When Shi Zhen was building Fang Changming's house, he also considered whether to hire some experienced workers to speed up the construction process.

Generally speaking, those who work in engineering must work quickly in order to earn more money.

However, considering that the six people he brought from the village needed to learn and practice, and that he could teach them, he was not in a hurry to hire someone.

After all, laying foundations and building walls are the most basic tasks, and they all need to learn them.

Later, when Fang Changming's younger brother started building the same house that Fang had built for Boss Wang, Shi Zhen became even less anxious about building the house.

For example, if we're building a roof today, he'll teach us slowly and we'll build it together.

Fang Changming was not short of money. After the two-story building was completed, the floor slabs were laid before the roof was built on top, meaning there was a small attic on the second floor.

Because of this, the danger of them covering the house with tiles was greatly reduced.

Shi Zhen stretched out a rope, hung a basket from the bottom, and moved the tiles piled up next to him and Shi Ting into the basket, then had the people above pull it up.

These tiles are indeed very heavy. At first, Shi Zhen could carry five tiles at a time, but later he couldn't anymore and could only carry four at a time. As for Shi Ting... she could only carry one tile at a time and she walked very slowly.

After moving things for a while, she couldn't take it anymore: "Brother, I'm so tired..."

"Tingting, I'll pay you after I finish moving everything!"

Shi Ting suddenly regained her strength!

Shi Zhen added, "Look at me, look at your brother Da Niu and the others, they all do heavier work than you."

That's true. Shi Ting carried only about ten tiles back and forth, while Shi Zhen carried ten tiles in his first two trips.

As for the others... Shi Ting looked at the people working on the roof and felt scared just looking at them.

There was only a narrow drainage ditch around the roof, and people walked around on it without their legs getting weak at all!

Shi Ting was full of admiration and continued moving the tiles, taking the opportunity to slack off when Shi Zhen wasn't paying much attention to her.

At first, Shi Zhen accompanied Shi Ting to move the tiles. After a while, he went upstairs to teach everyone how to lay the tiles.

These large tiles are actually easier to install than the old-fashioned small tiles, and they also look very nice.

Its surface is as smooth and shiny as a ceramic tile, sparkling in the sunlight. It is incredibly beautiful and quite rare.

Of course, this refers to this era.

Ten years later, all the houses in the countryside had these kinds of tiles.

"Ah Zhen, how come you know everything!" Shi Daniu said admiringly.

He was a distant relative of Shi Zhen, and in terms of kinship, he was more distant than Shi Zhiqiang was from Shi Zhen.

He had an honest appearance, was not tall but was very strong, and was much older than Shi Zhen—of the six people Shi Zhen had called out this time, the four who were married were all born in the 1960s and were around thirty years old.

Men of this age have wives, children, and elderly parents to support, so they work the hardest.

“You can learn it,” Shi Zhen laughed. “If you practice more, you’ll get it eventually.”

Those who followed Shi Zhenxue nodded in agreement.

They had never built a brick house before and thought it would be very difficult, but now a house is almost finished... Building a house seems quite simple after all?

They've all agreed that they'll build their own houses from now on!

"By the way, Zhen, how old is Tingting? She's still a girl, why did you let her come along to work?" Shi Daniu asked again.

Shi Daniu's family lived right next to Shi Zhen's family. Shi Zhen and Shi Ting were both raised by Shi Daniu.

“I just wanted her to practice more and experience some hardship,” Shi Zhen added, then remembered something. “If children are spoiled too much, they are prone to becoming lazy and unwilling to work.”

In his hometown, because of the scarcity of land and the large population, people who did not work would go hungry. Therefore, most of the rural people born around the 1960s were hardworking, or at least willing to work.

Occasionally there are a few lazy ones, usually the youngest in the family. Their older siblings do all the chores, so they don't have to do anything from a young age and become lazy.

If the youngest child is a boy, or even the only boy in the family, then the situation becomes even more extreme.

But now... since the implementation of the family planning policy, children have become more precious, and there are more people who are unwilling to work.

Most of these people were men.

Boys are always more favored than girls.

Shi Zhen remembers that Shi Daniu's precious son was what they called a "money-throwing good-for-nothing" in their dialect.

