Chapter 53: Completely Defective! I'll Even Pay You to Take It!

"She has lost her mind!"

Lin Wanyue thought Lin Qingchi was completely out of his mind. For no good reason, he actually seemed determined to earn silver just to spend it on Lin Zhaozhao!

It was not that she looked down on Lin Qingchi, but "with that brain of his, can he even manage to study properly?"

Upon hearing this, however, Lin Zhaozhao's eyes lit up. Over the past two days, she had truly been driven out of her mind by him.

How should one describe this kind of annoyance?

It was simply that anyone who had ever raised a child would understand—it was the kind of situation where the moment you opened your eyes, he would accurately and flawlessly stand right before you, flashing a broad grin and chattering away like a chanting monk.

He followed her when she ate, and followed her when she drank water.

This drove Lin Zhaozhao to the verge of madness. "Are you going to follow me to the outhouse too?"

"Sister, if you need me to, following you isn't entirely out of the question!"

Lin Zhaozhao, "..."

A moronic brother—flawed in every possible way, yet somehow desperately throwing money at her!

Well, if he was willing to throw his money at her, Lin Qingchi was more than happy to hand over his silver. "Sister, I know you love these shiny yellow and white things. Here is five taels I saved over the last two months, plus ten taels of next month's allowance I managed to advance from the estate. Take them all!"

Lin Zhaozhao, "..."

If he had come to apologize, she couldn't be bothered to entertain him, but if he was offering silver—well, in this world, who would ever pick a fight with money?

"If you give me all this silver, how are you going to get by next month?"

At this mention, Lin Qingchi was instantly wide awake. "Sister, take it and save up to buy gold! Don't worry about me. I'll just skip going to the taverns with those fox-friends of mine a couple of times!"

Oh, so Lin Zhaozhao understood now. "Skip it a couple of times, which means you still have enough silver left to go a few more times, right?"

Lin Qingchi, "..."

Lin Qingchi silently handed over every last piece of fragmented silver in his pockets.

"To be honest with you, at your age, you should be focusing on working hard and making something of yourself. Stop running off to those taverns for no reason. Look at other people's brothers—at this age, they're already buying bridal trousseaus stretching for miles for their sisters."

Lin Zhaozhao sighed. "It's not that I want you to be a brother who only knows how to bleed for his sister. It's just that every extra tael you spend is a tael less for me, and if some random wild monkey out there offers me a few melons and dates and I run off with him, that wouldn't look good either. In the end, it's still your face that loses face!"

Just listen to that!

Just listen to those words!

What an emotionally manipulative speech—it practically fried Lin Qingchi's mental circuits.

Consequently, the young lad managed to latch onto the crucial point in her words.

Instantly, his eyes welled up with tears as he said, "I said I wanted to accomplish something great, and everyone else thought little of me, but only you, Sister, believed I could do it."

As expected, a real sister was still the best!

"Sister, don't you worry. Everything that went wrong before was my fault. From now on, as long as there is a single bowl for me to wash, there will be a copper coin of income for you! I'm going right now to figure out what business to start!"

Aha!

Wasn't this just the way it should be?

However, putting that aside, Lin Zhaozhao couldn't just keep lying around the estate all day long.

After all, she had managed to extract quite a few shops from Lin Qingwu last time.

There were pharmacies, rouge and powder shops, and garment shops.

When she checked the revenues, she found that the rouge and powder shops were truly not performing very well.

Yet, since ancient times, a woman's business had always been the easiest to run.

Therefore, Lin Zhaozhao prepared to take matters into her own hands and concoct some whitening pills and similar items.

After all, as the old saying goes, a fair complexion hides a hundred flaws.

Cold, porcelain-white skin was what most people pursued. Of course, tanning was fine too, but many people of the realm possessed yellowish-black skin tones. Being stuck in the awkward middle ground—neither dark nor fair—was the most embarrassing position to be in.

