Transmigrated into the Scumbag Ex-Wife of the Prime Minister - Chapter 60

At the Mao hour (5-7 AM), Qi Nan, as usual, delivered the liquor to the wine shop.

“Xiao Sheng, should these three hundred jin of liquor also be unloaded at the shop?” Qi Nan pointed at the ten remaining jars of liquor on the ox-cart.

“No need, these ten jars go directly to the pier warehouse,” Lu Sheng wiped her hands and told Qi Nan, “I’ll go with you.”

The liquor ordered by Lin Shuqing was three thousand jin per month, and the wine shop needed to deliver three hundred jin to the Binhe county pier warehouse every three days. Lin’s family would meet them there and load it onto their contracted ship.

Today was the first delivery, so Lu Sheng thought she should go along to see how it went. She turned to tell Liu Yun a few words and then got onto Qi Nan’s ox-cart.

The boats coming and going at the Binhe pier were of three types: official ships, passenger ships, and cargo ships. Official ships were exclusively for the imperial court’s use, and passenger ships mainly carried people.

Cargo ships were the most numerous, used only for transporting goods. Furthermore, all goods carried on cargo ships had to be weighed at the pier warehouse and the ship tax paid before they could be loaded onto the ship.

When the ox-cart arrived at the entrance of the pier warehouse, Lu Sheng saw Lin Shuqing’s butler, Zhang Bo.

Lu Sheng had seen him when she received the invitation from Xianlin Villa, so she recognized him at a glance.

Next to Zhang Bo stood a young man, short and thin, wearing ordinary gray short clothing.

“Miss Lu,” Zhang Bo bowed to her when he saw Lu Sheng.

“Zhang Bo,” Lu Sheng got out of the cart and greeted him with a smile, turning sideways to point at the ox-cart behind her, “This is the liquor Shuqing ordered.”

“Lin Tie,” Zhang Bo called the man behind him, and said to Lu Sheng, “His name is Lin Tie, and from now on, he will be responsible for meeting you here on the scheduled days.”

“Miss Lu,” Lin Tie bowed.

“Little Brother Lin,” Lu Sheng nodded and introduced him, “This is Qi Nan, and she will be delivering the liquor from now on.”

“Miss Qi, drive the cart this way,” Lin Tie pointed to the warehouse gate on one side.

Zhang Bo bid them farewell. Lu Sheng got back on the cart, and Qi Nan drove the ox-cart into the warehouse.

The entire warehouse was enclosed by wooden pillars two people tall. The surface of the wooden pillars was brushed with a layer of tung oil, and the top ends of the pillars were all sharpened to prevent thieves from climbing over the wall to steal.

The pier warehouse was divided into an East field and a West field, with entry through the East and exit through the West. Since Lu Sheng and the others were delivering goods, they went to the East field.

The warehouse was noisy with people busy coming and going: attending workers, porters and laborers carrying goods, and customers like Lu Sheng and the others who were delivering or picking up goods.

When they arrived at the entrance of the East field, the ox-cart was stopped by the gate attendant. Lin Tie showed his bamboo slip for the contracted ship. The attendant looked at the wine jars on the cart and called another person to lead them to the weighing station.

After weighing the goods and paying the corresponding ship tax, they could go to the cargo pier to load the ship.

Lin Tie was not tall, but he was quite strong and agile.

Lu Sheng carefully observed the muscles in his arms and his movements while exerting force, concluding that the man must have some martial arts skills.

After unloading the goods and heading out, Lu Sheng and Qi Nan said goodbye to Lin Tie at the gate of the East field.

As they were talking, three burly men walked hurriedly out of the gate of the West field.

The leader was a robust man in brown short clothing, with dark skin and a long scar on the corner of his right eye.

“Bah, what kind of thing is that, barking at me here,” the scarred man spat a wad of yellowish phlegm on the ground, his face full of disdain, cursing, “A slave dog who’s gotten powerful, really thinks she’s a mistress.”

