Chapter Seventy-Four: Something Similar Happens Again

  Qingyun Alley is not far from Ye's house in this purple-robed alley, and it can be reached by passing through two small alleys. Moreover, that alley has its own entrance and exit at the alley mouth, and does not need to come over to the purple-robed alley side. Zhengshi usually goes out, encounters Ye Ming and others' probability is extremely small. So Ye Zhuo listened, and was very fond of this house, asked: "What kind of courtyard is for sale? Why does the owner want to sell it?"

  Although Gu's family had doubts about Zheng's ability to buy a house, she wouldn't ask directly and said: "The owner is a merchant from outside the city who was dissatisfied with staying in an inn every time he came to purchase goods, so he bought this small courtyard. Now that the merchant has grown old, his son passed the imperial examination and became an official, so he no longer wants to make money through hard work and plans to sell this house. I heard it's a two-section compound with a relatively small area. As for how much they want to sell it for, Wang's wife isn't very clear either. If you think it's suitable, we can go take a look and ask questions tomorrow."

  Ye Zhuo listened to these and was even more satisfied with the courtyard. However, since it's a two-story small courtyard, the owner didn't rush to sell cheaply, so the price must be high. With Zheng Shi's 300 taels of silver in hand and her own 50-60 taels of silver, she feared that they wouldn't be able to afford it. She didn't commit either way and asked instead: "What about the two rental properties?"

  "One place is the Qin family's small courtyard not far from here. The son of the Qin family's old lady is not very promising, idle and lazy every day, so the old lady Qin took out half of the ancestral property to rent it out and earn some silver to make a living. They separated that small courtyard from the Qin family and opened a small door on the side, forming an independent courtyard, with a monthly rent of one or two silver coins and five cents. It just so happened that the person who rented the courtyard had just moved out a few days ago, so the courtyard was empty. There is also another place that is a bit far from here, it takes about two meals to get there by walking east. The family gambled on stones and got rich, so they bought a big courtyard and rented out their original old house. According to what Wang's wife said, that house has more than ten rooms, but the courtyard is very small, just like a small sky well. The rent is even more expensive than the Qin family's, with one or two silver coins and eight cents per month."

  Yue Zhuo was not very satisfied with either of the two places. Although Qin's place sounded good, it was not far from Yue's house and the yard should be quite large, convenient for activities. But Qin's mother's son was already in his thirties or forties and still lived next door, idle and unemployed, who knows what kind of people he would bring home. And Zheng Shi lived nearby, which was also very inconvenient.

  "Let's go take a look at all three places tomorrow," said Ye Zhuo. But in his mind, he was thinking about whether to gamble again and win some money to help Zheng Shi buy the courtyard. Regardless of whether Zheng Shi would marry or not, having one property left in hand would be good.

  After chatting with Guan's family about this topic, Ye Zhuo went to see Zheng's family and saw her enthusiastically learning embroidery from Zhao's family with needle and thread, so she put her mind at ease and returned to her room to practice carving.

  Other jade carving apprentices usually start with the most basic knife skills and practice all the knife skills before moving on to practicing shapes. However, Ye Yuqi taught her in a completely different way: he simply explained the knife skills once and let her start carving various objects. As a result, Ye Zhuo's current carvings don't care about knife skills at all; she thinks about what shape she wants to carve the stone into and just does it. Also, because of her previous life's painting foundation, although her knife skills are a bit immature, they are extremely spiritual, and various flowers, animals, and plants come alive vividly, making Ye Yuqi praise them endlessly.

  But Ye Zhuo was a perfectionist, how could she tolerate her own clumsy swordsmanship? Instead, she went back to practicing the most basic sword techniques. This heartfelt desire made even the dull practice interesting, and its effectiveness far surpassed that of the learning apprentices. It was also because of this that her progress was incredibly rapid.

  As for splitting incense, after countless restrictions and challenges, and numerous failures, Ye Zhuo finally made some progress last night. She found that when she calmed down, and then calmed down even further, to the point where she could hear her own blood flowing, but was oblivious to the rustling of leaves and chirping of birds outside the window, the bright red light would expand before her eyes, and then expand again. Then, swinging her arm along a certain arc-shaped trajectory, it was very likely that she would hit the red light. Last night, in that state, she was able to split two out of ten knives. If she was lucky, she could even hit three or four knives.

  As she thought of the scene last night, Ye Zhuo's mind moved and she stopped the engraving knife in her hand. She stared at the stone in her hand with a fixed gaze, concentrating all her attention on it. Before long, that state where only the stone and the knife existed between heaven and earth appeared again. At this moment, she felt as if she could see the hidden patterns under the stone. The engraving knife in her right hand immediately moved. The knife seemed to have come alive in Ye Zhuo's hand, dancing rhythmically without stopping. Under the knife, stone chips fell continuously.

  It wasn't until much later, when her ears could hear the sound of Guan's voice in the courtyard again, that the stone in her hand had transformed into a woman holding a flower basket. The woman wore a smile on her face, gazing at the flowers in her hands, seemingly entranced by their beauty. The movement, the expression, even Ye Cuo, who was always extremely strict with herself, was very satisfied with this work. To be sure, carving human figures is much more difficult than carving flowers or animals. When carving facial features, it's absolutely not allowed for the knife to deviate even a little bit, otherwise the figure would no longer resemble the one you had in mind. And yet, the figure she held in her hands was full of life, with smooth lines and nearly perfect facial features; there wasn't a hint of immaturity in her knife work, it was completely a qualified stone carving piece.

