Jiang Zhi wouldn't be foolish enough to go to the less crowded area at the back: "Bring him here! I'll leave whenever Xu Genyou comes out! I can afford to wait."
At this moment, a crowd had gathered three or four deep at the store entrance, pointing and gesturing towards the inside.
The business deal is off!
The eldest son of the Wang family clenched his fists repeatedly, veins throbbing on his forehead. He cursed inwardly: How could he have provoked such a fearless shrew that day?
Beating someone up in the street—if you win, you lose face; if you lose, you lose face even more; and if you kill them…
He kept glancing at Tian Gui and Li Laoshi behind Jiang Zhi.
These two are nothing to fear; what I fear most are those two hotheads who played with knives last time.
With Xu Errui and Xu Xiaoman not around, Wang Laoda's heart pounded: What were those two scoundrels up to? His own children and wife were in town; he couldn't afford to do anything reckless.
Jiang Zhi was certain that the Wang family wouldn't dare to cause trouble at this time.
People have weaknesses when they have concerns. At this moment, Boss Wang was no longer a thug chasing someone down the road with an axe, but a craftsman who wanted to do business.
Jiang Zhi watched as Boss Wang gritted his teeth and glared, unable to make a decision for a long time. She immediately pressed him, "Have you thought it through? Hand over the person right now. If you want to do business peacefully in town, don't mess with my Xu Family Village."
"Alright, I'll get Xu Genyou out here! You wait!" Boss Wang turned and went to the backyard.
Soon, the two Wang brothers came out. The one walking in front was Xu Genyou, his knees covered in mud and a red handprint clearly visible on half of his face.
"You hit someone!" Jiang Zhi's face darkened.
The second son of the Wang family was a simpleton. Upon seeing Jiang Zhi, he blurted out, "You shameless old hag, you've come to my Wang family's doorstep looking for a man!"
The onlookers outside burst into laughter.
This is going to tarnish your own reputation!
Jiang Zhi's original self was not one to back down easily, so Jiang Zhi naturally couldn't be defeated by just one sentence.
"Yes, we'll find you a grandfather, call him 'Grandpa'! My dear grandson!"
Louder laughter erupted outside, and someone fanned the flames, shouting, "Wang Lao Er, that shout makes you sound like an elder!"
Wang Laoda grabbed Wang Lao Er, who was jumping up in anger: "Lao Er, it's not worth arguing with an old woman. Why don't you go and see where those two boys are?"
Wang Lao Er was reminded and quickly looked around for Xiao Man, but he couldn't find the boy who had knocked on his big green sac and whose disappearance took half a month to disappear.
Li Laoshi was busy all day, gesturing and talking non-stop in the crowd.
Since the Wang family's daughter married into the Xu family, she has been lazy and good-for-nothing. She was beaten for robbing things at the market, and then she instigated her two brothers-in-law to rob things on the way. Now she is detaining people.
He spoke in a series of interconnected and well-founded arguments, with a clear beginning and end, more captivating than a play script.
Unfortunately, one of the people who had witnessed the beating of Wang Xiaoju before immediately chimed in, nodding in agreement: "Yes, yes, that's exactly what happened. That time, a woman tried to take someone's things for five coins, saying that people from the same village should give them to others!"
Those nearby, hearing this, all cursed in unison: "Hey! Isn't this blatant robbery? They're not even from the same village, why should they take it?"
At this moment, the onlookers' gaze towards Wang's shop changed.
Someone who knew them whispered to the others, "You don't know yet, but the Wang brothers are the local bullies, and nobody dares to mess with them."
"If they hadn't been pushed to the limit, how would a woman dare to come looking for someone?"
Li Laoshi wiped his mouth, which was spitting as he spoke, and pointed to Xu Genyou coming out, saying, "See that? That's Xu's eldest brother. He came looking for his brother, but he was detained and beaten! Jiang's wife is our village chief, and she came specifically to rescue him!"
