Da Tang Si Zi: My Six Super Rich Little Nuggets!

Chapter 233 Xie Zhizhi? The Most Precious Salary?

Xiao Si's heart tightened, and a name suddenly flashed through her mind: "No way, you wouldn't happen to be Zi An, would you?! And who is San Lang Zi An?"

Gao Lishi's smile deepened, his tone tinged with a hint of teasing: "He specializes in time-traveling emperors, like Li Shimin, or Brother Zhinu..."

"Good heavens, then who are you?" Xiao Si sighed, her tone tinged with helplessness at the instability of spacetime.

“I don’t know either,” Gao Lishi shrugged, his tone relaxed. “I seem to remember my name is Xie Zhizhi, but it seems we don’t know each other.”

Xiao Si sighed, her tone tinged with exasperation: "Sigh! Anyway, our team is stronger again." She pursed her lips, but secretly resolved to unravel the mystery of these tangled threads!

She suddenly leaned closer to Xie Zhizhi, who had transmigrated into the body of Gao Lishi, and asked, "I once came across Bai Juyi's 'Collection of Bai Juyi's Works'. When Bai Juyi was a county magistrate, he wrote that his salary was 'three hundred shi of grain.' What does that mean? Do you know how much stuff that could buy?"

Gao Lishi Zi'an pulled out a yellowed parchment from the bottom of the box:

“Look at this ledger—two hundred bushels of millet require twenty donkeys to be hired, and one hundred bushels of polished rice must be protected from the granary official adulterating it with sand. Once, he exchanged three bushels of his stipend for a Persian carpet from a foreign merchant, and Qiu Gong caught him and scolded him, ‘The stipend is the sweat of the people, not the ink in a scholar’s ​​bag’…”

The rain outside the window grew heavier. Suddenly, Xiao Si remembered something and lowered her voice, "What was I thanking you for? Zhizhi?"

“Haha, just like your Zhi Nu brother, Zhi Zhi.” Gao Lishi scribbled.

"Ah, how do you know Brother Zhinu? Who exactly are you? Never mind, Mystic, I still prefer to call you Mystic, otherwise I really can't tell which one is you! Um, continue, are the officials in Lingnan really like Zheng Quan? Fighting to be transferred to other places for official land?"

Gao Lishi drew circles in the charcoal ash with his fire poker: "The official land of the Prefect of Guangzhou could grow citrus fruits as tribute to the emperor. When Bai Juyi was the Prefect of Hangzhou, the rent from his forty hectares of official land was enough to support three thousand staff members—but did you know that 30% of his 100,000 cash salary was exchanged by merchants from Lingnan using flying money, and the copper coins were all covered in green mold..."

Xiao Si grabbed the bronze fish-shaped tally and imitated receiving his salary: "Oh, I see. So, do you think it's more worthwhile to be an official in the capital or in the provinces? For example... the salary of the Crown Prince's Junior Tutor?"

Gao Lishi took out a faded ivory plaque from the box: Bai Shaofu's monthly salary was 200,000 cash, enough to buy half a garden in Luoyang. But he once said, "Sixteen thousand cash a month is more than enough"—Gao's slender, long fingertips traced the "Special Supply Spring Tea" mark on the plaque. "Look at this three shi of salt. Nowadays, even deer antler ash is forbidden to you by Duke Jing. Back then, special supplies were the norm..."

Xiao Si sighed, "Rules are always changing, but what remains unchanged is..." Just then, the third watch of the night struck, and she noticed the engravings on the inside of the fish-shaped tally. Xiao Si suddenly murmured, "The dirty hands that count money... are as numerous as the rats in the granary."

The rain outside the window gradually stopped, and Xiao Si put the fish-shaped tally back into the box.

“Strongman, let me ask you, after Bai Gong retired he said his monthly salary was a hundred thousand, a second-rank official position, but was his money bag really heavier than Jing Gong’s rattan bed?”

Gao Lishi blew out the candle and left the hall. A voice echoed in the darkness: "They are not from the same era and cannot be compared... Moreover, what's heavy is never the money bag, but—"

"What is it?"

The young Xie, who had transmigrated into the body of Gao Lishi, had already gone far away. Amidst the sound of rain, the palace watchman's call could be faintly heard: "All is well—"

The next morning, Xiao Si wrote in her astrological diary: "The most precious reward is nothing more than the night watchman's drum in Chang'an and the moving sound of the pipa in Bai Juyi's poem..."