  She put down the stone carving with satisfaction, just about to stand up and stretch her body, when she suddenly heard a strange and flustered voice coming from the gate of the courtyard, and responding to him was Guan Shi. It's unknown what that person said, but Guan Shi's voice rose up all at once.

  What happened?

  Ye Zhuo stood up and pushed the door to go out, but saw Guan Shi standing at the gate, her expression a bit dull. She hurriedly walked up to support Guan Shi and anxiously asked: "Grandma, what's wrong?"

  Guan's eyes widened as if she had just woken up from a dream, and she burst into tears, grasping Ye Zhuo's shoulders tightly. "What to do? Zhuo'er, what to do? Our main house didn't do anything wrong, why won't heaven let us go?"

  Ye Zhuo saw that Guan's mind was already in disarray, and she was shocked. She quickly turned her head to ask the man still standing at the door: "Uncle Li, what exactly happened?" This man had met Ye Yuqi on the day she opened Yuzhuo Fang, and they were quite familiar with each other.

  "Something has happened at the Jade Carving Workshop. A customer brought a top-quality jade material to be processed, but your grandfather was not around, so Master Luo took it upon himself to accept the material. However, during the processing, something went wrong and the jade carving was ruined. The customer is now causing trouble at the workshop, demanding that you compensate him with 3,000 taels of silver. Is your grandfather at home? Hurry up and get him over here!"

  As soon as he heard that it wasn't Ye Yuqi who had the accident, Ye Zhuo let out a big sigh of relief and shook his head: "My grandfather went out early in the morning and isn't at home. I'll go take a look." He then turned to comfort Guan Shi, "Grandmother, although the jade is damaged, it's not impossible to repair. Even if it's shattered into pieces, it can still be made into pendants and sold for money. Don't worry."

  This remark not only made Old Master Li shake his head, but also caused Madame Guan to become uncontrollable, crying: "Can the price of a small piece of jade and a whole block of jade material be the same? If three thousand taels of silver are spent on making a jade ring, it can't even be sold for one thousand taels. The debt of two thousand taels is still unpaid, and even if we sell our house, we won't be able to pay it back! Heaven, why don't you have eyes? Why do you specifically bring calamity to good people?"

  Zhao, Zheng and Qiuyue heard Guan's crying voice and had already run out. They also heard Uncle Li's words. However, they were also at a loss - a matter of 2-3 thousand taels of silver was not something that Zheng, who only had 300 taels on her, could solve; while Zhao probably only had tens of cents to buy vegetables.

  "Grandma, this is not the time to be flustered. Aunt and Mother, please take care of Grandma, I'll go to the workshop and take a look." Ye Zhuo said, and bowed to Li Da Shu again, "Thank you, Uncle Li, for coming to inform us. My grandfather probably went to the Yu Jie's Lishi Workshop to check on the jade materials, we'll have to trouble you again to go fetch him back."

  "No need to be polite. I'll go to Jade Street now." Uncle Li thought that Ye Zhen was just a little girl, and even if she went to the Jade Pavilion, it would be of no use. It's better to find Ye Yuqi back, which is the right thing to do. He hastily instructed a sentence, turned around and got on the carriage.

  "Autumn Moon, Autumn Chrysanthemum, let's go." Ye Zhuo didn't have time to comfort Guan Shi, she called out and took Autumn Moon and Autumn Chrysanthemum to the alley entrance. It wasn't that she was being bossy, insisting on bringing two maids whenever she went out. It was just that this matter was important, and who knows when they might need to run errands for help. Having people at her beck and call made things more convenient.

  Three people hailed a horse-drawn carriage and hurried to the Jade Carving Workshop. When they arrived, many onlookers were already gathered at the entrance of the workshop. Just yesterday, something similar had happened to Zheng Fangjing, and now another incident occurred at the Jade Carving Workshop, causing everyone at the entrance to discuss and speculate whether there was some kind of evil spirit on Yi Ren Street, as such events rarely happen in a year, yet they occurred consecutively within two days. Autumn Moon heard these discussions and felt anxious, worried that people would recall Zheng Fangjing's relationship with Ye Yuqi's family and associate it with Ye Zuo, who had an unlucky reputation.

  Among the three, Ye Zhuo was the calmest. She had the skill of gambling on stones and 3,000 taels of silver were not a loss she couldn't afford, so she wasn't worried that the Ye family's main house would go bankrupt or even be destroyed because of this. Instead, she was thinking about something else. That is, such things happened continuously for two days, and the masters who experienced these things were all related to her, which made her suspect that this was a trap set by others, step by step pulling them into desperation.

  "Make way, make way, everybody please make way." Qiu Yue saw that the entrance was blocked and could only shout all the way.

  "The girl from the Ye family has arrived."

  "How is it her? Where's Boss Ye?"

  "What's the use of a little girl?"

  "Hey, whether it's useful or not, a little girl can come alone, that's gutsy. This girl is alright!"

  Many of those who had seen Ye Zhuo on the day Yu Zhuo Fang opened for business looked at her with sympathetic faces and gave way to her, discussing it among themselves in private.