About an hour later.
Ye Tian found an inn with a relatively affordable price: five hundred wen for three days. While that might have been slightly pricey elsewhere, this was Luoyang City, the capital of Da Qian, where the cost of living was naturally high.
Thus, Ye Tian was quite satisfied with the price. He had already checked out two other inns—one cost three hundred wen a night, and the other five hundred wen a night. Both offered only the most basic rooms, featuring nothing more than a bed to sleep on.
Sitting in his room, Ye Tian began to plan his future.
After deducting the five hundred wen he had just paid the inn for his stay, he had about seventeen taels of silver left to his name.
If he only spent and didn't earn, this money certainly wouldn't last long in Luoyang City. Still, he was an educated man with the scholarly rank of a Xiucai, and combined with his memories from later generations, making money would surely be no problem at all.
The only thing to figure out was *how* to make money.
For instance: brewing wine, making sugar, producing salt, smelting iron, making soap, making cement...
Salt and iron were definitely out of the question; those were state monopolies, and anyone daring to touch them was asking for a death sentence.
Soap sounded pretty good, and cement wasn't bad either, but without the right people to help out right away, he certainly couldn't manage much on his own. Plus, the formulas would be easy to leak. Before he even made any money, others would have snatched the formulas and raked in a fortune.
As for brewing wine... Da Qian's grain supply was fairly abundant, so the restrictions on brewing weren't particularly strict. The problem, however, was that the startup costs for brewing were too high, making it somewhat difficult as well.
Sugar was definitely a hard currency, but on his way here, he had already seen quite a few people selling it, so trying to get rich through sugar-making was also a bit of a stretch.
Still... one part sulfur, two parts saltpeter, three parts charcoal, plus a bit of white sugar...
"Forget it, I'll figure it out after I get some sleep."
Ye Tian sighed. It wasn't that he was easily content; rather, he was currently on his own with very limited funds, so it was best to choose a safer method to make a living.
After all, while he had indeed read about these things back in the day, actually making them would undoubtedly require a lot of time and materials. Success would be fine, but failure meant a complete waste of time and money.
……
Meanwhile.
After finishing her chores, Lin Wan hurried straight to her cousin's courtyard, eager to share what she had seen and heard today.
"Cousin, are you in? I met a really strange person today, and I even heard a masterpiece of a poem that will be passed down through the ages!" Lin Wan called out happily the moment she stepped into the courtyard.
"Really? Didn't you go to the temple fair today? It wasn't a poetry gathering, so how could you possibly hear a poem, let alone an all-time classic?" Zhao Qinghuan walked out of the room, looking somewhat skeptical of Lin Wan's words.
"Hehe, I did go to the temple fair, but on my way back, I happened to run into someone, and that's how it all happened," Lin Wan said, walking over to link arms with her cousin.
"Seeing you smile so brightly, the other person couldn't possibly be a man, could they?" Zhao Qinghuan had only meant it as a tease, but to her surprise, her cousin actually grew shy upon hearing it, which immediately piqued her interest. She wondered what kind of young and talented scholar could make her cousin unforgettable after just a chance encounter.
"It has nothing to do with men; I simply admire his talent," Lin Wan argued, with a hint of spoiled pride.
Zhao Qinghuan didn't call her bluff. Instead, she played along and said, "Fine, fine. Then do tell me about his talent so your cousin can appreciate it too."
"Here is what happened: on my way back from the temple fair, feeling the sedan chair was too stuffy, I took Xiaolan and decided to walk home along the street. As I was walking along, I suddenly heard the line, *'People say Luoyang's flowers are like brocade, but when I arrive, it's not yet spring,'* and it instantly caught my attention."
*People say Luoyang's flowers are like brocade, but when I arrive, it's not yet spring!*
Zhao Qinghuan, who had still been all smiles, turned grim upon hearing this line. She immediately thought of her own current predicament—wasn't it precisely what these words described?
"Is this line part of a poem? If the rest of it is good enough, I'm afraid it could make it into the Bright Moon Pavilion's poetry rankings even in August," Zhao Qinghuan asked, recovering her smile.
"The man said it was just a fleeting sentiment of his, not a poem." Lin Wan shook her head with a hint of regret and continued, "I said something similar to him at the time, though I wasn't as bold as you, Cousin—I only said that if it were a complete poem, it would surely make it into next month's Bright Moon Pavilion poetry rankings. But do you know what he told me? He said he had no idea what the Bright Moon Pavilion was, nor had he ever heard of its poetry rankings."
"How is that possible? The Bright Moon Pavilion's poetry rankings are famous throughout the world. It would be one thing if he were an ordinary person from some remote area, but here in Luoyang City, let alone an educated scholar, even a peddler or a porter would know the Bright Moon Pavilion like the back of their hand. You didn't run into a swindler, did you?"
"Sister, why are you saying that too? Xiaolan also said Master Ye was a swindler at first, but it turned out not to be the case at all." Lin Wan went on to explain: "Master Ye looked rather disheveled at the time. According to his account, he seemed to have accidentally fallen into the river, caught a chill, and lost some of his memories, which was why he temporarily forgot about the Bright Moon Pavilion. Later, when Xiaolan told him that everyone in Luoyang City knows of the Bright Moon Pavilion, he even spent five wen to ask a restaurant manager about it.
……
"Later, learning that Master Ye was facing some difficulties, I gave him all the dozen or so taels of silver I had on me.
"In the end, to thank me, Master Ye asked me to give him a topic, intending to compose a poem for me as a gift.
"Thinking that Master Ye's words flowed effortlessly and that he had passed the Xiucai exams at such a young age, I gave him the Mid-Autumn Festival as a theme to showcase his talent. And he actually wrote a piece for me that could easily rank in the top three of this year's Mid-Autumn poems!"
"What? A piece that can rank in the top three for the Mid-Autumn Festival?" Zhao Qinghuan looked completely incredulous upon hearing this.
It would be one thing if it were just the top three for an ordinary month; given that the fellow could utter such a line as he did, he surely possessed some genuine talent.
Yet the Mid-Autumn poetry gathering was practically the biggest poetry event of the entire year. Not only would young scholars participate, but a great number of prominent Confucian scholars from the court would take part as well. Counting all the various regions, at least a thousand Mid-Autumn poems were produced every year.
To break into the top three under such circumstances—even the top talents from Luoyang City and all over Jiangnan would have to exhaust every ounce of effort just to scrape together a glimmer of a chance.
No matter how lucky Lin Wan was, there was absolutely no way she could casually run into someone on the street, hand them a dozen or so taels of silver, and obtain a poem of that caliber.
A poem capable of entering the Mid-Autumn top three—even if it took third place—would cost at least three to five thousand taels of silver, and even then, it would be priceless and unobtainable because absolutely no one would ever be willing to sell it.
……