Chapter 191

When Wei Sheng received a call from Wu Qionghua and heard that the villagers in Shenwu Ridge had gone crazy trying to pull strings just to join her in growing tea tree mushrooms, he couldn’t help but laugh.

Nothing attracts people like scarcity. He had already noticed this dynamic before. So many poverty alleviation cadres, full of passion and armed with promising projects, had gone to the countryside to help villagers out of poverty—only to be met with closed doors time and again.

It wasn’t because they lacked enthusiasm, nor because their projects weren’t viable. The real issue lay in a deeply ingrained mindset shared by many: anything that comes knocking on your door uninvited is probably no good.

Take marriage, for example. In rural areas where young, unmarried women are in high demand, if a family suddenly tells the matchmaker they don’t want a single coin of bride price—in fact, they’re even willing to throw in a dowry just to marry their daughter into your family—what would you think?

Even the poorest families would start to wonder: is there something wrong with this girl?

But the more Wu Qionghua kept things under wraps, the more she acted like she didn’t want others to get rich with her, the more the villagers were dying to get in on it. They came knocking on her door one after another, pleading to be included.

Ahem. So, sometimes it’s not that the poverty alleviation cadres aren’t working hard enough. It’s just that they haven’t seen through human nature.

After a bit of guidance from Wei Sheng, Wu Qionghua seemed to have had a breakthrough. When relatives and friends from both her own side and her two boyfriends’ families came asking to join in, she didn’t agree to a single one.

Then, only after everyone had left disappointed, she quietly met with Wei Fang and Wei Ping in private to explain her dilemma.

The reason she hadn’t agreed on the spot was because the mushroom spawn packs had been obtained through Wei Sheng’s personal connections, sourced at an insider price from a mushroom research institute under the provincial agricultural university. The supply was limited, ahem…

When the relatives showed visible disappointment, they “reluctantly” offered some consolation: “It’s too late to get in this year, but once we set up our village’s own cooperative next year, we can bring you in through that. Then we can place a bulk order with the research institute under the cooperative’s name. Might even get a better price than this year.”

Though it meant waiting another year to make money, the idea that next year’s spawn might be cheaper—and the chance to see whether Wu Qionghua’s crop would actually turn a profit this year—was enough to soothe their worries.

Thinking ahead to next year, when they’d need Wu Qionghua’s help to join the cooperative, the relatives eagerly offered their help. When her family harvested the mushrooms, if they were short on hands, they insisted she call them.

Before Wei Sheng’s “brainwashing,” Wu Qionghua would’ve felt bad about using her relatives for free labor. But now? She was no longer the same Wu Qionghua.

She nodded modestly and said she’d definitely need their help when the time came.

Of course, there’d be no money involved—just three meals a day. And while they were at it, they could see for themselves how high-yield her tea tree mushrooms were. She was sure that once word got out, people would be lining up from one end of the village to the other to join the cooperative next year.

Boss Wei had already promised: if over half the households in Shenwu Ridge signed up for the tea tree mushroom cooperative, she’d get a bonus. The more households that joined, the bigger the bonus.

So really, there are no true scammers in this world—only opportunities too good to pass up. That’s what creates scammers.

But Wu Qionghua didn’t see herself as a scammer. If things went the way Boss Wei said they would, and they managed to develop a mushroom-growing base in Shenwu Ridge like the one in Langshan Village, then any household with a few dozen acres of forest could earn over a hundred thousand yuan a year just from growing mushrooms under the trees. Wouldn’t the villagers worship her?

She might even be asked to light incense at ancestral ceremonies—standing right in the front row, shoulder to shoulder with the clan leader!

With Wu Qionghua acting as their “inside agent,” Wei Sheng went all in with the performance. He didn’t show his face at all, nor did he mention anything about starting a cooperative. They made it seem like Wu Qionghua’s family was simply starting a private business.

So the villagers watched as Wu Qionghua’s family got busier by the day.

One day, they invited mushroom experts from the provincial agricultural university to the village to inspect the site and teach them high-yield cultivation techniques.

