Chapter 4: Drink

The small brown bottle unfortunately fell on the floor and rolled from her feet towards him, finally stopping at his shoe tip.

He bent down to pick up the bottle. Its surface was uneven from her handling, with some paper residue remaining.

Unsure if she truly didn’t remember or was deliberately pretending, he asked, “Where’s the written agreement? Didn’t you see it?”

She lowered her gaze, her tone flat, “What agreement?”

Gu Yingqing didn’t want to argue endlessly with her and tossed the bottle back to her.

She reacted quickly, catching it steadily, and said expressionlessly, “I really don’t know.”

Gu Yingqing was somewhat exasperated, “Then I’ll say it again, the divorce…”

The carriage suddenly stopped, and Lanfan interrupted his words with her uniquely domineering voice.

“My lady, we’ve arrived.”

Zhu Wansheng responded with a sound towards the outside, “Do you still want to continue talking?”

In such an atmosphere, with Lanfan blocking any further conversation, he shook his head.

She stood up without hesitation, “Do whatever you want, you don’t need to follow me.” Before she finished speaking, she had already disappeared from view.

***

Zhu Wansheng had been standing outside the “Zhu’s Coral” shop for a while. The surroundings were bustling with people coming and going, yet her family’s rouge shop stood desolate, with no customers in sight.

A strong scent of rouge wafted from the shop. It was quite spacious, with two rooms combined into one, separated in the middle by an antique shelf. The shelf held not only rouge and powder but also some peculiar small ornaments.

The decor was grand enough, showing signs of past glory. Now, however, its desolation was visible to the naked eye, with dust settling on the upper shelves of the merchandise racks, left unswept.

The shopkeeper was a middle-aged woman, fanning herself with one hand and reading a picture book with the other. Hearing footsteps, she didn’t even bother to look up, casually saying, “Feel free to look around.”

In such a large shop, the few assistants were lazily scattered in various corners, drowsy and half-asleep.

Zhu Wansheng gently tapped on the table. The shopkeeper finally deigned to put down her book, saying impatiently, “I said…”

Her words caught in her throat halfway, and she squeezed out a smile uglier than crying, “Oh, Lady Zhu is here. Have you run out of rouge and powder? I’ll get some for you right away.”

Without waiting for Zhu Wansheng’s response, she swiftly turned and skillfully retrieved some rouge, placing it before her with a smile: “These are all the styles that Lanfan usually comes to get for you, my lady.”

Zhu Wansheng opened and tried a few. The rouge the shopkeeper gave her was all mediocre in quality. Both the color and luster were far from satisfactory, and the dry powder wasn’t fine either. Only the packaging was exquisite. In four words: all show, no substance.

“Give me the best in the shop, or rather, the best-selling ones.”

The shopkeeper looked troubled, “My lady, these are already the best. You naturally use the best, how could I dare give you anything inferior?”

Seeing her fiddling with the rouge boxes, the shopkeeper’s beautiful eyebrows furrowed, her red lips tightly pressed, her heart rising to her throat.

What wind had blown this arrogant, disrespectful, unpredictable, and notorious ancestor here?

She had just been caught slacking off, would she lose her job because of this?

The more the shopkeeper thought, the more uneasy she felt, her palms beginning to sweat.

Fortunately, Zhu Wansheng only said lightly, “Please package these for me first.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” The shopkeeper breathed a sigh of relief, wiping her sweaty palms before packaging the rouge.

“Is the account book available?”

The shopkeeper’s breath caught in her throat again, “Yes, yes, I’ll bring it to you right away.”

The account book was yellowed and old. Zhu Wansheng casually flipped through a few pages. It was truly sloppily written, with many days left blank. She couldn’t tell if there really was no business on those days or if they had forgotten to record it.

The ground floor was still passable, but upstairs, standing there, looking at the thick layer of dust on the wooden tables and chairs, and the cobwebs on the ceiling, she felt a sense of helplessness at the passage of time and changes. The family business accumulated by generations of the Zhu family, which should have been passed down and flourished, how had it come to this?

Could she really do something about it?

After leaving the shop, Lanfan finally couldn’t help but ask, “My lady, if I may be so bold to ask, why did you want to check the account book? Is there something amiss?”

Zhu Wansheng shook her head.

“My lady…” Lanfan scratched her head in confusion. Her lady was behaving so strangely! Why check the shop at a time like this!

Zhu Wansheng gave Lanfan a strange look, “What’s wrong with you?”

“My lady, didn’t you have an appointment with Young Master Ji? It’s almost time!”

Zhu Wansheng: ?

