Chapter 178: Recruiting Help and Working on a Big Deal Along the Way

As the people from Hexi Village dispersed, the crowd from Hedong Village swarmed around Chen Huajiang, escorting him back to their settlement.

Everyone was in high spirits. In the conventional mindset of the villagers, being able to physically overpower Hexi Village was a matter of face and immense pride. Even Chen Jianjun and the other young men looked at Chen Huajiang with unconcealed admiration, for compared to anything else, the younger generation valued straightforward physical strength above all.

Yet everyone knew that tomorrow was when the real trial would take place.

Chen Huajiang borrowed a tractor and rushed to Nanming City to track down Black Tiger and Er Mao, instructing them to bring their brothers in full force the next day to lend support at Sancha River. Next, he sought out Jin Sanhun, asking him to gather some men to help, and finally, he headed to Wuxing Village.

Initially, Chen Huajiang held little hope for this leg of the trip. Wuxing Village maintained good relations with Hexi Village, and both villages shared a high concentration of residents bearing the surname Zhao. In terms of familial closeness, Wuxing Village naturally leaned toward Hexi Village. Chen Huajiang's original intention in visiting Zhao Hongmei was merely to leverage their existing business cooperation and persuade her to keep her villagers from reinforcing Hexi Village. After all, bolstering one's own manpower and thinning out the opponent's forces yielded the exact same strategic result.

To Chen Huajiang's utter surprise, however, Zhao Hongmei agreed.

"We can lend you our support, but you must purchase two thousand tons of oranges from Wuxing Township. Furthermore, you must hand over the production technology for that orange soda of yours."

Zhao Hongmei launched straight into negotiations, her gaze piercing as she fixed it on Chen Huajiang. Moreover, she had deliberately used the term "Wuxing Township" rather than "Wuxing Village"—the scale implied by that distinction was vast.

For a moment, Chen Huajiang was completely stunned by her demand, but he quickly regained his composure and shook his head decisively.

"Are you out of your mind? Two thousand tons of oranges? What are you even dreaming about?"

"Five hundred tons at most. Any more than that is beyond my capacity, and even five hundred tons is already my absolute limit."

"Don't try to bite off more than you can chew by throwing around the name of Wuxing Township. To be blunt, this is merely a dispute between two individual villages. Even if your township dared to come and back them up, I wouldn't dare accept your involvement," Chen Huajiang said with a dismissive sneer.

Good grief, a township and a village were completely different concepts. In future years, townships would be reorganized into towns through administrative mergers. At present, a single township could encompass anywhere from a dozen to several hundred villages, with populations ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands—Wuxing Township alone boasted over three hundred thousand residents.

This was hardly a battlefield; to mobilize such a massive apparatus over a trivial matter meant Chen Huajiang would have to be out of his mind to agree. If he actually dared to pull that off, he might as well face a firing squad!

Gathering a few hundred people for a village brawl was one thing, but mobilizing hundreds of thousands? What were they trying to accomplish? Who on earth would believe it wasn't an uprising?

Zhao Hongmei smiled. She was merely bluffing Chen Huajiang to test the waters—aim high at the start so they could negotiate down to earth.

"The oranges in Wuxing Township are experiencing a severe backlog this year. In previous years, at least the vast majority would be sold out by the New Year. But this year, more than half remain unsold, and once the New Year passes and spring arrives, the fruit will rot."

"It's not just our production brigade; the production brigades across the entire Wuxing Township are agonizing over this problem, making it impossible to even enjoy the holiday. I was originally planning to make a trip to Nanming City after the New Year to see if you could help purchase more oranges, or perhaps turn the surplus into orange soda."

"Since you've come asking for help today, let's negotiate a deal. I can easily rally ten production brigades. You don't necessarily have to buy the oranges, but you must pass on the technology for making orange soda to us," Zhao Hongmei said with a smile, getting straight to the point.

