Chapter 18: Next Life!
When the village chief led the villagers to start digging the reservoir, the people in town were also rebuilding houses.
After Magistrate Bai counted the casualties, he discovered that due to advance prevention measures, not many people died from the earth dragon turning over; at most, they suffered minor injuries.
The situation was so good partly because Gu Yu had contacted Magistrate Bai earlier, informing him of an impending earthquake.
Since it wasn’t the first time dealing with Gu Yu, Magistrate Bai didn’t disbelieve him. Instead, he took his words very seriously, believing that proper prevention was necessary to avoid disaster for Lian Town if the earth dragon truly appeared.
And the facts proved Gu Yu’s words to be true.
This made Magistrate Bai sigh with admiration for Gu Yu of the Gu family while arranging personnel to handle post-disaster matters, marveling at how Gu Yu seemed to know everything!
He could even predict earthquakes in advance; this experience truly opened his eyes.
“Your Excellency, people in town are starting to buy grain at high prices. Should we warn them?”
“The earth dragon has only appeared for a few days, and people are already trying to profit from the disaster. They are truly driven mad by money… Take your men, confiscate grain from merchants who are buying at high prices, and then lock them up in prison for a few days to teach them a lesson.”
“This… isn’t that too harsh?”
As Magistrate Bai pondered how Gu Yu knew about the earth dragon’s appearance, his advisor suddenly spoke to him, mentioning that there were unscrupulous merchants in town trying to take advantage of the situation to buy grain and inflate prices.
Hearing this, Magistrate Bai’s brows furrowed. What he said next surprised the advisor, who hesitated, wondering if the punishment was too severe.
After all, offending these merchants, even for a magistrate, would make his future days difficult, as there were many difficult characters among these merchants.
Furthermore, Lian Town’s development also relied on these merchants.
“Not harsh at all. This is not a normal time. These merchants are deceiving farmers with high prices to sell their stored grain. Although it’s a voluntary transaction, have you considered… now, after the earthquake, a batch of grain has already been lost. If these merchants sell the grain to other places and then sell the remaining grain at a higher price when Lian Town faces a grain shortage, can the civilians afford prices more than ten times higher?”
“Ten times!”
“Do you think they will still sell at low prices? I’m already worried that Lian Town will fall into a food crisis.”
While speaking with the advisor, Magistrate Bai sighed and shook his head, thinking that the coming year would likely be difficult!
After understanding the implications, the advisor hurriedly took his men to the market to apprehend these people, fearing that if they were any later, the group of unscrupulous merchants would have already bought up all the grain.
…
“Xiao Xiang, have you heard? Someone in town is buying grain at high prices! My goodness, it’s three times the original price! Many people around have gone to sell!”
“Is that true? Three times the price, that’s too expensive!”
“It’s true, even I went to town and sold quite a bit, earning two taels of silver!”
“After the earth dragon appeared, the prices of everything have gone up several times. It feels so great!”
“You all should stop selling blindly. What if you don’t have enough food to eat at home?”
“How could that be! As long as we leave enough to eat at home, it’s fine. It’s worth more to sell it anyway. We can plant grain again later, but prices like this don’t come around often!”
“You guys say, how much must the Gu family have earned with so much grain! I’m so envious. If I had known, I would have planted more land!”
After the earth dragon appeared, while the men of Yang Family Village were building the reservoir with the village chief, the women of the village sat under the trees at the village entrance, chatting animatedly.
When talking about recent events, especially the persistently high grain prices, the women were very enthusiastic. Each of them wondered whether to sell their surplus grain, as they couldn’t eat that much anyway.
Converting it into silver would allow them to buy many things.
However, some disagreed with selling grain.
This made the village women’s conversation even more heated. Gu Qingheng, who was nearby, listened with great interest, thinking about how expensive grain could be sold… No wonder many people had come to buy grain recently.
However, the prices they offered were the same as before, indicating they wanted to buy grain at a low price while the Gu family was unaware of the market price.
But did these people not consider who they were dealing with…
Did his brother-in-law look like a pushover?
In the end, Gu Yu directly refused with two words: “Not selling,” and sent those people away, adding, “Don’t come again after this.” Many people regretted their actions, thinking they shouldn’t have been greedy for small gains and now had angered Gu Yu.
Angering the major grain producer of Lian Town had very serious consequences.
At the very least, there was no point in thinking about buying grain from Gu Yu in the future.
After Gu Yu refused the requests to buy grain, to get rid of the trouble of people constantly visiting, he directly wrote “No Grain” on a wooden sign and hung it at the entrance to prevent anyone from coming to grab a bargain.
Thinking about it now, his brother-in-law truly had foresight!
However, Gu Qingheng was more inclined to believe that Gu Yu wanted to sell his grain at a higher price, so anyone coming to buy at a low price was trying to rob him of his money…
Thinking of this, Gu Qingheng felt that he should think better of his brother-in-law; perhaps it wasn’t as he thought!
Although, the probability of that was 99%.
“As for grain, maybe the price will be even higher in a while!”
“You all are fine, having the leisure to care about grain issues. I’m worried about where I’ll live in the future! My house collapsed from the tremor, and I don’t have the money to rebuild.”
“Sister Xiao Hua, don’t be sad. Isn’t there still the village chief? Not too long ago, it was rumored that the village chief was the reincarnation of an old immortal, and he would definitely ensure you had a place to live.”
“Now that we don’t know if there will be more earth dragons, we can’t rebuild. I guess the village chief is also very troubled!”
“Can’t you just squeeze in? Let’s see, perhaps we’ll find families with extra houses to stay with for a while!”
“Hehe, if we could stay in the Gu family’s house, wouldn’t it be heavenly to eat and drink meat every day!”
“Isn’t Qingheng here? You can ask him how it is, if life is blissful.”
As Gu Qingheng listened to the village women chatting, he didn’t expect them to drag their family into the conversation again. Seeing many gazes turn towards him, he grinned and didn’t say much, only thinking that if the villagers could move into the Gu family’s house, they would be truly amazing!
Right now, he was constantly displeasing his brother-in-law at home, who always wanted to kick him out so he could have a sweet two-person world with his sister…
How could the villagers possibly move into the Gu family’s house!
Next life!
Alas, if his Sister Lian wasn’t away, he would have moved out to live with Sister Lian.
Then he could be sweet with Sister Lian, hehe…