***

After roaming through the third shop like a street urchin, Zhu Wansheng was mentally and physically exhausted, with an aching waist and legs. She began to miss the days of lying in bed doing nothing – why couldn’t she just be confined? Why did she have to take on this mess?

Each of the Zhu family’s shops had numerous problems: the shops were large, but sparsely populated. The shopkeepers were indifferent, maintaining an attitude of ‘I don’t care if you buy or not’.

For her, a science graduate who only knew experiments, this was too difficult – she could try making some rouge, but beyond that, she was truly powerless to change the situation.

As for making rouge:

She had learned rouge-making methods during her undergraduate studies, and even helped her supervisor with some horizontal projects during her master’s. She also knew some cosmetic formulas.

But all of this was premised on having a well-equipped, advanced laboratory. Looking around here, she couldn’t even find a beaker, let alone pipettes or centrifuges…

[Hello, Little Chem senses that you have a need. How can I help you?]

Zhu Wansheng still held some doubts about Little Chem’s functionality. After a brief pause, she tentatively thought: Twenty milliliters of oleic acid, one gram each of tea polyphenols and vitamins, sterols, five grams of safflower, five grams of rose, three grams of calcite calcium carbonate, two grams of mica powder, 0.8 grams each of beeswax, beaker, weighing balance, mortar, alcohol lamp, glass cup, can you place all these on the table on the second floor of the main store?

[Received. Safflower and rose are raw materials. Little Chem can only provide chemical reagents and does not currently support raw material distribution. The rest of the reagents are being prepared for you.]

…..

Zhu Wansheng: You must have pigments, right? Three grams each of rouge red pigment and capsanthin.

[Goods have been prepared for you. Do you want to save this reagent purchase as a plan?]

Zhu Wansheng: Yes, save it as Rouge.1.

[Received. Saved as Rouge.1. You can retrieve goods using the plan name next time.]

The system directly provided her with pigments, saving her the extraction cycle and time, which was a good thing.

But when she needed to purchase pigments in large quantities in the future, while chili peppers were easy to solve, where would she find so many insect bodies to extract rouge red pigment from Kermes vermilio adult insects?

The voice in the system sounded again at this moment:

[System detects that you haven’t replenished your sugar levels. Please replenish in time.]

Zhu Wansheng ignored it. She was still bumping along in the carriage, where would she find time to eat sugar?

A moment later, they arrived at the fourth shop.

As she got off the carriage, yellow dust flew about, with gray sand flying towards her face one after another. Even though they were far from the bustling market, the Zhu family still had shops here, showing their past glory.

The shop wasn’t as large as those in the city, but the decor was as lavish as ever. A drowsy servant sat on the ground, leaning against a pillar, nodding off in intimate contact with the dream world, his head tilted at odd angles.

Looking around, there was no sign of the shopkeeper. Dust swirled on the ground, and with the wind came intermittent laughter and low moans, both male and female, coquettish with a hint of lewdness…

How strange, there was no one here, where was the laughter coming from? Could it be from upstairs?

Zhu Wansheng made a hushing gesture to Lanfan, instructing, “Wait for me downstairs.” Then she circled around the soundly sleeping servant and lightly stepped onto the wooden stairs.

The closer she got to the upper floor, the clearer the sounds became.

As soon as her vision cleared, Zhu Wansheng immediately regretted it. Curiosity killed not only the cat but also her eyes:

A woman with a graceful figure and charming eyes was half-reclining on a white animal skin rug, one arm around each of two beauties. She tilted her head back, her red lips half-open, as a man suspended a wine jug in the air, slowly pouring into her mouth.

Another man was using his pale, bony hands to massage her, moving up and down, reaching higher and higher…

Averting her eyes from the improper scene, Zhu Wansheng turned to leave, but the woman called out to stop her, “Isn’t this Wansheng? What brings you to this remote place?”

Zhu Wansheng mechanically turned back, matching the voice’s owner with her identity: Zhu Yilin, the daughter of the original owner’s concubine.

“I was passing by and thought I’d take a look.”

Zhu Yilin pushed away the man feeding her wine and kicked aside the man massaging her, rising from the soft cushion. The two men then knelt sitting in their original positions with their hands hanging.

“Passing by? If I remember correctly, our Wansheng has always disliked such places. Could it be that you’re following someone here?”

She seemed to have drunk too much, walking unsteadily, swaying back and forth, her already loose and barely covering clothes becoming even less effective.

Zhu Wansheng was drawn to her clothing, her hands itching to help close her clothes, so she paid no attention to the contemptuous implication in her words.

