pappabearbooks Chapter 63, Following you is the worst luck for my second brother.
Chapter 63, Following you is the worst luck for my second brother.
After leaving the South City, Lin Zhou walked back with Lu You. He looked beaming, his sleeves tucked in as he chuckled. He imagined seeing a spectacular sight in the open space outside the city the next morning.
Lu You, however, seemed somewhat worried. Lin Zhou glanced at him and asked, "What's wrong? Is there some kind of mishap? You great talent."
"Brother Lin, please don't laugh at me. Your method is absolutely flawless. I'm just worried about my own affairs."
"What? Did your mother upset you again?"
"Hmm..." Lu You sighed, "I've already brought this up, but she still won't let me go. She wants me to meet a girl from a certain family tomorrow."
"It's no big deal. I'll see if I'm free tomorrow and go with you."
Lin Zhou didn't take it to heart at all. If a mama's boy like Lu You couldn't handle something, Lin Zhou had two thousand eight hundred ways to deal with it. He wasn't good at writing poetry, but when it came to being annoying, few in the world could match him.
"Brother Lin, please don't joke like that. What can be done about this? My mother... she's really giving me a headache."
"Take care of the important matters first."
Lin Zhou was too lazy to waste too much time talking to him. After all, he was going to visit Shen Kuo's descendants that night, and he didn't want to let his trivial matters interfere.
However, it seems that Lu You was a well-known mama's boy in the circle, and anyone who had a good relationship with him would tease him a few times when they met.
It has to be said that this incident seems to be the only stain on the life of the upright and unyielding Lu You. After all, even the most devoted to etiquette and filial piety, there are very few people who would be driven to this point by their mother.
When Lin Zhou first met Shen Gai, both of them were a little reserved. But when they started teasing Lu You together during dinner, the sense of distance disappeared instantly, as if they were born to be best friends.
"Alright, alright, Brother Jingwen, stop teasing me with Brother Lin." Lu You said, his face flushed. "I've come here to discuss something with you. Brother Lin wants to build a workshop, but we don't have a master craftsman. I hope Brother Jingwen can be that master craftsman."
"Asking me to handle something like this at the workshop, isn't that a bit...?" Shen Gai and Shen Jingwen were still somewhat displeased after hearing this: "Aren't there master craftsmen everywhere? It's not that I'm being presumptuous, Brother Lin... actually, this matter... let's find someone more capable."
Lin Zhou, being a seasoned veteran, could easily understand what the other person meant. Would the descendant of such a great scientist be willing to build a house? It lacks both difficulty and technical expertise; if word got out, his reputation would be ruined.
"I know Jingwen is not short of money and doesn't care about building houses, but if... hehe."
Lin Zhou kept everyone in suspense for a moment, then gently placed the blueprints and manufacturing process on Shen Gai's table: "Please take a look, Jingwen."
He watched the young scientist pick up the blueprints and felt incredibly smug: "Little brat, if this doesn't stun you, then what was the point of that science student getting his PhD?"
A professional could tell at a glance whether someone was good or not. The extremely advanced furnace and the steelmaking process from coal to steel immediately captivated the eldest son of the Shen family.
Lin Zhou didn't understand how professionals like them felt when they saw this kind of thing, but theoretically it was similar to the feeling of a sect's prodigy in a cultivation novel seeing a top-tier cultivation technique—the exhilarating feeling of having all the confusion that had been weighing on their hearts for years resolved with just one glance.
Of course, Lin Zhou had never had this feeling before. He used to copy his deskmate's homework, let alone have any sudden enlightenment. Now he had lost all his skills. He had long forgotten about sine and cosine, push and pull.
Shen Gai sat there for a long time, leaving Lin Zhou and Lu You to their own devices. The two of them sat there eating the pastries without daring to speak, afraid of disturbing the other person's concentration.
After a long while, Shen Gai raised his head. Luckily, he was a member of the Hominidae family and the Homo genus; if it were any other mammal, its eyes would probably be gleaming.
"Interesting, truly interesting. Three airways, coal washing and refining... interesting, very interesting." He looked up: "Where did all these techniques come from?"
