Chapter 161 Who is this?

Seeing that he had made up his mind, Jin Sanshun did not try to persuade him any further. With the New Year fast approaching, everyone was busy.

He waved his hand to signal his subordinates to wait aside for a moment, and soon the crowd dispersed to the side.

This left Chen Huajiang momentarily stunned, and he sighed with emotion, "Boss Jin really commands the loyalty of his people."

"I treat them with sincerity, and naturally they treat me with sincerity in return."

"On the other hand, Boss Chen, I have the utmost admiration for you. Watching you manipulate the situation so effortlessly this month, your methods are truly superb."

"I managed to make a small fortune just by following your lead and picking up the scraps. Hats off to you, truly impressive!"

Jin Sanshun looked at Chen Huajiang and laughed, full of flattery.

In truth, he genuinely admired Chen Huajiang. Most people probably only knew that Chen Huajiang had made a fortune selling coal stoves.

However, because the majority of the No. 8 aluminum pipes were sold through his network of dealers, he knew that the real goldmine wasn't the coal stoves, but the piping materials.

After all, the coal stoves only commanded a high price initially; later on, they were sold at a loss just to build buzz, essentially balancing each other out.

Yet, which household didn't need a few meters of aluminum pipe? A single meter yielded a net profit of nearly twenty cents. In this day and age, a large residential compound housed thousands of families, while smaller ones had at least a hundred.

A single compound alone could generate a net profit ranging from anywhere between one hundred and a thousand yuan. Even after paying his distributors a commission of five cents per meter, he had managed to clear nearly thirty thousand yuan in just one month. The other party naturally made even more—at least sixty thousand.

Chen Huajiang smiled and did not pick up the thread of that conversation.

"Oh right, the items you wanted."

Jin Sanshun bent down, picked up a woven sack from the floor, and placed it on the table. The bag was quite large, comparable to a standard twenty-jin rice sack.

This completely baffled Chen Huajiang. He had asked the other man to help procure some more radios, intending to take them back to his rural hometown as New Year gifts for the villagers.

He originally thought getting ten or so would be a stretch, but looking at this sack now...

"Hiss."

Upon opening it, Chen Huajiang's eyes widened. There were at least fifty radios inside.

"Boss Jin, you are way too crazy."

Chen Huajiang said with a sigh, inwardly shocked.

After all, radios were rationed commodities in this era and required official coupons to purchase.

***

"Just a minor matter. Old Jin here doesn't have many other skills, but I do have plenty of connections."

"Forget fifty, I could get you five hundred if you wanted them."

"What do you say, interested in teaming up? I have the connections and you have the brains. If we join forces, we're guaranteed to make a killing."

Jin Sanshun boasted with a proud expression, then looked at Chen Huajiang with eager anticipation as he extended an invitation.

Clearly, he had set his sights on the illicit trade of reselling goods for profit, which was the hustle through which most people made their fortunes over the next year or two.

A certain notorious real estate mogul of later generations made millions just by reselling corn.

While possible in this era, the prerequisite was having the right connections—and not getting executed by a firing squad.

"Boss Jin, I advise you to exercise some caution. The current political climate is murky; you might want to keep your head on your shoulders."

Chen Huajiang shook his head directly. He had no intention of getting into that kind of business anytime soon. He didn't possess Jin Sanshun's luck, and who knew when he might end up facing a bullet.

However, by the second half of next year, Chen Huajiang might dip his toes into it. By then, the controversy surrounding the "Foolish Melon Seeds" business would be settled, and private individual businesses would receive official recognition. Private entrepreneurship would sprout like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, and small-scale reselling would no longer be considered a crime.

"Boss Chen is joking. I, Jin Sanshun, was terrified of poverty growing up. The worst that can happen is a scar on the neck."

"As for me, I'd rather have a scar on my neck than ever be poor again."

Jin Sanshun said, licking his lips, completely dismissing Chen Huajiang's warning.

Furthermore, he was dead serious; every word came straight from the heart.

Seeing his expression, Chen Huajiang inexplicably thought of his nickname: Jin the Taotie.

According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the mythical beast Taotie was insatiably voracious. It consumed animals, plants, and even wood and stone, never feeling full and constantly plagued by hunger.

To deal with the Taotie, ancient people used a bronze ox heated by fire as bait, luring the creature to devour it until its intestines were burned through and it died.

At this moment, the reselling trade was akin to that "ox." Getting caught meant becoming a glowing red-hot bronze ox; escaping detection meant a feast of beef.

Jin Sanshun could not possibly fail to understand this, but his greed for wealth had overpowered everything else, just like the Taotie's craving for food.

True to form, a nickname is rarely given in error. At this moment, Chen Huajiang felt that adage made perfect sense.

After exchanging a few more casual remarks with Jin Sanshun, he stood up and took his leave.

Jin Sanshun walked him all the way to the entrance, and only after Chen Huajiang had walked far away did he turn around and head back into the teahouse.

***

"Boss Jin, was that fellow Boss Chen Huajiang? The boss of Kunlun Coal Stoves? I can't believe he's so young."

"That's him for sure. When Kunlun Coal Stoves first came out, I saw him shouting slogans at the East Gate Sluice. Some of the sales pitches like 'step right up, don't miss out' that some of us use were originally coined by him."

"He's certainly a formidable guy, a true hero born of his youth. With the way this Boss Chen has manipulated the tides this month, he must have made an absolute fortune."

The group returned to their seats around Jin Sanshun, chattering excitedly and gossiping away.

The next day, Chen Huajiang and Lin Jiayin set about preparing gifts for all their relatives.

Those with closer ties received more substantial gifts, while distant relatives received lighter tokens. Everything had to be calculated meticulously.

Even in later generations, showing favoritism often led to family discord, and such friction was everywhere.

They spent the entire afternoon wrapping and labeling gifts for the majority of their relatives. After a hasty meal, they had Ermao drive a borrowed donkey cart and head toward Hedong Village.

Once past the East Gate Sluice, the scenery along the road began to grow desolate. The dirt road was uneven and bumpy, with few trees in sight, kicking up clouds of dust with every step.

On the bright side, lush green rice paddies lined both sides of the road, presenting a pleasing sight to the eye.

The closer they got to Hedong Village, the more nervous Chen Huajiang felt.

Having lived two lives, in his previous life, this exact time marked his divorce from Lin Jiayin, after which each returned to their respective homes.

Word of his divorce had spread through the village, and amid the petty gossip and trivial village rumors, he lost all face, prompting him in a fit of anger to leave the village as early as the second day of the Lunar New Year.

For the next few years, he struggled in the south, gradually growing accustomed to the aloof distance characteristic of cities. Aside from sending back a generous gift through an acquaintance during the New Year, he couldn't be bothered to return.

Yet, as he grew older, he came to realize that every situation had its pros and cons. Cities offered personal boundaries, but also accompanying indifference; villages possessed gossiping tongues, but also mutual neighborly support and shared community ties.

Especially in industries requiring a large workforce, such as catering or construction, a head chef often brought in relatives or fellow villagers as subordinates, and construction foremen did the same.

That was a form of mutual reliance, born largely because trust between strangers in a large city was hard to verify, and the cost of doing so was too high. Relationships with relatives and fellow villagers, by contrast, carried an inherent baseline of loyalty.

With a mental age of over forty now, Chen Huajiang certainly wouldn't view things with the rigid narrow-mindedness of his past self.

Upon reaching the village entrance, a group of people had gathered around a man in a Western-style suit, puffing on cigarettes and chatting animatedly.

"Well, well, who could this be? Is that Chen Huajiang?"