RNP Chapter 142 Things are about to get out of hand.
Chapter 142 Things are about to get out of hand.
"If you know, you know!"
Fan Lihong poured the pig feed into the trough, straightened her back, and said, "Let's see who dares to say a word against it! Our Xiaotao earns money through her own abilities, not by stealing or robbing! Anyone who's jealous, anyone who's capable enough to haul a cartload of melons to town to sell, let's see if they have the guts!"
Li Youtian was speechless, his eyes rolling back in his head. He couldn't reason with this woman.
The more he thought about it, the more frustrated he became. So he put his hands behind his back, left his own house, and went straight to Li Jianshe's house.
He needs to talk to Li Jianshe; this matter can't be allowed to escalate any further.
As soon as I arrived at Li Jianshe's door, I saw Li Jianshe squatting against the wall, drawing something on the ground with a small wooden stick, and muttering something to himself.
"...Eight hundred catties per cart, one catty is one mao, that's eighty. Two carts would be one hundred and sixty... Oh my God..."
Li Jianshe was engrossed in his calculations when suddenly a dark figure appeared beside him, startling him so much that he quickly wiped the words off the ground with his foot.
"Ahem, the Party Secretary is here." Li Jianshe stood up and patted the dirt off his trousers.
"What's the big deal?" Li Youtian said with a dark face, seeing right through what he was doing.
"No...it's nothing, just drawing for fun."
"Hmph, just drawing for fun?"
Li Youtian plopped down on a nearby stone bench. "Jianshe, what do you think of this? Our two kids are really too audacious. They've made some money, but if this kind of behavior sets off, how will we manage the village's work in the future?"
Li Jianshe rubbed his hands together and chuckled, "Secretary, my dear in-law, the policies have loosened up now, they're on the radio every day. We can't keep living on old traditions, watching others eat meat while we're still eating cornbread, can we?"
Li Youtian opened his mouth, about to retort, when a commotion suddenly came from outside the courtyard.
Is the Party Secretary here?
"Secretary Li! Come out and tell us what's going on!"
Seven or eight villagers blocked the doorway of Li Jianshe's house, their faces showing anxiety and dissatisfaction.
The leader was Wang Fugui, who lived at the edge of the village. He had seen Li Weimin hauling melons to sell in the county town these past two days.
"Secretary, you need to give us an explanation!"
As soon as Wang Fugui saw Li Youtian, he immediately started yelling, "What time is it? In previous years, the melon harvesters would have been here long ago. Our melons are almost overripe in the field, and they'll rot if we don't pick them soon! But your family and Xiao Tao's family are doing this, secretly taking them to town to sell for a high price, leaving our whole village here. What's the meaning of this?"
"That's right! Party Secretary, you can't show favoritism!"
"If you had told us earlier that we could sell in town, we would have gone! Now look what's happened, we're just sitting at home waiting like idiots!"
The villagers were all talking at once, their resentment palpable.
These days, the harvest from the fields is a matter of life and death.
Seeing others getting rich while your own melons are still hanging in the ground, who wouldn't be anxious?
Li Youtian was in a real bind. He stood up and waved his hands, shouting, "Everyone, quiet down! Quiet down! Listen to me!"
He cleared his throat, adopting an official air: "Selling in town is speculation...it's against the rules! Boss Zhan, the melon buyer, will be here in the next couple of days, so everyone can rest assured and wait! The price will remain the same as last year!"
"The usual price? The usual price is three cents a pound!"
A young man shouted indignantly, "Secretary, your daughter sells for one cent a pound in town! That's more than three times the price! We work hard all year to grow our crops, why should we be exploited like this?"
These words caused an uproar among everyone.
"One cent? My goodness!"
"That's a huge difference!"
Just as Li Youtian was being besieged by the villagers and was almost at his wit's end, someone suddenly came running from the west end of the village, shouting as they ran:
"Here it comes! Here it comes! Boss Zhan's car is at the village entrance!"
That shout was like a bucket of cold water being poured into a hot oil pan.
The villagers surrounding Li Youtian scattered in a flash, no longer bothering to question the Party Secretary, and rushed towards the village entrance.
Li Youtian and Li Jianshe exchanged a glance, their hearts skipping a beat.
Said Cao Cao, Cao Cao.
This is going to escalate into something serious.
……
At the entrance of Lijia Village, under that century-old locust tree.
A slightly worn-out Jiefang truck was parked there, its cargo bed empty.
A middle-aged man wearing a white polyester shirt and with a slightly protruding belly was leaning against the car door, a cigarette between his fingers, chatting leisurely with several women who had gathered around him.
This man is Zhan Laosan, the middleman who has been in charge of buying melons in this area for many years.
"Oh, Mr. Zhan, we've been waiting for you!" A plump woman said with a beaming smile. "We thought you weren't coming this year."
"How could I?" Zhan Laosan exhaled a smoke ring, exuding an air of importance. "We've been cooperating with your Li Family Village for so many years, how could I forget you all? Don't worry, I'll take care of all the melons this year."
"The price..." another woman asked tentatively, "Boss Zhan, you see, fertilizer prices have gone up this year, and it's been dry. It's not easy to cultivate an acre of melons. Could you... raise the price a little?"
Old Zhan's eyelids drooped, and he pointed at the woman with the finger holding his cigarette: "Hey, sister, you can't be too greedy. Three cents a pound, that's the usual price. I've been to so many villages, and that's the price they always give. I only came here first because of our years of cooperation. If you don't want to sell, there are plenty of villages lining up to sell to me."
These words were a mix of soft and hard, and even carried a hint of threat.
Zhan Laosan knew that no one else in this area would come to collect melons except him.
Upon hearing this, the women immediately wilted.
They also know that the price is the same every year; the seller has an exclusive right to sell, and if you don't sell, the melons will just rot in the ground.
Just then, a gossipy woman in the crowd, who had probably overheard something at Li Jianshe's doorstep, couldn't help but mutter under her breath, "Three cents... that's outrageous! The Party Secretary's daughter, Li Xiaotao, took a cartload of melons to town today, and she can sell them for ten cents a pound!"
The sound wasn't loud, but in this relatively quiet environment, it reached Zhan Laosan's ears clearly.
The smile on Zhan Laosan's face instantly froze.
He whirled around, staring intently at the woman who had spoken, his eyes blazing with murderous intent: "What did you just say? Say it again!"
The woman trembled at his gaze, but having already spoken, she could only grit her teeth and repeat, "I...I said, the Party Secretary's daughter sells melons in town, for one cent a pound..."
"One cent?!"
Zhan Laosan instantly exploded.
"Damn it!" Zhan Laosan slammed the half-smoked cigarette butt to the ground and ground it back and forth with the tip of his shiny black leather shoes, as if it were not a cigarette butt but Li Xiaotao's head.
He looked up, and his chubby face, which usually wore a friendly and prosperous smile, was now so gloomy it looked like it could be wrung out of water.
A pair of triangular eyes fixed on the talkative woman from before, his tone icy cold: "Say it again, who? Selling for a penny a pound in town?"