Chapter 37

“Auntie, is anyone home? I am Zhou Jing. I have some sausages here, it’s very cheap, only 12 copper coins per catty!”

“12 copper coins per catty?” When they arrived at Wang Baichuan’s house, it was Shen Wen who opened the door for Zhou Jing.

However, after visiting just a few households, he was so wet like a drenched chicken—a tall and big man curled up under his raincoat, looking particularly miserable.

Shen Wen blocked the doorway, not allowing him to enter, and his attitude wasn’t very good.

In a tone that was neither positive nor negative, he asked, “Aren’t you selling this sausage for an exorbitant price usually? I heard it was 25 copper coins per catty. Why are there only 12 copper coins today? That’s quite a difference.”

His tone clearly meant that he suspected there was something wrong with the sausages Zhou Jing was selling.

In his past life, Zhou Jing had started from scratch and encountered numerous setbacks in the business world—meeting all kinds of people along the way.

Among them were those who simply disapproved of him and found various ways to pick fights.

Zhou Jing never got angry with these people. He believed that if a deal fell through, there was no need for enmity; if they didn’t want to buy his goods, that was fine.

There was no need to fight or argue; otherwise, he would just have to sulk every day, and he wouldn’t be able to do any business.

In fact, whether in his past life or at this moment, Zhou Jing was a person with a considerable degree of tolerance—as long as no one touched Shen Mo—Shen Mo was his only bottom line.

Zhou Jing patiently explained, “Auntie, you know that my family has been in the sausage business in town lately. In business, the foods are always perishable, and now that it’s summer, even with a cellar, we can’t keep these meat products. My family can’t even eat them all, so rather than throwing them away, it would be better to sell them cheaply to the villagers, allowing them to have a taste as well.”

Shen Wen curled his lips in disdain. “Your words sound nice, but isn’t it just because they can’t sell it and will lose money?” he said.

In town, lean meat was sold for 15 copper coins per catty, and something as refined as sausages was even more expensive, with Yun Ji’s shop selling them for 30 copper coins.

That was a whole difference of 18 copper coins.

This was quite the bargain, and it had been a long time since there was any meat at home. Besides, they couldn’t make it to the town anyway.

Shen Wen thought for a moment and said, “Give me a catty. Let me tell you, this is only because we’re from the same village. Otherwise, my family wouldn’t be willing to spend this unnecessary money. In the future, if you have any good deals, you’d better think of your aunt first. Don’t let this money be spent in vain.”

Zhou Jing smiled and agreed with her verbally, thanking her, though in his heart, he had a different calculation going on.

Only then did Shen Wen invite him into the house and hand over the copper coins.

“Make sure to give me a little extra. I’m doing this to support your business.”

The sausages were wrapped by Zhou Jing in a thick layer of oiled paper and torn cloth, stuffed under his clothes. When he took them out, only a small patch on the outside was wet, but the inside was still clean and fresh. There was only one scale in the house, but no one had brought it out. They all had a rough idea of the weight of a single sausage.

A catty could easily be gauged by hand, and giving a little extra wasn’t a problem since, if they couldn’t sell it, it would just go to waste.

Zhou Jing had given the full amount, so even with Shen Wen’s inspection, he couldn’t find any fault with the weight of the sausages he bought.

After Zhou Jing left, Shen Wen said to Wang Baichuan, “The Zhou family’s good days have only lasted a few days, and now they’re about to decline.”

Wang Baichuan asked: “How do you know their good days were coming to an end?”

Shen Wen rolled his eyes dramatically at his son’s dullness. “Isn’t it obvious? If they weren’t falling apart, would Zhou Jing be going door to door selling sausages in this pouring rain, and selling them so cheap at that? He’s just trying to make back whatever little he can. Just wait, once the weather clears, the whole village will know their family is done for.”

Wang Baichuan furrowed his brow—a small worry flashing through his mind.

“If that’s really the case, what will happen to Shen Lin? Will Zhou Jing still be willing to keep another ger in the family if they can barely support themselves? Shen Lin’s only just begun to have a few good days.”

