Chapter 12: Gift-Giving!
The system vaguely sensed that Rong Ziyin might have ulterior motives.
Rong Ziyin looked dead serious: “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a respectable person.”
As he spoke, he withdrew thirty salted duck eggs and fifteen salted fish from the system. Calculating, it was just enough for three days’ worth of purchases. A net profit of one hundred and seventy yuan.
The System sighed helplessly, “Host, doesn’t this repetitive routine make you feel a little… uneasy?”
Rong Ziyin shrugged, “Why should it? This is just standard procedure, right?”
The System fell silent, suddenly remembering that Rong Ziyin’s original plan was to build his fortune by selling salted duck eggs.
“So how much have you earned in total now?”
Rong Ziyin calculated, “Over three hundred!”
“Then are you going to transfer money to the loan shark?”
“Of course!” Rong Ziyin thought for a moment. It had been several days since his last payment to the loan shark. As a creditor owed a massive 200,000 yuan, the debtor’s silence must have the gentleman on edge.
Rong Ziyin calculated with his fingers—today was indeed an auspicious day for repayment. Yet he clearly had no intention of sending the entire sum to the loan shark.
System curiously inquired: Why not?!
Rong Ziyin: One hundred and seventy is a bit much. We need to think about long-term development.
So the System assumed Rong Ziyin would send the usual thirty. To its utter shock, Rong Ziyin transferred only three yuan!
System: …
Rong Ziyin: Three bucks a day, ninety a month. Two hundred thousand will be paid off in just one hundred eighty-five years!
The system was utterly stunned by this outrageous maneuver.
One hundred eighty-five fucking years? By then, even the loan shark’s grandchildren would be half-buried in the ground. Rong Ziyin was truly ruthless.
Sure enough, half a minute later, the loan shark granted Rong Ziyin another 700 anger points. At first glance, it seemed substantial, but it was noticeably less than before.
Rong Ziyin sighed. “Seems even men of passion can sever ties when pushed too far!”
The system rolled its eyes. “Isn’t it because you kept fleecing the same sheep until it was completely bald?”
Rong Ziyin fell silent for a moment. While the system had a point, his greedy nature remained unchanged. He resolved to devise a new scheme to continue fleecing.
Rong Ziyin, like a predator eyeing its prey, fixated on the plump lamb in his grasp, his mind consumed with draining the loan shark dry. Meanwhile, on the other side, as time passed, the unease among Rong Ziyin’s two cousins grew ever more palpable. Even though Rong Ziyin hadn’t uttered a word.
At Rong Ziyin’s uncle’s house, his two cousins gathered to vent their frustrations at each other.
“It’s all your fault! Why didn’t you go to the livestock station earlier when the duck got sick? You had to screw over that bastard. Look at the mess we’re in now!” Rong Chi, Rong Ziyin’s second cousin, opened his mouth with a jab at his older brother.
He’d been in town recently, so he hadn’t been present when the old vet from the station called the village meeting and hadn’t known about the incident.
Now, the moment he returned to the village, he heard that Wang Dazhuang had gotten into trouble and was detained in the county seat. His first instinct was to go home and demand an explanation from Rong Cun.
But this whole thing had been their joint decision. Rong Cun wasn’t stupid—he wasn’t about to take the blame alone. He shot back immediately, “What good does it do to bring this up now? Did I buy those sick ducks? Didn’t you bring them back because you were greedy for a bargain?”
“Now you’re playing the good guy? When it came time to deliver the ducks, you ran faster than anyone!”
“Bullshit! I bought that cheap duck to save money for the household. Besides, it was your idea! You were the one who took the duck from my place. Mark my words, if this blows up, I won’t take any blame!”
“Hah, you think that’s possible?” Rong Cun sneered coldly. “Ever since we were kids, you’ve hated that bastard the most. Remember the night Uncle San got into trouble? That bastard got lost in the mountains and nearly died—wasn’t it you who tricked him into going?”
“Think you can wash your hands of it? No way!”
“And what about you? The first year after the family split, Grandpa and Grandma wanted you to slip him some tuition money secretly. But you pocketed it and blew it all in town within three days!”
