That night, Shi Zhen heard from Qian Qilai about Yan Jiangtao’s face being splashed with mud.
Qian Qilai sat on a small stool that Guan Baiyu’s grandmother had made with wood planks she had picked up. He was a little gloating. “This Yan Jiangtao’s family is rich. Every time he opens and closes his mouth, he is despising others for being poor. He shows off this and that all day long and looks down on others… He has offended a lot of people in school. Who knows who did it this time?!”
“No one saw who did it?” Shi Zhen was a little surprised.
“No one saw. Or maybe someone saw, but didn’t say anything.” Qian Qilai started talking excitedly. When he moved, the small stool made a “creak” sound and looked like it was about to fall apart. “In school, there are a lot of people who can’t stand him.”
While handling the pig head skillfully, Shi Zhen tried to save the small stool. “Stop sitting. Do squats if you have time. You can train your thigh muscles.”
Qian Qilai let go of the small stool, and started to do squats. After doing squats for a while, when he saw Guan Baiyu going out, he whispered to Shi Zhen. “By the way, master, I heard that Yan Jiangtao’s father gave the teacher a gift, and asked the teacher to arrange a good deskmate for Yan Jiangtao. That’s why the teacher had him sit with Guan Baiyu. As a result, he despises Guan Baiyu all day long, often bullies Guan Baiyu, and even steps on Guan Baiyu’s desk and stool. He even speaks badly of Guan Baiyu in school.”
Shi Zhen’s face looked a little cold.
If it weren’t for Guan Baiyu’s good grades, making people look highly upon him, Yan Jiangtao’s behavior would probably make the whole class isolate Guan Baiyu.
This kind of naughty kid lacked severe beatings from society.
On Tuesday, Yan Jiangtao came to school with an unhappy face, looking like everyone was displeasing to the eye.
He really didn’t like anyone at school, and he hated studying, but his dad said that if he didn’t come to school, he wouldn’t give him pocket money!
He could only come to school.
He didn’t know if everyone in school was talking about him and looking down on him today…
When Yan Jiangtao arrived near the school, he felt that everyone around him was looking at him strangely, making him want to punch someone.
Although he did not beat anyone, he still said to several people passing by him, “What are you looking at? You idiot!”
Some of the people he scolded didn’t know him at all, and they didn’t even know that Yan Jiangtao was scolding them.
However, when Yan Jiangtao entered the school gate, one of the people he scolded was unhappy. “You are the idiot. You have gone crazy after being soaked in feces and water!”
Yan Jiangtao was furious. “You bitch. You were driven crazy by feces and water. You eat feces at home every day, right? Did your mother give birth to you in a latrine?”
Yan Jiangtao grew up in the village and was very good at swearing. After scolding for a long time, he said, “A bunch of rural people and poor people…”
The face of the person who had been scolded by Yan Jiangtao for a long time turned dark as he listened. He grabbed a bucket from the person standing next to him and threw it at Yan Jiangtao’s head.
Their boss asked them to get some dirty water to splash on Yan Jiangtao, and then spread a few words about Yan Jiangtao in the school, saying that he was dirty and smelly.
They agreed, but because they had no grudge against Yan Jiangtao, they didn’t originally plan to throw it at Yan Jiangtao’s face, thinking that throwing it on his body would be enough.
But Yan Jiangtao’s words were so unpleasant… A bucket of water was splashed directly on Yan Jiangtao’s face.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Yan Jiangtao was completely stunned.
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Ktlr kjafg raecx!
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He didn’t hurt anyone. He just fought back after being scolded by Yan Jiangtao. The school couldn’t do anything to him. It could only criticize him.
But this was not painful for him – he never attended school in the past, and even the teacher told him not to come to school to be a bad influence on others. It was fine as long as he took the graduation exam.
In this case, being criticized was nothing!
Guan Baiyu came to school very early and started doing practice questions. While he was completing the practice questions, the girl at the table behind him came in carrying a schoolbag and poked his back with a pen.