Shi Daniu was very hardworking. After working for him for more than ten years, he returned to his hometown county town to buy a house because his family was not willing to settle down in Changxi City. He continued to work there afterward.

Right now, his hometown county town looks a bit run-down, but in twenty years... it will be a place where house prices are 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per square meter.

Shi Daniu learned a lot of skills from him and became a master craftsman when he returned to the county. Even in his fifties, he could still earn more than 10,000 yuan a month.

But it wasn't enough for his son to squander.

Shi Daniu's parents only had one son, Shi Daniu, and only one grandson, whom they doted on. When there was meat at home, the child would eat his fill before anyone else would get any. Any good food in the house would also go to the child.

As for chores? They're all still capable of doing them! How could we let the children do them?

Most importantly, after Shi Dalin made money outside, they stopped doing farm work and felt that their children would definitely not have to do farm work in the future, so they did not require their children to work in the fields like Shi Daniu did back then.

The Shi family had little formal education and didn't know how to educate their children. They only knew how to spoil them. If they were lucky enough to have a good child, that would be fine, but most of their children were just average, and being overly pampered could easily lead to problems.

Shi Daniu's son didn't continue his studies after graduating from junior high school. Instead, he spent his days eating, drinking, and having fun outside, asking his family for money for all sorts of reasons.

The Shi couple were actually very frugal, but they doted on their child and would give him money whenever he asked... Naturally, the child became increasingly delinquent and even started gambling.

At times like these, their thoughts are actually... to find a wife for their son and have a grandson, then their son will be reformed.

This theory makes some sense, but it mainly targets those who aren't inherently corrupt.

For example, some young couples are lazy and unambitious before marriage, but after getting married and having children, they want to give their children a good education, so they start thinking about buying a house in a good school district and then they start to work hard... This is common.

In ancient rural impoverished families, with little surplus grain, they were unlikely to develop vices like gambling. The so-called "badness" was merely laziness and not working. Such people, when they got married and had children, were indeed likely to become better—if the children were hungry at home, they couldn't just not feed them.

But Shi Daniu's son wasn't "bad" at all.

After getting married, he still didn't work, and he still gambled.

Anyway, his wife and children are taken care of by his parents and grandparents.

The Shi couple, fearing their daughter-in-law would run away, have been supporting her financially, but their son is proving to be unreliable.

When Shi Daniu's granddaughter was three years old, Shi Daniu's son had accumulated a debt of 500,000 to 600,000 yuan in high-interest loans.

Being with such a scoundrel could easily drag you down with the slightest mishap. Shi Daniu's daughter-in-law divorced him and remarried, taking Shi Daniu's granddaughter with her.

The Shi couple scraped together money to pay off their son's debts and begged him to change his ways, but their son did not change. He continued to gamble, and within two years, he had accumulated hundreds of thousands of yuan in debt due to online loans and other illicit interest.

Shi Zhen only found out about these things when Shi Daniu came to him asking for a loan.

At this moment, Shi Daniu said, "Tingting is already very good, isn't she? I still remember when she was just learning to walk, she would sit naked at the door and eat rice with soy sauce mixed with her own hands. She was so well-behaved... My son is five or six years old now, and he still needs his grandma to feed him."

Shi Zhen: "..." When Shi Ting was a child, she was greedy and would grab food with her hands instead of holding a spoon. Was that considered "well-behaved"?

Shi Daniu added, "That kid still refuses to eat this and that. We'll have porridge for breakfast, but we must make him a separate egg fried rice."

Shi Daniu seemed to be complaining, but when he talked about his son, his smile became much more genuine, and he looked radiant: "He also loves to eat meat. Now that I'm earning money, I'll send it back home, and I'll definitely be able to let him eat meat every day."

If you tell Shi Daniu that his child's behavior is bad, he'll definitely get angry.

Shi Zhen said, "Have you thought about bringing him here? The schools back home aren't as good as the ones here. The teachers there don't even speak Mandarin properly! And the elementary schools here? Students here get criticized for speaking the local dialect. If your son comes here, he might be able to get into university in the future."

