<h4>Chapter 169</h4>
Ever since that day when the two of them were caught doing naughty things in the yard, Jiang Wenyuan looked at Jing Yan with a weird expression for several days afterwards.
He couldn''t bear to me his beloved daughter, so he pushed all the responsibility onto Jing Yan, believing that he had led his beloved daughter astray.
Even Emperor Xia Jing noticed that something was off. He secretly asked his son, "What have you done that he has such a big opinion of you?"
Jing Yan looked at him but didn''t say anything. Emperor Xia Jing''s mind suddenly had a sh of inspiration and asked, "Could it be that you did something inappropriate to his daughter and got caught red-handed?"
It was better when he didn''t ask. When he did ask, even Jing Yan''s ears turned red, and his face was also unusually embarrassed.
As soon as Emperor Xia Jing saw this, he immediately became gleeful, "Heh, turns out it''s true!"
At the same time, he couldn''t help but make fun of his son, "Look at you, already over twenty, and you still haven''t married a wife. But then again, your father-inw is indeed quite difficult to deal with. It would be impossible for him to voluntarily marry his daughter to you. You, on the other hand, need to have thicker skin. Go over to your mother-inw more often and curry some favor, polish the apple more. As long as those two agree, no matter how reluctant your father-inw is to marry off his daughter, he would have toply."
Jing Yan strangely felt that his father''s words made a lot of sense.
So afterwards, Jing Yan started visiting the Jiang residence even more diligently. Whenever there were any good stuff in the pce, he would send them to Jiang Wuyuan''s desk at the first opportunity.
When Jing Yan was giving gifts to his beloved little wife, he didn''t forget to bring a share for his mother-inw as well, making Lu delighted and smiling happily. She would often boast about him in front of Jiang Wenyuan. There was a growing feeling that the mother-inw was increasingly satisfied the more she looked at her son-inw.
Jiang Wenyuan was extremely vexed internally. Fortunately, his beloved daughter was still quite clear-headed. No matter how many gifts this brat gave, she would still do her own things without any dy.
He didn''t expect that his beloved daughter and the first person on his cklist were not only interacting openly but also having secret trysts. They would use up severalmunication talismans every night.
Moreover, most of the time, their conversations were about mundane topics like "Have you eaten?", "Where did you go?", "What have you done today?", "Do you miss me?", and so on. These seemed to be meaningless and silly conversations without much substance.
Of course, sometimes they would also discuss things rted to their studies, work and cultivation.
Since they were using up the papermunication talismans quickly, although it wasn''t troublesome to draw them, it was still time-consuming. Jiang Yuqing thought about it and decided to just craft amunication jade talisman, simr to a mobile phone from her previous life.
What she thought of, she aplished. After ruining countless jade talismans, Jiang Yuqing finally seeded in making two directionalmunication jade talismans. Moreover, they had unlimited usage without any restrictions on time or frequency. They could chat for as long as they wanted.
When Jing Yan received thismunication jade talisman, he was utterly delighted.
Then he held her tightly and kissed her fiercely before letting go.
At this time, the two''s dating location was in the East Pce. Not to mention Jiang Wenyuan didn''t know, even if he did, without permission he couldn''t easily enter.
As for the other people in the East Pce, they definitely wouldn''t be so tactless as to disturb the date between the Crown Prince and the Princess. They wished that the Crown Prince would hurry up and marry the Princess into the pce.
As time entered June, and the weather grew hotter by the day.
By the end of June, the grapes and peaches in Tai''an Farm had all ripened.
Over the past two years, Tai''an Farm had also bought quite a lot of barren hills around it and increased the variety of fruits nted, such as apples and cherries.
It was a pity that they were newly nted not long ago and still not old enough to bear fruit.
The scale of sheep breeding had also expanded further since the Tai''an barbecue was doing too good a business. No matter if it was the mutton skewers for summer barbecues or the mutton hot pot for winter, they all relied on sheep.
As the farm grew bigger, more manpower was naturally needed. Currently, there were already over 300 veterans working at Tai''an Farm alone.
