Chapter Twenty-Nine: Has the Son-in-Law Made It Big?

The vegetable vendor business could not be put on hold yet; all the money Lu Kun had was invested in stockpiling galangal. To buy up even more, he first needed to earn more. Lu Kun had already made up his mind—the next batch of galangal he acquired would simply be stored at Shitou's house. Now everyone in the village knew that Shitou had an uncle who was a high-ranking official in the city, so nobody dared to mess with him.

...

Ping'an Town.

On the main street by the vegetable market.

Lu Kun had been running his vegetable vendor business for over three months, and his network of contacts was growing ever broader. Fellow vendors all knew Lu Kun had established connections with the cafeteria procurement teams of the town’s three middle schools, as well as the purchasing departments of the two major factories. They were happy to help him buy up cheap goods to sell on to him at a tidy profit.

When he ran into Li Erniu, Lu Kun straightforwardly told him to stop buying galangal in the countryside. In just over a week, prices would begin to rise. At first, it would be a slow, tentative increase, like boiling a frog in warm water. But soon, it would turn into a frenzied surge. Lu Kun’s decision to have Li Erniu cease rural purchases was for his own good—otherwise, as prices soared, the villagers might think Li Erniu had been setting them up. If trouble started, Lu Kun himself could easily be implicated.

...

Business as a vegetable vendor continued to thrive. The orders from the three school cafeterias and two factories were fixed, so aside from the rush when loading the trucks, Lu Kun had plenty of free time. With cash in hand, he asked a nearby vendor to keep an eye on his stall and started scouting galangal up and down the street.

There were several unfamiliar faces buying galangal today. Lu Kun felt a prickle of caution, suspecting these must be agents of some major investors. He exchanged a glance with them, and both sides tacitly kept silent. Perhaps, in their eyes, Lu Kun was just like them—working for some big shot behind the scenes.

There were plenty of people in the street asking about galangal, but few willing to actually make an offer. Even as galangal became scarcer, everyone was quietly working together to keep prices from rising.

“It’s almost time to pull back,” Lu Kun thought nervously.

Bringing galangal back to the village was just a diversion, a tactic to draw inquisitive eyes toward Ping’an Village instead of the real location where he had been storing his reserves. Suppressing his greed, Lu Kun stopped after buying four or five hundred pounds, loaded the sacks onto his tractor, and headed back.

Ping’an Village...

In broad daylight, Lu Kun drove into the village on his hand tractor, causing a predictable stir. He chatted casually with the villagers before continuing on toward Shitou’s house at the edge of the village. Shitou was already up, brushing his teeth and washing his face. When he saw Lu Kun lugging sack after sack of galangal into his house, he was momentarily stunned.

“Uh…” Shitou’s mouth hung open, swallowing a mouthful of foamy toothpaste.

“Hey, did you come to the wrong door?” Shitou called, catching up to him.

Lu Kun had no time to respond. He needed to hide the galangal before the villagers arrived and started asking questions. For now, their attention was on the tractor, but once galangal prices shot up in a few days, it would be a different story.

He had just finished moving all the galangal into Shitou’s empty room and hadn’t even caught his breath when a crowd of villagers gathered around the tractor, marveling at the sight. The only other tractor in the village, a used one bought by collective funds, had been borrowed by the town authorities. Lu Kun’s was the first of its kind in Ping’an Village. Some villagers teased that he must have struck it rich.

Lu Kun hurried to explain. He meant no harm, but he still owed quite a bit of money to these people. If they got the wrong idea, they might start pressing him for repayment, and he didn’t have the cash yet. After much persuasion, he finally managed to send them on their way. Still, the news that Lu Kun had driven a hand tractor back to the village spread quickly, reaching even the Liu family in the neighboring village by that afternoon.

“Are you short on cash these days?” Shitou, now finished washing up, clapped Lu Kun on the shoulder.

“When am I not? I’m still buried under a mountain of debt,” Lu Kun replied with a rare, easy smile.

Hearing Lu Kun’s hearty laughter, Shitou felt reassured.

“If you still need money, I have some saved up,” he said.

“Oh?” Lu Kun raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you get money? Didn’t I borrow everything you had?”

“I earned some over the past few months. The money you borrowed before is gone, of course.”

Lu Kun hadn’t realized that ever since he started working tirelessly day and night, Shitou had been frightened by his determination.

“Is my old friend even the same person?” he wondered. The kid who used to chase after him yelling, “Wait up, Shitou!” was now a relentless workhorse supporting his family.

“How much do you have?” Lu Kun asked casually.

“A little over a thousand yuan,” Shitou replied seriously.

...

“What?” Lu Kun was stunned.

In his previous life, he’d borrowed over a thousand yuan from Shitou, leaving him with nothing, not even enough to marry. So how did Shitou still have a thousand yuan now? If he’d had that money in his past life, he wouldn’t have ended up losing his fiancée.

Lu Kun’s mind was a jumble. Clutching the thousand yuan he’d just borrowed from Shitou, he walked home in a daze, unable to collect his thoughts for a long time.

...

Donglin Village.

The Liu family home.

The household was in an uproar; chickens and dogs scattered in the chaos.

“This is your fault, you short-sighted old fool, rotten to the core!”

“I told you long ago, that Kun kid is such a good-looking young man—how could he possibly be useless…”

“Nonsense! Back then, you only liked him because he was handsome, and you insisted on giving him all our best things. In all my years, I’ve never heard of a bride’s family giving gifts to the son-in-law instead of the other way around...”

Lu Kun’s mother-in-law, Li Xiuqin, seeing she couldn’t win the argument, grabbed a stick and charged.

“All right, you old fool! You’re getting bold, talking back to me like that! I’ll show you why the flowers are so red today!”

...

While Liu Liping’s parents fought in the yard, a crowd of onlookers craned their necks at the door, but no one dared go in to break up the fight.

Ping’an Village.

Lu Kun sat on his doorstep, his mood shifting like the weather.

What on earth was going on?

He was sure Shitou wasn’t lying. Given Shitou’s work, as long as he was careful with his spending, saving a thousand yuan in half a year was perfectly feasible. But if Shitou had this money in his past life, why did he wait until he was over forty to marry a divorcée?