Chapter 10

Half a month later, herb prices suddenly shot up.

Disorder began to spread through the city too. Gong Lang and I had little to fall back on. Although we had bought some servants at the labor market, you could never truly know another person’s heart. I trusted none of them.

I had disguised my remaining herbs and stored them in several cellars. Even Gong Lang didn’t know their actual locations.

I had only just let it be known that I meant to sell the contents of one cellar.

There was one price when we went out, another by the time Gong Lang negotiated, and a different one again when he returned and we were about to settle terms.

My herbs were good, and my asking price was not outrageous.

Just as we were about to close the deal at a restaurant, several unexpected parties interfered.

The first was Su Cheng, Master Su’s beloved second son.

In my last life, he was the man my sister had wanted me dead for.

Dressed in brocade, he arrived with two stewards and two servants, making quite a display.

The customer I had been speaking with was ushered aside. At the long table, Su Cheng sat alone, holding his tea and studying me.

“So you’re the celebrated Master Jiang. Not quite what I imagined.”

“Hardly a master. I’m merely a junior steward running errands.” The most important thing in business was bluffing. Using what I knew from my last life, I had invented a connection to a steward in the household of a wealthy, idle prince in the capital.

Nothing too grand or too humble. Just enough.

Su Cheng’s alluring eyes passed over my throat with an unreadable hint of amusement. Then he promptly offered a price that was hard to resist.

“Thirty percent more, Master Jiang. We can even count the quantity twenty percent higher, and handle the transport ourselves. How does that sound?”

An increase in price was ordinary enough. But inflating the quantity too, and arranging the transport?

I suddenly remembered my last life. When war broke out in the north and herbs became scarce, cities sending aid had paid enormous sums to buy up medicines. They shipped a huge consignment north for the General Who Guards the North.

Northern raiders intercepted it. Not a single stalk reached its destination.

The wounded soldiers had been left without treatment, and morale had suffered badly.

Looking at that face now, what more did I need to understand?

Another scheme hatched by crooked merchants and corrupt officials.

He could probably sell these herbs for ten times the price again.

I watched him. He looked back, perfectly at ease.

Just as he had in the courtyard of Master Su’s other residence in my last life. I had been bathing inside, while he stood beyond the screen and demanded to know how I had bewitched his father into neglecting everything else and making his mother miserable.

I told him to ask his father. His sword slowly sliced through the screen. “I’m asking you.”

Behind the half-open screen, I leaned against the bath without hiding or moving away, waiting for his sword.

My shoulder was covered in bruises and scars.

He stood looking at me for a while. In the end, he warned me not to waste my efforts. I would never enter the Su household, whatever I did. The main Su family were nobles in the capital. Not just any woman could attach herself to them.

Then came the affair with my sister.

The man before me was vicious, dissolute, and utterly unscrupulous.

Fraud involving military medicine suited him perfectly.

I smiled faintly. “It sounds like a good deal. Allow me to consider it.”

Su Cheng smiled too. “Then I’ll give young Master Jiang a day.”

He rose, leaning down to look at me. “You won’t find a more generous buyer. Besides, young sir, even if you get all that silver, these are troubled times. Someone as conspicuous as you—can you really walk away unscathed?”

He straightened. When he left, my original customer promptly bowed his head and followed him out.