New Era
Three days passed quickly, and the exam finally ended. Li Guorong learned the whole story. It turned out that Li Jiaoniang had been trafficked to a village in Xizhou City. Fortunately, the provincial, municipal, and district police launched a joint operation that day, and Li Jiaoniang was rescued by the police as soon as she was sold there. Half of the village was full of trafficked wives. It was said that there was a girl in the mountains who had been tortured beyond recognition.
Li Xiangxi said, "She's finally getting her comeuppance. I heard she'll slink away to the countryside and marry a farmer, and she'll never be able to climb the social ladder again."
Li Guorong stared at the newspaper word by word. This was not the future. This human trafficking gang had been wiped out in one fell swoop, and 90% of them had been sentenced to death by firing squad. The police had also found a large number of skeletons in the back mountains. Several sellers in the village had been sentenced to life imprisonment, including Wu Jun and Wu Hai. She couldn't help but curl the corners of her mouth. "Serves them right. These kinds of people deserve to be torn to pieces."
Li Xiangxi looked at his sister-in-law in horror. Could it be? Li Jiaoniang hadn't actually done anything with his brother.
Lin Shaocheng explained, "Your sister-in-law is talking about human traffickers."
Lin Shaocheng leaned closer to look and whispered, "Now you can rest easy."
Li Guorong put down her newspaper. "We're having foreign food today, it's on me." She kept her promise; those people got their comeuppance, and they should celebrate properly.
Li Xiangxi stood up and exclaimed, "Sister-in-law is wise!"
Li Guorong opened his eyes, a sharp pain shooting through his leg.
Wu Jun had blood in his throat, and he could see the dark night outside through the bloody hole. He grinned and said, "Wife, the bridal chamber."
Li Guorong felt numb from her feet to the top of her head. Waves of bloody and foul smells rushed into her nostrils. Her limbs went weak. She reached for the oil bottle and lighter beside her, but they were gone!
Was her second chance just a dream?
Li Guorong's eyes were bloodshot. This was impossible; if she could go out once, she could go out a second time.
"Guo Rong, Guo Rong." It was as if a voice from another world was calling to her.
Li Guorong shuddered. Lin Shaocheng hugged her tightly, his thick hands soothing her back. Her hands regained their strength, and she wrapped them tightly around Lin Shaocheng's neck.
"Did you have a nightmare?" Lin Shaocheng's deep voice soothed Li Guorong's wildly beating heart like soothing music.
Li Guorong buried her head in Lin Shaocheng's broad chest. She was terrified, terrified of returning to her past life, terrified of dying long ago on the winding mountain road, terrified of returning to that village, "kiss me."
Li Guorong tilted her head back. Only the raging storm could give her a moment of reality. Sometimes it felt like being on a cloud, sometimes like being in bed. She felt the reality of this moment, a satisfaction that money could not bring her. Lin Shaocheng was like a thread, holding her tightly so that she would not lose her way in the sky.
"If I ever make a mistake in the future, just tell me, and I won't get angry for no reason anymore." Lin Shaocheng didn't say anything, but just hugged Li Guorong even tighter.
In 1990, in Shenzhen, Li Guorong dismantled the wooden door of his small shop, which contained skewers, dan dan noodles, and wontons. Residents from the neighborhood and people who came to the south to seek their fortune would come here to eat. It was a business with a steady stream of income.
Lin Shaocheng is studying at a nearby university and will graduate soon. Li Guorong is happy to think about this. Only during winter and summer vacations can Lin Shaocheng get some cheap and fashionable clothes to take her to the north. He really loses a lot of money.
"Give me a bottle of chili oil."
"Okay." Li Guorong took out chili oil from the counter. This chili oil can be mixed with rice or steamed buns without needing any other dishes. The frugal migrant workers and scavengers in the vicinity who don't know how to cook all love to eat it. Unlike the locals, they prefer to eat food with a lot of oil and salt because they do manual labor.
Lin Shaocheng entered the room with a slight frown, as if he had something on his mind.
Li Guorong served the milk tea. "What's wrong?"
Lin Shaocheng sighed, "Xiangxi graduated, but now job placement is no longer guaranteed. He was originally planning to work in a factory for two years as a temporary job, but now the factory is about to close down, and many of his former brothers can't find work."
Li Guorong's eyes lit up. "So, a lot of machinery is no longer needed, but what about the cannery?"
Lin Shaocheng looked at Li Guorong suspiciously, "What are you planning to do?"
Li Guorong hasn't been wasting her time in the south these past few years. With a machine in her family's factory, she dared to open a factory. If she could sell machine tools at a low price and have Li Xiangxi, a top student, repair and maintain them, wouldn't her chili oil business be on the right track?
“I need to expand my chili oil business. Also, the angelica root I collected at home is now very expensive. I asked around and they said that processing it into pills is many times more expensive than the raw material. I heard that many large-scale health supplements on the market are produced by the Japanese. How can the ancestors not beat the grandchildren?”
Lin Shaocheng rubbed his temples. "I'm afraid I don't have that much money."
Li Guorong felt confident, thinking about his houses in Beijing and Shenzhen, his gold jewelry, and the money in his bank account. "At worst, I can borrow money and buy as much machinery as I can afford."
Li Guorong wasn't just making money for herself. Last winter vacation, she and Lin Shaocheng went back to Chongchuan. After selling clothes in the city, they returned home to find barefoot children in the neighborhood. Only the father had decent pants to wear. It was like a completely different world from the bustling south.