The next day, they hauled back a truckload of plastic sheeting from the county, saying it was to build small greenhouses to simulate the ideal climate for tea tree mushrooms.

The day after that, they bought 300 chicks from a poultry farm. The experts had said that Shenwu Ridge’s climate was especially suitable for tea tree mushrooms, and this year’s crop would likely be a bumper harvest. When the time came, they’d need lots of help picking mushrooms in the mountains. So they were raising chickens now, planning to make salted eggs during the off-season. When helpers came, they’d serve sticky rice cakes stuffed with cured meat and salted eggs—perfect for eating in the mountains.

Villagers: “!!!”

It was confirmed. The Wu family was definitely going to strike it rich. Otherwise, who would invest this much?

Wu Qionghua’s family suddenly became the most popular people in the village.

When she went up the mountain to check on the mushroom spawn, all the aunties and grannies fought to babysit her child.

When Wei Fang went to cut grass in their medicinal field to feed the pigs, villagers grabbed their hoes and sickles to help. In no time, they’d gathered enough pig feed for the whole day.

Wei Ping was the most popular of all. When word got out that he had gone with Wu Qionghua to Langshan to learn wild mushroom cultivation, even when he was just mixing feed for the chicks in the courtyard, people rushed to help.

“Take a break, Wei Ping! I’ll mix the feed for you. But tell us—does growing mushrooms in Langshan really make that much money? Do people there really all have their own cars now?”

Wei Ping just laughed. “Cars? That’s nothing. Lots of families over there have bought semi-trailer trucks! They use them to haul goods for extra income. During the busy season, they help the village cooperative transport mushrooms. I heard many of the men can drive those big rigs. They make at least this much every year!”

He held up two fingers and whispered, “Two hundred thousand a year. A truck pays for itself in two or three years. After that, it’s all profit, and the truck is yours. I already told Qionghua, once we get through this busy season, I’m going to the county to get my A2 license¹. Then we’ll buy a truck of our own. We’ve got plenty of goods to move anyway. Why let someone else make that money when we can earn it ourselves?”

The villagers all nodded. That made perfect sense! You had to be smart with your money. No wonder Wu Qionghua was a boss—just look at her taste in men. The Wei brothers were both money-making machines!

Their village did have a few guys who drove big trucks, but they were just working for someone else, earning a few thousand yuan a month in hard labor. Wei Ping was different. From the sound of it, Wu Qionghua was going to buy him a truck outright. That would make him the first man in the village to own his own rig.

That was some serious status.

One young man in the village, a former middle school classmate of Wei Ping’s, lingered after everyone else had gone home for lunch, clearly reluctant to leave. Wei Ping thought he was just trying to mooch a meal, so he started preparing to cook. But the old classmate looked around to make sure no one was watching, then sidled up to Wei Ping and lowered his voice.

“Pingzi, we’ve been bros for years, right? You know I’ve always had your back.”

He leaned in even closer. “Since your wife already accepted both you and your brother, do you think she’d be willing to take in one more? My family’s got over forty acres of forest, and twelve acres of mountain fields. I can even drive an excavator…”

Wei Ping’s face turned black instantly. “Get lost!”

He didn’t even offer lunch. He shoved the guy out the door and slammed it shut, then immediately deleted him from his contacts.

Damn it. I treated you like a friend, and you have the nerve to lust after my wife?

At lunch, Wu Qionghua was puzzled. “Where’s your classmate? Weren’t you going to invite him to eat with us?”

She’d even stopped by the convenience store earlier and bought two bottles of good liquor.

Wei Ping’s expression darkened. His eyes darted around before he explained, “He said he couldn’t pay back his online loans² and wanted to borrow money from me to cover the hole. We don’t have that kind of money right now. And who knows what he borrowed it for? What if he’s been gambling?”

Clearly, all the Wei family’s brains had gone to Wei Ping. As soon as he said that, Wu Qionghua’s impression of his old classmate plummeted.

