Chapter Eighty-Two: The Third Match

The steward’s wife asked whether the Sweet Water Shop and the Su Shop should join forces.

The answer, Su Lu said, was better left to stand apart. If they mixed too closely, things would only become muddier. “It would be cleaner to keep separate kitchens and separate bowls,” he advised. “In truth, I think it would be best to use the He name. That way, Mother can negotiate for better terms.”

After a pause, he added, “And the pressure on her shoulders will be lighter too.”

The foster mother nodded with deep feeling. She understood, of course, that he was thinking of her.

Whether it was reputation, public opinion, or the support of her natal family, the He banner could bear a great deal of the burden for her.

And Su Lu was also thinking of his own people. The old Su family could never be saddled with the disgrace of profiting from the downfall of a household without heirs.

Su Tai was even more satisfied with this decision; he was the one who pitied the He brothers most of all.

“Then let He Shop and Su Shop partner up,” Su Lu said. “As for whether it becomes a shareholding arrangement or a new brewery altogether, you and Granduncle Seven can decide that yourselves.” He gave Su Tai’s arm a light pat. “Second Brother has finished his apprenticeship, so he can serve as Mother’s spokesman at the brewery.”

“That was Mother’s thought from the start,” the foster mother said with a delighted laugh. “If I can’t have Xia the second foreman, I won’t work with them!”

“I can’t be a foreman. At best I could manage a gang leader,” Su Tai said at once, waving both hands.

“If you don’t know how, then learn! Don’t always think you’re no good at it,” the foster mother said, arching her brows. “Your mother was shoved into the saddle too, weren’t I? And now I still manage Sweet Water Shop in perfect order!”

“Oh, I remember, I remember, all right…” Su Tai accepted the lesson obediently.

“And what about the exact shares?” she asked again.

“That really is not something you should ask me,” Su Lu said with a wry smile. “It would be most improper for me to speak on it.”

“Very well, then I’ll talk to them myself.” She no longer pressed him.

“No more questions?” Su Lu asked, eager to leave and return to his books. For a grind like him, holidays were nothing more than a change of study location.

The foster mother thought for a moment, then lowered her voice. “One last question. What are we to do about the Lord of the Thousand-Household Commandery? Won’t he think we deliberately shut him out?”

“There is such a possibility, but the brewery must not let him get his hands in it.” Su Lu nodded, then smiled. “How about this: let Sweet Water Shop become the brewery’s exclusive agent in Peaceful Town. Wouldn’t that leave the Lord of the Thousand-Household Commandery with nothing to object to?”

“What a fine idea,” the foster mother said, her eyes lighting up. “That way we separate ourselves from him, and he still gets his profit. Naturally he won’t have any complaints.”

The next day, when Su Tai returned, he told the head foreman that the foster mother had agreed to meet.

Su Da-ji thought it over all night. The more he pondered it, the more he felt that Heaven had given the brewery its last chance. He could no longer concern himself with matters of family pride or old prejudices; at midday he prepared a belated “opening gift” that was six months overdue and headed straight for Peaceful Town.

The moment he stepped into Sweet Water Shop, he saw Su Youcai talking and laughing with the proprietress across the counter. In an instant, Su Da-ji understood everything.

“Oh? Granduncle Seven is here?” Su Youcai knew he would come, but had not expected him to arrive so soon. His old face reddened. “I’ve just been helping out for a couple of days…”

“No need to explain, no need to explain,” Su Da-ji said hurriedly, waving him off. “Do whatever you like.”

With that, he had Su Lang present the gift, then cupped his hands and smiled at the proprietress. “I’ve long heard that your shop is flourishing and customers come like clouds. Today I have brought only a small token, to draw a little of your good fortune!”

“You flatter me, Foreman,” the proprietress said with a curtsey. “It is only a small shop earning its keep. Please, come upstairs for tea.”

She led Su Da-ji courteously to the small sitting room upstairs, where she served him tea and gave his grandson the season’s new specialty, Peach Snow Dew.

Su Lu had already prepared everything in advance, so the negotiation naturally went very smoothly.

Just as he had expected, the Su Brewery really could not survive much longer. Su Da-ji treated the clear-sand liquor as a lifeline and was willing to give up at most thirty percent of the shares in exchange for cooperation.

The proprietress did not haggle with him. With a smile, she said, “Very well, thirty percent it is. But I have one condition.”

“Please speak,” Su Da-ji said, letting out a breath. Any more than this, and he could not persuade the clan to agree.

“The thirty percent shall be divided so that He Shop holds twenty, and the remaining ten go to Su Tai,” the proprietress said bluntly.

“Why?” Su Da-ji was startled. “Xia is a member of our Su family. The brewery already has his share.”

“If he has a share, then he has none,” the proprietress said, striking to the heart of the matter. “A mother must fight for her son’s interests so he will see her through her old age.”

Su Lang, listening from the side, stared in dumbfounded silence, almost wishing he could call her Mother too.

“This…” Su Da-ji hesitated. In principle, the proprietress was not asking for a single extra coin, and she was in no way harming the brewery’s interests. Yet emotionally, it was hard to accept.

People were used to treating each individual as a piece of the lineage. The good part was that the whole clan felt like one household, ready to stand together when trouble came. But the bad part was right there too: once you are family, talking about profit becomes terribly inconvenient.

That was precisely why Su Lu had refused to show his face. For him to negotiate profits with the clan would be far too difficult; one great moral banner after another would be pressed down upon him, and no one could bear that weight.

But Su Lu also could not contribute to the clan for nothing. So having the foster mother step in to talk meant none of those scruples applied.

She truly was loyal. In truth, the arrangement most favorable to her would have been for the two houses to establish a new brewery together, rather than directly folding the He shop into the Su Brewery.