Just as she claimed, even if Chen Huajiang had not sought her out today, she would have brought people to find him after the Lantern Festival. This concerned the collective interests of the entire township's residents. She had no fear that Chen Huajiang would refuse to cooperate; in this era, there was no such thing as private means of production—when collective interests were at stake, private concerns had to step aside.

Chen Huajiang felt a slight headache coming on. He certainly understood what Zhao Hongmei was driving at, but he was not without countermeasures.

"Any technology or formula is an invaluable treasure. If a single mistake is made, the losses won't be mine—they will be yours."

"I can provide the production technology and even the equipment, teaching your Wuxing Township the craft of making orange soda. However, this is strictly contingent upon a partnership: I will contribute the technology and equipment as capital for a fifty percent stake, while your township will contribute the oranges and labor for the other fifty percent."

"We will jointly run a single soda factory. Furthermore, I happen to possess some canning formulas and processes that we can also cooperate on in the future. But if you expect to get something for nothing, I'm sorry, but that's simply not going to happen."

Chen Huajiang looked her in the eye and spoke with utmost seriousness. In later eras, this was the most normal form of partnership imaginable, but in the present day, it was a delicate matter indeed. After all, the controversy surrounding the famous Foolish Melon Seeds enterprise was raging fiercely at that moment, centering precisely on whether private businesses should be nationalized. It would take a few more months before the upcoming party congress settled the debate, after which private factories, workshops, and companies would spring up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.

"So, are you a capitalist roader after all?" Zhao Hongmei asked suddenly, her brow furrowing deeply as she stared at him.

Chen Huajiang rolled his eyes in silent exasperation and retorted, "Can we please leave those labels out of this? Can we keep things simple?"

"Here is what we'll do: let's sign an agreement first. If it proves unviable later on, the factory reverts entirely to you."

"However, every gain comes with a sacrifice: if the political winds shift in the future, I must hold a fifty-one percent controlling stake in the factory," Chen Huajiang added solemnly. He understood the internal conflict she faced—she wanted to accomplish something meaningful, yet feared violating regulations and inviting disaster.

"Very well!"

True to her word, upon hearing Chen Huajiang's terms, Zhao Hongmei nodded in agreement.

"Tomorrow, I will lead my men to back you up. Afterward, I'll report the soda and canning factory proposal to the township mayor. I cannot make the final decision entirely on my own authority, but I imagine it won't be an issue."

"And even if complications arise, at the very worst, our production brigade will cooperate with you directly."

Zhao Hongmei stood up, extended her hand, and shook Chen Huajiang's vigorously with a broad, delighted smile. From her perspective, they were getting an absolute bargain! No matter how political trends shifted, if things went public, their township or production brigade would end up owning the entire soda factory; if they went private, they would merely be parting with a single percentage point of equity.

"Deal. Pleasure doing business with you," Chen Huajiang breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, having reached a verbal agreement on the matter.

Inwardly, he was thoroughly pleased. He had not expected that recruiting reinforcements would not only cost him nothing, but actually land him a lucrative business venture. As for the ideological friction between public and private ownership, only someone like Zhao Hongmei would obsess over it. For someone like Chen Huajiang, who knew the trajectory of the future, was there any need for anxiety? None whatsoever.

The next day, at Sancha River.

On the Hedong side stood a massive crowd of villagers from Hedong Village. On the Hexi side stood an equally vast multitude from Hexi Village.

The two sides lined opposite banks of the river, though Hexi Village held the upper hand in sheer momentum simply due to having more people. Hexi Village had begun mobilizing its entire population the previous day, whereas Chen Huajiang had chosen not to follow suit on the Hedong side. Dragging the elderly and children along served no purpose; gathering warm bodies merely to inflate appearances was far too crude.

"Chen Huajiang, what do you have to say for yourself today? When do we start fighting?"

Zhao Shanhua stepped forward, shouting across the river at the top of his lungs toward Chen Huajiang. Today, his bravado had fully returned, and bolstered by the psychological advantage of superior numbers, his presence felt even more imposing than before.