Waking up feeling refreshed, I noticed that my second sister was already gone.
"So early." Xiao Mi yawned as she got out of bed. When she opened the door and stepped outside, a cool breeze made her shiver slightly.
It was raining, a light drizzle just moistening the ground, and the weather was dreary, likely to continue for a while.
From the courtyard next door ca bursts of exclamations. Muttering to herself, Xiao Mi jogged out.
The passage to the side yard was through a Begonia Gate. Xiao Mi was surprised — unlike a Moon Gate, the Begonia Gate looked like four petals.
The Begonia Gate symbolized "magnificence and splendor." It was already quite late when she got ho last night, and being too tired, she hadn’t noticed it.
The exclamations interrupted Xiao Mi’s surprise. Following the hall door beside the main house, she saw a Bottle Gate.
Shaped like a vase, it symbolized peace and safety.
And the voices of her elder brother and others ca from behind the Bottle Gate.
Taking a turn, Xiao Mi was astonished.
This courtyard was even larger than she had imagined.
Behind the Bottle Gate was yet another little world.
As soon as she entered, she saw a small rockery and water landscape, with streams trickling down from the mountain top, and several koi swimming in the pond.
"Xiao Mi, you’re up." Her second sister’s voice interrupted Xiao Mi’s amazent, making her realize everyone was in a room.
"Second sister, elder brother, little brother, why are you all here?"
Xiao Mi walked towards them, noticing another room in a different direction. The doors and windows were open, revealing it to be a small tea room.
"Xiao Mi, co and see, this is the study. From now on, big brother and the others can read here, it’s particularly quiet."
Xiao Xue happily beckoned Xiao Mi to hurry over: "By the way, our courtyard also has a separate embroidery room. Xiao Mi, have you seen it?"
Xiao Mi shook her head and glanced around the room, seeing it was well-furnished with bookshelves and desks.
"This house is so big, it must be really valuable, right?"
The courtyard was much larger than what they had glimpsed in haste last night. From a distance, it seed similar to the courtyards in Fu’an Village, but clearly, they had been mistaken.
"Actually, it’s not expensive." A voice ca from behind, making Xiao Mi pause and turn around in surprise, "Brother Ze? When did you get here?"
It was Liu Ze. Earlier, he had stood slightly to the side of the door, so Xiao Mi hadn’t noticed him when she ca in.
Liu Ze smiled, "I just arrived not long ago. We were talking about this house."
"Actually, this courtyard wasn’t newly built, but was once an annex for a wealthy rchant. Later, the rchant violated the law, so the annex was confiscated, and finally auctioned off by the county office at a low price."
"At that ti, Uncle Jiang decided to co to Cheng County, and Grandpa acquired it at an extrely low price. You see, much of the decor is left from before."
Liu Ze raised his hand to point, indicating the study and the landscaping.
"Only so small items were arranged by Grandpa for easier living. The silver coins Uncle Jiang sent were mostly used to buy the land."
Xiao Mi opened her mouth wide in surprise, "Really? That’s incredibly lucky, isn’t it?"
When she had co in earlier, she had seen another courtyard behind her parents’ main hall, beautifully arranged, with a small patch of purple bamboo and two wax plum trees in the corners.
The wax plum trees were just outside her parents’ room window, wafting fragrance throughout the garden, so pleasant to sll.
Last night, she also saw that there were rooms on both sides of the foyer, which were places for the servants of large households to live.
The front hall was also spacious, and the front courtyard was filled with flowers and plants, so of which were withered, while others had begun to sprout.
The inner courtyard was the sa, with flowerbeds and pavilions. The water outside the study flowed through the wall and the ground, pooling around the pavilion, forming a waterside pavilion.
These were just what Xiao Mi had seen so far. If she rembered correctly, when she ca out earlier, the courtyard where she and her second sister lived had another door, and she didn’t know what was beyond it.
And beyond that, there were a kitchen, firewood room, and storeroom.
With this setting, without a thousand or eight hundred taels of silver, it would be impossible to acquire it.
As for their family, by Xiao Mi’s own estimation, even at most, they only had a thousand or eight hundred taels, most of which ca from Uncle Liu and Liu Ze’s board expenses from a few years ago.
For common people, this was an absolutely huge sum, and so might not accumulate that much silver in a lifeti.
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