“Damn dog,” the tall man following the scarred man cursed with raised eyebrows, advising, “Brother, don’t stoop to her level. She’s just a whore who crawled into an old woman’s bed.”

“Exactly, that Governor Peng could be her old mother, it’s really disgusting,” another thinner man echoed.

“Brother, what do we do now?” the tall man asked the scarred man, “Where are we going to find work from now on?”

“Where else can we earn as much as at the warehouse?” The scarred man frowned and spat again, “Damn it, daring to cut off my source of income.”

Hearing his words, the angry faces of the other two became even more annoyed. The tall man said, “Why don’t we go find Manager Liu again? He usually accepted a lot of favors from us.”

“You blockhead!” The scarred man glared fiercely at him, “He’s just a manager, how can he control the warehouse supervisor? What’s the point of looking for him?”

“With that stinking bitch around, it’s useless for us to go back.”

“We should have just killed her that day,” the thin man gritted his teeth and said viciously.

“We really should have killed her then, thrown her directly into the river to feed the fish. Then she wouldn’t be riding on our heads and shitting on us today,” the tall man agreed.

“Brother, maybe we can find another opportunity,” the thin man said, making a throat-slitting gesture.

The scarred man glanced around and noticed Lu Sheng’s ox-cart opposite them. He signaled to the other two, and all three fell silent.

Watching the three walk away, Lu Sheng glanced toward the West field, only seeing a crowd of people gathered in the distance within the field.

Lu Sheng couldn’t make anything out, so she withdrew her gaze.

Two more days passed.

The wine shop opened at the Mao hour as usual, but after almost half an hour, only a dozen or so customers had come, and business was extremely slow.

“Xiao Sheng,” Liu Yun said, puzzled, “Why are there so few customers buying liquor today?”

As she spoke, she looked out of the shop. The pedestrians coming and going on the street were about the same as usual.

Lu Sheng also found it strange. Usually, at this time, many working people would come to buy liquor, but not a single familiar customer had been seen this morning.

“I’ll go out and have a look.” Lu Sheng took off her apron and walked out.

As soon as she stepped out of the shop door, a familiar customer walked toward her. The customer held a bamboo flask, and upon seeing Lu Sheng, he was first surprised, then greeted her somewhat reluctantly, “Miss Lu, morning.”

“Morning, why didn’t you come to buy liquor today?” Lu Sheng smiled as if she hadn’t seen the flask in his hand.

“Ah, I was originally planning to buy some,” the customer’s forced smile couldn’t hold, “But, this… Jixiang Wine Shop also released Five-Grain Liquor, and it just came out today, only two wen per liang of liquor.”

Lu Sheng’s heart skipped a beat at the news.

Lu Sheng wasn’t surprised that other wine shops would follow suit and produce Five-Grain Liquor. What she hadn’t expected was that Jixiang Wine Shop’s Five-Grain Liquor was selling for only two wen per liang.

When the wine shop opened, Lu Sheng specially ran a promotion to get people to accept the Five-Grain Liquor: buy two liang and get one liang free, which also averaged two wen per liang of liquor.

Later, she worried that the selling price was too low and would attract the jealousy of competitors, so she raised the price to five wen for two liang of Five-Grain Liquor, which was similar to the three wen per liang for rice wine.

Lu Sheng dared to sell it for two wen at the time because the Lu Family Wine Shop’s brewing method had been changed from solid-state brewing to semi-solid-state brewing, increasing the liquor yield by nearly one fold.

Otherwise, according to the solid-state brewing method, the cost of one liang of liquor would be more than two wen.

But now Jixiang Wine Shop also dared to sell it for two wen per liang.

Were they also using a new liquor promotion like her? Or did they also know about the semi-solid-state brewing method?

While she was thinking, she saw Qi Nan rushing over with a bamboo flask.

“Xiao Sheng, this is bad.” Qi Nan handed the flask to her, “This Jixiang Wine Shop also released Five-Grain Liquor, and they’re selling it even cheaper than ours.”

Today, Qi Nan delivered the liquor and saw a crowd gathered noisily at the entrance of Jixiang Wine Shop on her way back, so she went over to take a look.