Because the work was stable and ie was secure, quite a number of them even married and had children.
This was also what Jiang Yuqing was happy to see. She hoped that every veteran could live a life of "wife and children by a warm stove".
Moreover, the veterans were extremely diligent. They utilized all the spaces between the cherry trees in the orchard as well as the edges and corners of the farm to nt watermelons.
And they were nted quite well too, all exceptionallyrge in size. When Jiang Yuqing went to take a look, even the smallest ones were still over ten jin, while thergest exceeded twenty jin.
A few days before the farm''s opening, invitation cards were sent to all loyal elderly customers of Tai''an Farm. Jiang Yuqing had even personally sent one to Mingyang Princess to invite her to visit Tai''an Farm.
After recuperating for over a month, aided by Jiang Yuqing''s premium beauty elixir, the current Mingyang Princess lookedpletely like a different personpared to when she was at the teau.
She had gained weight, her skin was rosy and lustrous, perhaps from having rtives by her side. Her mood seemed brighter and more cheerful as well. Her entire being appeared glowing and radiant.
On the opening day, not only did Mingyang Princesse, but the Second Princess, Third Princess and Ronghua Princess came too.
These people rushed straight for the watermelon patch when they arrived, yelling that they came to see the peaches and grapes every year so there was no hurry. They could pick themter. But this was the first time watermelons were nted in the Capital City, so they must cherish the opportunity.
When they saw the plump, round watermelons nestled among the green vines, they were utterly delighted. Disregarding their image, they screamed and lifted their skirts to rush forward.
Afraid that they would pick unripe watermelons and waste them, Jiang Yuqing personally served as the melon picking ambassador. Any watermelon they picked, she would go over to knock on it herself to confirm it was ripe before letting them pluck it.
As a result, these people got hooked on melon picking. Each person picked 20 to 30 before finally stopping. They really made Jiang Yuqing drenched in sweat from exhaustion.
Jiang Yuqing also picked some watermelons for herself, nning to send some into the pce for the Emperor, Empress, Jing Yan and Li Deshun while keeping the rest for her family to eat.
No matter who picked the watermelons, Jiang Yuqing had the watermelons sent to the entrance to be weighed and calcted for payment, including those she picked herself.
After ying enough in the watermelon patch, the princesses then went to the peach and grape yards to pick fruit. The happiest one was Mingyang Princess. She said this was the most fun thing she had ever done.
Jiang Yuqing felt very distressed thinking about the hardships she had gone through in the past, and sincerely said, "You cane here every day if you like."
Unexpectedly, Mingyang Princess clicked her tongue at her and yfully scolded, "I won''te here every day. Wouldn''t that just be letting you unjustly profit?"
"While you struck it rich, my purse would greatly shrink!"
Everyone burst outughing when they heard this.
Jiang Yuqing joked, "Do you reallyck that bit of money? I don''t believe that. Who knew that Jing Yan''s sister is actually a top-notch miser!"
Mingyang Princess eximed, "I admit I''m a miser! What can you do to me?"
After she finished, everyoneughed even harder while she also couldn''t stopughing herself.
Jiang Yuqing really liked this kind of Mingyang Princess. Only such a lively life could be considered truly living, no longer stagnant waters.
There was a letter from her old hometown Qingzhou. Her Fourth and Fifth Brothers were getting married.
The wedding date was set for August 12, right before Mid-Autumn Festival.
They were marrying the twin daughters of the current Prefect of Lingzhou, Li Wanchang.
Jiang Yuqing also knew this Li Wanchang. He was an Advanced Schr from the same year as her father. Two years ago, he was the Prefect of Fuzhou.
Back then during the naval battle of Fuzhou when they captured Sakuma Shoutarou, he had specially held a banquet to honor the navy generals when they returned triumphantly. Jiang Yuqing had also attended it and chatted with him for a bit.
It was also then that her two wretched brothers just happened to be studying there and through a coincidence, were offered lodging by Li Wanchang for a night, thereby getting acquainted with him.