The Su Brewery was already buried in debt, and the debt it owed the proprietress was on an entirely different scale.

The proprietress was willing to join the Su side and share the burden of debt, and Su Da-ji was deeply moved. She was nothing less than a living Bodhisattva sent to save the suffering!

So in the end, Su Da-ji gritted his teeth and agreed. “Fine. I’ll take it. Give him ten percent!”

“Good.” The proprietress nodded in satisfaction. “I’ll hand the secret recipe to Su Tai, and have him assist the head foreman in overseeing the production of Second-Gentleman Wine.”

“No problem. That is exactly as it should be,” Su Da-ji said, nodding. Since Su Tai would now be the third shareholder and the largest individual holder, he was already the brewery’s little boss.

He lifted his teacup and saluted her with a toast. “You are truly a woman of great righteousness. I never expected the matter to turn out like this. Whatever comes of it, whether success or failure, the Su family owes you a great debt of gratitude!”

“Is that so?” The proprietress smiled slyly at that. “If so, then can that debt of gratitude be repaid now?”

“Er… of course.” Su Da-ji tensed inwardly. He thought, I was only being polite—why is this young widow refusing to play by the script?

“It is nothing major,” the proprietress said softly. “It is just that my godson’s grandfather…”

“Oh, you mean my Sixth Brother.” Su Da-ji relaxed a little. “What about him?”

“The old man keeps thinking I am of the Cheng family, and it leaves him with a knot in his heart,” the proprietress said in distress. “It makes me too embarrassed to go see my son. It is really vexing.”

Su Da-ji thought to himself that not only was she of the Cheng family, she was also Scholar Cheng’s daughter.

But compared with the brewery matter, this was indeed a small thing. So he thumped his chest and promised, “Rest assured, proprietress. Leave it to me. No matter how hard the knot, I’ll untie it for you!”

“Truly?” she asked in delight.

“Of course it’s true. If I can’t do it, the clan elder can.” Su Da-ji smiled. “Besides, this concerns the livelihood of the whole clan. Sixth Brother should know how to put the greater good first, shouldn’t he? Could he really let the whole clan lose their jobs just because he’s being difficult? Impossible!”

“Then I’ll leave it to you, Foreman,” the proprietress said with a deep bow.

“Don’t worry. There will be no problem at all,” Su Da-ji said with complete confidence.

The two of them only settled the framework that day; many details still had to be discussed. Su Da-ji also needed to win over the clan, so it would not be settled in ten days or half a month.

Su Lu could not spare any thought for those matters, because nine days later, on the fifteenth day of the fifth month, the third monthly examination would arrive.

The atmosphere at the academy grew increasingly tense, and the laughter of earlier days gradually faded. The students buried themselves in their essays inside the classrooms. Even in the dead of night, there were still scholars in the half-study hall laboring by lamplight.

Only then did the students realize that their moods were somehow tied to the phases of the moon.

One of them even composed a light verse in mockery:

When the moon is a crescent, the heart grows light;
As it waxes round, more worries take flight.
On the fifteenth, the full moon breaks my soul;
After the test, I breathe again and wait for the next.

Even more cutting, another compared the monthly examination to a woman’s monthly courses, and wrote a still more impish rhyme:

Fair ladies sigh at the crimson tide;
I too lament when the monthly test arrives.
One pain returns once every month for each of us;
Her back aches, while mine is in my head.

Thus were the students’ tense and dreary hours given a little humor.

The fifteenth arrived in the blink of an eye, and the students in the lower hall at last迎来了 their third monthly examination.

The earlier parts need not be repeated; let us go straight to the final composition. The topic was:

Bathe in the Yi River, enjoy the breeze atop the Dance Terrace, sing, and return home.

This was a “clipped at both ends” question, a three-part prompt that seemed parallel on the surface but actually had a clear emphasis. Unlike the previous two examinations, this one’s difficulty rose sharply.

It was not only the style of the prompt; even the subject itself had the students cursing under their breath. It was, damn it, about Zengzi going out for a spring outing, and the description was extraordinarily detailed: bathing in the river, dancing in the wind, singing all the way home, carefree and happy.

The problem was, how the hell were you supposed to open a topic like that?

The students scratched their heads, gnawed their nails, chewed their brushes, and looked like a nest of hamsters, no longer as composed as they had been before the exam.

Many of them had no idea how to begin. In the end, with time running short, they could only steel themselves and force something onto the page.

As a result, after turning in their papers, none of them had the earlier buoyancy. One by one they sat there with heavy brows and gloomy faces, all feeling that they had botched this round.

“Why did the question suddenly become so hard?” the students in the Self-Examination Hall were all discussing it.

“Maybe the first two were too easy. You can have one and then two, but not three,” someone guessed.

“Will they all be this hard from now on?” Li Qiyu said tearfully. “Then I’m finished.”

“Who knows?” Even Su Dan had lost confidence. He had thought himself rather capable, only to find his composure stripped away the moment the difficulty rose.

Seeing that everyone was unhappy, Ma Qianli felt that, as the hall leader, it was his duty to cheer them up. He stood and announced, “Come on, I’m treating everyone to a meal out. Not a single one of you is left behind!”

Then he glanced at Sanwan. “You have to come too.”

Cheng Wanzhou and Cheng Wanfan both looked toward Cheng Wantang.

Cheng Wantang’s pimples had gotten even worse. During this period he had studied day and night, and especially after receiving Su Lu’s guidance, he felt his level had risen by a great deal.

He had inevitably harbored a little hope in his heart, only to run headlong into this sort of question. He had not even recovered from the blow when someone lightly patted his shoulder.

He looked up. It was Su Lu.

“Come along. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow,” Su Lu said gently.

“Yes, brother.” Only then did Cheng Wantang stand up and leave the study hall with his classmates.