Lin Xiazhu originally intended to take the person to the police station, but there were too many people buying things at the time, and the couple was also very quick. Before she could react, the husband quickly took out two ten-yuan bills from his pocket and threw them at Lin Xiazhu's face.

At the same time, he suddenly broke free from his restraints, rushed over, pulled his wife out, and ran away. Lin Chacha was also persistent, holding onto the woman's hand tightly.

After being pulled along for a while, the streets were so crowded that walking was difficult, and the couple eventually managed to run away from us.

"Sis, I couldn't catch him." Lin Chacha finally returned to the store, utterly exasperated.

"They got off too easy. Oh well, they've already paid for it, so let's not be upset. Let's hurry up and sell the goods," Lin Xiazhu said as she worked.

The whole day was chaotic and hectic. The market didn't close until 3 p.m. Everyone was starving. Lin Xiazhu didn't want to move, so she took a few unsold apples, washed them, and shared them.

Lin Chacha ate the apple in a few bites, threw away the core, and said, "I'm going to cook. This grocery store is really tiring. It's better to sell snacks."

At least selling snacks meant she could eat meatballs to fill her stomach. To be honest, she would grab a handful of white sugar to stave off hunger during lunchtime.

"Go ahead, I'll come back later to help you." This morning I bought five pounds of beef, two pounds of meatballs, a bowl of bones, three yuan's worth of tofu, a few pounds of radishes, and two bunches of greens.

In town, vegetables are sold bundled in baskets, without being weighed. A large bunch costs only 50 cents and weighs about two or three pounds.

Tofu is now two pieces for one cent, and a big bowl can be filled for three dollars.

Their family's meals have always been good, because they can afford it and are willing to spend money on it. Many people who own shops around the area point and whisper behind their backs when they see them buying so much food every day.

The gist of the argument is that Zhao Xiaolian doesn't know how to manage money; she probably spends all the money she earns every day on food, and her whole family is overweight and bloated.

This is all driven by jealousy. Who wouldn't want to eat well every day? But not everyone is willing to spend so much money. Does Lin Xiazhu have any fat, greasy people in her family?

No, they're just a little fatter than others, and they have fair skin, grow tall quickly, and are good-looking—none of them are ugly.

The rice cooker was used to cook the rice. Once the rice was cooked, Lin Xiazhu came in and started washing and chopping the vegetables. The dishes were stir-fried beef with radish, pork bone stew with radish soup, pan-fried tofu, simmered with shiitake mushrooms and bonito flakes, a few fried eggs, and a plate of stir-fried greens.

Fortunately, she bought a gas stove. It would have been much more time-consuming to cook with firewood. Nowadays, most people in the town cook with firewood on small stoves. Very few people are as extravagant as Lin Xiazhu, who uses a gas stove to cook.

After all, liquefied gas costs money, but firewood can be obtained by chopping it up in the mountains, which can save a lot of money.

Forty minutes later, the meal was ready, and the whole family enjoyed it immensely.

After finishing her meal, Lin Xiazhu started thinking about how to allocate the tasks so that she wouldn't be as flustered as she was today.

“I don’t think we should have opened this grocery store. It’s okay most of the time, but at the end of the year, it’s impossible to do business normally. Look at all those people crowding in, making a fuss about buying this and that. I tell them to line up, but they refuse to do it even if it kills them.”

Yan Xin was speechless. In order to keep an eye on the grocery store, she hadn't sold many clothes. These country folk were too ruthless. Not only did they have no sense of order, but when they asked them to line up, they glared at them and yelled.

One of the old men yelled at her menacingly, "I told you to hurry up and sell it, what are you dawdling for? Do you even know how to do business? What's with the queue? Do you care if we queue or not? Do you think you're in military training? You talk too much nonsense."

Yan Xin was completely stunned by his scolding. If she didn't have to do business, she would have really wanted to roast him to death.

Lin Xiazhu was also very worried. She thought opening a small grocery store would be easy, but she had no experience at all. After all, she had worked all her life in her previous life and had never run a business, not even a small business in the countryside.

However, it wasn't difficult. After a day of testing, she had figured things out. The next market day definitely wouldn't be as chaotic as today.

We didn't sell much sugar and oil today, but we sold quite a lot of candy. I expect more people will buy candy and fruit on the next market day. After I go to the county town to buy more goods tomorrow, I'll start packaging them.

Weigh out five or ten pounds of white sugar, put it in plastic bags, and when someone wants to buy it, they can just take it. The candy is also sold in bulk, so it should be packed in bags of one pound each, so it can be taken directly when needed.

With preparation and everyone's experience, there was no panic, and the goods were kept under control, preventing those who wanted to steal from them from having the chance.

This busy period lasted until the 29th of the lunar year. On the evening of the 29th, we started packing up. There was a lot of cardboard used to pack things, which needed to be bundled up so that it could be sold to the scrap collector later. The shop inside and out also needed to be cleaned.

"Let's clean up tonight and prepare the New Year's dishes tomorrow. Let's all be happy, and I'll give you all big red envelopes then." Lin Xiazhu encouraged her family with a smile, saying they had all been working hard these past few days.

Yan Xin was furious. She only wanted to sell clothes, not groceries!

However, she could only object in her heart and dared not speak it out. Her income on each market day reached about 10,000 yuan. After deducting the cost, the net profit was more than 6,000 yuan, which was a huge sum of money in the rural areas of that era.

After the New Year, Lin Xiazhu will go to the county town to buy land. Once the house is built, they can move to the county town. Yan Xin is looking forward to this day, following the old ways of getting rich.

From village to town, then to county, and then to city. Once she reaches the city, she will truly be free from rural life. She can work hard for the next few years and then buy a house in the city.

No more worrying about being forced to do farm work or grow vegetables.

Aside from Bai Junbo, no one else knew that Lin Xiazhu had bought land in the county town a couple of years ago. She told Yan Xin that she would buy land in the county town next year and build a new house, but in reality, she was planning to buy three more plots of land.

The county town has already developed a lot of land, so I should definitely buy some now that I have the money. I spent 120,000 yuan on three plots of land, and they are all in good locations.

This time, Yan Xin, an adult, is needed to go through the motions. There are two names on the land deeds, Lin Xiazhu's and Lin Chacha's, because she also helps out when they go into the mountains to dig for ginseng.

With the arrival of spring, the land in the county town had been acquired. Lin Xiazhu hired two groups of people to help build the houses. One group consisted of her uncle Lin Shanlai and Zhang Yu's group, while the other group was the contractor from the county town. Each group was responsible for two buildings.

All four buildings were built to be three stories high. Actually, Lin Xiazhu wanted to build six or seven stories high, but the government had a plan that required them to be built according to regulations. It wouldn't be good if her family stood out from the crowd, with everyone else having three stories while hers looked like a fortress soaring into the sky.

At that time, instead of buying a shop, I'll buy a plot of land of several hundred square meters suitable for living to build a villa, and I can design it however I want.

In June, Shanhe Town suddenly experienced a week of continuous heavy rain. One night, a major flood occurred, and the river rose into the streets, submerging many shops in the town.