“Shen Lin… Shen Lin, is that all you can think about, that ger? You’ve really lost your mind!” Shen Wen snapped, clearly frustrated.

As Zhou Jing went door to door, few people bought anything.

It wasn’t that the sausages were expensive; it was because of the heavy rain.

After such a downpour, if it lasted another ten days or half a month, the crops in the fields were likely to suffer.

Farmers relied on the weather for their livelihood—when the harvest was good, there was money to spend; but when the harvest was bad, families would hold on tightly to their silver, saving it carefully to survive the winter.

So, when the three of them circled the village and returned soaking wet, they didn’t even have time to change their clothes before asking how the sales had gone.

“Brother Jing, Xiao Di, how much did you two sell? I only sold one catty, and even that was all thanks to Uncle Wang. He only bought half a catty because we’ve been renting his mule cart recently.” Shen Mo said with a sigh, looking equally troubled.

Shen Lin sighed as well, his face also full of worry. “I only managed to sell one catty too, and that was spread out between three different households.”

“I sold three catties,” Zhou Jing said, though not without effort. He had some experience with business and knew how to talk, especially when everyone in the village was anxious about their crops. Selling three catties under such conditions was no small feat.

But even so, they had only sold five catties altogether, not even close to what they would normally sell in a day. Shen Mo couldn’t help but feel troubled. He looked at the pile of sausages in the kitchen, which they had taken out stuffed in their bags, only to bring back just as full, and sighed deeply.

“Forget it, if we couldn’t sell them, we couldn’t sell them. It’s just five silver coins after all. In business, you win some, you lose some.”

Zhou Jing tried to console the two gers. “Think about it, even if we lost the cost of these sausages—these five silver coins worth of business—we still made a profit of 25 silver coins. If we didn’t have this business and were just farming like everyone else, now ‘that’ would be a real disaster.”

He glanced outside at the pouring rain and continued, “With the rain this heavy, the crops won’t do well. In a good year, after paying taxes, most families can still keep around 15 silver coins aside from their food. But this year, they’ll be lucky just to scrape together enough to pay taxes. Meanwhile, our family has already earned more than most people do in a good farming year, and once the weather clears, we can keep selling. But the fields… they’re done for.”

Zhou Jing’s words were meant to comfort them, reminding them that despite the current setback, they were still in a far better position than the rest of the village.

Shen Mo said, “That’s how it is… It’s just a pity, we wasted a lot of sausage for no reason.”

Zhou Jing replied, “Let’s wait and see. If it keeps raining like this tomorrow, we’ll just give the sausages to our neighbors. We can’t let them go to waste. But we also have to consider the people we will give these to, or else we’ll end up with ungrateful people.”

—o—o—o—

Many families, like the Zhou family, hoped for the rain to stop, but the heavens did not fulfill their wishes. The rain continued to fall day after day, showing no signs of stopping.

However, there was one household in the village that could not sit still.

So far, aside from the Shen family, four other households have signed contracts with Zhou Jing to provide ducks.

Unfortunately, the rain was falling just when a man named Wang Fa was scheduled to deliver to the village.

Originally, it was through the Shen family’s connection that he was able to establish a relationship with Zhou Jing, and to that end, he splurged on a large piece of meat to buy favor from the Shen family.

His family was poor, and throughout the year, they could only afford to eat meat towards the end of the year, so this purchase was indeed a significant expense.

When the contract was signed, they had thought that good days were finally on the way. The whole family was so happy that they couldn’t sleep all night, even celebrating by frying a dish rich in oil and meat to commemorate the occasion.

Little did he expect that just as he was about to deliver to his home, the rain began to fall, and Zhou’s family also paused their duck purchases.

Although they had signed a long-term supply contract, it took four months for a batch of ducklings to grow to maturity. Each family had to stagger their supply times, and they had only just bought the ducklings.

What they needed to supply to Zhou’s family now were the few dozen ducks that had been free-ranging at home.

Wang Fa’s wife, Zhao, looked at the ducks in the duck house and sighed heavily.

“Zhou Jing is going door to door and selling his goods with the villagers now. Although he said he had a lot of stock on hand, he must have lost quite a lot of money. I wonder if he will still have the money to do business when the rain stops.

If he doesn’t have the money and refuses to buy our ducks, what will we do? Our family’s savings have already been used to cover the bride price for the third son’s wife. If we take a loss, how can I face the children?”

As Mother Zhao spoke, she began to wipe away her tears. “This year is bound to have a heavy rainfall. Heaven won’t even give us a meal to eat. How are we supposed to endure this? It’s like they’re trying to kill us! Why is my life so bitter? I can’t enjoy a bit of good fortune. Just when I finally see some hope for better days, this kind of thing happened.”

Wang Fa was also worried; in just a few days, he had even lost a few strands of hair due to stress.

They could no longer count on the crops in the fields—even if the rain stopped now, the harvest would still be poor. The only remaining hope was Zhou’s family.

If Zhou’s family accepted their ducks, they would have money to survive the winter.

If all went well, they might even raise two batches of ducks to make up for the poor crop yield.

However, if Zhou’s family went back on their word and refused to buy them, how would the nine mouths in their household—old and young—survive?

Wang Fa gritted his teeth—resolutely determined.

“At this point, we have no choice. Zhou’s family has to accept our ducks; they can’t go back on their word.

Come on, let’s take a walk around the village. I refuse to believe that other families won’t notice how the Zhou family was selling their sausages door to door—they might be thinking what we are thinking.

They might also be worried about their own ducks being left unsold. As long as we can persuade them, if we all go together, Zhou Jing won’t be able to refuse us in giving us a proper explanation!”

Wang Fa went out in the rain to ask a few other families—some went with them, and some were unwilling to join them.

They explained that they raised a batch of ducks every four months, and they needed to coordinate their schedules to avoid overlapping.

The current batch of ducks was being raised by the families who had signed contracts first, while the two families had not yet even purchased the ducklings for their turn.

Since the two families had not invested anything, it meant they had not incurred any losses.

Although there were losses in the fields, those could not be blamed on Zhou Jing.

Understanding that everyone had their struggles, they felt that it was best to just let it go, believing that one shouldn’t be too unreasonable in life.

However, the other families had made investments, and when combined with the losses in the fields, it amounted to a considerable sum of money. All of them were poor, and whether Zhou Jing needed the ducks or not was equivalent to their lifeline, so they naturally could not let this opportunity slip away.

As a result, a large group set off toward the Zhou family, with Aunt Shen prominently in the lead.

Her family had been raising ducks for nearly half a month, and she had invested the most.

In order to care for the ducks, her son had even quit his job carrying sacks in the town.

Shen Lin was startled by their imposing presence. Although they hadn’t resorted to using clubs to drive them away, he still kept a watchful eye on their unfriendly faces—ready to respond if necessary.

Shen Lin guardedly asked: “What do you want?”

In the village, men held a higher status, and women’s words were often overlooked.

Moreover, Shen Lin was merely a ger living temporarily in his elder brother’s home. The villagers thought that he depended on his elder brother for food and clothing, so they believed he had even less say in matters.

Wang Fa didn’t want to waste words with him. He replied directly, “Zhou Jing is in the house, right? We’re looking for him, so step aside.”

After saying this, he shoved Shen Lin aside and attempted to push his way inside.

Although Shen Lin was a ger, he had depended on his older brother for many years, and he knew that if he didn’t stand up for himself, he would be bullied.

Therefore, he wasn’t afraid; instead, he picked up a wooden stick from beside the gate and held it out horizontally in front of Wang Fa and the others.

“What do you want? Explain yourselves! My family isn’t a place you can just barge into!”

Despite his bravado, Shen Lin was still just a ger, and his strength was no match for the men.

Facing so many of them, he felt that no one took him seriously.

Wang Fa, growing impatient, said, “Tie him up. Let’s get inside and talk; we shouldn’t be out here in the rain.”

A few men actually came up to grab Shen Lin and bind him. However, he wasn’t one to back down easily; he swung the stick and struck them.

The men, feeling the pain from his blows, grew angry and decided to show no mercy.

Just as one of them was about to grab his arm, they were suddenly interrupted by a loud shout.

“What do you think you’re doing, barging into my Zhou family and trying to kidnap my people?”

Shen Mo had noticed that Shen Lin had been gone for too long just to open the door, and suddenly, he sensed an ominous feeling that made him rush out to see what was happening.

Wang Fa looked on as Zhou Jing and Shen Mo quickly approached.

Shen Mo protected Shen Lin behind him and shoved the man who was about to take action against Shen Lin.

The man staggered from the push but did not dare to make a sound. He stole glances at Zhou Jing.

He heard that Zhou Jing was very protective of his wife; he would even seek revenge for the grievances against his wife’s family.

Zhou Jing coldly stared at the intruding man in the courtyard and asked in a harsh tone, “I don’t understand what you uncles and aunts mean by this?”

When facing with Zhou Jing, Wang Fa and the others no longer acted so arrogantly toward Shen Lin.

“Um… we came because we have something to discuss with you. The rain outside is so heavy; let’s talk inside, or we’ll get drenched.” Wang Fa said cautiously, observing Zhou Jing’s expression.

“No need!” Zhou Jing replied with a darkened face. “My home does not welcome uninvited guests. If you have something to say, say it here; it’s the same.”

At this, Wang Fa and the others also turned pale, but since the host refused to let them in, they had no choice but to stay outside.

Feeling embarrassed, Wang Fa became angry and lost his politeness, stating directly, “That’s fine; we can discuss it here. We came this time regarding business. It’s clearly the agreed time, so why haven’t you come to the village to collect the ducks? We signed a contract, and if you dare to go back on your word, we can go to the magistrate’s office and report you at any time.”

Zhou Jing let out a cold snort, his expression full of disdain and indifference. He looked at the other two families behind him and asked, “You two came here today with the same intention?”

Liu Wei, who was Wang Fa’s cousin, was swayed by Wang Fa’s words.

Since Zhou Jing had indeed sold sausages at his home a few days prior, he felt that the Zhou family was genuinely facing losses. He thought that if they didn’t confront Zhou Jing, they would never get their money back.

Liu Wei said: “Zhou Jing, don’t blame us for being indifferent. These days, everyone is struggling. The heavens aren’t providing for us, and we don’t know how we’ll get through this winter, so don’t hold it against us.”

Zhou Jing sneered coldly, “So I’ve become your lifeline, huh? As long as you can squeeze some money out of me, you’ll get through this winter, and my life and death won’t matter at all, right?”

Wang Fa mumbled: “It’s not fair to say it like that; we do have this contract, after all. We indeed signed an agreement with you, or we wouldn’t have been able to find you.”

Zhou Jing ignored him and turned to the silent Aunt Shen, who had been hiding behind him. “Aunt Shen, are you here for the same reason today?”

Aunt Shen glanced around, her eyes finally settling on Zhou Jing’s impressive tiled house.

She recalled what her son had told her about the Zhou family’s flourishing business—selling over fifty catty of sausages each day, with even more duck products being sold.

Considering the sausages alone, which could bring in over a silver coin of silver daily, she believed that even if the Zhou family had suffered some losses, it couldn’t be significant.

They had been in business for so long that a few days’ worth of goods wouldn’t cause them any severe damage.

After pondering for a while, Aunt Shen, who had just been swayed by Wang Fa, gradually regained her clarity of thought. She ultimately decided to take a gamble and said, “I certainly believe in Zhou Jing’s character. Our small amount of money is absolutely not going to go to waste. In fact, the reason I came today wasn’t to cause trouble; I just thought that since we’re all from the same village, we should discuss things properly. We shouldn’t resort to violence. I purely came here with the intention of being the mediator. I was worried that if we couldn’t reach an agreement and ended up arguing, there should at least be an elder, like me, to intervene and prevent anyone from getting hurt.”