The Wife Is First

Chapter 30

Ch30 - Urgent Report from the Southwest

Once you had a supply of goods, opening a store was very easy to do. Mu Hanzhang, thanks to Zhou Jin, found a two room store in front and on the same street as Hui Wei Restaurant. Then, he had Steward Yun go find a famous carpenter and silverware shop in the capital, to have something made to order: small and exquisite wooden and silver boxes. 

“What does Wang Fei want to use these boxes for?” Yun Zhu, who held a stack of completed boxes, asked Mu Hanzhang. The craftsmanship on the boxes was very refined, so much so that it was even more expensive than the perfumed ointment. Wouldn’t the Wang Fei lose money if it was like this?

Mu Hanzhang held a silver box and smiled but did not speak, having Yun Zhu carry these to his wet nurse’s courtyard. The perfumed ointment sent from Jiangnan, most were stored in bamboo tubes or iron boxes. The cost of this was not high, even if the price was raised, people could easily buy up to a hundred or so wen of it, but, if one switched it for an exquisite box then it wouldn’t be the same. A great majority of people who lived in the capital were high-ranking officials and noblemen, the more expensive (and expensive looking) the item, the more people would buy. 

In the blink of an eye it was already the middle of the fifth lunar month, the shop had already been put into order and was ready. Once the second cargo of goods arrived, Mu Hanzhang’s small shop selling perfumed ointment would officially open.

The shop interior was elegantly decorated. The entrance was half covered with a bamboo hanging screen and above the door hung an inscribed bamboo sign, on it were written three meaningful and refined, powerful words “Mo Lian Establishment”.

The “Mo” character referred to the Mo Garden the male wives often went to, the “Lian” character expressed the delicate fragrance of the items. Because, during this month’s gathering, Mu Hanzhang brought some perfumed ointment packaged in wooden boxes and gifted it to the male wives, the news of his shop passed quickly from mouth to mouth, until the day he opened the business. An assortment of people had come, some to make purchases, some to check out the bustle, and all blocked the roads in front of the shop entrance.

It was different from how other shops opened for business, who lit firecrackers and had lion dances. Mu Hanzhang had invited a famous musician in the capital to come and play in front of the store entrance, the faint music lingered in one’s ear, incomparably sophisticated. People seeing this kind of scene, could also not bear to make a racket, and only quietly watched from the side. 

The fragrant ointment inside the shop was separated into a few different qualities, there were iron boxes, wooden boxes and silver boxes. The price difference between each quality was very great, the iron boxes were a hundred or so wen, the wooden boxes went up to two taels of silver, and the silver box was from several tens of silver taels with upwards of a hundred taels. 

Since his Elder Brother went to the Southwest, Jing Shao had to go to court everyday and confront the fourth prince alone. He didn’t even leave some secret signal, and he was very unhappy, to the extent that every morning he would dawdle around in bed not wanting to go to court, Mu Hanzhang had to call him three to four times before he would get up. 

In these recent days, Jing Shao suddenly began to like going to court, because an urgent report had arrived from the southwest, the eldest prince had met with danger in the Yunnan-Tibet region, in an unpredicted life or death situation. The eldest prince would write a report to the capital everyday, but now, it had already been more than two days in which no news had come. 

Today, the governor of the Yunnan-Tibet region sent a report, in which finally matters were made clear. The eldest prince, once he arrived in the Yunnan-Tibet region, was in a hurry to attack the southern barbarians and did not listen to any advice. The southwestern forests were filled with miasma, and as such, it was not long before the troops fell ill after breathing in the miasmic air. Last month the eldest prince had brought troops into the mountains and got caught up in a hard battle that was still in progress to this day. This report had been urgently sent over three thousand li, yet it was still delayed by seven or eight days, whether the eldest prince was still alive or dead, it was simply unknown.