After arriving in Lizhou Province, this was the first time Zhulan had received a letter from home. "Is it just a letter?" she asked.
Steward Ding replied, "This letter was brought by swift horse, it's only the letter."
Zhulan signaled that Steward Ding could leave, and not until she was alone in the room did she begin to open the letter—while opening it, she thought that not only had she been busy this month, but the Yang family had been too.
After seeing her purchase mountain land and build an ice cellar, her father also bought a hundred acres of mountain land to plant fruit trees, yet the Yang family did not have the financial depth of Zhulan's family; they bought three-year-old fruit trees. The rest of Yang family's silver was spent on ninety acres of dry land and ten acres of paddy fields, virtually depleting the family savings accumulated over a lifetime.
