"Many salt wells have been destroyed, and we don't know if they can be restored in the future." Village Chief Zheng felt very sad when he thought about this.
"Is it possible to restore these salt wells?" Yunqi continued to ask.
"It may not be possible to achieve this in the short term. The techniques used by our ancestors to dig salt wells have been largely forgotten. Now we rely heavily on mechanical equipment, and it would be extremely difficult to restore them."
"Then your mechanical pumps can't pump water anymore, right?"
Village Chief Zheng felt helpless when he thought about this. "Our village used to store some engine oil, but recently the village has been mining it one after another, and all that engine oil has been used up. Now we have to use oxen and manpower to do it."
“Since that’s the case, other villages don’t have salt wells, but you’re short of labor here. If everyone works together and guards this salt well, you’ll have more security in the future.” Yunqi had already given his idea; whether or not to adopt it was up to their salt village.
Village Chief Zheng wasn't ungrateful; he knew this idea was the best option for his village at the moment. He sincerely thanked Yun Qi, saying, "I will discuss this matter with the villagers. If we can work together, then I think no one will dare to provoke us easily."
Because of these delays, Si Cheng couldn't bring up the matter of exchanging salt with Village Chief Zheng and the others that day, and could only think of finding an opportunity to discuss it with them the next day.
The people of Yancun will have a sleepless night. They have locked more than twenty bandits in the old warehouse, but this time they have rotated roles. If Sicheng and his men were here, they would find that these people have wounds that are the same as the wounds on the original villagers, but they are more serious.
"Please, please let me go! We were just guarding the door, we didn't hurt you," the bald man who had been guarding the door pleaded repeatedly.
"Pah! Even though you didn't hurt us, you were involved in tying us up here before." An old woman stepped forward and dragged him a few steps. "You dragged us here like dead dogs. Wait, I'm going to drag you all over the village to vent my anger."
"Auntie, you've all watched me grow up. I really know I was wrong. Can you give me a chance? I promise I'll be a good person from now on." Zheng Hao's face was so badly bruised that it was unrecognizable, especially since several young men from the village were still punching and kicking him.
"Why did you come begging for mercy now? When you brought these people into the village, did you ever think about what our village would suffer? You deserve this." A girl standing next to her said angrily, and then stepped forward and kicked him a few times.
"All you people do is make sarcastic remarks. After my family members had their accident, you took over their shares and swallowed them up. Then you give me a little food and expect me to be grateful. What do you expect me to do to you?" Seeing that his pleas were hopeless, Zheng Hao simply poured out all the resentment he had harbored over the years.
"You actually think of everyone like that? Your parents were primarily responsible for the car accident back then. The village cleared out their shares, but it still wasn't enough. Every household in the village had to contribute to make up the difference. I didn't tell you about it then because you were still young, but I never expected you to get so hung up on it." Old Mrs. Liu knew the whole story very well back then. She was the village accountant at the time, and she handled many things.
"Don't put it so high and mighty. So much time has passed, so of course it's as you say it is."
“Why are you so stubborn, child? If you had asked back then, the older generation in our village could have told you. I even have the old accounts kept. You can check them.” Although Grandma Liu hasn’t been an accountant for many years, she has kept the old accounts.
"Zheng Hao, who told you that the village embezzled your family's shares?" Village Chief Zheng was also very angry, as this was a complete questioning of everyone's character.
"Do I need anyone to tell me? Although I was young at the time, I always heard my parents say that our family owned a share in the salt well, a relatively large share in the village. It's impossible for us to lose all of these shares just because of a car accident." Zheng Hao still insisted that the village was the one who wronged him first back then.
"Do you know what that car accident was like back then? It was a chain-reaction accident that tore countless families apart. If the village hadn't helped by covering the costs back then, do you think they would have let you grow up so comfortably all these years?" Village Chief Zheng looked at Zheng Hao in disbelief, never expecting that he could doubt the elders who had always been so kind to him based on what he had heard in his childhood.
"You brat, why don't you just ask someone? You wait here, I'll go back and get the bills for you to see." Accountant Liu slapped him a few times in exasperation.
"Don't try to fool me, you're the ones who wronged me first..." Zheng Hao kept telling himself, refusing to accept reality.
As for the bandits who broke into the village, there were two different opinions in the village. Some people thought of crippling their hands and feet and driving them out of the village to fend for themselves, but others felt that they should be nipped in the bud and not allowed to continue to cause trouble. If they were to find another opportunity, the consequences for them would be unimaginable.
Regardless of their discussion, Si Cheng and his group unanimously agreed to exchange the salt the next day and return to Gaozhuang that same day. After dinner, everyone gathered around the fire and chatted.
"I wonder how their village is going to deal with those bandits?" Yun Tao and the others wanted to go over and find out, but they were all being watched by the elders of each village, and were not even allowed to move around freely.
"They probably won't let them go." Ma Donglai thought of the people who had come to their Ma Village before; they hadn't let Wolf Brother and his gang go back then either.
"Isn't this too cruel?" Gao Baiyun felt that although those people were bad, they didn't deserve to die.
“Silly boy, if we hadn’t come, who knows what state this village would have fallen to.” Ma Donglai thought of the Ma family members who had lost their families because of these bandits. Although so much time had passed, they still hadn’t recovered from that blow.
Upon noticing that the people of Majia Village nearby had fallen silent, Yun Xun gave Yun Yang, who was sitting opposite him, a wink.
"Have you noticed that they don't have any farmland here? How do they live?" Yun Yang noticed that most of the land here was barren as soon as he entered the village, so he quickly changed the subject.
"Because they're making salt every day, the surrounding land has gradually turned into salt fields. Besides, as long as they have salt, they're not afraid of not being able to exchange it for food," Yun Qi, who happened to be sitting next to Yun Yang, explained.
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