“Didn’t you eat the stuff I bought? Didn’t you play with it?”
In no time, the brothers were bickering. They’d been in the same yard since they wore open-crotch pants, and when it came to digging up old grudges, they were ruthless. Soon they were wrestling and fighting.
Finally, Rong Ziyin’s uncle heard the commotion and came out from the inner room. With a loud “Shut it!” he pulled them apart.
“What are you arguing about?! Figure out how to resolve this first!” Rong Ziyin’s uncle was nearly driven mad by these two good-for-nothings.
When Rong Ziyin was young, the way they bullied him was typical childish behavior. Since Rong Ziyin couldn’t prove anything, and they stood to gain from it, everyone turned a blind eye.
After Rong Ziyin left, their family’s reputation plummeted. They truly endured a period of being gossiped about and pointed at.
Fortunately, after Rong Ziyin moved to town, the village rumors gradually died down, and life eventually returned to normal. Only when news of Rong Ziyin’s academic achievements resurfaced would his family become the subject of gossip once more. This was precisely why Rong Cun and Rong Chi harbored such deep hatred toward Rong Ziyin.
But in truth, those two fools didn’t realize that Rong Ziyin’s uncle couldn’t wait for him to spread his wings and never return.
Now that these two had walked right into Rong Ziyin’s hands, his uncle couldn’t sleep a wink at night.
Rong Chi scoffed. “Dad, you’re being way too cautious! That land belonged to Grandpa in the first place. Back when the land was divided based on household size, that bastard wasn’t even born yet! If he wants his own share, it’s perfectly fine for us not to give him any. Now that Grandpa and Grandma are gone, they agreed before passing away that the six mu of land would be split evenly between me and Rong Cun. What right does Rong Ziyin have to claim anything?”
Rong Ziyin’s uncle slapped him hard across the head. “You know full well it was divided by household size! But those two acres were originally registered under Rong Ziyin’s parents’ names. That’s precisely why they changed the registration outside our village. The village chief has changed, but past records aren’t impossible to trace.”
“Don’t you know how expensive land is now? Six acres at two hundred thousand yuan per acre is a million two hundred thousand yuan. Are you trying to stir up trouble and make him get it back?”
Rong Ziyin was young back then and unaware of the details. He simply believed his parents hadn’t left any money in the accounts. Moreover, the Rong family hadn’t divided their household. The three brothers lived in one courtyard, handing over all their earnings to the elders for shared household expenses. So few people truly knew the specifics of the land matter.
Moreover, when the village originally distributed land based on household size, six mu had been allocated to another village. Rong Ziyin’s parents, being honest folk, saw the intense disputes over this and voluntarily claimed it for themselves.
Thus, had those six mu originally belonged to their own village, they would certainly have set them aside for Rong Ziyin. But precisely because they didn’t, they resorted to such outrageous demands. Later, forcing Rong Ziyin out served the same purpose. They feared that once he grew up and understood the scheme, he might return to claim the land.
Though many years have passed, the evidence hasn’t been erased. Moreover, as Rong Ziyin’s uncle grew older, he felt increasingly guilty toward his deceased younger brother. Facing Rong Ziyin suddenly made him feel uneasy.
He’d rather never see him again.
Hearing this detailed explanation, the cousins felt uneasy. They cautiously asked, “Surely not. It’s been over a decade.”
Their uncle remained silent, making the brothers even more anxious.
Earlier this year, they’d made plans: selling those six mu of land would be just enough for each cousin to build a new house. But now…
Right. Who knew if Rong Ziyin remembered? It suddenly dawned on them—the village where Rong Ziyin worked was precisely where those six mu of land were located.
Meanwhile, Rong Ziyin, too, felt a twinge of unease.
He sensed an unusually high level of anxiety. His cousins had definitely tricked him, and they’d surely be anxious about facing the consequences later. But why were his uncle and aunt feeling anxious too?
System: Could it be because they’re cowards?
Rong Ziyin shook his head: Maybe they just miss me.
System Crashed: Rong Ziyin, what kind of face do you have?
Rong Ziyin didn’t bother arguing with it, instead carefully pondering the situation. He naturally had no idea what exactly these people were afraid of now, but that didn’t stop him from slowly investigating.
