Chapter 167: Ambush in the Mountains at Midnight
Several villages including Tianma, Meijiang, Chakeng, Dongjia and Xijia are located in the vast Gudou Mountain area.
In the middle of the night, the forest was quiet, with only a truck driving on the winding mountain road.
The modified headlights were as bright as day, illuminating the mountain road just like daytime, except that the road was difficult to drive on, as it was all mud.
If the Jiefang truck had not been fully modified and had great power, Lin Sanqi suspected that the truck would have been stuck countless times and then caught in a trap.
After driving for half an hour, we finally arrived at the agreed meeting place.
There is a row of bungalows next to the orange orchard, which is usually used as a factory for making tangerine peel and is also used as a warehouse. It is a long distance away from the village and is the best place to do bad things.
You can shout, even if your throat is broken, but no one will hear you...
Hearing the sound of a truck, some villagers came out from behind the wall.
Under the car lights, Lin Sanqi saw the district village chief waving his hands, indicating where to park the truck.
As soon as Lin Sanqi jumped out of the car, the district village chief couldn't wait to ask, "Comrade Li, how is it? Did you bring the food?"
"I have it. It's all in the back of the truck. If your dried tangerine peel is of good quality and in large quantities, I can transfer more food."
"Okay, okay, Comrade Li is indeed a leader from the provincial capital. He keeps his word. Let's go into the warehouse and take a look."
Under the guidance of Qu Bo, Lin Sanqi inspected each warehouse one by one.
When Lin Sanqi first saw the warehouse full of jute bags, he knew that this batch of dried tangerine peels would not be old for long.
We walked past another warehouse, which was filled with sealed pottery jars.
Qu Bo took Lin Sanqi inside. A villager had already opened the clay pot, and a pleasant fragrance of dried tangerine peel wafted out.
"Comrade Li, look, this is the best 50-year-old dried tangerine peel we have here. It's not easy to preserve it. It must be kept away from the wall, the ground, and the ceiling. If it doesn't meet the requirements, the dried tangerine peel will become moldy and deteriorate.
In addition, dried tangerine peels that are less than five years old need to be turned over and dried at least once a year. Freshly picked tangerine peels and tangerine peels that are less than three years old need to be turned over and dried one to three times a year, and each time they are turned over and dried, they need to be dried thoroughly.
So we farmers have a hard time. We have to take care of tangerine peel all year round and have no rest every day. Comrade Li, can you raise the purchase price of such good tangerine peel a little bit? "
Lin Sanqi didn't say anything. He picked up a piece of tangerine peel and smelled it. The fragrance was refreshing and pleasant.
I broke off another small piece and put it in my mouth. It was indeed sweet, mellow and delicious, which I had never tasted before.
The village chief was watching Lin Sanqi from the side and found that he seemed to be quite knowledgeable and his description of the characteristics of tangerine peel was exactly the same.
In fact, Lin Sanqi knows nothing. He drinks tangerine peel tea frequently, but he used to drink the lowest-grade tangerine peel. This time when he came to Xinhui, he specially looked up information, precautions and identification methods on the Internet.
"Village Chief, this tangerine peel is quite good. I'm very satisfied with it. I can raise the price by another 20%."
The village chief was overjoyed when he heard this and patted Lin Sanqi on the shoulder: "Good, good, good, we are fellow villagers after all, take care of your fellow villagers."
Lin Sanqi was indeed soft-hearted, because it is very difficult to preserve dried tangerine peel. Without constant temperature and humidity, these dried tangerine peels have to be preserved for decades and maintained every year. The farmers have to put in a lot of effort.
This is not abalone or shark fin from the seaside. You can catch them every year. They are all wild and you can catch as much as you want.
If it weren't for the fear of giving too much food and causing unnecessary trouble, this ceramic jar of tangerine peel alone would not be considered too much, even if it contained a whole cartload of food.
"District Head, how much inventory do we have now?"
"Oh, I've counted them. There aren't many dried tangerine peels over 50 years old, only about 200 kilograms. There are 600 kilograms of dried tangerine peels between 40 and 50 years old. There are about 1,500 kilograms of dried tangerine peels between 20 and 40 years old."
After hearing this, Lin Sanqi really wanted to laugh out loud three times. This was another fortune.
"Okay, Village Chief, quickly calculate how much food is needed, then move the food off my cart and help me load the tangerine peel back on."
The village chief was delighted when he heard this and shouted to the people around him, "Why don't you calculate it quickly?"
A villager who looked like an old accountant took out an abacus and did some calculations, and finally came up with a number:
"We need 7.5 tons of grain, fine grain."
The accountant emphasized this point again, fearing that Lin Sanqi would try to fool people by taking out sweet potatoes, potatoes and other coarse grains.
Lin Sanqi had no objection to this number.
"Okay, I'll give you 9 tons of rice, but I have to make another trip. I only have 5 tons of rice on my truck, so I have to make another trip."
When the village chief saw that Lin Sanqi was so understanding and really willing to give more food, his eyes rolled:
"Comrade Li, I have a treasure at home, a two-jin (2.5 catties) piece of dried tangerine peel, passed down from our ancestors and preserved since the Daoguang era of the Qing Dynasty. I wonder if Comrade Li is interested?"
Lin Sanqi's eyes lit up instantly.
Although he could not exactly say which year of the Daoguang era it was, he remembered the destruction of opium at Humen in the textbook, which happened during the Daoguang era.
