The butler thought it was the Li family who deliberately did not open the door for him, and after some thought, raised his voice through the gate, “Lord Li, my son has an important matter to discuss, so please let someone open the door.”
He shouted three times in a row, but no one answered.
He seemed to have thought of something and stood up straight and called out to a servant to come and give him some instructions.
The boy darted to the back door, deftly climbed a large tree near the wall, carefully climbed up the wall and peered inside, but there was no one there, so he jumped off the wall, opened the back door and turned and ran to the front yard.
The courtyard was quiet, not a soul in sight.
The boy was shocked and rushed over to open the door, reporting sharply, “There’s no one there.”
No one?
The butler pushed him away and walked in quickly, pushing the door of the main house open, and the cold air came over him, so he knew without looking that no one was inside.
The butler turned around at once and went out of the courtyard and got into the carriage to return to the house to report.
“What did you say?”
Zheng Fan stood up incredulously.
The butler bowed, “Old slave thinks …… they are back at the Xu Mansion?”
The Li family was already at the end of their rope, they didn’t even have the money to buy a tonic for Li An, so they certainly wouldn’t have gone to an inn and couldn’t have gotten away from the capital, otherwise Li An wouldn’t have appeared at the Household Ministry just now.
The only possibility was that he had been picked up and returned to the Xu family.
Zheng Fan walked back and forth a few steps, thinking that this was very unlikely, since the old man had driven the man out of the Xu residence, he would not let him go back again.
“Send someone to poke around, wherever they are, find them for me.”
……
After leaving the Ministry of Works, Li An instructed his subordinates to drive around the streets a few times and found no one following before he ordered back to the South City.
Song Wangyue had been waiting there.
In order to make Li An’s injuries look heavier, she had used a special method. When Li An returned home, Song Wan Yue took out a bottle and handed it to Wen, instructing her to rub it on Li An’s red swelling, which subsided after a quarter of an hour.
“Miss Song, as you expected, if Squire Song hadn’t gone over there today, I’m afraid Lord Shang Shu wouldn’t have allowed my resignation.”
“I also helped you for my maternal great-grandfather, I didn’t want him to be taken advantage of.”
Song Wangyue’s words were clear.
Li An was still full of gratitude, “Even so, you have saved us, so if there is anything you need from us in the future, Miss Song, just give us an order.”
Song Wan Yue waved her hand and opened her door, “I want you to go to Jiangnan, are you willing?”
Li An, in particular, thought that Song Wan Yue would let them go to Qingping County with her family.
“Jiangnan is a thousand miles away from the capital, once you go there, no one will be able to find you, and you can live there in peace and quiet. Don’t worry, I will send a letter to my grandfather to take care of you, and I will also pay for the expenses on the way, so you will not be embarrassed.”
Li An looked at his wife and daughter. He had no parents or siblings, Wen and Xu Ling’er were his only relatives, and as long as they both agreed, he could go anywhere.
Wen’s lips twitched, wanting to say something, Xu Ling’er said firmly, “We’ll go!”
Her reputation was already ruined, and with what had happened to her grandmother and uncle, she could not stay in the capital for a long time, and when she went to Jiangnan no one knew them, she could start from scratch.
Wen swallowed back the words she wanted to say, and only after a long time did she nod gently.
Li An looked at Song Wan Yue, “Then thank you very much Miss Song, we will pack up and leave immediately.”
“There’s no hurry, you can’t delay this leg injury, it’s not too late to leave after it’s healed.”
After leaving the mansion, Song Wangyue ordered the coachman to go to the pastry shop.
The scent of egg yolk pastry had long since wafted down this street to that other street, and the people in the long queue for pastry there couldn’t help but inhale. Some of them were seasoned foodies, and some of them often bought food for their masters, so they naturally smelled the difference of the scent wafting over.
“It can’t be that the Song family pastry shop has developed another fresh pastry, can it?” Someone in the queue said something.
The queue was silenced for a moment, and then someone came out of the queue and walked towards them.
There was one, then there was two, then there was three, then there was four ……
The shopkeeper looked up from packing a pastry for a customer at the front of the queue and froze for a moment when he saw that the queue was short by a small margin.
Others continued to leave.
He was so anxious that he wanted to come out from behind the counter and pull people back in, raising his voice, “Everyone, all the pastries you want are ready, I’ll have them packed for you in a minute.”
No one turned around to pay attention to him and the crowd came over to see a fresh pastry on the counter, with several trays with small pieces cut into it sitting next to it.
“You can all taste it.”
The man smiled and greeted those who came over with an earnestness that emanated from the bottom of his heart. They hadn’t had so many people here for days, since the customers had been taken away by the pastry shop over there.
Qing’er took in the situation and quickly went to the back of the house to report to Xiao Yao, who also let out a long breath and ordered Qing’er in a low voice, “Go and keep an eye on the shop to see which people in the shop are abnormal.”
When Song Wan Yue arrived, there was a long queue of people lined up here, although it was not as long as when the shop first opened, it was still better than the previous few days.
She didn’t go to the backyard to look for Xiao Yao, but went into the pastry shop first. She called out to the two people who had ordered yesterday and asked them to bring over the ingredients she had ordered her to prepare yesterday, “Today, we will teach you how to make pea yolk.”
The two of them happily responded and followed Song Wangyue’s lead.
They were in a separate room, out of sight of the people outside.
An hour later, they had finished learning, and half an hour later, the first portion of pea butter was cooked, and Song Wangyue deliberately asked them to make more, cut a small portion of it into small pieces and bring it to the counter for the customers to taste.
The crystalline yellow colour was pleasing to the eye, and when they learnt that it was another new pastry, people in the queue came forward to take a small piece and put it in their mouths, it was sweet but not greasy, very tasty, and they immediately asked people to buy it, but the man narrowed his eyes with a smile, “Today is just a trial run, it will only be launched tomorrow, so if you want to eat it, you can come and buy it tomorrow.”
In the crowd, someone took a small piece and put it in his mouth, but took the time to turn around and slip the pastry into his sleeve, queued up again for a while, bought two pieces of egg yolk pastry and carried them to the end of the street, turned a corner and went back to the pastry shop through the back door.
He took out the egg yolk pastry he had bought and the pea yolk in his sleeve and handed it to the shopkeeper, “The egg yolk pastry is new today, and the pea yolk is said to be available tomorrow.”
The shopkeeper looked at the crystal clear pea yolk, picked it up, broke a small bit and put it in his mouth, chewed it for just a moment before getting up, wrapped up the rest of the pea yolk and held it in his hand along with the egg yolk pastry, went out the back door and went to the west city.