Consequently, the lead-based face powders of the Dayong dynasty sold like wildfire.

If Lin Zhaozhao wanted to get a share of the profits, she naturally had to start from this angle.

The so-called whitening pills, once consumed, would naturally regulate the body from within, allowing one's skin to gradually radiate a bright, fair glow from the inside out.

Yet, since that was a slow process relying on gradual results, anything faster would naturally need to be paired with whitening powder—something similar to modern liquid foundation.

Thus, over the past few days, Lin Zhaozhao had been cooped up in the estate tinkering with all sorts of things, interrupted only occasionally by being dragged off by her father's men to study palace etiquette.

While she was busy experimenting here, Lin Qingchi was racking his brains to figure out how to make money to win her favor.

Originally, Lin Wanyue had assumed that Lin Zhaozhao had a fiery temper. Since she had already broken ties with Lin Qingchi, surely the two of them wouldn't easily make up.

After all, Lin Qingchi also possessed the temperament of a pampered young master; back when she used to give him cold looks in their childhood, he would also throw tantrums and fall out with her.

Yet who would have guessed that after several days in a row, not only did Lin Qingchi show no signs of falling out with Lin Zhaozhao, but on the contrary, he kept shoving all kinds of silver into her hands.

Something was wrong.

This completely violated her understanding of this younger brother.

Lin Wanyue sat on pins and needles, and hastily had the snacks that Lin Qingchi loved prepared and delivered to his courtyard.

In the past, whenever she threw a tantrum, she would wait for Lin Qingchi to apologize before she would make up with him. But today, she lowered her pride and spoke up,

"It was my fault at the polo match. I've spent the last few days reflecting deeply in my own courtyard—won't you please stop being angry with me? No matter what happens, I will always charge ahead to protect you!"

The young girl, dressed in a light pink dress with slender, delicate fingers, had a servant carry over his favorite bird's nest soup.

In the past, Lin Qingchi would have long since lost his desire to stay angry.

Yet today felt wrong.

He didn't quite know how to put it into words.

He held too much guilt in his heart toward Lin Zhaozhao. He even felt that if Wanyue Sister had realized her own mistakes, she shouldn't be saying these empty things to him, but should instead go and offer an apology to Zhaozhao Sister as well.

Yet if he were to say such words aloud, it would inevitably wound Wanyue Sister's feelings.

He truly had no idea how to balance this relationship, so he simply waved his hand and said, "I don't feel like eating these. I want to be quiet for a while, you should go back first."

Once he had thought things through and managed to make up for the disappointment he had caused Zhaozhao Sister, he would figure out a way to mend the relationship between the two of them.

In Lin Wanyue's eyes, however, this translated to—

I've come over with kind words to seek a reconciliation, yet your attitude is icy cold. Isn't this just openly slapping me in the face?

One had to know that the Marquis Qingyuan's estate was not the residence of some ordinary official with merely two or three maids.

Today, Lin Wanyue's rejection had taken place right in front of numerous servants of the estate.

While everyone kept quiet on the surface, behind closed doors, the gossip had already spread far and wide.

"They say blood is thicker than water, and fathers and sons go into battle together. Since ancient times, people with blood ties are simply closer! In the past, it looked like Qingchi Young Master disliked the Fifth Miss, but in reality? All the silver he earned himself went straight to the Fifth Miss!"

"Ain't that the truth? Now, the moment the Fifth Miss says a single word to the young master, he gets as happy as a puppy!"

"I finally understand what it means to play him like playing a dog!"

"In the past, the Madam favored the Fifth Miss while the Old Madam and the others disliked her, but look at now! The Fifth Miss is going to the palace as a study companion, and the Master even invited such an illustrious tutor to teach her court manners. You can see just how much importance they place on her!"

"A fake phoenix is still a fake phoenix, so what if it flies up to the branches? After unjustly occupying someone else's position for so long, the skies of our estate are truly about to change!"