Rong Ziyin wasn’t stupid; he could roughly guess two possibilities. One was the plot to frame him, and the other, most likely, involved the family estate.
Yet Rong Ziyin knew full well his parents had been ordinary farmers back then. The Rong family didn’t divide assets; there was no hidden stash. That was precisely why he’d ended up leaving with almost nothing.
But it didn’t matter. He’d uncover the truth sooner or later. Besides, it was high time he collected some interest from his two cousins.
Thus, a week later, when the avian flu crisis had largely subsided and the village chiefs of Xiaowang Village and Lujia Village came together to present Rong Ziyin with a banner of commendation, he uttered a single sentence that instantly delivered a decisive blow to those two cousins who had been his constant sources of anxiety. It also caused the village chiefs of both villages to darken their faces simultaneously.
Rong Ziyin declared, “Actually, this banner shouldn’t be for me—it belongs to Rong Cun and Rong Chi. If they hadn’t given those ducks to Wang Dazhuang, letting him screw me over, I never would’ve uncovered this duck plague.”
Rong Ziyin looked earnestly sincere. “Give it to them. They’re the ones who discovered this duck plague.”
“This…” The expressions of the two village chiefs immediately darkened.
The incident where Rong Ziyin and their village chief had caused a scene in the county town hadn’t spread widely in the village yet, so few people knew about it.
But after Rong Ziyin mentioned it, the gossipmongers immediately started digging for details.
The women from the Women’s Federation who had gone to help settle the dispute that day were all present, and they quickly pieced together the story.
“Holy shit! And they’re relatives?!”
“How utterly despicable! What kind of people are they? That whole clan must be rotten to the core!”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about it too. They kicked Young Doctor Rong out when he was just twelve or thirteen. It’s only because he made something of himself—passing the county exams—that he left that family behind.”
“Ugh! What a mess!”
This incident instantly made both the eldest uncle and second uncle’s families notorious.
Rong Ziyin’s second cousin was dating someone, but after hearing about this, the girl immediately broke up with him.
The reason was simple: his character was utterly rotten!
“Damn it! Is that bastard out of his mind!?” Rong Cun was so furious he wanted to grab a weapon and storm over to beat them up.
But Rong Chi, still retaining some sense, kept holding him back. “Think about it—that land!”
“What about the land? I don’t even have a wife anymore!”
“It’s just one woman! Sell the land, and we’ll each get hundreds of thousands to live in apartments in the county seat! With a place to live and a business, there’ll be plenty of pretty women. Just ride out this storm first!”
Rong Chi painted a major source of profit for Rong Cun and forced himself to calm down.
But they hadn’t grasped one crucial thing: this wasn’t a minor offense. It was a major case involving the entire village.
So, barely two days after things quieted down, the village chief and party secretary of Lujia Village came knocking. One word: penalty. Rong Cun, who had personally delivered the duck, was taken straight to the town police station. They said he had broken the law and faced criminal charges.
All because they’d given Wang Dazhuang a single duck!
Rong Ziyin’s two uncles and their entire family were stunned. Yet not a single villager showed sympathy. Even those passing by their door spat venomously.
“Spit! A family of bastards.”
Meanwhile, Rong Ziyin had amassed another fifty consecutive points from the steady stream of emotional energy they provided.
Rong Ziyin calculated that the salted duck eggs and salted fish he’d given to the snack shop couple were nearly sold out. It was time to restock.
So, he pulled out his familiar basket, ready to collect another round of salted fish and duck eggs.
The system was numb: “Host, please, I’m begging you—go wash your face first, okay?”
Rong Ziyin remained steadfast: “Money can’t change your destiny; occult practices can’t save the unlucky. Just accept it!”
This time, not even a gray glow appeared. Thirty-five salted duck eggs and fifteen salted fish materialized precisely before Rong Ziyin.
Rong Ziyin was thoroughly satisfied—after all, his supplies for the coming week were secured!
This time, however, he deliberately set aside ten salted duck eggs and five salted fish.
The system tallied the numbers, a vague sense of foreboding creeping over it.
“Host, what are you up to?”
Rong Ziyin replied, “Gift-giving!”