Siheyuan: The romantic and suave Xu Damao

Zhao Fangfang was still a little worried and asked, "Will they leak this out?"

Damao smiled and explained confidently, "No, I've made it very clear to them both. They can't even tell their own mothers about this!"

After Xu Damao finished speaking, he stuffed the last bite of steamed bun into his mouth, then picked up a piece of potato chip with chopsticks and put it into his mouth to chew. Then he picked up the bowl of soup in front of him and drank it with big gulps.

"Hey, is this sweet potato noodle soup? It tastes pretty good. Cuinong, did you make this?" Xu Damao asked curiously.

Cuinong shook her head and replied with a smile: "It wasn't me, it was Sister Fang who did it. I was only responsible for cooking."

Zhao Fangfang took over the conversation and explained with a smile: "This is nothing special. In the past, white flour was very scarce, and it was not enough to make pancakes and steamed buns. We had to take out some flour, add some water, mix it evenly, and then put it into the cooked sweet potato soup, so that we could satisfy our cravings."

"Don't worry. With the current relationship, money is not the most important thing. We will definitely have enough white flour and corn flour in the future!" Xu Damao said confidently.

Cuinong laughed happily after hearing this and said, "Hehe, that's great! This is better than what the landlords used to eat. In the past, those small landlords didn't even have extra food at home."

"Okay, it's getting late and I should go back. Cuinong, you've slept all day, so make sure you don't have trouble sleeping at night." Xu Damao stood up, dusted himself off, and walked towards the door.

"Brother Damao, be careful."

"I know it myself, don't worry, come and close the door!"

Xu Damao pushed his bicycle out, then rode it towards the warehouse. He thought he might have to spend a lot of time in the warehouse at night, so when he passed by a delicatessen on the street, he stopped to buy some roast chicken, braised beef and a dozen sesame cakes, which he carefully packed and put in the back basket of his bicycle.

There was no conversation along the way, and they soon arrived at the warehouse. Zhang Tietou and Huang Genwang had already arrived, and they were sitting in the corn warehouse, warming themselves around a copper brazier.

"Brother, you are here, why don't you bring an abacus?"

When Zhang Tietou saw Xu Damao pushing the cart in, he immediately stood up to greet him with a look of concern on his face.

"I don't really know how to use that thing."

Xu Damao smiled and answered truthfully. In fact, he was also somewhat confused deep down, because in his previous life, he only learned abacus briefly in elementary school.

Later, with the revision of textbooks, the abacus course disappeared completely from school education. Now, he only vaguely remembers some simple formulas, such as "three becomes nine, nine becomes nine", but he is not familiar with the specific calculation methods.

"One up, one; two up, two; three down, five down, two..."

Xu Damao muttered these formulas to himself, but he found that he had almost forgotten them.

"Brother, how can we calculate without an abacus? Our business is in large quantities. Although Uncle Zhao also brought an abacus, we can't just listen to their one-sided story." Zhang Tietou said worriedly.

"Don't worry, even though I, your big brother, can't use an abacus, I can do vertical calculations! Hehe." Xu Damao said with a grin.

"Vertical form? What does that mean?" Zhang Tietou looked confused.

"You wouldn't understand even if I told you. If you have this free time, you might as well go count how many bags of corn and cornmeal are left in the warehouse." Xu Damao said unhappily.

"Brother, it's not that I don't want to count. In fact, Genwang and I tried to count them yesterday, but there were just too many bags and we couldn't count them at all." Zhang Tietou said helplessly.

"Then how did you calculate it before?" Xu Damao asked with a frown.

"Just use your eyes to estimate the number roughly." Zhang Tietou replied.

"That won't work. We have to be more precise."

"But there are so many bags that I can't even count them!"

Zhang Tietou also looked helpless.

"You can't even think of something so simple? These bags are arranged so neatly, forming a rectangle. Count the number of bags on the long side, and then count the number of bags on the wide side. Multiply the two numbers, and you will know the number of bags of corn on this layer."

As Xu Damao spoke, he pointed at the bag on the ground. His eyes revealed a kind of helplessness and dissatisfaction, as if he was very disappointed with the stupidity of the person in front of him.

"Then count how many layers of bags there are, and multiply that by the total number of bags in that layer you just calculated, and you'll know the total number of bags."

Xu Damao continued to explain, but when he saw the other party's still confused expression, he couldn't help but sigh.

"Brother, what do you mean? I don't understand."

Zhang Tietou scratched his head, his face full of confusion. He tried hard to understand what Xu Damao said, but he still couldn't understand the meaning.

Xu Damao shook his head and stopped dwelling on the topic. He realized that he might need to find a different way to solve the problem.

"Forget it, you don't have to worry about this. You two just go outside and watch over the carriages today. I'll be in the warehouse keeping accounts. Remember, come in and let me know if anything happens."

"You two should work hard, and there will be more deals like this in the future. Remember, you can't tell anyone about these things, otherwise don't blame me for being ruthless."

Xu Damao's voice was low and cold, carrying a chilling threat.

He slowly took out a revolver from his waist, waved it at the two men, with a cold light flashing in his eyes.

"If anyone talks nonsense, I will give him a peanut as a reward."

Zhang Tietou and Li Erzhu's faces turned pale as paper in an instant, and their bodies began to tremble uncontrollably. They stared at the Mauser pistol in Xu Damao's hand with wide eyes, as if they saw the coming of the god of death.

"Hey, brother, didn't we talk about this before? We didn't even tell our own mother! Brother, put this thing away. I'm scared looking at it."

Zhang Tietou tried hard to force a smile, but his lips kept trembling and his voice sounded a little hoarse.

"But there are also benefits to doing this business. We will definitely make a lot of money, but that's secondary. The main thing is that we will have enough flour at home in the future."

Hearing this, a trace of greed and excitement flashed in the eyes of the two. After all, in that era, white flour was a very precious food. If the family could eat this every day, wouldn't it be a great honor for them?

"If any of you are running out of flour, you can ask me to bring it back. If your family members ask where you got the flour after you bring it back, you will have to figure it out on your own."