Lian Erye in the Red Mansion

Knowing she couldn't communicate with Jia Lian, Zijuan took the medicine bowl back and went out.

Seeing that only she and Jia Lian were in the room, Daiyu felt inexplicably awkward. However, seeing Jia Lian engrossed in sipping his tea while glancing around her room, Daiyu thought for a moment, then got up, picked up the teapot, refilled Jia Lian's cup, and then casually asked:

"What have you been up to lately, Second Brother? We haven't seen you around the manor. I heard from Second Sister-in-law Lian that you went outside the city."

"Yes, I went to run errands outside the city."

"Does Brother Lian really enjoy being an official?"

Daiyu suddenly became a little angry.

She remembered that when she was young, her father was always busy pursuing an official career, leaving her and her mother in Suzhou for years without any care.

It wasn't until he was transferred to Yangzhou that he had time to bring her and her daughter to live with him, and the family enjoyed several years of happy family life together.

"I don't really like being an official..."

Jia Lian suddenly turned around, his deep gaze falling on the girl in front of him, taking in her budding, charming appearance.

Daiyu waited for Jia Lian's reply, but after a long while, she didn't hear the rest of his sentence. She looked up and saw Jia Lian staring straight at her, so she quickly lowered her head.

After a while, feeling embarrassed, she lightly stamped her foot and said coquettishly, "Second brother, what are you looking at...?"

"Hehe, it's nothing. It's just that seeing our Lin sister growing more and more like a fairy, I'm thinking, I wonder which lucky boy will end up with her, and that makes me quite unhappy."

"Oops~"

Jia Lian's laughter instantly brought tears to Daiyu's eyes, her cheeks flushed, and she glared at Jia Lian with shame and indignation: "You're bullying me!"

After saying that, she glared at Jia Lian fiercely, then quickly returned to her desk, buried her face in the paper, and dared not look up again.

Her small body, slumped over the table, appeared even more frail, as if a breath on the tabletop could overturn her.

Jia Lian glanced again at the two little squirrels hopping around in the cage in front of her head. Seeing their significantly larger size compared to their kind, she couldn't help but chuckle.

The little girl can't take good care of herself, but she's managed to raise her pet to be all fat and chubby. It's quite amusing.

So he stood up and said to Daiyu, "Alright, I'll come see you another day. Take good care of yourself."

I ran into my uncle yesterday, and he asked about you. I was afraid he would worry, so I told him you were fine.

If you don't take good care of yourself, your uncle will see you later and say that I lied to him.

If you have nothing to do, don't stay cooped up in the house. Come sit in my yard more often and play with Xiangling and the others.

I'm leaving, please stay.

When Daiyu heard that Jia Lian was leaving, she wanted to get up and see him off.

Hearing Jia Lian tell her to stay, and after smiling at her, he turned and disappeared through the door, ultimately not getting up.

I finally managed to come see her, but I only stayed for a short while before leaving...

In the end, she still didn't know whether he was really busy and didn't want to spend much time with her, or whether Lian Er Gege was being polite and deliberately not staying in her room for long.

Remembering Jia Lian's words, her face burned, and she hurriedly took out a mirror from the drawer to look at herself.

Seeing the person in the mirror with rosy cheeks, Daiyu admired her beauty, which surpassed even that of peach blossoms, and was so captivated that she stared at her in a daze.

Suddenly she heard a soft "squeak" sound. Looking down, she saw two greedy squirrels tilting their heads and staring straight at her.

Daiyu looked embarrassed, as if her thoughts had been read. She reached out and slapped the cage, startling the two little squirrels so much that they almost huddled together. They stared at Daiyu in fear, seemingly trying to figure out why their enormous owner, who often fed them delicious food, was angry...

……

Wang Xifeng waited for Jia Lian at home.

There were some things I couldn't say in front of the elders.

So when Jia Lian returned, she began to question him about his scheme.

Jia Lian had no intention of explaining all his thoughts to her; he simply spoke from a perspective that Wang Xifeng could understand.

For example, if you spend 20,000 taels of silver, you'll have more leverage and can legitimately interfere in other matters.

For example, if the money were invested in the government, Madam Xing wouldn't care about it, thus avoiding any potential financial hardship for her.

Wang Xifeng could understand, but what she understood even more was: "The master's things must be worth more than 25,000 taels of silver, right?"

