I'm incredibly ambitious after being reborn.

Chapter 12 Ancestral Craftsmanship

Taojiazhuang learned about the incident of the trucks being surrounded at the "Jiangxiangli Agricultural Wholesale Market" relatively quickly; such news spreads in just two or three days.

Furthermore, this truckload of goods was collected by Manager Gu Jiancai's men in Taojiazhuang. The amount of money was small, but the nature of the matter was very serious because it was a slap in the face to Taojiazhuang.

So the village chief of Taojiazhuang found Tao Xingfa, one of the "victims". He is a large-scale vegetable grower with a lot of say when selling vegetables, which also makes it easier for other professional and part-time vegetable farmers in Taojiazhuang to sell vegetables.

If Tao Xingfa gets into trouble, it won't just affect one or two families, but dozens.

"Xingfa, Gu Jiancai's car is blocked. I heard it's because of your family's vegetables?"

"Ah."

Tao Xingfa, who was already middle-aged, stammered and only responded with a single word. When he handed out cigarettes to the villagers, he didn't dare to look them in the eye.

He already knew what was going on, but he didn't expect the young man selling fast food in Zhangshi Village to be so ruthless.

Moreover, they are very cunning. On the surface, they are polite and courteous, but on the other hand, they make the North Gate Vegetable Market and the Agricultural Wholesale Market temporarily stop touching the vegetables from Taojiazhuang.

It's unrealistic to open your doors to business and refuse to buy vegetables from Taojiazhuang for an extended period, but dragging it out for ten days or half a month to annoy the vegetable farmers of Taojiazhuang is nothing.

Ultimately, we still need to sit down and talk.

But here's the problem: the young man from Zhangshi Village didn't even bother to ask someone to pass on a message.

"Do you know who or what kind of bastard did this? You grow vegetables quite well and your business is also very proper. If anyone causes trouble, just say so. We in Taojiazhuang are not going to say we have no connection at all!"

"Right! Xingfa, think about it, do you have any ideas? If it's a thug who's been blinded, we can call some people to teach him a lesson and he'll behave!"

"I……"

"The wheels of my tractor were ripped off a couple of days ago. I don't know where those pigs and dogs came from, they did such a despicable thing! Uncle Village Chief, you must get justice for my family!"

Before Tao Xingfa could speak, his wife started yelling at the top of her lungs. She mentioned that the wheels of their tractor used for hauling goods had been removed, and that there were still more than a thousand kilograms of vegetables that hadn't been transported out, which made her curse and swear incessantly.

However, she didn't connect it to the young man's family in Zhangshi Village, even though Tao Xingfa had mentioned it to her while watching TV. At the time, he sounded quite smug, as if he had the satisfaction of a seasoned veteran in control of the young man's family.

The thrill of trampling people underfoot didn't last long; now they've suffered a setback, and the couple each have their own thoughts.

As a seasoned veteran, Tao Xingfa had already guessed who was behind his scheme, while his wife had no such idea whatsoever. She only felt that someone was jealous of their family's wealth and wanted to ruin them.

Seeing that Tao Xingfa seemed hesitant to speak, the village chief didn't say anything on the spot, but instead said he remembered something and would call him.

That night, Tao Xingfa avoided his wife and children and made a phone call to the village chief's house.

"Uncle, it was probably done by a young man from Zhangshi Village..."

Tao Xingfa held the receiver and quietly recounted the business deal he had signed with Zhang Daxiang to supply fresh vegetables. He mentioned that not only had he breached the contract, but the penalty for breach of contract had also been halved under the guise of "local business".

The penalty for breach of contract was supposed to be 1,000 yuan, but he only paid 500. He saw the young man was being polite and there was nothing he could do, so he thought the old hand was just bullying him. He never imagined that 500 yuan would cause such a huge problem. "Have you forgotten your brain in a latrine?! Is this how you do things?!"

The village chief was stunned. He hadn't expected Tao Xingfa to be so audacious. You yourself knew to use the phrase "from this village" when paying the penalty for breach of contract. What? Did all the elders of the younger generation die? Are they not from this village?
"I was blinded by greed at the time..."

"Is this greed? You've gone mad!"

The village chief could guess what Tao Xingfa was thinking. He was probably thinking that if the young man told his elders, at most the elders would come to Taojiazhuang to demand an explanation, and at most they would have to pay back the five hundred yuan he had renege on.

Unfortunately, none of their elders came to Taojiazhuang.

They'll go all out to destroy you.

This job doesn't really feel like much to someone Tao Xingfa's age. After all, the people of the "Zheng" generation in Zhangshi Village are all honest and hardworking, belonging to a relatively dutiful generation.

But for village chiefs of that age, the feeling is completely different. In the old days and old society, they personally experienced the way of doing things of the "Qi" generation and the "Zhi" generation in Zhangshi Village.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't too bad among his peers. The main issue was the "Zhi" generation. Back when the surrounding farmland and rivers were still reed marshes, Zhang Zhixu from the Zhangshi Village was one of the targets of the warlords' "bandit suppression" campaign.

On the surface, they were just ordinary people who cleared land and farmed the land, but behind the scenes, they had more than a thousand water fortresses, mills, and oil mills within a radius of several hundred miles. Zhangshi Village alone accounted for more than a hundred of them, and the rest were people they knew by visiting each other.

When the raftsmen from Jiangnan West Road arrived in Jiyang City, their first request was to ask Zhang Zhixu for help with the escort mission, and their second request was to give him twenty silver dollars.

With these, the journey through the area would be smooth and unimpeded. Water pirates and lake bandits would give them face, and it wouldn't be a big problem whether the various goods were unloaded at Zhangshi Village or continued down the canal into the sea.

Shedding the "bandit" identity is a thing of the new era. The village chief of Taojiazhuang even visited Zhang Zhixu, that kind-faced old man in his later years.

Who would have thought that this old man, who looked just like a scholar, was practically a highway robber in his youth? Although it's hard to say for sure that he actually did it, no one has any solid evidence that Zhang Zhixu did it, since he had two brothers who had legitimate positions in the county at the time.

Two brothers who were "scholars," and he was the third brother, could he really be a bandit?

The village chief of Taojiazhuang now only thinks that Zhang Zhixu must have treated people to "wonton noodles" before, otherwise his great-grandson could not have been so skilled in the business.

It's obvious that they come from a family with a strong sense of tradition and have passed down authentic skills.

She's only eighteen.

That's how it happened.

"I'll go to Zhangshi tomorrow morning to sound things out first. You two these days... sigh, let's leave it at that for now. Damn it, no wonder you said I was still confused, unable to understand why the North Gate market suddenly underwent such a large-scale inspection, and why street vendors weren't allowed to set up stalls to sell vegetables. So that's the reason behind it..."

There is a man named Zhang Zhengyun at the North Gate Market. Although he is not Zhang Daxiang's biological uncle, he is a cousin of Zhang Daxiang and belongs to the "Zheng" generation in Daxing.

At his age, the village chief of Taojiazhuang naturally knew everything. Zhang Zhengyun's father was named Zhang Qishun, and his grandfather was named Zhang Zhiyu. Zhang Zhiyu worked as a "secretary" in the city and later as a secretary. When the village chief of Taojiazhuang was young, he thought that the old man from the Zhang family was the most prestigious in the countryside.

Whether the older generation is still powerful or not, I don't know, but among the younger generation, Zhang Daxiang from the Three Ranks is definitely not someone to be trifled with.

(End of this chapter)