Mountains and giant beasts, cabins in the woods

The deal proceeded quickly between the two.

The onlookers were unhappy.

"Third brother, what's going on? What kind of good stuff is this?"

"Why are you paying so readily, you old bastard? You're not usually that kind of person, are you?"

"Shopkeeper, give me one of that too!"

"Me too! Me too!"

Liu San Niang calmly responded to each question.

Each merchant received a small bamboo bottle.

"Wow, this is amazing! It's such a wonderful thing!"

"Oh no! I shouldn't have insisted on paying at the banquet. Can anyone lend me some money?"

"Shopkeeper, I live on Huangxing Street. Do you pass by there every day?"

"Come stroll around my neighborhood too!"

……

In the blink of an eye, 35 bottles of blood potion were sold.

The gray wolf straightened its four legs and began to wander again through the narrow streets between the wooden houses.

Liu San Niang remained leaning against the window when she saw the woman in red turn around, smiling brightly against the sunlight: "How about that? Aren't I amazing!"

"More than impressive!" Liu Xingmo was genuinely astonished. "They're absolutely incredible!"

"Absolutely, don't you even know who I am?"

"Oh dear! Third Sister, I always thought you were just wasting your days and probably couldn't even support yourself," Liu Xingmo exclaimed. "But now I see you're really working hard. That puts my mind at ease."

"You brat! What are you pretending for? I've seen more of the world than you have!" Liu San Niang snorted irritably.

She ignored the man behind her and faced the flow of people coming and going outside the window, a gentle smile on her face.

Liu Xingmo sat on the cart and watched the whole way.

Liu San Niang was very skilled at seeing in all directions and hearing from all sides.

Her target wasn't just pedestrians on the street, but even residents of the buildings along the road.

Nine out of ten customers she greeted were sold. Depending on their budget, she would buy bottles and cases of alcohol, quickly churning out large quantities. Along with the alcohol, the blood-activating potions in small bamboo bottles also sold out.

The container carried by the gray wolf is a convenient mobile store.

Seeing that things were almost settled, Liu Xingmo said, "Thank you, Third Sister. Please let me down."

"What? It's not that easy! You'd better do some work for me too."

"Boom!" The container hit the ground, and Gray Wolf lay down on the ground again.

Liu Sanniang climbed the stairs to the second floor: "Follow me."

Liu Xingmo walked up to the shelves, which were once densely packed, but were now completely empty.

Liu San Niang continued walking uphill.

Liu Xingmo had no choice but to follow, and they arrived at the rooftop of the container on the third floor.

It was a square plot of land with a wooden fence around the edge. Standing here, you could look out over the street and also see a huge gray wolf dozing off nearby.

Liu San Niang stepped onto the crossbar, crossed the broad back of the gray wolf, and arrived at the container on the other side, then went down the stairs.

A short while later, she returned carrying a tall crate of liquor: "Don't just stand there, come with me to move the goods."

"Why go through all this trouble? Why don't you just go over there and sell your goods directly?" Liu Xingmo asked.

"Are you stupid! When you go west, the container on your right faces the customer to the north; when you turn back and go east, the container on your right still faces the customer to the south."

"Okay, okay, I got it."

The two men slid back and forth along the walkway on the wolf's back, carrying all the wine from the other side.

After finishing his work, Liu Xingmo sat on the cart and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Looking out at the street, he belatedly asked, "Third Aunt, why didn't we just switch the containers?"

"How do I change it?" Liu San Niang raised her eyes in annoyance.

Liu Xingmo replied quietly, "Let the wolf slip out, turn around, change direction, and carry the container. Wouldn't that solve the problem? Why do we have to work ourselves to death moving bottles of wine?"

Liu San Niang was stunned for a moment, and it took her a long time to process what she had just heard. She gritted her teeth and said, "Why didn't you say so sooner!"

"You've led me astray. Sigh!" Liu Xingmo was speechless.

In the blink of an eye, it was already dark.

The shelves were almost completely emptied of wine.

A huge gray wolf walks through the brightly lit streets.

Liu Xingmo also came to the window.

The houses along the roadside are all good shops facing the main road.

Wisps of smoke drifted from the warm, orange light, and a white linen flag bearing the character for "wine" fluttered in the wind. Vendors selling braised meat, noodles, and fruit... a dazzling array of food drew passersby to linger.

The container on the wolf's back swayed and bounced.

Liu Xingmo held the last bottle of wine in his hand and gulped it down.

At that moment, the long street blurred into an indistinct band of light in his vision. He was a little drunk.

Liu San Niang lit a candle and tapped away on her abacus, recording one entry after another in the ledger.

Liu Xingmo tilted his head back again, no more clear liquid dripping from the bottle: "Finished? What a pity."

He turned to look at another person in the dimly lit room: "Third Sister, come and see, the night view is really nice."

Under the candlelight, the woman in red didn't even look up, continuing to work on her abacus: "I see this every day, I'm sick of it."

"Stop calculating, you can't even do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division properly. Is this the amount of money you received today?" Liu Xingmo stretched out his hand, his five fingers alternating as he displayed the various numbers.

Liu San Niang wrote down the number on a piece of paper and compared it with the data she had only half-calculated, her face full of confusion: "When did you do this calculation?"

"Mental arithmetic." Liu Xingmo leaned against the carved window, enjoying the evening breeze.

"You've got a lot of tricks up your sleeve." Liu San Niang moved a few more beads on the abacus, wrote the results in the ledger, and then packed up her writing materials.

Liu Xingmo turned around: "I'm telling you, you're really making a fuss over nothing. What year is this? Still using a calligraphy brush? The thing is, you can't even read, you don't know calligraphy, so what are you pretending to be, a cultured person?"

"Our village has been using calligraphy brushes for so many years, how come it's changed in your generation?" Liu Sanniang slammed her hand on the table. "Besides, I'm not as smart as you, able to learn everything so quickly. I've had some education, but I couldn't understand a thing!"

"Surely not? After passing the second stage, with a clear soul and a lucid mind, how could they not learn to read and punctuate?"

Liu Xingmo walked to the counter, looked at the messy scribbles on the yellow straw paper, and burst out laughing:

"What is all this nonsense? Which number is like this? Did you make it up?"

"Hmm? Isn't this how it is?" Liu Sanniang picked up the straw paper, looked at it from left to right in the candlelight, "No problem? I've used it for decades and it hasn't changed."

"Who taught you that? A spy from outside?"

"What are you thinking? It's what they teach at school, of course!"

"A school? That can't be..."

Liu Xingmo was extremely puzzled.

The writing on the scrap paper didn't look like numbers at all; it was just a jumble of messy vertical and curved lines.

Under the leadership of the old monkey's predecessor, compulsory education in Heilongzhai was fully implemented.

For over a hundred years, as long as children go to school, they can learn the most basic knowledge.

What exactly happened?