The Pampered Wives Could Not Rise from Bed, While Outside They Peeled Chestnuts and Untangled Rotten Accounts All Night
"Replying to Sister Su, Ling'er can't even lift her own medicine chest anymore..."
Shen Ling'er sobbed deeper into the bed, her voice muffled beneath the thick plush pillows.
"His lumbar spine feels like it's been disassembled and reassembled; every bone in it is screaming. From now on, if Your Highness needs to recuperate, whoever wants to serve him can do so."
Xie Wanqing and Liu Ruyan didn't even have the strength to speak.
Only two lazy sighs remained in the room before falling completely silent, as they had clearly gone back to sleep.
Passing through the corridor, the room in the northeast corner.
The scene before the table, however, was quite different and rather tragic.
Meng Jiuning pressed her hands firmly against the open hemp paper ledger, almost falling into the pile of counting rods on the table.
Her eyes were bloodshot, her eyelids were swollen, and the fine brush in her right hand had long since forked, leaving dark ink blots on the yellowed pages.
There were twenty or thirty sheets of scrap paper scattered around the table, covered with numbers written in vermilion.
"A seventh-rank official receives an annual salary of forty-five strings of silver and eighty shi of rice... The Tea and Horse Bureau secretly deducts thirty percent for losses... and then deducts the hush money paid to the various tribes of West Mountain..."
Meng Jiuning's lips were chapped and peeling, and she muttered to herself nervously, her fingers frantically fiddling with the abacus beads.
"Wait, how do we account for this three thousand taels of smuggled pig iron?"
Gu Moran is clearly deliberately mixing up the mess from three years ago with this year's issues. It's a bottomless pit; even a math PhD from the Dali Ministry of Revenue would be spitting blood!
On the other side, Yun Shuyue lay limply on the table, looking like a wilted pancake.
Beneath her chin sat a large, rough willow basket, piled high with thorny, hard raw chestnuts.
After a whole night of hard work, she had ripped the chestnuts in the basket to shreds.
The hard shell was covered with teeth marks, and the chestnut meat inside had been peeled open and was now mushy, with patches of yellow and black stuck in the coarse porcelain bowl.
Her ten fingers were covered in bluish-black chestnut peel juice, her fingernails were filled with crumbs, and there was even half a roasted chestnut crumb stuck to the corner of her mouth.
" Sister Meng, I can't take it anymore, I can't feel my thumb."
Yun Shuyue rested her chin on the edge of the table, looking at her hands with teary eyes.
"This raw chestnut is harder than the ruler my father used to discipline me."
The prince didn't actually want to eat chestnut cake; he just didn't like me and was finding all sorts of ways to torment me.
Meng Jiuning slammed the calligraphy brush in her hand on the table, grabbed her messy, bird's-nest-like hair, and said indignantly:
"Peeling a few chestnuts is no hardship at all."
I ran through twelve whole books of messy accounts that night! That bastard Gu Moran not only withheld the permits for the raw herbs, but also forced me to help him find evidence of corruption in Jiannan Circuit.
This account is full of traps! If I make a single mistake, the medicinal herbs for tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians on the Dali border will be completely wasted!
"But it really hurts..."
Yun Shuyue sniffed and drew circles on the table with her dark index finger.
"And what exactly was going on inside? In the middle of the night, I heard Sister Shen crying, Sister Murong cursing, and then even Sister Su stopped making a sound."
Is Your Highness practicing some kind of evil technique that drains people's yang energy inside?
Meng Jiuning's expression changed as the embarrassing noises she had overheard under the window last night instantly flooded her mind.
He grabbed a thick ledger and smacked Yun Shuyue on the forehead.
"Shut up! You're so young, yet your head is full of nonsense!"
You better keep peeling your rotten chestnuts. The living Yama will come out to inspect the goods at dawn. If you can't hand over the goods then, you'll be in big trouble!