She couldn’t help it—her ex-husband had also been a gambling addict who turned to online loans when he ran out of cash.

With one potential rival quietly eliminated, Wei Ping shot a proud glance at his older brother. But seeing him standing there like a wooden post, he rolled his eyes and sighed inwardly. He really had sacrificed so much for this family.

The entire second half of the year passed in a flurry of activity on Shenwu Ridge. Not long after Wu Qionghua’s household planted their mushroom spores, it was time for the annual harvest of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs. The Wu family estate once again bustled with life, and the villagers no longer had time to stand around watching the commotion. Whole families mobilized, heading up the mountain before dawn with food packed for the day so they wouldn’t have to come down at noon. They worked straight through until nightfall, then delivered the day’s harvest to the temporary collection point.

At the collection point, aside from Wu Qionghua and her two husbands, there were also two quality inspectors sent by the pharmaceutical factory.

The collection process had been rehearsed in advance: Wu Qionghua and Wei Ping would inspect the herbs first, assess their quality, and assign a grade before weighing them. The factory’s inspectors would then conduct a secondary inspection, verify the results, and sign off with a stamp. A slip bearing this information would be affixed to the mouth of the burlap sack containing the herbs. That way, if any issues arose later, they could trace the bag back to the supplier and the responsible quality inspector.

Once the herbs were collected, Wei Fang and a few hired hands would carry the sacks to the truck. As soon as the truck was full, it would depart that very night, arriving at the pharmaceutical plant in Yuan Stream Township before midnight.

At the same time, inside the Yuanxi Biotech facility in Yuan Stream Township, hundreds of workers hired in advance were busy sorting herbs on the production line. Normally, this season would be peak time for harvesting potatoes.

But then again, potatoes could sit in the ground for a while without spoiling. At worst, a few would get nibbled by field mice. How much money could they really bring in?

So instead, everyone was scrambling to get a temp job at the pharmaceutical factory.

This was the factory’s busiest season and also when they were most short-staffed, so the wages were especially attractive. From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., a full twelve-hour shift, with a 40-minute lunch break and a meal provided. One day earned you 240 yuan.

If you were diligent and didn’t take a single day off, you could make over 7,000 yuan in a month. In three months, that was more than 20,000 yuan.

In the past, a whole family could toil away for two years, and after deducting the cost of seeds, pesticides, and fertilizer, they still might not make 20,000 yuan. If they hadn’t already planted this year’s potatoes, they wouldn’t even bother harvesting them. They’d rather keep working at the factory.

Think about it—7,000 yuan a month, over 40,000 in six months! Add in overtime pay and attendance bonuses when the factory was especially busy, and you could net 50,000 yuan in half a year. Who would still want to grow potatoes?

Ironically, all the county’s previous efforts to persuade the villagers to switch from potatoes to higher-value crops had failed, no matter how hard they tried. But the temp wages at the pharmaceutical factory finally convinced the locals: next year, no more potatoes! They’d clear the fields and plant medicinal herbs instead.

That way, they could earn money from selling herbs and earn another income working at the factory. No matter how you calculated it, it was far more profitable than growing potatoes or sweet potatoes.

Which just goes to show—there’s no such thing as someone who truly wants to give up on life. It’s just that the money hasn’t been good enough.

Don’t believe it? Try putting up a hiring notice at any factory: daily wage of 1,000 yuan, paid at the end of each day. You’d have people lining up to screw in bolts from Hainan all the way to the northeast.

The poverty alleviation cadres of Nine Streams County couldn’t help but get teary-eyed. They knew this tactic worked too—but who else could afford to pay the kind of wages Wei Sheng did? The tricks of the God of Wealth weren’t something just anyone could copy.

(End of chapter)

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Translator’s Notes

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1. A2 license: A category of driver’s license in China permitting the operation of heavy-duty trucks and large vehicles, essential for commercial transport in rural economies. ↩
2. online loans: High-interest, short-term microloans obtained through mobile apps in China, often leading to debt cycles due to predatory lending practices. ↩