Lu Sheng took the flask, and Qi Nan added, “I tasted a sip just now, it’s slightly different from ours, but it tastes almost the same.”

Lu Sheng found a small bowl, poured some liquor out, looked at it briefly, and then took a small sip.

The aroma was slightly off, likely due to a different fermenting starter, but the alcohol concentration was basically the same as their Five-Grain Liquor.

With this quality of liquor, if it was brewed using the solid-state fermentation method, Jixiang Wine Shop would definitely be losing money if they sold it for two wen per liang.

That only left one possibility: the wine shop’s semi-solid-state brewing method had been leaked.

Compared to the distillation method, which everyone in the wine shop could see, the process of mixing the starter and fermentation, which involves the liquor recipe, was only known to Lu Hualin and Qi Nan.

But clearly, neither of them would leak the secret.

Then who could it be?

Could someone have secretly entered the wine shop and learned it?

“I’ll go back to the wine shop with you.”

Lu Sheng couldn’t figure out a result by guessing, so she planned to go back and ask Lu Hualin if he could figure out who leaked the secret.

If it was someone from the wine shop, they should be found as soon as possible, to prevent even the starter’s recipe from being stolen in the future.

When they arrived at the wine shop, Lu Hualin panicked when he learned that Jixiang Wine Shop had also released Five-Grain Liquor.

“This, how, how could this happen!” Lu Hualin immediately grabbed a rake and was about to head out, “I, I’m going to ask, ask, Old, Old Li why, why he stole, stole my liquor recipe!”

“Uncle, please don’t rush.”

Lu Sheng was much calmer than Lu Hualin. Now that the method had been leaked, getting angry was useless.

The most important thing was to find out who leaked the secret and figure out a countermeasure as soon as possible.

“Uncle, when you and Qi Nan mixed the starter and added the ingredients, was there anyone helping?” Lu Sheng asked after thinking.

“No, it, it’s always, always just been, been me and Qi, Qi Nan,” Lu Hualin scratched his head anxiously.

Hearing Lu Hualin’s words, Qi Nan also immediately realized that only she and Lu Hualin knew about the brewing process, and now that the recipe was stolen, she was the most suspicious.

“Master, Xiao Sheng, I, I didn’t…”

Qi Nan explained with a flushed face, but Lu Sheng interrupted her, comforting her, “Sister Nan, I know it wasn’t you.”

If Qi Nan had leaked the secret, she would have sold the starter and the semi-solid-state brewing method together, which would have gotten her more money.

The liquor from Jixiang Wine Shop was clearly not made with their starter, so the person who leaked the secret couldn’t be Qi Nan.

Seeing her serious expression, Qi Nan finally sighed in relief.

Lu Sheng calculated carefully. Based on the brewing time of this batch of liquor from Jixiang Wine Shop, it should have been about a month ago.

“Not recently, it should have been in the twelfth lunar month.”

“Twelfth lunar month, twelfth lunar month.” Lu Hualin vigorously scratched his head.

“I remember!” Qi Nan slapped her hand forcefully, “It was Little Aunt Lu.”

The Little Aunt Lu Qi Nan referred to was Lu Huaying.

“In the twelfth lunar month, she came several times to borrow money from Master. Twice when she came, we were mixing ingredients.”

“Yes, yes.” Lu Hualin was first happy, then his entire face darkened.

At the end of the twelfth lunar month, Lu Huaying came to borrow money from him, but because of the family division that happened before, Lu Hualin didn’t treat her kindly.

Lu Huaying came every few days, following Lu Hualin wherever he went.

Lu Hualin initially thought she was just badgering him for money, but now, upon reflection, she wasn’t clinging to him to borrow money. She knew he wouldn’t lend her money and intentionally came to steal the recipe.

Since she was a member of the Lu family, he didn’t worry so much when she came to see Lu Hualin.

Truly, one can guard against outsiders, but it’s hard to guard against a family thief.

“I, I’m going to find her!” Lu Hualin grabbed the rake and stormed out the door.

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