He turned around and saw the girl asking him mysteriously, “Guan Baiyu, do you know that Yan Jiangtao was splashed with feces again?”
Guan Baiyu was curious. “Again?”
“Didn’t he get splashed once at noon yesterday? I heard it was fecal water! He was splashed again just now. It’s so disgusting!” The girl said she was disgusted, but she looked a little excited.
After Yan Jiangtao got rich, his eyes grew on top of his head*, and he despised other people’s poverty all day long. Many people couldn’t stand it.
They were all from rural areas. When walking on the road, they sometimes accidentally stepped on chicken droppings. Everyone was quite familiar with these things.
Guan Baiyu: “…” What he threw yesterday was not feces, but mud…
But Yan Jiangtao’s bad luck was always a good thing.
When Guan Baiyu was talking about this matter, other people in the class were also talking about Yan Jiangtao being splashed twice with fecal water.
Yan Jiangtao must be furious… Guan Baiyu threw this person out of his mind and started to solve the problems at hand.
He could basically answer all the questions in the test papers set by the school teachers correctly, but in the final exam, there were many questions that he could not solve or even had never seen before.
The two exercise books he had now also contained many questions that he had never seen before. After completing these two exercise books, his Chinese and mathematics scores should be much better.
While Guan Baiyu was completing the practice questions, Shi Zhen took the time to visit a nearby chicken farm.
He planned to develop a new product.
Shi Zhen’s new product was braised eggs with almost no technical content.
After peeling the eggs, marinate them and sell them. It would be small profits but quick turnover. He should definitely be able to make some profit from this.
In the future, he could also braise some tofu and other things, so that when people came to his stall, they could buy several kinds of foods at once.
The things he made may not be as sophisticated as those at other cooked food stalls, but they were cheaper and there was still a market for them.
People here in J City were very interested in making money and were willing to try various ways to make money.
Guan Baiyu’s adoptive father wanted to make money by raising chickens when Guan Baiyu was a first year in high school*, because someone in his village made a fortune raising broiler chickens, and in the village next to theirs, someone raised a lot of old hens and sold eggs every day.
Shi Zhen went to the place that sold eggs, asked the price, and started picking eggs.
As for how to choose…of course, choose the small eggs!
When selling eggs, he would sell them by the piece, but when buying eggs, it was by weight. If he bought a bunch of big eggs, he would lose money.
Shi Zhen selected some eggs and after weighing them, he found that one yuan could buy about eight eggs.
In this case…his braised eggs could be sold at the rate of one yuan for four.
Tea eggs in town sold for 30 cents each, while his braised eggs would be 50 cents for two. There would definitely be people willing to buy them.
Shi Zhen thought about boiling eggs when he went home, but was stopped by the egg seller before he left. “You bought so many eggs. Are you going to braise them in sauce? These eggs have just been laid, and it is not easy to peel them after they are boiled. It is best to leave them for a few days before boiling.”
Local people often made braised eggs with soy sauce when hosting weddings and treating guests. They cooked a large pot at a time. Shi Zhen bought so many eggs in one go, so the man thought he was also making braised eggs with soy sauce.
But for freshly laid eggs, after being boiled, the shells were sticky and were difficult to peel. The eggs might also become pitted when peeling.
Some people thought there was something wrong with his eggs and would come to him to complain, so he was used to reminding others.
Shi Zhen really didn’t know about this, so he thanked him immediately.
If the eggs couldn’t be sold right away, he could sell some braised dry tofu* first…
Shi Zhen thought about it and bought a lot of dry tofu to braise.
Qian Qilai came again that night. After smelling the fragrance, he immediately said that when the braised dry tofu was ready, he would buy a yuan worth of braised dry tofu.
“Oh, I’ve spent all my money, but I can’t find a job…” Qian Qilai sighed.
Shi Zhen’s heart moved. “Do you want to follow me? I’ll cover your lunch and give you five yuan a day. This way, if you want to practice martial arts, I can give you guidance at any time.”