Most importantly, if Shi Daniu's parents hadn't come, the child wouldn't be so old and still being chased around to be fed.

Shi Daniu seemed to be deep in thought.

But some people said, "Sending them here to study costs so much money! The kids can just study casually, finish their studies as soon as possible, and start working as soon as possible! Back then, we didn't have the good life they have now. We can't spoil them! Shi Daniu, if your son were mine, I'd beat him to death."

Shi Zhen smiled upon hearing this and didn't say anything more.

This man is named Shi Duofu. He has a son and a daughter. He is not very good to his children. He is the kind of person who enjoys his money first.

His wife is very submissive and listens to everything he says.

Strangely enough, his two children were very successful, especially his daughter, who was particularly capable. She not only went to university but also settled down in a big city on her own.

His son was a bit ordinary; after graduating from junior high school, he went to a vocational school and started working, but he was hardworking and had no worries about food and drink.

Even their children don't like to talk to Shi Duofu and his wife. They say all day long that their children are unfilial, but it's no use.

Shi Zhen can actually understand their children.

Take Shi Duofu's son, for example. His wife was pregnant, and Shi Duofu and his wife said they would go to help. But Shi Duofu spent all his time lying on the sofa watching TV, while his wife wanted her daughter-in-law to serve them...

If Shi Duofu's son had a good relationship with his parents, he might have joined them in making things difficult for his wife, but he doesn't have a good relationship with his parents.

Later, he stopped letting his parents live in his house.

As for the other two who are married, their families are just ordinary, and there's nothing messy or chaotic about their homes.

Now, these people have been with Shi Zhen for a month. Shi Zhen was worried that they would be inconvenienced if they didn't have money, so he gave them all of his first month's wages. Shi Dalin didn't keep a penny for himself except for food expenses, and sent it all back home. As for Shi Duofu, he always treated himself to special meals and didn't send a penny home. The other two were in the middle.

The group worked until 11 a.m. before stopping, and then went to eat at the old lady next door who cooked for them.

Shi Zhen asked the old lady to cook him a chicken today, boiled.

There were eight of them, so one chicken was a bit too little, but there was also a large plate of egg drop soup with a few eggs and a large bowl of stir-fried vegetables, which was enough for them.

Shi Ting took a large bowl, filled it to the brim with rice, and ate a chicken leg in one hand while frantically shoveling rice into her mouth with the other, looking like she was about to starve to death.

Shi Zhen thought she looked much cuter this way than when she was in her past life, always complaining about wanting to lose weight and not eating anything.

Shi Ting almost choked while eating. After finally finishing, she showed Shi Zhen her hands: "Brother, look at my hands!"

Some areas of Shi Ting's palms were worn white. If she didn't continue working, the skin on these areas would probably peel off in a few days. If she kept working, calluses would form.

Shi Zhen held out his hand to show her his: "Look at mine."

Shi Zhen's palms were almost covered with a layer of calluses.

Shi Ting withdrew her hand, feeling embarrassed.

After lunch, everyone can rest for a while.

This time, Shi Zhen not only had to supervise the construction of Fang Changming's house every day, but also had to do the work himself, which was particularly hard. Right now, he went into the newly built house, spread out a mat, and lay down to take a nap.

Shi Ting didn't have the habit of taking a nap, so she went to dig out the pebbles they had sifted out of the sand.

The sand used for building houses is mostly river sand. After buying it, it needs to be sieved with a special iron mesh before it can be used.

You can often find a lot of beautiful pebbles inside, and the village children will come to collect them.

Unexpectedly, Shi Ting also liked it.

Shi Zhen woke up after a nap, and Shi Ting had already picked out a bag of stones to take back with her.

He found it amusing and continued working.

The tiles had already been moved upstairs in the morning, and Shi Zhen had Shi Ting sift sand next to him.

He sifted the sand by shoveling it onto a wire mesh—fine sand could pass through, but coarse sand and stones couldn't.

Shi Ting was not strong enough to even lift a shovel, making the work extremely difficult. Eventually, she simply stopped using the shovel and found a winnowing basket, "throwing" sand onto the wire mesh in half-basketfuls.

