In the blink of an eye, the year was drawing to a close, and Jian Ruonan was about to celebrate her first New Year in Great Xia.
What delighted her most was that she would get a holiday for the New Year.
After the festivities, she would report for duty at the Ministry of Revenue.
Her eldest brother, Jian Huayuan, was already on his way home and would arrive before dinner. The entire Jinyang Marquis's Residence brimmed with cheer.
The juicy drama surrounding the Top Scholar's family continued:
Daoist Zhang had enjoyed great success promoting his Castration Technique. Castrated pigs had no unpleasant odor, and their meat was delicious.
Once pork from castrated pigs reached the market, it dealt a tremendous blow to the butcher's family.
Upon learning of this, the butcher immediately sought out Daoist Zhang to become his apprentice. After mastering the technique and returning home, he gathered the whole family and announced that every pig they owned would be castrated.
Castrating pigs was a major undertaking. Other people did it before the pigs were two months old, when the young boars were small and easy to restrain.
The butcher's pigs were nearly ready for slaughter before he thought of castrating them. Each weighed a hundred to two hundred jin, and simply pinning them down took enormous effort.
The butcher intended to hone his skills on the adult pigs. Though they were already fully grown, castrating them was still better than leaving them intact.
These days, nobody on the market would buy an uncastrated pig!
The butcher's pregnant daughter had become the family's precious treasure and could not do heavy labor, so the weighty responsibility of assisting with the castrations fell to the Top Scholar and Madam Fu.
The Top Scholar refused. "How could a learned man perform