"Village chief? Who's the village chief? Could it be that woman?"
"Sister Jiang is the village chief? Your village is run by a woman! Hahahaha!"
Their interest in watching the spectacle quickly shifted from finding a man to the female village chief.
Everyone stared at Jiang Zhi, constantly asking Li Laoshi why he chose a woman to be the village chief.
Li Laoshi was very proud: "Why? Of course, it's because of my ability! You wouldn't understand even if I told you, so go and find out for yourselves later!"
At this point, he stopped talking, leaving the onlookers impatient and eager to hear more.
At this moment, Xu Genyou had already walked out of Wang's carpentry shop, and even a blind person could see that he had been beaten.
When Jiang Zhi saw him come out, she didn't say anything more and immediately called Li Laoshi to leave.
When the group arrived at the town entrance, they met up with Xiaoman and Errui, who were waiting anxiously, and then headed towards Xujia Village, which was ten miles away.
On the way, Xu Genyou remained silent. Li Laoshi asked him repeatedly before he finally told him that he had gone to the Wang family to find his younger brother, Xu Genbao.
It turned out that when Wang Xiaoju returned to her parents' home, she told her brother and sister-in-law that the Xu family had treated her badly and had colluded with outsiders to bully her over a piece of land.
This led the Wang brothers to chase after Xiaoman and Jiangzhi out of Pear Blossom Town, intending to cause trouble for them, but they ended up returning home with bumps on their heads.
Unexpectedly, Xu Genyou went to Xu Genbao to borrow money, saying that he needed to buy seeds for his fields.
So, Wang Lao Er grabbed someone in the backyard, made him kneel on the ground, and made him admit to forcing his sister-in-law away, seizing his brother's land, and demanding compensation for fruits, vegetables, grains, meat, and eggs.
"Xu Genyou, what did your brother say?" Jiang Zhi asked.
Xu Genbao lives in his father-in-law's house. If he harbors ill intentions towards his brother, he might even collude with outsiders to harm his own family.
He, as the village chief, went to the county government to remove Xujia Village's household registration, so that Xujia would have to live with the Wang family for the rest of his life.
Xu Genyou shook his head: "I didn't see Genbao, nor did I see my sister-in-law. They definitely didn't say that."
As the older brother, he couldn't believe his younger brother would think that way.
Since things are still the same, Jiang Zhi decided to leave it alone for the time being.
In addition to the seeds I bought, I also bought some brown rice and other coarse grains. I'll record them all in the ledger when I get back to the village.
Everyone who received grain or seeds would put their name and fingerprint on the document. When the grain was collected, the document would be returned to the general ledger and then allocated to Jiang Zhi.
This was the bookkeeping method that Jiang Zhi had thought of long ago, just like the old system of recording work points and entering them into the collective general ledger.
This avoids the risk of losing money after paying out of pocket and offending people, and also saves a lot of trouble.
Various grains were more expensive than ordinary grains. Three taels of silver could buy four or five hundred catties of grain. Seven people took turns carrying them down the mountain road for more than ten miles. By the time they returned to the village, it was already afternoon.
We bought the seeds and even the grains, though they were all old, coarse rice and mixed grains, it was still better than starving.
So, without any time to rest, Jiang Zhi summoned Xia Xiucai to set out the account books, and each family received grain according to the number of people and seeds according to the amount of land.
Finally, after his name, he pressed his specially purchased red clay handprint onto the paper.
Each household spoke words of gratitude to Jiang Zhi, who simply said, "Be more proactive in returning the grain, or I'll have to come to your door and yell at you!"
The villagers shook their heads repeatedly: "No, no! It will definitely be the cleanest grain."
If the selection of a female village chief was somewhat out of necessity, the villagers' helplessness has turned into admiration and anticipation for an even better future after only three days of having enough grain and seeds.
Jiang Zhi was also very satisfied, as she could exchange the old rice for new rice the following year and make a profit!
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