He planned to sell a few more things, so it would be difficult for him to manage by himself.
If Qian Qilai came over to help, it would ease some of his burden and he could also produce other products.
In fact, he had thought about asking Shi Xinghuo to help before, but Shi Xinghuo couldn’t do simple math and wouldn’t be able to calculate totals and change.
The most suitable job for Shi Xinghuo at this stage was to work as a laborer.
Qian Qilai agreed. “Okay! Master, you don’t have to give me any money. Just let me learn martial arts from you!”
Qian Qilai was only sixteen years old, so he didn’t care so much about things like money.
But Shi Zhen couldn’t take advantage of him. “If you’re working with me, how can I not give you money?” He had never seriously studied martial arts, and there actually wasn’t much he could teach Qian Qilai.
Shi Zhen insisted on paying him, so Qian Qilai didn’t refuse. Now that he had a job, he was very happy when he went home that day.
As for Shi Zhen, he soon discovered that paying Qian Qilai to help him was the right thing to do – Qian Qilai’s father heard that Qian Qilai had found a job, and he bought him a bicycle the next day!
Qian Qilai’s parents gave birth to four children in total, two boys and two girls. Qian Qilai was the third child. He had two older sisters and a younger brother.
Before, Qian Qilai couldn’t find a job and he still looked like a child, so his parents didn’t care about him much, but now he had a job…
While his parents thought that everyone who had a job should own a vehicle, they couldn’t afford a motorcycle. As for a bicycle, it was very easy for people who were living a good life and did not spend money recklessly to buy one.
Qian Qilai got a brand new bicycle.
Nowadays, the quality of bicycles was very good. The bicycle Qian Qilai got could withstand many things. Although Shi Zhen had not yet bought a cycle rickshaw, with Qian Qilai there, he no longer had to carry pig heads to town on his own.
Add a wooden board to the back seat of the bicycle, put a basin on it, cover it with a wooden board, and put another basin on it… He could transport two basins of pig head meat to town at a time this way, and he could even bring some extra miscellaneous items if he wanted.
Not only that, it took half an hour to walk from Guan Baiyu’s house to town, but only ten minutes by bicycle.
It was a great deal to hire someone for five yuan and get a bicycle for free!
Shi Zhen was in a good mood and felt more confident about expanding his business.
Qian Qilai was also very satisfied with this job. Although five yuan a day was not a lot, it wasn’t a small amount either. The most important thing was that after having a bicycle, this work was not tiring at all!
Working in a factory only paid a little over 200 yuan a month, but one had to work three shifts and the factory didn’t cover meals. Here with Shi Zhen, he just had to “work” during the day. Sometimes, when there was nothing to do, Shi Zhen would let him go shopping around town, but would still pay his salary, which was really awesome.
In addition, Shi Zhen’s lunch also tasted very good. Braised eggs that were not peeled well during peeling, crushed braised dry tofu, and pig head meat… How could he usually eat like this at home?
For Qian Qilai, the food tasted delicious and he had a daily salary. He also bought some to take home every day. In this way, his family was also very satisfied, and it could be considered a win-win-win situation.
***
T/N: *Eyes on top of the head is a Chinese phrase that means you have high vision and look down on others.
*Remember he’s talking about his past life, since Guan Baiyu is still in junior high school right now. It was mentioned before that Guan Baiyu had to drop out of high school because his adoptive father lost money when he tried this chicken raising business.
*Dry tofu – the author mostly uses 豆干 (dougan), which literally means bean (dou) dry (gan). Dougan is used interchangeably with 豆腐干 (doufu gan), which literally means tofu dry (豆腐 doufu is tofu in Chinese). Dougan/doufu gan is a firm variety of tofu common in Chinese cuisine. I went with dry tofu for the translation, but see online some people call it pressed tofu.
Everything is proceeding so smoothly for them ♥ hopefully that yan jingtao will get lost and stop bullying our poor baiyu
Guan Baiyu was just getting rid of his deskmate but he set off a trend
Every penny counts when making money