Xie Zhuo remained silent for a long time, until they were almost at his doorstep, before finally saying to Liu Mancang, "Let's put aside whether it's a trap or not. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone planning to get rich by playing cards."
Where's your brain?
Xie Zhuo stared at Liu Mancang with a look of utter disbelief.
"Haven't you been to Jisheng's house lately? Haven't you seen Zhao Jihou being chased around for money every day?"
"I...I've been having pretty good luck lately," Liu Mancang mumbled, head down, but then stopped talking, probably thinking about Zhao Jihou's situation.
"You're so lucky! You're still dreaming of winning money every day."
Xie Zhuo was genuinely angry.
It's normal to play cards occasionally for entertainment, after all, winter is long and farmers don't have much work to do, so they either gossip about this and that or stay at home sleeping.
But Liu Mancang's game is clearly not something he plays casually. Who can win more than a dollar in three or four days by playing casually?
It's obvious that the stakes were very high, and given Liu Mancang's card skills and intelligence, it's abnormal that he could win so much at once.
It's obvious someone is setting a trap for him.
As for whether this scheme is targeted at him alone or at others, it's hard to say for now.
Liu Mancang grew up following Xie Zhuo around since he was a child. Xie Zhuo truly treated him like a younger brother, so he didn't want him to go astray. However, he didn't have the right to stand on the main road and reprimand him.
He's a grown man now, he cares about his reputation.
But what I did...
Seeing that Liu Mancang's head was almost touching the ground, Xie Zhuo couldn't bring himself to scold him anymore, after all, he knew that Liu Mancang's family was short of money.
In his previous life, he even went to the mountains to find wild ginseng for money and almost got gored to death by a wild boar.
“Stand here and wait,” Xie Zhu stared at the whorl of hair on his head for a while, then sighed inwardly.
"Hmm?" Liu Mancang was still thinking about what had happened in the past few days.
Actually, when he first heard that they were playing such a high-stakes game, he felt uneasy and didn't dare to join in.
But after seeing it a few times, and seeing other people with piles of small bills in front of them, I couldn't help but want to try it myself.
At first, he thought he would only play one game and then stop, but unexpectedly, he played one game after another for several days.
Moreover, he's been praised by card players these past two days, and he feels incredibly lucky. He's also good at cards, and maybe he can actually make money playing cards.
Unexpectedly, this might have been a setup from beginning to end.
If he hadn't happened to be taking Xie Zhuo with him, the 30 cents that had just been in his pocket might have been stolen by someone else before he even had a chance to enjoy it.
That's not right either. Maybe not only will the money you've won in the last few days be lost, but your entire savings will also be tied up.
Liu Mancang was thinking seriously when he heard Xie Zhuo tell him to wait at the door.
He waited for about five minutes before Xie Zhuo came out of the yard, carrying a cloth bundle in his hand.
"What is this?" Liu Mancang quickly reached out to take it.
“Money,” Xie Zhuo said.
"Huh?" Liu Mancang squeezed the package. "Whose bill is this big?"
As he spoke, his hands quickly flipped through the pages, and he saw several junior high and high school textbooks.
"this……"
Liu Mancang pondered for a moment, but still didn't understand Xie Zhuo's meaning. What did it mean to suddenly give him such a big bag of books?
"Haven't you heard that saying?" Xie Zhu patted the package, "There are golden houses in books. If you really don't want to support yourself by farming in the future, then listen to me."
“Hmm,” Liu Mancang’s eyes lit up immediately, “I’ll definitely listen to you.”
“Take these books back and read them. I’ll only give you a year and a half,” Xie Zhuo said with a serious expression but a casual tone. “If you can learn all the knowledge in these books in a year and a half, I’ll tell you the secret to making big money.”
"...Huh?" Liu Mancang's newly raised expectations were instantly dashed.
He glanced at Xie Zhuo's coat, which was even more tattered than his own, then at the book in his hand. "Can you really make a lot of money?"
Xie Zhuo followed his gaze and looked at himself, then raised his hand and slapped his arm. "I call this being low-key. Am I broke?"
"Isn't that also Third Sister-in-law's?" Liu Mancang said softly.
When Xie Zhuo went to the educated youth settlement to ask for money last time, he went with him. Although he didn't get all the money, he managed to get a hundred or two.
"Are you listening or not?" Xie Zhuo had never told anyone about his contact with people in the black market or about repairing radios and watches, so he didn't argue when he heard him say this.
“Listen, listen, listen,” Liu Mancang responded in a string of replies, “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”
Seeing that he was relatively obedient, Xie Zhuo added, "If there's anything you don't understand, you can come over and ask me tonight."
Liu Mancang was puzzled as to why Xie Zhuo was showing him these things even though the college entrance examination had been cancelled.
He pondered for a long time on his way home with the book in his arms, and finally understood that this was a test given to him by his third brother.
Xu Yan was watching Da Bao and Xiao Bao write when Xie Zhuo rushed in, took a stack of books from a cabinet next to the small bookshelf, and then turned and left.
When he came back in, Xu Yan looked up at him and asked, "Do you have textbooks?"
"Yes," Xie Zhuo was taken aback by the question, "everyone in our class has it."
"Then you..." Xu Yan wanted to ask, "Why didn't you say anything when I went to the city to buy books that day?" But she remembered that she didn't seem to have told Xie Zhuo that she wanted to buy textbooks.
"Then what did you take it out for just now?" Xu Yan changed the subject and asked.
"The warehouse is full," Xie Zhuo walked over, glanced at Da Bao and Xiao Bao's notebooks, and then briefly explained the situation to Xu Yan.
When Xu Yan heard that Liu Mancang planned to make money by playing cards, he was speechless. "Aunt Yang is worried sick."
Xie Zhuo nodded.
Xu Yan continued watching Da Bao and Xiao Bao write. After a few seconds, she seemed to remember something and turned to look at Xie Zhuo.
Xie Zhuo was about to make himself a cup of tea when he saw her looking over and gave a questioning hum, "What's wrong?"
"Why did you make him read those textbooks?" Xu Yan asked.
Xie Zhuo paused as he poured water into the enamel mug, then steadily added half a mug of water a second later. The dark green tea leaves jumped up as the hot water boiled and then unfurled.
"He was so easily fooled because he's not very bright," Xie Zhuo said without changing his expression. "Reading more books might be able to fix that."
Xu Yan looked at him suspiciously for a few moments, then looked away. "I don't know what the village chief in the next village is thinking. Someone has opened a casino in the backyard of a widow's house, and he doesn't care."
“It’s winter,” Xie Zhu put the kettle back on the stove, then stood up and added half a ladle of cold water, “but it’ll be wiped out sooner or later.”
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