Chapter 52: Repaying Kindness

"Prepare well for the county examination after you return; the exam is in one month."

Li Pan looked at Lu Beigu and said, "Also, hurry up with the household registration transfer; do not delay until after the county examination, or it will affect your entry into the prefectural school."

"Yes, Lord Jun, this student remembers."

After parting with Li Pan, Lu Beigu, carrying a book satchel on his back and a bundle slung over his shoulder, did not return to the county school first; instead, he went to a rice shop in the county town to buy some rice, then went to a meat stall near the South Street to buy mutton.

The butcher at the stall looked very fierce, his face red like cured meat soaked in a soy sauce vat, with a black mole the size of a soybean on his left cheek, from which three stiff hairs quivered up and down with the muscle twitching.

On his right cheek, there was a deep dark purple scar extending all the way to the corner of his eye.

The moment he saw this person, Lu Beigu felt he had found the prototype of the "Guardian of the West" who was beaten to death by Lu Zhishen's three punches.

"I want ten jin of lean meat, cut into mince, with not a single bit of fat on it."

The butcher paused, then immediately replied, "Very well."

He then went to the meat block, selected ten jin of lean meat, and carefully cut it into mince.

Song people loved mutton the most, regarding pork as merely average.

For Lu Beigu, actually, his favorite food was beef, but beef was generally not sold in the market; like horses, cattle were important resources controlled by the government, and unless a plow ox died of illness or old age, one could rarely eat beef.

Therefore, even in large restaurants, dishes such as "stir-fried yellow beef" could not be ordered.

Hmm, Lu Beigu had not yet eaten at a restaurant, but from what he heard in his memories, it seemed the large restaurants in Hejiang County made stir-fry dishes only averagely, about the same level as the county school's dining hall.

Or rather, although the iron woks produced by Great Song were undeniably top-tier technology for surrounding countries.

The Song people themselves had not yet fully figured out how to utilize the stir-frying properties of iron woks, and still needed time to settle and master it.

These supplies cost Lu Beigu a total of 350 copper coins; he put the few strings of coins he had broken from a five-guan note of Jiaozi into his book satchel.

Carrying these items, Lu Beigu found the home of the fisherman who had saved him from the water that day.

Lu Beigu was a person who repaid kindness; previously, one thing after another had happened, time was too tight, and he had no time to do this; now was the time to do it.

It was very easy to find, because the scene of the incident was the riverside right in front of the fisherman's house.

As soon as Lu Beigu walked to the courtyard, he smelled the familiar fishy odor; several fishing nets were drying under the eaves outside the courtyard, and a fish basket woven from bamboo strips lay crookedly by the door, with two palm-sized crucian carp still flopping inside.

He gently knocked on the wooden door, and a hoarse reply came from inside.

"Coming."

The door opened; the space inside was not small, a standard courtyard house of Hejiang County, which would be about 200 square meters if converted.

"Old sir, I apologize for the disturbance; do you remember the person you fished out that day? I have come to repay your kindness."

Lu Beigu clasped his hands in a bow and handed over the bag of rice and the mutton.

The old fisherman paused, then immediately waved his hands repeatedly: "What are you doing, young sir? This old man only did a simple favor; how could I deserve these!"

"If not for your rescue, I would have likely lost my life in the river by now."

Lu Beigu insisted, "These are but humble gifts, merely to express my gratitude."

Unable to refuse further, the old fisherman accepted them and said, "Young sir, come inside and sit; I will ask my wife to brew a pot of tea."

The two sat inside the house and chatted for a while.

The old fisherman's name was Feng Si; his family had fished for generations, and the neighbors all called him Old Feng; he also had a daughter at home, but she was married and did not live here anymore.

Before long, rustling sounds came from inside the house; an old woman with gray hair came out holding a coarse porcelain tea bowl, her face wearing an awkward smile: "Young sir, do not disdain it; the house only has some coarse tea."

Lu Beigu took the tea bowl, saw the tea soup was turbid with several coarse stems floating on top, yet he did not mind.

He took a sip and smiled, asking, "Did you go fishing on the river today, old sir?"

"Went, went!" Old Feng rubbed his hands, his wrinkles spreading out on his face, "Today's luck was good; I caught several large perch, just had my wife take them to the market... pity, I only got back 1200 iron coins."

1200 iron coins sounded like a lot, but in reality, when exchanged for copper coins, it was only about 100 coins.

"Can't you exchange them for copper coins?"

"Sigh." Mentioning this issue, Old Feng was also somewhat helpless, "Fish are not rare items; people just give iron coins; take it or leave it; if there's a loss, we can only take a small loss."

