Who Cares

23

Chapter 23 Merchant Woman

The Qin Dynasty destroyed six states and unified the world. What they pursued was Legalism ideology, and Legalism emphasized on agriculture and massive military force, but suppressed the development of business. Furthermore Confucian scholars, school of diplomacy, sword-wielding people, deserted soldiers and business people, these five categories were called five beetles, and the Legalist were extremely capable of despising and suppressing them.

After the demise of the Qin state, it experienced hundreds of years of disputes. The feudal states all followed the example of the first emperor, intending to reform the law and strengthen the army, then unify the world, so they also pursued the militarist idea of emphasizing agriculture and heavy military. Gradually, the merchants who were originally low-ranking, turned into the lowest existence of Nine Streams, and sometimes, even inferior to the servants of other noble families.

The Ye family accumulated a lot of wealth by reselling war materials, and they wanted to take a shortcut and quickly squeeze into the upper class. It was obviously not feasible for their descendant to marry women from noble families, but there was still some hope for their daughters or granddaughters to marry into high gate families. Therefore, whenever there was a beautiful woman in the clan, the head of Ye family would spend great efforts to cultivate them, hoping to hoard it like Lu Buwei, and sell it at a price.

Ye Zhen had won the favor of the head of the family with her beautiful appearance, and since she was a child, she had been prepared to marry into a high family. In terms of scheming, means, and talents, she was not lacking in everything. However, the merchant family had limited vision after all. They only knew how to teach zither, chess, calligraphy, painting and seduction methods. They didn’t know that the only thing a real noble family mistress should learn was to take charge of central feed, and the rest were just embellishments, not essential.

The daughter of Ye family could only become a concubine, female entertainer, or even fell into prostitution was like fish back in the water. But Zhao Luli liked that kind of woman, and didn’t notice anything wrong, so he taught his daughter to be another Ye Zhen.

At this time Guan Suyi was supporting her cheek with one hand and smilingly stared at Zhao Chunxi who was at a loss. She wanted to know, without her guidance and correction in this life, what kind of path would Zhao Chunxi open up? Was it still possible to obtain the title Lady of the Third Rank, with income of five thousand households? Could she still marry into the imperial clan, with the same impressive condition?

Zhao Chunxi had never touched such a thing as an abacus, and had absolutely no idea what the beads on top and the beads on the bottom represented. But she didn’t want to admit defeat, and she didn’t want to show her timidity, so she had to bite the bullet, but only push until “plus three” and couldn’t continue.

At this time, the world was beginning to settle. After hundreds of years of war and plight, people’s only thought was to survive. Where would they be in the mood to attend school and learn to read, let alone study arithmetic. Even those merchant giants who have been traveling doing business outside all year round, their ability to settle accounts was limited to a small amount, and a little more, such as counting the number of arrows, horses, army provisions, etc., would need to call dozens or even hundreds accountants who were proficient in this matter, could only be determined by reviewing it day and night.

From one to ninety-nine, not only was it an unimaginable number for Zhao Chunxi, but even if the head of Ye family was brought over, afraid wouldn’t be able to calculate it in a short while. She repeatedly scratched the beads, her expression gradually changed from pretending to be calm to grievance and pain, her eyes were red, and she seemed to be about to cry. It’s too hard, it’s really too hard, Guan Suyi is deliberately making her look ugly!