Zhu Yilin hooked her arm around her neck, waves of fragrance and soft touch came with it. “Since you’re here, want to join in the fun?”

The smell of alcohol wafted over, “But you’ve always admired the high and mighty, hard-to-tame Young Master Ji. I’m afraid you won’t be interested in my obedient ones.” She said, gesturing with her eyes towards the two kneeling behind her.

Zhu Wansheng felt uncomfortable with the alcohol fumes, stepping back twice, “Not today, I have other matters to attend to.”

But Zhu Yilin’s interest was piqued, “Oh? What’s keeping our Wansheng so busy these days? Do tell.” She then grasped her hand, her smile fading as she stared at her.

Seeing her probing expression, Zhu Wansheng didn’t answer but asked in return: “What about you? Why aren’t you enjoying yourself at the pleasure houses? The conditions here are mediocre, not even half as good as the ones we used to go to.”

In the original owner’s memory, the places Zhu Yilin frequented had extremely high thresholds, with membership fees that were out of reach for ordinary people.

Zhu Yilin’s grip on her hand tightened, “If you drink a few cups with me, I’ll tell you.”

Zhu Wansheng maintained her composure, glancing behind her. Drinking was a small matter, but whether it was worth it needed to be weighed.

This Zhu Yilin was someone who spent her days mingling in pleasure houses and wine shops.

The rouge shop should be more under the management of Zhu Yilin’s mother. As for why she was here, she was genuinely curious – yes, she was being nosy again…

She nodded, and her wrist was released. Zhu Yilin put an arm around her, leading her to sit on the soft cushion, then signaled to the kneeling man with her eyes.

The man holding the wine jug immediately moved to Zhu Wansheng’s side, his body softening as he fell into her arms, his hand around her neck.

The man smiled at her, his lips about to touch hers, carrying a whiff of alcohol and cheap powder fragrance. Zhu Wansheng disliked it and quickly turned her face away.

“My lady, let me help you drink.” The man clung to her ear, blowing gently, and raised the wine jug to her mouth.

She blocked the approaching wine jug with her hand, glancing a few times at Zhu Yilin who was entangled with the man, suppressing her discomfort, “Why are you here?”

“My rule is to drink first, then hear the story. Don’t you remember?” Zhu Yilin looked her up and down, her already slightly upturned eyes now showing a hint of calculation.

Zhu Wansheng felt uncomfortable under her gaze. She took the wine jug from the man in her arms, tilted her head back and drank without touching the spout.

This wine wasn’t as sweet and clear as what she drank in the mansion. It was spicy upon entering her mouth, rushing straight to her nose. She only took a few sips before stopping, then handed the jug to Zhu Yilin, “Let’s drink together, what’s the fun in just me drinking?”

She took it and gulped down several mouthfuls directly from the spout.

Then she threw the empty wine jug aside and kicked the person in Zhu Wansheng’s arms, “What are you dazed for? Hurry and get more wine.”

The person in her arms respectfully got up and left, and Zhu Wansheng could finally breathe freely.

This was the first time a strange man had tried to please her at such close proximity. She felt a sense of discomfort, as if her territory had been invaded.

The sun was slowly withdrawing its light, and Zhu Yilin still hadn’t gotten to the point. Zhu Wansheng wanted to leave, her palm just pressing on the floor, when Zhu Yilin spoke.

“I, well, I have different ideas from my mother. She lives by her principles, and I’ve had enough of it. I don’t want to go home even though I have one. Since we can’t stand the sight of each other, it’s better to stay away.” Saying this, she grabbed a pipe, stuffed it with some tobacco and lit it. Her tone carried a hint of disdain, “But guess what?”

She couldn’t possibly guess, so she just shook her head.

Zhu Yilin’s face gradually merged into the smoke, becoming hazy, “This little one accidentally offended the old one’s male favorite, what do you think will happen?”

Before she could answer, she continued: “The old one felt she couldn’t save face, and suddenly had the idea to banish the young one to a remote place. She said it was for learning management, but do we need to spell out the real reason?”

“But she underestimated me. I can have fun anywhere I go.”

Zhu Wansheng had nothing to say and could only smile along. She seemed to not want to continue either and changed the subject, “What? You’ve followed Young Master Ji all the way here? Are you accompanying him to play the zither again?”

She suddenly leaned in close, her lips curled in a mischievous smile, and blew a puff of smoke at her. This smoke was different from what she had smelled before – not just choking, but also bitter. Zhu Wansheng waved away the smoke with her hand, “I didn’t come here to pursue him.”

“You, do you really dislike Husband Gu that much? Is he not good enough? Can’t he satisfy you?”