At the beginning of Great Song's founding, the Shu region continued the coinage policy of Later Shu, mainly circulating iron coins, but iron coins had low value and were heavy; sometimes buying a bolt of cloth required 20,000 iron coins, weighing several hundred jin, so the people of Shu hated this very much.

But there was no way; the decades of warfare during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period had knocked the economies of most regions back to a primitive state, and the Song Chaoting, on one hand, was indeed short of copper, and on the other hand, always harbored suspicion toward the Shu region, which easily formed its own system.

Therefore, the iron coin problem in the Shu region was not only not solved but became even more severe because the court added an iron coin mint in Bazhang County, Yazhou, to mint large quantities of coins.

By the current reign of Emperor Renzong, the exchange ratio between iron coins and copper coins gradually stabilized at 10:1, but the purchasing power of iron coins was simply not as good as that of copper coins.

So for sellers, if the goods in hand were relatively scarce, they could exchange for copper coins, but if they were just ordinary goods, they had to accept iron coins even if they didn't want to.

This awkward dual-currency parallel system did not improve with the appearance of Jiaozi; the people of Shu continued to suffer, even to the extent of seriously affecting economic development; everyone wanted to save copper coins and spend iron coins, but in fact, things often went against their wishes.

Lu Beigu did not know whether his strategy could change all this.

But he held considerable hope for the combination of Zhang Fangping and Fan Xiang, after all, these two were already the most economically knowledgeable technical officials in Great Song.

And if, with Zhang Fangping returning to the position of Commissioner of the Three Departments and Fan Xiang promoted to Deputy Commissioner of Transport and Commissioner for Regulating Salt, this new salt certificate law could be fully implemented, bringing in a large influx of copper coins, then the inconveniences personally experienced by the people of Sichuan might be changed because of him.

Lu Beigu nodded, his gaze sweeping over the broken fishing gear in the corner of the room and the dried fish hanging to dry, and casually asked, "How do the fish in Anle Creek compare to those in the Yangtze River?"

"That's a huge difference!"

Old Feng got excited and gestured, saying, "The fish in the Yangtze River have thick flesh and fresh taste, especially after passing through the Wu Gorge; there is a fish called shi fish, which is truly fat and delicious!"

The two chatted casually about family matters.

Not long after, someone suddenly entered the doorway again.

It was a butcher in appearance; this man was broad-shouldered and stout, with a round belly protruding under his greasy apron.

The light at the doorway was dim, so Lu Beigu could not see his face clearly; he only saw it clearly after the man came in.

— Wasn't this the stall owner from the meat stall just now?

"Old Master Taishan."

The butcher's loud voice shook the dust from the beams, and his palm, like a palm-leaf fan, slapped against the doorframe, his short, thick knuckles still stained with dark brown scabs.

Old Feng frowned but had to go forward to greet him.

"What's wrong?"

This butcher, looking like Old Feng's son-in-law, shouted, "Is there any money left at home? The shop on South Street was seized by the pawnshop; now the pawnshop wants to sell it, front shop and back courtyard. I've set my sights on it. If I'm slow, someone else might buy it first."

"You filthy rascal! If I pawn my bones, how many copper coins can I get?"

Old Feng pushed his son-in-law's belly and scolded, "Do you think making money from slaughtering pigs and sheep is easy? You only think about buying shops. Which shop doesn't cost a hundred strings? If you have the ability, handle it yourself. Don't come looking for me."

Lu Beigu looked at the minced mutton on the table with a strange expression.

"This is self-production and self-sale," he thought.

Old Feng's son-in-law was big and burly, yet he dared not contradict his father-in-law, only nagging endlessly.

Things like, "Isn't that for your daughter's sake?" and "The meat stall is too narrow now; it's hard to even turn around."

Old Feng ignored all that and simply kept pushing him out.

Pushed to desperation, the butcher actually raised his palm, large as a palm-leaf fan!

Lu Beigu thought he was going to slap Old Feng. If he really did, Old Feng would probably lose half his life. Thinking he couldn't just watch his savior get beaten to death right before his eyes, he quickly stood up.

But the butcher's palm did not fall; instead, he covered his own eyes, sat down heavily, and burst into wailing tears.

"Master Taishan, it was your daughter who forced me to come beg for money! She said, she said if I don't get the money and go back, she'll beat me half to death as soon as I get home."

Lu Beigu was dumbfounded.

Originally, he thought that if he wasn't the Town Guardian Xi from Water Margin, he'd at least be the Butcher Hu from Fan Jin Passes the Imperial Exam. Turns out he was a man dominated by a "River East Lion's Roar." It seems Chen Jichang lives in Meishan right now.

(End of this chapter)