Among the nearby villages, only her village was relatively well-off. Everyone in the village regarded her as a great benefactor. Just because she harvested a few chili peppers in her hometown, the elderly and children could eat a few mouthfuls of rice, and she became a living bodhisattva.
Several people from nearby towns who went out to work have experienced various setbacks. Some have disappeared without a trace, some have been ridiculed in other places, and some have not been able to collect their wages. Some distant relatives complained to Lin Shaocheng, saying that they thought everyone outside was as honest as Brother Lin. Who knew that some people would talk a good game but disappear when it came time to pay? Only a few of them could earn money. Most of them worked hard for a year but didn't save a few dollars before spending it all.
There are also several children who only see their parents for a few days a year and have already forgotten what their parents look like. They hide behind their grandparents and are too afraid to call out to them, which makes Li Guorong feel heartbroken.
Now her chili oil is in high demand. Even if she and two helpers work day and night, they can only make a few bottles. If she could open a small factory, like the bottled sauces of later generations, and put them in supermarkets or even export them abroad, she could not only make money but also help the villagers in several villages.
When Li Guorong returned home in his previous life, there were several Chinese medicinal herb planting bases, all owned by Japanese companies. They could obtain raw materials with very little money, process them into medicines, and then sell them back to China. For example, Baoxin Jinwan (a traditional Chinese medicine) was in high demand and short supply. Lin Shaocheng's family had a medical tradition. Even if he didn't have a talent for pulse diagnosis and acupuncture, he could remember all the prescriptions. He didn't believe he couldn't beat those little devils.
Thinking of this, Li Guorong was full of energy. He went upstairs and opened his savings book. He had 100,000 yuan. Most of this money came from the wholesale of small commodities and clothes in the south and the sales back home in the north. The rest came from the rent given by his older sister and the share of the food stall. Now, a pair of jeans can be bought for 20 yuan here and sold for more than 100 yuan in the north. Lin Shaocheng has a good eye and knows many people at school, so he can get fashionable and low-priced goods.
House prices have risen, but not like the crazy rise in later years. Selling now is definitely not a good idea. How can I make money quickly? Li Guorong threw down his savings book and lay on the bed angrily. This money probably isn't enough. What can make money quickly?
Stocks? No way. People who think about buying stocks in the future will jump off buildings. Do stocks even exist now? She immediately got into it. Her husband seems to have studied finance and trade. Is that what it is?
"Shaocheng, if no one's here, come up. Don't bother tidying up."
Lin Shaocheng still looked gloomy. "I just went to the phone booth next door to contact Xiang Xi. He said he would ask around. He estimated that the cannery alone would cost 67,000 yuan, and the Chinese medicine factory would cost 150,000 yuan."
Li Guorong breathed a sigh of relief; it wasn't as much as he had imagined. "You're not a finance major, but I've heard of stocks. Why don't you practice managing the money in this account?"
Lin Shaocheng took a closer look and realized that this was not Li Guorong's entire fortune. "Aren't you afraid of losing it all? There's a new stock coming out of Shenzhen soon that looks like it has good growth potential."
Li Guorong leaned on Lin Shaocheng and said, "You are my husband. If I don't trust you, who do I trust? If I lose, I can earn it back. I'm just setting a bottom line and an upper limit. If I lose half, I'll withdraw. If I earn double, I'll withdraw. I just wanted to test the waters."
Li Guorong carefully recalled her past life. Her second brother seemed to have said that if you bought stocks at the beginning, you could make 4 or 5 times the profit. She was not greedy. She only needed enough money to buy equipment. As for land, luckily, she bought the land of two bankrupt factories when she was hoarding houses a couple of years ago. The land was empty. As long as she had equipment, she could start working.
Lin Shaocheng had always wanted to try his hand at the stock market, but Li Guorong managed all the money in the house. He didn't know how to bring it up, but he didn't expect Li Guorong to trust him so much. Lin Shaocheng reached out and put his arm around Li Guorong, thinking about that matter and wondering if Guorong would support him.
"The stock exchange will have its trial operation tomorrow, and I'll go there early tomorrow to queue up."
Li Guorong nodded, "What about the machinery and equipment?" Li Guorong was torn between wanting to have his cake and eat it too.
Lin Shaocheng patted Li Guorong lightly, "Don't worry, some factories over there are still applying for national aid. I think it's unlikely that aid will be available. Only the top factories will be able to get it and struggle for a while. So many factories are going bankrupt. The most sought-after equipment will definitely be from textile factories and machinery factories. Equipment from canneries and traditional Chinese medicine factories can still be negotiated."
Li Guorong felt relieved. She needed to think carefully about how to industrialize and streamline the process of making chili oil, and how to open up sales channels. This wasn't the future, where you could sell goods just by doing a live stream.
In the early morning, Lin Shaocheng put on a thick coat and went to the securities trading counter. There were already three people ahead of him when he arrived at 4 a.m. He touched the egg on his chest. It was prepared for him by Li Guorong after he accidentally made a noise when he got up. Thinking of this, he felt warm inside.
In just a short while, 30 or 40 people lined up behind him. Although they were all very orderly for a while, as soon as the door opened, people ignored the queue and surged into the door. He had already put 100 yuan in the order form in case he managed to squeeze in but the form was pushed to the bottom.
Lin Shaocheng's legs went numb from standing. The security guard stood in front of the door, opened the iron gate, and before Lin Shaocheng could react, he was pushed in. Luckily, he was pushed directly to the counter seat. Lin Shaocheng took out his order form, and the order forms of the people behind him flew into the counter. The trader sorted the order forms expressionlessly.
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