When digging wells, she and Ga Mei were the only girls working at Hongshu Slope. Now, Ga Mei was highly valued by the Master and the Mistress, and was even allowed to go to the capital with Lu Hua and live there for an extended period.
As for her, Qian Cui Wan, she had never even been to Tianshui Town in her life. She spent her days making clothes and shoes at the tailor shop, doing unpromising work.
The Mistress was truly biased.
She was clearly more beautiful, more mature, and more sensible than Ga Mei, yet all the benefits went to Ga Mei. It was as if she was deliberately excluding her.
Did the Mistress dislike pretty girls? It was said that girls often compared each other secretly. Was the Mistress jealous of her looks? Afraid she would seduce the Master like Wang Dong Hua?
Although she… also liked the Master very much, she dared not harbor such thoughts. She had already been sufficiently patient and accommodating!
The injustice in her heart made Qian Zhao Di’s eyes redden.
Besides this reason, Zhao Di felt that the Mistress might also be excluding her because of her disreputable parents.
Therefore, no matter how diligently and sensibly she behaved, the Mistress still looked down on her.
Qian Zhao Di’s fingers, gripping the corner of her clothes, gradually turned white.
On the carriage, Sun Ga Mei’s extremely happy smiling face and her giggling laughter struck Zhao Di as particularly glaring and grating. She wiped her eyes and turned away from the farewell gathering.
Yang Shi glanced at her inadvertently, her gaze deepened, but she said nothing.
Qian Zhao Di returned to her room, dug out a small cloth bag from under the bed, and poured out the silver fragments and copper coins. She counted them, totaling thirteen taels of silver.
She hugged the money bag to her chest, silently vowing to save more money, to redeem herself in the future, and then leave this wretched place.
She didn’t want to be a household slave!
She wouldn’t be as foolish as Wang Dong Hua, who had brought about her own demise. With her looks, marrying into a good family shouldn’t be a problem in the future.
Lu Ye drove the carriage, gradually moving away. The four people in the carriage kept waving their arms at the people on Hongshu Slope who were receding.
And the people on Hongshu Slope also waved at the increasingly smaller carriage until it disappeared from sight. Only then did they reluctantly return home.
With the road construction paused, Bai Sheng expanded the area for planting saplings and crops.
Hongshu Slope was surrounded by people working enthusiastically.
The space could provide the necessary water storage for planting, and the manure fertilizer was barely enough. Especially the manure from seven to eight hundred horses, which could fill the septic tank in the space in about a day. Coupled with chicken and rabbit droppings, it was not a small amount.
The septic tank outside the space, under Lu Yun’s paid collection management, not only attracted villagers from nearby to bring their own manure but also villagers from afar who delivered manure from miles away.
Therefore, the manure fertilizer was barely sufficient.
Only the soil was a problem, but this problem was solved by Bai Sheng’s sudden enlightenment – using the soil from the space.
Bai Sheng conducted an experiment, digging out soil from the space and transporting it out. She wanted to see if the pit would be refilled. The result proved that it could. However, it required Bai Sheng to use her mind and wait for a night.
This discovery made Bai Sheng overjoyed.
With the space soil, there was no longer any need to travel far to transport soil. Moreover, the space soil was more nutritious than ordinary soil, and the survival rate of trees and crops would be higher.
The only tricky part was how to explain the source of this soil.
Bai Sheng had people dig a large pit near the septic tank specifically for storing the soil. She told the few people in charge of the household that this soil was obtained through someone entrusted by Prince Yu, who had managed to steal it from other prefectures and counties. To avoid suspicion, all future soil transportation would have to be done secretly in the dead of night.
She instructed everyone to keep it a secret and not to mention the soil to anyone outside, as if the matter of the soil did not exist.
Since it was said by the Mistress and related to Prince Yu, the few people in charge did not question it further.
Others would certainly not inquire about the source of the soil. That was a matter for the owner and his wife. They only needed to work and ask the managers for materials when they ran out.
Every few days, Bai Sheng would secretly add soil to the large pit.
In addition, with Heng Heng and Lu Ye absent, watering with spiritual spring water also became a problem. Bai Sheng had no choice but to inject the spiritual spring water into the wells and form a twenty-person watering team. They bought ten flatbed carts and dozens of large wooden barrels to water the crops and saplings daily.
More and more people came to work at Hongshu Slope, while the miners from the mine a few miles away decreased in number. Only those excluded from Hongshu Slope had no choice but to work there.
Supervisor Huang of the mine was anxious. Their supply of mined goods to the higher authorities had drastically decreased. The higher authorities were already furious, and Boss Jiang could only put pressure on him.
Supervisor Huang was helpless. The wages Boss Jiang offered were too low, and life was difficult these days. If there were better pay elsewhere, miners would naturally flock there.
But he definitely couldn't say that Boss Jiang's wages were low, or his head would have been chopped off long ago. In the end, he had to find a way to poach miners himself.
He had already ascertained that Hongshu Slope was occupied by a family driven out of Huangsha Village. The head of the family was Lu Ye, who knew some martial arts.
That family was originally so poor that even their parents died of thirst. However, after moving to Hongshu Slope, they suddenly became rich.
What surprised Supervisor Huang even more was that they had somehow managed to curry favor with Prince Yu and had the backing of Prince Yu.
Although Prince Yu was merely a discarded son of the Emperor, he was still a prince. Without a legitimate reason, they could not rashly confront the people of Hongshu Slope.
Boss Jiang had disdainfully said that while Hongshu Slope had someone behind them, their mine also had someone behind them, and it was someone even more powerful than Prince Yu.
Without a pretext, they would not act against Hongshu Slope for now. It wasn't that they truly feared Prince Yu, but they didn't want to escalate the situation and cause trouble for their patron.
He told Supervisor Huang not to act rashly. Once they found a real handle, they could make their move. By then, even Prince Yu wouldn't be able to do anything to them.
Therefore, Supervisor Huang had been looking for a reason to settle scores with Hongshu Slope these days. Their wages and treatment were inferior, but if they could ruin what Hongshu Slope was doing, the villagers would have nowhere to go and would naturally come to their mine to work.
His luck was truly good. Just as he was dozing off, someone delivered a pillow. Today, a stone hauler from Huangsha Village told him that someone from Huangsha Village was looking for him, claiming to have important news about Hongshu Slope that could help him solve his current predicament.
Upon hearing this, Supervisor Huang immediately had the person brought into his tent without delay.
It turned out that the reason the family at Hongshu Slope became rich was because they sold a precious ore. It was said that a silver snake had given that precious ore to their family.
So, Huangsha Village speculated that the family at Hongshu Slope had instructed that snake to steal it from their mine.
Supervisor Huang was very pleased. Didn't this provide him with a reason?