At Wang Yongde's house, when Wang Yonghua heard Li Xiuyuan say, "This time you're leaving, the next one might be a construction team, with excavators," he immediately understood why Li Xiuyuan had called him there.

He took a step forward and looked at Wang Yongde with a smile: "Old Wang, have a smoke. Our machinery has already arrived today, and we also have some workers from other places in our company."

Wang Yonghua said nothing, yet his words conveyed everything: the machinery had arrived, and the workers were from out of town. The threat was blatant.

Wang Yongde suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. He looked at Li Xiuyuan, whose face was gentle but whose words were full of murderous intent, then at Wang Yonghua, who looked like a smiling tiger, and Shi Yufei, who was sneering beside him.

His heart turned cold, and he immediately realized that after his cousin Wang Zhixing was transferred, he had lost all his leverage. It turned out that Li Xiuyuan had completely disregarded the things he had been worried about.

If Wang Yonghua really woke up in the middle of the night and hired two workers from out of town to demolish his house with an excavator, could he stop him?

"I'm going outside for a smoke. Director Zhang, President Wang, you two talk to him again. Yu Fei, come out with me." Li Xiuyuan waved his hand and led Shi Yu Fei outside, leaving Wang Yonghua and Zhang Yaozong behind.

Zhang Yaozong came out with the contract in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette at the door; Wang Yongde had already signed it.

Li Xiuyuan glanced at it, closed the contract, and handed it back to Wang Yonghua. All obstacles had been cleared before the start of the second phase of the project, and the second phase of the project could start next Monday.

Li Xiuyuan led his men outside, and at the same time instructed Shi Yufei: "You should talk to Director Zhou about making the opening ceremony on Monday more lively. This is a great thing for our Meilin Village. Even though the leaders won't be coming, we should still create a lively atmosphere. There was a line in a Spring Festival Gala skit a couple of years ago, 'The drums and gongs are deafening, and the firecrackers are exploding.' Let's make it as lively as possible."

Upon hearing this, Shi Yufei nodded and memorized the eight characters: "The sound of gongs and drums filled the air, and firecrackers crackled in unison."

Weekends in Meilin Village are entirely planned around these eight words.

Monday arrived in the blink of an eye.

At nine o'clock on Monday morning, men, women, and children from Meilin Village came to the groundbreaking ceremony for the second phase of the project. Dozens of construction machines and red banners fluttered in the wind.

The people from Guangda Company, those brought by Wang Yonghua, and the villagers recruited from Meilin Village were all neatly waiting on site.

The village organized a drum and gong team, and Zhou Jianzhong also spent several hundred yuan to hire a lion dance team. Although it was from a neighboring village and not a well-known lion dance team, this scene had not been seen in Meilin Village for a long time.

The firecrackers at the scene were neatly arranged in boxes and strings.

Zhang Xingguo and Hou Peng also came. Although they had opinions about Li Xiuyuan, they couldn't miss such an event. Otherwise, if word got out, people would think that Li Xiuyuan had complete control over the central town, especially after Wang Zhixing's visit recently.