Chapter 338: Just a Concubine (3)_1
Pei Qin set up her stall to sell sesame sauce pancakes. They no longer sold red yam balls; they had used up the remaining red yams. At this point, some of the red yams had frozen and turned bad. They ate the spoilt ones themselves and dried the rest to make red yam chips and ground them into red yam flour.
Shen Songming stayed for a few more days, familiarizing Zhang Gengshan and Feng Wei with the medicinal herbs they had gathered. He also badmouthed Mo Heng and his servant in front of Pei Qin to the point that Pei Qin almost thought Mo Heng was a fugitive murderer, before he finally left Yuanyang County.
After he left, Pei Qin dug her ears and cursed "idiot" before going to fry some peanuts. This time, she fried sugar-coated peanuts and Drunkard’s Peanuts, which that dimwit took away with him, along with so much red yam flour. She wondered if he could even stomach it all!
Shen Songming had given half of the red yam flour to Meng Dinglun, saying the other half was to be taken back to the capital for his family elders to try, so he couldn’t give any to him. He didn’t say much else and didn’t ask about the matters concerning the Qian family either.
Meng Dinglun, a Fourth-rank Magistrate, was also shrewd. Seeing that Shen Songming just came to deliver red yam flour and loitered around before leaving, taking a detour specially to see him, Meng understood it was meant as a reminder. It would surely be mentioned to Elder Shen along with his previous deeds. Although one or two comments wouldn’t greatly affect his career, if there were someone with similar credentials, he would definitely be the one getting suppressed.
After much thought, Meng Dinglun decided to push the matters of the Qian family aside and directed them to Wu Dongsi.
Wu Dongsi was also somewhat annoyed. He couldn’t manage the hundred-some clerks and government officials in the county government office, and now Shen Songming’s visit had bypassed the office entirely. But with the wheat harvest over and the time to plant yams approaching, surely Shen would leave some message, right?
So he called upon Pei Qin in the county government office to ask if Shen Songming had left any message about the summer yam planting plans.
Shen Songming wasn’t a farmer; it was impressive enough that he thought about planting yam seedlings and transplanting them. What plans could he have? She told Wu Dongsi just to post a notice close to the wheat harvest, teaching the people how to prepare the land and plant the yams.