"Bought."
Lin Zhou's question left Shen Gai speechless. Shen Gai looked up at Lin Zhou, tilting his head slightly, and asked, "Bought it?"
"I bought it. I travel around trading, and one day I bought it from an old Taoist priest. It was four or five strings of cash."
Shen Gai rolled his eyes at these words and hurriedly said, "Then sell it to me, and I'll give you forty strings of cash."
Lin Zhou rolled his eyes: "What, do you have so much money you don't know what to do with it?"
Shen Gai frowned: "What do you mean?"
This is where the difference between science and humanities students becomes apparent. Lu You, who was standing next to him, said with great amusement, "Brother Jingwen, if you were to become the master craftsman in the workshop, you could personally improve the formula and blueprints, no matter if they were yours."
Shen Gai's expression at that moment was as if he had met a sweet young girl. He even stuck out his tongue and licked his lips. With the candlelight shining on him and his silk clothes, he looked as lewd as could be.
At that moment, Lin Zhou understood! He completely understood! These people looked at these things like they looked at a pretty girl; it was like a thorn in their side. They couldn't stand it without handling it and touching it.
"No problem, no problem, hehe..." Shen Gai gripped the stack of blueprints tightly in his hand: "It's settled then. I'll head there first thing tomorrow morning, but Brother Lin has to treat me to a meal."
"How can you not provide meals?"
Lin Zhou laughed heartily and clapped his hands: "Since everyone is free today, how about I treat you to a brothel? Don't laugh at me, but I've never been before."
"I'm fine with it, but I wonder if Wu Guan dares to go?"
"Go ahead, who's afraid of who... I... I... I'm not that useless."
The three hit it off immediately and decided to go together as food bloggers exploring shops in Lin'an. On the way, Lin Zhou was still uneasy, after all, he didn't know how to add bells in the Song Dynasty, or what special services would be offered after adding them. It shouldn't be just playing the zither and reading the Golden Sutra, right? The vegetarian dishes were priced like meat, which could be considered a scam.
But to his surprise, before he could even step through the gates of the Changchun Courtyard, two men wielding curved swords blocked his path. These two burly men had serious expressions and were clearly from the Jin Kingdom.
Lu You hated the Jin Kingdom the most and went up to argue with them, but the two men ignored him and coldly said to Lin Zhou, "The Princess has ordered that the young master of the Lin family is not allowed to enter."
"Me?" Lin Zhou was taken aback, pointing at Lu You, "Not him? It's me? Why are you bothering with me?"
"By order of the Princess Consort! Young Master Lin is not permitted to enter."
They didn't even bother to answer Lin Zhou's question, just mechanically repeating it, leaving him stuck in a rut. In the end, he stood in the cold wind, hands on his hips, with a wry smile: "Fine... fine, you're meddling too much, huh?"
After that, the three of them changed places several times, but unsurprisingly, with their mediocre skills, they couldn't shake off the Jin Dynasty's imperial spies at all, and could only obediently find a restaurant to eat roast pork.
With a cup of yellow wine and a bite of meat, Lin Zhou looked up and sighed deeply, while Lu You seemed to have escaped a calamity...
"You're still laughing? Why don't you learn from Liu Sanbian? You're bored to live with that fierce wife of yours every day." Shen Gai teased Lu You again, "But Brother Lin, he is indeed a bit pitiful."
"Stop talking, stop talking." Lin Zhou waved his hand helplessly, picked up his wine glass and drank it all in one gulp. "Going openly like this probably won't work. Next time, we'll go sneakily... They can't be watching us day and night, can they?"
Lu You was still laughing: "Brother Lin, you should conserve your energy. You have important things to do early tomorrow morning. In my opinion, it's a good thing that you're not allowed to go to brothels. Those places cost money and energy. You might as well use that extra energy for your studies."
"Oh dear... I'm so wronged." Lin Zhou cried out in anguish, one hand on his forehead. "We finally found a place where brothels aren't illegal, and I still got nailed to the seven-inch mark. I feel so sorry for my second brother who suffered such a loss with me."