If this tangerine peel is really passed down from the Qing Dynasty, it definitely has a history of more than a hundred years.
This kind of tangerine peel can no longer be described as having medicinal value, it can be regarded as the treasure of the museum.
So Lin Sanqi nodded hurriedly and said:
"It's really a treasure! Tangerine peel that's over a hundred years old is amazing. What do you mean, Village Chief?"
The district village chief said somewhat proudly:
"I estimate that there are no more than a handful of tangerine peels left over from the Daoguang era in all of Dongguang. I won't ask for more. I'll give you a ton of rice for every pound. What do you think, Comrade Li?"
The district village chief thought he was asking for too much.
Two tons of rice, 4,000 kilograms, mixed with some coarse grains, can feed a family for a long time, and perhaps they can successfully survive the famine.
The village chief is also a decisive person. He knows that tangerine peel cannot be eaten as food and that food is still needed at critical moments. Now that there is a sucker in front of him, of course he must grab it tightly.
If 4,000 kilograms of rice and 2 kilograms of dried tangerine peel were put together and people were asked to choose, even a fool in the village would know what to choose.
Lin Sanqi was ecstatic. A ton of rice cost several thousand yuan, but he could exchange it for century-old tangerine peel worth millions. Is there any bigger profit than this?
"Okay, District Village Chief, then we have a deal. Wait, I'll go transport the food."
Money gives motivation. Lin Sanqi was full of motivation and immediately climbed onto the truck and went back to "transport grain".
Both parties were happy with the transaction. Tianma Village received two truckloads of rice, and Lin Sanqi took away two truckloads of decades-old tangerine peels.
There were also 2 kilograms of auction-level Daoguang dried tangerine peel. Lin Sanqi specially prepared a plastic box and placed it solemnly on the passenger seat.
In this way, one village one night, in the next few days, Lin Sanqi had collected all the tangerine peels in Tianma, Chakeng, Dongjia, Xijia and other villages.
The treasures stored in these villages for hundreds of years were easily exchanged for rice. It has to be said that Lin Sanqi has become a profiteer.
Just when Lin Sanqi thought that his trip to Xinhui would go smoothly, he encountered a ghost.
He committed a big taboo. Normally, a private transaction like his should be done in a different way.
Just like the several food-for-seafood transactions he made at the seaside, he only traded once in each place, and after the transaction ended, he would retreat in time under cover of darkness, so that he could do it without anyone noticing.
Even if a fisherman reported the incident, Lin Sanqi would have already fled far away and never come back. The relevant departments would not be able to catch him even if they wanted to ambush him, so the matter would have been left unresolved.
Perhaps the previous success had made Lin Sanqi complacent, and he stayed in Xinhui for a full five days, exchanging food for tangerine peel every day.
On the sixth day, Lin Sanqi loaded another truck with food and hummed a little tune as he headed towards Meijiang Village.
Meijiang Village is located in the deepest part of the mountains and is also the last place he plans to acquire. After today, Lin Sanqi is ready to retreat.
In the dark mountains at night, there was only a truck moving forward alone. All around was quiet. After turning a few corners, Lin Sanqi suddenly found a piece of wood lying across the middle of the road.
There's a log in the middle of the road in the middle of the night?
This discovery instantly alarmed Lin Sanqi, and his mind quickly flashed back to what Section Chief Kong had taught him: if he encountered a similar situation while on a business trip, he must have been robbed.
It would be even more dangerous if you were in the wilderness with no village in sight and no temple behind you. This means that those people would not only rob you of your money, but they might also kill you.
Lin Sanqi took out his pistol with trembling hands and took off the safety.
"I can't stop. If there are more than ten or twenty of them, it won't help even if I have a gun. I'll definitely be beaten to death."
Lin Sanqi gritted his teeth and thought about the car he had spent 500,000 to modify. Both the power and chassis were state-of-the-art. It was just a piece of wood, so he could just break through.
Thinking of this, Lin Sanqi got furious and stepped on the accelerator hard. The car engine started to run violently and accelerated towards the wood.
The people lying in ambush on the roadside were a little dazed.
Seeing that the truck not only did not slow down but accelerated towards me, I thought that my car would definitely overturn or get stuck under the wood and unable to move.
These eight people were all from the local supply and marketing cooperative. They received a report from villagers that a mysterious man was exchanging grain for tangerine peel in the mountains.
This made the supply and marketing cooperative very annoyed. After all, the supply and marketing cooperative has always been responsible for the purchase of dried tangerine peel. Even if outside units need to purchase goods, they have to go through the supply and marketing cooperative.
Now some people are bypassing the supply and marketing cooperatives. From a small perspective, this is damaging the interests of the supply and marketing cooperatives. From a big perspective, this is a violation of national policy.
They also went to Tianma, Dongjia and other villages to conduct investigations during the day, but these villages firmly denied it and refused to allow the supply and marketing cooperative investigation team to enter the warehouse to inspect the goods.
This made the people in the supply and marketing cooperative very helpless. After all, the clan forces in rural areas were not so easy to offend. These people could do anything. Once they came, the whole village would come to settle accounts with you. Who could stand it?
So when a villager reported that a mysterious outsider was going to Meijiang to buy dried tangerine peels tonight, they ambushed him halfway, ready to catch him both dirty and powerful.
(End of this chapter)
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