Unexpectedly, a little over a year ago, Li Wanchang was transferred to Lingzhou to be the Prefect. And these two fellows had just passed the county-level Imperial exam to be schrs and met Li Wanchang again during the deer bleat banquet held in the government office.
Only upon inquiry did Li Wanchang find out that these two were actually the sons of Duke Jiang''s residence, and thus their rtionship was established.
The Capital City was over 2,000 li away from Qingzhou. Jiang Wenyuan and Jiang Yuquan both had official duties and definitely could not return.
Since they could not go back, neither could Lu. Otherwise, it would be unreasonable for such arge noble''s estate to not even have ady managing the internal affairs.
Therefore, it was destined that only Jiang Yuqing would be returning alone this time. Jiang Yuqing also had not been back home in Qingzhou for over a year, so it was good timing for her to take a look.
When she told Jing Yan about this matter, this guy sighed deeply for a long time, very resentfully said: "There will be a long time again that I cannot see Qingqing." Then he repeatedly urged that she must remember to go early and return early.
Would the free-spirited Jiang Yuqing listen so obediently? Of course not.
As long as she left the Capital City, it would be a vast sea where fish could leap freely, and the sky would be wide open for birds to fly freely. She was happy to be free.
So in mid-July, Jiang Yuqing left the Capital City and returned to her hometown in Qingzhou.
Doctor Qiu knew her abilities and knew that his precious apprentice was just putting on a show for outsiders. As long as she left the Capital City, who would know where she had gone?
So he asked her to go to Qianse City on the southwestern border to find one of her masters to get two extremely rare medicines to bring back. Jiang Yuqing readily agreed.
When she arrived at the address her master had told her in Qianse City, she did not find anyone there.
There was only a young medicine attendant looking after the house. He said his master had gone to the Southern Bordends to gather medicines and was afraid it would be a few more days before he came back.
Jiang Yuqing had no choice but to stay at an inn in the city while waiting a few more days.
Fortunately, although the weather was extremely hot in Qianse, the fruit was exceptionally good, so she was not bored.
All Jiang Yuqing''s favorites fruits like mangoes, lychees, longans, mangosteen, rambutan, durian etc were avable here, and the prices were extremely cheap.
After eating them, she nted all the seeds in her Spirit Realm. After a few days, she would have more fruit than she could finish eating.
Under the inn where she was staying there was a letter stand, manned by an impoverished schr who made a living each day either by writing letters for people or copying books for bookshops.
The schr’s handwriting was very good. When she was bored, Jiang Yuqing would also lie on the window sill and watch him write.
At the moment he was carefully transcribing newspaper articles by famous schrs onto the pages of an empty book, meticulously and conscientiously.
The printing technology in the Great Xia Dynasty had emerged very early, but printing houses were hugely expensive and not every state and prefecture had them. Moreover, the printed characters could only be considered barely legible.
It was still eptable to print storybooks and the like, but there were very few printed copies of the Four Books and Five ssics and the like.
Firstly, with the long distances involved, once printed the books were still quite expensive by the time they reached their destinationspared to hand copied versions.
Secondly, as these were considered ssics by schr-officials, they could not be treated lightly as ssics, so such books were still mainly hand-copied.
Before the Jiang family became prominent, her father had also copied quite a few books.
At that moment, a woman with a headscarf and carrying a small bamboo basket walked over to the small stand and softly called out to the schr.
The schr looked up and immediately smiled gently, “Yunniang, why did youe?”
The woman took the basket off her arm, lifted the cloth cover, and revealed a few cakes inside, saying, “Seeing you still haven’t gone home sote, I guessed you must have forgotten the time again, engrossed in copying books.”
The schr took the things from the woman''s hands and pulled her over to sit next to him, and began to eat while chatting andughing with his wife.
For some reason, Jiang Yuqing felt that this voice was very familiar. She stared hard at the woman.
The woman also felt a gaze from somewhere above her head. She looked up in Jiang Yuqing''s direction.
Their eyes met in that instant, and Jiang Yuqing was dumbfounded!
"Ling Yun—!"