Returning to the small mountain village of '86, intelligence updated daily.

The Zhou family's lunch was very lavish, the kind of lavishness that would make others envious.

There was still some leftover stir-fried musk deer meat and stewed tendons from last night. Since there were two fewer strong men at lunch, the food was consumed much more slowly.

The family had leftovers by the end of the meal, but there simply wasn't enough for dinner.

After Zhou Rui finished eating and drinking, he told his mother, then his grandparents, and then took his younger brother Zhou Ming to the town market.

Walking down the street, Zhou Ming said sarcastically:

"Brother, should we go and call Zhao Qingya...?"

He was met with a sharp rap on the head, and Zhou Ming winced and clutched his head in pain.

They walked out of the house and onto the country road. When they reached Wang Er's house, a quarrel broke out.

"Chen Li, you shameless bitch, I'm so incredibly unlucky to have married you!"

"Why didn't I discover your true nature sooner? What a sin!"

"Wang Er, how dare you say that? Don't you know how many seconds it took you to lose control?"

"Li Dehua is way stronger than you!"

"Chen Li, get out of here. We're getting a divorce tomorrow."

"Divorce? No way! Who will raise the child if we divorce? Let me tell you, I'm sticking with you for life, and you're not getting away."

......

The two Zhou brothers exchanged a glance, both seeing amusement in each other's eyes.

After lingering for a short while, the two left. After walking a short distance, Zhou Ming coughed lightly:

"Brother, this Wang Er... is even weaker than Li Dehua."

His response was another heavy blow, but this time, Zhou Rui still said:

"Who could have imagined it? It's not impossible that Li Dehua was in a weak position because of Chen. However, Wang Er deserved it."

"He did say one thing correctly, and he may have indeed done something wrong; he was ungrateful for his words."

"But what are you thinking about all day, you little brat? You want a beating?"

Zhou Ming wisely kept quiet, but judging from his expression, he was clearly watching the show with amusement and no sympathy.

After this little incident, the two walked a distance further and passed by the Zhao family's house. The Zhao family's door was open, but there was no one at the door, presumably in the backyard.

Zhou Rui didn't go in to chat; he just glanced at the room and left. His younger brother, Zhou Ming, glanced at Zhou Rui beside him and said:

"Brother, aren't you going in to call her?"

Zhou Rui withdrew his gaze and shook his head:

"No, everyone has things to do. We can't focus all our attention on this. We should just leave it to fate. The most important thing is that we must enrich and strengthen ourselves."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Ming surprisingly did not make a sarcastic remark, but simply nodded, as if he understood the reasoning behind it.

Seeing this, Zhou Rui asked with great interest:

"Looks like you've made some progress. Tell me about it, bro."

Zhou Ming scratched his head, uncertainly saying:

"I don't know if I've gained anything from this, but I feel that what you said makes a lot of sense. Everyone has their own things to do. If we focus all our attention on others, what about ourselves?"

"I also think that people should prioritize themselves. Only when you are strong will others respect you."

"Like our family, when we were rich, we often saw people like Wang Er trying to curry favor with us."

At this moment, the two passed by a neighbor's house, where a vicious dog was tied up in front of the door. The dog then started barking wildly at the two of them.

Seeing this, Zhou Ming pointed at the vicious dog and said, "But once a person falls on hard times, even the dogs on the street will bite them like mad..."

Zhou Rui, who was standing next to him, had only asked casually, but after hearing the answer, he clearly stopped in his tracks and turned his head slightly to look at Zhou Ming next to him.

The latter noticed Zhou Rui's unusual behavior and also turned to look at him:

"What's wrong, bro? Am I wrong? But I really think it's true..."

After several seconds, Zhou Rui shook his head, his tone full of agreement:

"Brother, you're absolutely right. Only when we are strong can we avoid being bullied by others."

"We need strength so that others won't dare to underestimate us. This is a prerequisite for being respected. To put it more seriously, even if others want to use you, you must have value to be used..."

"It is truly tragic if a person lives their entire life without even having any value to be used."

Zhou Rui spoke with great conviction, and after listening attentively, Zhou Ming said, somewhat bewildered:

"Brother, I understand the first part, but I don't understand the second part."

Zhou Ming asked honestly, but Zhou Rui just smiled and didn't continue on that topic. Instead, he spoke slowly:

"Don't worry, it's best if you don't understand. Let's go, let's go to the market."

These two sentences are quite cruel, and they are the conclusions that Zhou Rui reached in his previous life after struggling and fighting his way through life.

Most of the time, the bridges between people are actually based on mutual interests. If you are beneficial to others, then you are a guest of honor in their eyes.

Conversely, if you are ordinary and inconspicuous, and others cannot benefit from you, then naturally not many people will pay attention to you.

Reality is harsh, which is why Zhou Rui told his younger brother that the most important thing is to strengthen oneself first, as this is the foundation of everything.

The two continued walking along the country road, passing many villagers on their way to the market.

As he walked, after passing many people, Zhou Rui noticed a conversation between two people ahead.

"Zhang Chengyun, how's your tea plantation? You're the only one in our village who grows tea; it must be tough."

The speaker was a middle-aged man in his forties, whom Zhou Rui recognized as a Taoist priest surnamed Zhang from the village.

The Taoist priest was named Zhang Sheng. In the village, everyone called him Taoist Zhang or Mr. Zhang. Every household would ask him to perform rituals when someone passed away.

He also has a master, but he hasn't been helping in recent years.

The person he was talking to was also surnamed Zhang, because although there were many surnames in the village, Zhang was the most common.

They were not related by blood; they were merely descendants of servants from a wealthy family.

As for this person surnamed Zhang, Zhou Rui was very familiar with him—no, not really familiar, just someone Zhou Rui had been thinking about lately.

Zhang Chengyun is the one who planted a tea field. His family wasn't particularly wealthy to begin with, and those tea trees were planted in partnership with some rich people in the town.

As a result, the tea didn't fetch much price locally because they didn't know that there was a tea-producing area in the neighboring city.

Basically, the tea from several surrounding cities comes from there.

This has led to poor sales of local tea.

Tea farmer Zhang Chengyun responded with a worried expression:

"Oh, Taoist Zhang, please don't laugh at me. This tea is really hard to sell. The price is getting lower every year, and it looks like we're about to break even..."

"I don't know how to tell those guys who put in the money. It looks like we're about to lose everything, down to our underwear. Sigh."

Zhang Chengyun sighed repeatedly, feeling quite helpless. Information was scarce back then, and there were simply not as many information channels as in later generations.

Nowadays, people in the village mainly contact others by writing letters, and only go to the post office for urgent matters.

People's sources of information about the outside world are limited to newspapers, books, or a few radio channels.

There are many illiterate people now, and most villagers don't know many words, so how can they understand newspapers and books?

This leads to a fundamental problem: ordinary people don't know anything about market research, let alone the fluctuations in tea prices.

However, Zhou Rui, who was walking behind and deliberately slowing down, felt a surge of excitement.

Zhou Rui had kept the previous information about rising tea prices in mind, but due to other matters and a lack of capital, the matter was put on hold.

So Zhou Rui hadn't even had a chance to go find Zhang Chengyun before he ran into the real deal!