Of all of Jia She's possessions, only she and Jia Lian had actually seen them all. Based on her judgment, they were definitely worth far more than what Jia Lian had mentioned.

"What do you think?" Jia Lian asked Wang Xifeng with a smile.

Wang Xifeng laughed, raising her willow-leaf eyebrows, and said with a smile, "The rest, shall we take them back?"

Jia Lian then tapped her on the forehead and scolded, "Don't even think about the remaining silver. Isn't the family already short of money?"

Aren't you afraid that if you hide too much silver in this house, it will be stolen?

In the past two years, apart from the initial five hundred taels of silver given to him, Wang Xifeng has only taken in money and never given it back.

Larger sums of silver were brought into the house, and Jia Lian even knew that he could find plenty of silver by simply searching the house.

"Pshaw, who would dare steal our money? She'd have to be crazy!"

Wang Xifeng said this with great disdain. But she kept it in mind, thinking she should arrange for someone to guard the courtyard...

She thought that the money Jia Lian left behind was simply because he spent it lavishly, and he didn't expect that he would always be struggling to make ends meet with her.

She also knew that Jia Lian had someone set up a restaurant outside. Although she didn't think it would make much money, it was at least a legitimate business, so she let him do it.

"It's fine if you're used to spending money extravagantly, but if you're capable enough to hide tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars outside, I can't stop you."

I have only one request: if you need to use family money again in the future, you must discuss it with me beforehand.

Wang Xifeng covered her forehead, which had just been tapped, and said with unwavering determination.

She was referring to Jia Lian's earlier offer to donate the family's money. Luckily, she had only mentioned 5,000; if she had said 50,000, the loss would have been devastating.

Men are just bad at budgeting and always end up getting taken advantage of.

Seeing Wang Xifeng's defensive posture, as if she was about to make another move, Jia Lian smiled and nodded directly: "Okay."

His demands were reasonable; he wasn't an unreasonable person.

Wang Xifeng beamed and quickly helped Jia Lian change into his everyday clothes, knowing that he was going to the east courtyard to oversee the construction.

"By the way, our family has used up all our savings to build this palace for the Empress."

The master has never liked to deal with such mundane matters, so this matter will probably have to be handled by us in the end.

"More than two hundred thousand taels of silver, you tell me, what about us...?"

Wang Xifeng's eyes darted around, clearly indicating that she wasn't up to any good.

Jia Lian looked down at her and asked, "Two hundred thousand taels, is that a lot?"

In this era, silver had tremendous purchasing power!

At the current market price, one tael of silver is enough to buy more than one hundred catties of fine rice and noodles!

This is why, even in a prestigious Duke's mansion, the young masters and ladies only receive two taels of silver per month as pocket money—it's enough.

Therefore, 200,000 taels of silver is an astronomical figure. It can be said that this amount of money is enough to accomplish 99% of the great things in the world!

However, this is only true when it comes to the construction of the Grand View Garden...

Perhaps, Grandmother Jia and the others had no idea what an expensive place the grand villa they insisted on building for their family visit would be.

Even the East Garden of Rongguo Mansion and the Huifang Garden of Ningguo Mansion were not worth more than 100,000 taels of silver.

Therefore, Grandmother Jia and others thought that spending 200,000 taels of silver to build a separate residence for Yuan Chun's visit home should be enough.

You can't blame them for that, because there are so many things they don't know!

They haven't seen the blueprints designed by Yamako yet...

They had no idea what the Grand View Garden would look like after it was completed!

Most importantly, they were unaware that Yuan Chun would be promoted to Imperial Concubine before her visit home!

Therefore, what Jia Lian had to do was to keep an eye on things before Grandmother Jia and the others were prepared to spend all their money, so as to prevent them from building a simplified version of the Grand View Garden in order to save money!

You think you can solve this with just 200,000? Jia Lian shook his head; that's wishful thinking.

If things fall apart halfway through because of money, we won't be afraid of not being able to draw up the wealth of Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang!

Jia Lian wasn't worried at all that the Grand View Garden wouldn't be able to be built, because Lady Wang, backed by the Wang and Xue families, would definitely do everything in her power regarding Yuan Chun's matter.

As for whether it would implicate him, how could it? He went all out from the beginning, handing over his father's inheritance...

So after all the hard work and effort that Grandmother Jia and others had put into the Grand View Garden, the Rongguo Mansion was completely under his control.

Even if you're poor, it's better than being bossed around all the time.