They're quite good at applying what they've learned to other situations.

This made Shi Daniu heartbroken: "Ah Zhen, do you dislike Tingting? How could you do this!"

"Brother Da Niu, when you were Tingting's age, you were already working in the fields, right?"

"How could things be the same back then as they are now? Back then, you had to earn work points," Shi Daniu said. In his time, it was considered good if you could finish primary school; most of them started working in the fields when they were teenagers.

“Brother Da Niu, Tingting is my sister. I won’t hurt her. If she suffers a little, she’ll know how hard it is to earn money,” Shi Zhen said.

“Sigh, it’s nothing for us to work hard, Tingting is still so young,” Shi Daniu said.

Shi Zhen: "..." It seems that's what he thought in his past life.

Even when Shi Ting is tired, she still slacks off. Every time she does, she keeps looking at Shi Zhen. If Shi Zhen looks at her too, she immediately stands up and gets back to work.

It's...quite interesting.

After working for a while, Shi Zhen saw an acquaintance approaching from afar.

He frowned and went downstairs.

When Shi Zhen went downstairs, the bricklayer surnamed Zhang, who had worked with him before, was watching Shi Ting sift sand.

Upon seeing Shi Zhen, Master Zhang clicked his tongue twice and said, "Little Shi, are you having trouble finding anyone to work for you? You've resorted to hiring child laborers."

Shi Zhen said, "Can't my sister come over to play? But what are you doing here?" Although Shi Ting had been working the whole time, the way she looked really meant she was just there to play.

What can a junior high school girl do?

Shi Zhen didn't have a good impression of this Master Zhang, after all, this man had always caused him trouble in the past.

The fact that this person suddenly came today probably means bad news.

"I just came to see your house. Didn't you always say that if we followed your method, the house would be built very quickly? Our three-story house is already finished, and yours is only just topped out? After all this trouble, you've only built a two-story house... It's not impressive at all!" Master Zhang looked at Shi Zhen smugly, with a rather petty and self-satisfied air.

Shi Zhen was speechless at his behavior.

Master Zhang, however, thought Shi Zhen was afraid: "When the time comes, your house will definitely not be as good as the house I built!"

He had always resented being suppressed by Shi Zhen, but now that he could turn the tables and outdo Shi Zhen, he was overjoyed.

Shi Zhen said, "Yes, good luck."

If someone truly has real skills, it's normal for them to come and show off their power.

They copy his methods when building houses, and they still come to him for help. What are they thinking?

Shi Ting is smarter than him.

Shi Zhen went back upstairs and continued working.

Master Zhang jumped up and down on the spot, shouting, "This lousy house you built is ugly to look at. I want to see what kind of mess you'll make in the end!"

Shi Zhen ignored him.

His house, which only has an outline, is indeed ugly.

For example, if he wants a room with floor-to-ceiling windows, the window's location would appear to be an excessively large hole to people at that time.

But as for the final result... let's wait and see, it will be out soon.

Master Zhang eventually left. After he was gone, Shi Ting angrily shouted at his retreating figure, "You're the ugly one! You're ugly just by looking at you!"

Sigh, she didn't dare say it just now.

Shi Zhen worked for a while, and then more people came.

The van that arrived was one he had never seen before. Shi Zhen was a little surprised and hurriedly went downstairs, where he saw Guan Baiyu get out of the van.

That wasn't all; Guan Baiyu was also holding a cake in his hand: "Brother, happy birthday!"

Guan Baiyu always remembered Shi Zhen's birthday and had been thinking about celebrating it for a long time.

He was also waiting for Shi Zhen to tell him.

As it turned out... Shi Zhen didn't say anything at all, and the Shi family, seeing this, didn't even remember it.

Of course, even if Shi Zhen didn't say anything, his birthday still had to be celebrated. Today, he asked Liang Qinxuan to pick him up so that he could go to Changxi City to get a cake and buy a birthday present for Shi Zhen.

A few days ago, Shi Zhen mentioned that he wanted to buy a bicycle... He can't afford a motorcycle yet, so he bought Shi Zhen a bicycle first.

He's already making money, so I'm sure his brother won't refuse his gift.