Before the words were finished, a series of unhurried footsteps came from around the corner of the corridor.
The boots creaked crisply on the fallen leaves, steady and rhythmic.
Gu Moran dressed in a brand-new black brocade robe, with a white fox fur cloak over it, and a jade pendant casually hanging at his waist.
He was full of energy, with a rosy complexion and a leisurely smile that was hard to decipher.
With his hands behind his back, he strolled leisurely into the pavilion.
Meng Jiuning's body stiffened abruptly, and her fingers quickly leveled the abacus;
Yun Shuyue was startled and hurriedly grabbed two raw chestnuts, stuffing them into her mouth and trying to bite the shells open with her cheeks.
"Hey, you two had a pretty good night, huh?"
Gu Moran stopped in front of the table, looking down at the mess. His gaze lingered for a moment on Yun Shuyue's bowl of chestnut meat, which was as mushy as mud.
"Miss Yun's skills are quite good. I need whole, peeled chestnuts to make Eight Treasure Cake."
"You've done a great job, saving the kitchen the trouble of mashing everything. It's perfect for feeding the pigs with chestnut puree."
With a raw chestnut in her mouth, Yun Shuyue's cheeks bulged like a startled hamster as she mumbled her explanation:
"Your Highness... the chestnut skin was too tight, Shuyue had to pry it off little by little with her fingernails."
Even if you didn't achieve great things, you still put in a lot of effort; you can't just give it to the pigs...
Gu Moran stepped forward, extended two fingers, and precisely pinched out a small packet of roasted chestnuts wrapped in oil paper from the edge of her sleeve.
The parchment paper was unfolded, revealing three glossy, roasted chestnuts inside, exuding a sweet caramel aroma.
"I punished you to peel raw chestnuts to cultivate your character, and instead, you sent your maidservant to buy cooked food from the back street in the middle of the night for a treat?"
Gu Moran tossed the oil paper package back onto the table and tapped the stone table.
"Hiding snacks and cheating."
"How could Lord Yun have given birth to such a gluttonous daughter?"
Yun Shuyue shrank back, burying her face completely between her arms, looking like a shrinking mullet.
Gu Moran ignored her and turned his gaze to Meng Jiuning.
He casually picked up the few sheets of rough paper on the table covered with red counting rods, glanced at them, and raised an eyebrow slightly:
"The princess of Dali is indeed quite something."
Meng Jiuning didn't even lift her eyelids, her voice hoarse like sandpaper rubbing against wood:
"Your Highness flatters me. I have already calculated the accounts clearly. Under the pretext of buying horses in Dali, they falsely reported the loss of seven hundred warhorses, and all the money went into the account of Yi Prefecture Datong Money House."
"Now that the accounts are settled, shouldn't the permits for the 300 cartloads of medicinal herbs for warming and preventing dampness that the prince promised to give to Dali be stamped?"
She stretched out a pale hand stained with ink, her gaze fixed intently on the man before her.
This was her only hope, which kept her going all night.
Gu Moran slowly folded the draft paper and stuffed it into his wide sleeves. Then he took out a cinnabar seal from his pocket and tossed it in his hand.
"Approval document? Of course we have the approval document."
Gu Moran pulled out a chair and sat down casually, his expression calm, and began to spout nonsense, continuing to deceive the princess.
"However, an urgent secret letter just arrived from the south last night."
The Dali and Gao families of Dali, who have betrayed their lords, secretly contacted Mount Qingcheng's outposts outside the mountain last night, attempting to use the profits from the two copper mines to bribe Mount Qingcheng's secret disciples to assassinate you.
Meng Jiuning's pupils suddenly constricted, and her fingers, which were pressing on the ledger, abruptly tightened.
" Mount Qingcheng Sect? That's the number one sect in Shu Region, how could it possibly interfere in the internal strife of Dali!"
"Besides, isn't it said that even the young master of Pu Yunshan is working for you, and his father is one of your men?"