlemen, Hu Sande was able to privately meet up with Butler Zhang.
In the end, he unexpectedly managed to negotiate the price for the two farms all the way down to 2500 taels. Naturally, Hu Sande promised to give Butler Zhang, as well as Butler Zhang’s son and his wife, a cut of the money he would be earning by slashing the price down this way. Thus, except for the young master of the Zhang family, who had no idea what the value of the land in his hands was worth anyway, everyone felt very happy.
Su Tang stayed in the County Seat for another day, and finally, on the fourth day, she got the land deeds for the Zhou and Yang farms. She had also already spent 2200 taels on the previous three plots of land and given Hu Sande 22 taels as his fee.
In the end, in addition to the 25 taels he earned for his fee for the sale of the two farms, because he helped Su Tang save 500 taels from her offered price, she gave him 20% of that as agreed, or 100 extra taels. As for how Hu Sande planned to divide that money with Butler Zhang and his family, that had nothing to do with Su Tang.
Thus, after four days, the 500 gold taels that Luo Xingchen had given Su Tang were basically all spent and exchanged for five farms of varying sizes
Since everything was done, Su Tang was ready to go back. Hu Sande and his wife had made a lot of money this time, so they happily came out to the edge of town to send Su Tang off before returning home in high spirits to count all their new money.
Niu’er had also been running all over the place with Su Tang these few days, so when he saw they were finally headed home he was also full of anticipation. And, in the evening of the tenth day of the first lunar month, Niu’er finally drove his carriage back into Qinghe Town and sent Su Tang to the back door of her restaurant, the Dessert Cafe.
Once they arrived, Su Tang immediately passed the previously agreed upon payment over to Niu’er. When Niu’er saw all the silver in his hands, he was overjoyed and immediately took the money and went home.
After watching the carriage disappear around the corner, Su Tang turned around and pushed the door open to go inside.
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tl begging corner:
