Chapter Forty-Four: A Hundred-Fold Exorbitant Profit!

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“Slow down. No one’s going to take it from you!” Zhao Zheng said.

After finishing a bowl of sweet soup, Zheng Chunmei finally recovered a little. She licked her lips, seemingly still savoring its sweetness. “Th-thank you, Uncle Zhao. Thank you, Xiao’e!”

“You can’t go on like this. Sooner or later, you’ll starve yourself into serious trouble.” Zhao Zheng frowned. “Go home. Don’t come back.”

Zheng Chunmei had thought Zhao Zheng would take pity on her. She had not expected him to be so heartless. “Uncle Zhao, you’re driving me away again!”

As she spoke, tears began to fall.

Zhao Zheng was unmoved by such tactics. “You worked for two days. I’ll waive the remaining six days. We’ll call it even. That’s generous enough, isn’t it?”

“Uncle Zhao, I owe you. I have to repay—”

“If something happens to you here, won’t your mother-in-law tear the roof off my house?”

Zheng Chunmei was furious. She knew it—Old Miser Zhao was only afraid that something would happen to her. “I’m only like this because I’ve been starving for too long…”

“That still isn’t my responsibility.” Zhao Zheng rose to his feet. “Rest for a while, then leave. Zhaodi, Xiao’e, if she refuses to go, escort her out!”

“Yes, Father-in-law.” Both women nodded.

Compared with a few eggs, a human life was still more important. Neither of them wanted their household burdened with even greater trouble.

Helpless, Zheng Chunmei could only leave. Yet the more she thought about it, the more indignant she became. “I’ll come again tomorrow. If I don’t get to eat the meat from Old Miser Zhao’s house, I’ll die unsatisfied.”

…

“The adobe bricks are almost finished. The excess only needs to be left out to dry. Tomorrow, you two can stack the dried bricks at home. I’m going to the market fair to see if I can find some work. We can’t just sit around eating through our savings.”

After several days without any income, Zhao Zheng was beginning to feel uneasy.

Winter was still long, and there were far too many things that required money.

The thatched roof of their house leaked wind whenever the weather turned gusty and leaked rain whenever it rained. If snow came, the whole thing would certainly collapse.

Without even a single tile overhead, even a heated brick bed offered no real sense of security.

So he had to replace the roof.

Besides, if he could establish a steady income in the future, he would have something to tell Zhaodi.

“Father-in-law, let us go out to work. You should stay home and rest,” Yang Zhaodi said.

“That’s right. We’ll go. You stay home and rest,” Zhang Xiao’e added.

“We agreed from the beginning: you two handle the household, and I handle matters outside. When it comes to the home, you have the final say. When it comes to the outside, you listen to me!” Seeing their hesitation, Zhao Zheng continued, “In times like these, labor is worth next to nothing. No matter how hard you work, you can barely fill your stomach. As the disaster worsens, things will only become more severe. Those landlords are jackals. They’re taking advantage of the situation to buy up farmland at rock-bottom prices, then rent it back to the peasants at exorbitant rates once the harvests improve.”

“The two of you could work yourselves to death and still never escape their exploitation. Manual labor offers no way out. Perhaps a small business might give us a chance to rise above our circumstances. Besides, it isn’t proper for women to show their faces in public. I’ll go. You need to have faith in me.”

The two women lowered their heads, dispirited. They both knew that their father-in-law was right.

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What Zhao Zheng said was the truth. In fact, reality was even more brutal than he described.

People dying in years of disaster was perfectly normal. If one’s parents died, they still had to be buried, didn’t they?

A single coffin was far from cheap.

And if you handled the funeral carelessly, the landlords’ tongues and informants would use filial piety to crush you.

They would force you to sell your fields, your land, your sons, and your daughters, all so you could give your parents an elaborate burial. In the end, you would still have to thank them for allowing you to survive.

If Zhao Zheng wanted to build a better life, he had to prepare for trouble before it arrived.

The following day, Zhao Zheng rose before dawn.

The weather was growing colder by the day, and the air seemed to carry a damp chill.

Yang Zhaodi had made him a set of thermal underclothes from bear hide.

With a quilted jacket underneath and an old bamboo hat on his head, he was warm everywhere except his hands and feet.

Yang Zhaodi brought out some shell-oil cream and chilblain ointment. Without the slightest hesitation, she lifted Zhao Zheng’s foot and rubbed the ointment into his chilblains.

Only after arming himself from head to toe did Zhao Zheng sling the basket over his back and leave home.

It took him more than an hour to reach the market fair.

The fair was not held every day, but generally once every three to five days.

The marketplace was crowded, with people brushing shoulders as they passed. Yet everyone wore an air of exhaustion and decline.

More and more people were kneeling along the roadside, selling their sons and daughters.

Some had even laid their parents’ corpses on the ground and were kneeling there, begging for enough money to bury them.

But the sight could no longer make passersby stop and look twice.

There was simply too much of it. Everyone had grown numb.

Zhao Zheng was no exception.

That was the state of the world. There were more unfortunate people than anyone could possibly help.

[Ding! One pound of dried wild termite mushrooms is worth one thousand copper coins…]

Zhao Zheng squatted before a stall selling various mushrooms and asked casually, “Friend, how much are you asking for these dried termite mushrooms?”

Seeing someone inquire about the price, the stall owner brightened and introduced them enthusiastically. “Brother, I gathered these myself this year from Pig’s Mouth Mountain. I don’t need to tell you how fresh they are, do I? Boil them on their own or stew them with meat—they’re so delicious they’ll make you swallow your tongue!”

Zhao Zheng nodded. Wild termite mushrooms were extremely expensive in the modern world, and wild ones even more so. Even in the lower-end markets, a pound could fetch two or three hundred yuan.

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And if he remembered correctly, these mushrooms had once even been presented as tribute.

But here in Prosperity Township, they could only be described as ordinary.

As if no one else knew how to forage in the mountains.

“People can’t even afford to eat these days. No matter how delicious they are, you can’t command much of a price. It just so happens that my daughter-in-law is about to give birth. We have no food at home, and I can’t afford meat, so I thought I’d get her some termite mushrooms to nourish her,” Zhao Zheng improvised without hesitation.

“Ah, your daughter-in-law is certainly fortunate,” the stall owner said with a smile. Then he continued, “How about this? Since you’re sincerely interested, I’ll let you have them for fifteen copper coins a pound…”

Zhao Zheng stood up and walked away. “Are you robbing me? If I had fifteen copper coins, wouldn’t I be better off buying a pound of rice?”

“Brother, don’t go! We can still discuss the price!” The old stall owner grew anxious. “Twelve copper coins—no, ten. If I go any lower, I’ll suffer a huge loss. At least let me make a little for my labor!”

Zhao Zheng stopped. The corners of his lips lifted slightly, but when he turned around, he put on a dissatisfied expression. “Forget it, forget it. You don’t have much stock anyway. I’ll take it all.”

The stall owner grinned. “That’s more like it.”

[Ding! One pound of dried wild termite mushrooms is worth one thousand copper coins. Total value: four thousand copper coins. Store or sell?]

Zhao Zheng counted out forty copper coins and handed them to the stall owner, then placed the dried mushrooms into his bamboo basket.

“Thanks, Brother. If you want any more mountain goods next time, come find me!”

“Ha! My daughter-in-law can’t be giving birth every day, can she?” Zhao Zheng laughed, waved his hand, and walked away.

Inside, however, he was overjoyed. A hundredfold difference in price—he had made an absolute killing.

If he had not been afraid of attracting attention, he would have bought up every other mountain product on the stall.

Still, Zhao Zheng remained calm.

It would all be his eventually. There was no need to rush.

There were still relatively few buyers for such mountain goods.

These days, millet and foxtail millet were the real treasures.

Wheat, polished rice, and flour were all luxuries beyond the reach of poor families.

Zhao Zheng browsed from one end of the market to the other, and managed to spend quite a bit of money on some excellent goods. Just as he was preparing to leave, he spotted someone familiar.

“Why has he come to set up a stall again?”

Zhao Zheng’s eyes shifted. He walked over to the stall and asked, “Brother, how much are you asking for this fox pelt?”

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