Gasp! She's a Time Traveler Using Modern Tech to Improve Ancient Life-Chapter 380 - 377: Paying Copper to Save a Slave

Until someone from the County Government came to inquire if Xiao Yixun wanted to replace her slave and take the punishment herself, Lin Wanwan, the head of the Lin Mansion, only then realized that someone from her residence had been quietly taken away by the government the day before.

When Lin Wanwan learned that the other party was accused of causing injury by accident, she suddenly understood where the money Xiao Yixun handed over with Qingyu came from!

Previously, she found it strange how a burly man, sheltered in a noble household, could earn money; she never imagined his side jobs would be so unconventional.

Isn’t this just a killer script for doing things with money? Although no one was killed on the spot, the nature is already similar.

Xiao Yixun naturally couldn’t produce the six hundred jins of Copper Coins to save her servant from the rod and prison, so Lin Wanwan proposed lending her the money, with the condition that she helps Lin Wanwan with accounting.

Xiao Yixun’s primary personality was extremely sensitive to numbers. Lin Wanwan never avoided others when teaching Lin Mengli the double-entry bookkeeping method, so Xiao Yixun, who listened in, always learned faster than Lin Mengli. Even when Mengli calculated using an abacus, he couldn’t match Xiao Yixun’s mental calculation speed.

For Lin Wanwan, providing Xiao Yixun with food and shelter was her way of repaying the favor of her rescue that time by the cliff, but lending money was a separate matter and had to be accounted for clearly.

Everything valuable on Xiao Yixun now was gifted by Lin Wanwan, and she certainly couldn’t take it back to repay her. So besides working for Lin Wanwan, she had nothing else to pledge.

In fact, Xiao Yixun originally had no intention of replacing her slave with punishment by Copper Coin. If it’s a whipping, so be it, the thick skin could bear it, and if it’s imprisonment, so be it; after all, she didn’t need Zhong Yi’s service at the Lin Mansion.

The life of a servant isn’t worth six hundred jins of Copper Coin, Xiao Chong must have gone mad over money.

But since Lin Wanwan actively proposed this exchange, Xiao Yixun agreed accordingly.

The main reason was that she actually enjoyed doing accounts for Lin Wanwan. Being acknowledged for her calculating skills by Lin Wanwan gave her a bit of a thrill.

Lin Wanwan ordered Sun Chuyao to drive a carriage loaded with six hundred jins of Copper Coin to the County Government to exchange for the burly man Zhong Yi.

In truth, Lin Wanwan also felt that Xiao Chong had done it on purpose; this was probably his way of profiting by exploiting the deficiency in Sun Lake! She had seen fines of several jins of Copper before, but never hundreds at once.

That’s the issue with the Great Tang—it claims to be a nation governed by law, with laws to follow, but in reality, the County Magistrate has considerable freedom, except for death penalties needing to be reported for review; other small cases are basically adjudicated by the County Magistrate.

After being exchanged back with Copper, Zhong Yi kowtowed solidly to both Xiao Yixun and Lin Wanwan.

Lin Wanwan admonished him never to engage in illegal acts or earn ill-gotten gains, saying there wouldn’t be a next time she’d spend money to save him.

Zhong Yi naturally agreed earnestly.

Originally, when he heard Xiao Chong’s sentence of fifty lashes plus three years of imprisonment, with six hundred jins of Copper to replace the punishment, he was already prepared to serve labor at the Ta Mountain Dam — it was an open secret that all reform-through-labor prisoners in Mao County had to work there now. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Six hundred jins of Copper Coin! How many slaves like him could it buy!

Not to mention, the young master had no money now, even while living in the Xiao Family, they wouldn’t have spent so much Copper Coin to redeem him. He had that level of self-awareness.

As a slave, aside from loyalty, it’s critical to recognize one’s own status.

When he was young, his unusual eyes led his in-laws to reject him, and ultimately, his family, for the sake of peace within the clan, sold him at the age of eight to a broker for a fixed price of currency (about six kilograms).

If Xiao Yixun hadn’t had unusual criteria for selecting servants, not minding those with disabilities, and picked him to be a Guard at the age of twelve, allowing skilled troop members to train him, he would have already perished at the stone mine.

Now, his young master actually spent such a large sum of Copper Coin to take his punishment; how could he not be moved to tears?

As he watched that cartload of Copper Coins pass by him, he almost broke into tears. When did he become this valuable in his young master’s eyes?

In return for the young master and the Village Lady of Le’an, Zhong Yi’s loyalty was at an unprecedented high.

Xiao Yixun naturally had no idea of Zhong Yi’s thoughts, but even if she knew, she wouldn’t care. To her, a slave’s thoughts were insignificant; their life and death were inherently tied to their master’s, and loyalty was merely their duty.

In the Great Tang, slaves were regarded as inferior, akin to livestock in the law, so to expect much sympathy from nobles was impossible.

If a slave made a mistake, and the master petitioned the government to kill them, there was no crime!

If a master kills an innocent slave without permission, the most severe punishment is one hundred strokes, which could still be substituted with Copper Coin, effectively making the issue disappear—as long as the master hadn’t offended someone who held a grudge against them.

Growing up in such a value system, how could Xiao Yixun care about a slave’s life?

Someone like Lin Wanwan, who cares for slaves, is definitely an anomaly, and Xiao Yixun always observed her secretly with a curious and peculiar mindset.

Lin Wanwan naturally noticed each time Xiao Yixun looked at her with curiosity and inquisitiveness, but considering the other’s mental state, she didn’t mind.

For someone like Xiao Yixun, who sometimes exhibited a second personality and competed with Qingyu for her affection, wanting to be her daughter, Lin Wanwan couldn’t help but harbor a bit more tolerance and compassion.

To be honest, Lin Wanwan was definitely attracted to appearances, she just wouldn’t admit it. If Xiao Yixun were even slightly less good-looking, her tolerance for her would never be as high as it is now.

After all, Xiao Yixun’s looks could rival Xiao Chong; their Lanling’s Xiao Family members were truly favored by heaven. The timelessly beautiful Empress Xiao, became a concubine of Li Shimin in his early thirties because she was so stunningly beautiful, even at over fifty.

Xiao Yixun was the same, although her utterly pale skin was eerie, she was absolutely beautiful, ethereal, like a spirit, far exceeding the ordinariness of common albino patients.

The sheer whiteness of Xiao Yixun’s skin was so uniformly flawless that even though it seemed pathological, rather than being frightening, it carried a captivating allure.

Had she not been of noble birth, if she were without power, even as a commoner rather than a lower class, she would surely lead an unstable life and likely be kept by nobles as a possession.

Those beautiful Pusa Man and Hu Ji, wasn’t it their beauty that doomed them to become playthings of the nobility? True affection with nobles is truly only found in novels and TV dramas.

In fact, noblemen are quite realistic, and no matter how beautiful Pusa Man and Hu Ji are, they are only pets to them, bound to experience a bleak old age once their beauty fades.

What they really pursue are those women from the high-status Five Families and Seven Hopes, even if the latter are in second marriages, they are still prize catches.

This hierarchical system is deeply rooted, and even the royal family, wanting to break it, cannot.