Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 167 Should we look for it? Or should we not?

Li Xing said, "The police station makes a little money every month from these billiard halls and dance parties. If you talk to Zhang about it, he probably won't dare to take your money."

Xiao Wei shook his head and laughed, saying, "Why bother with that? If we're going to do it, we'll follow the rules. We'll give what we're owed. This place is bound to cause trouble for the police station."

Hei Zi said, "Why don't we build another dance hall next door? We're already in the business anyway, and it won't cost much. It just requires someone to protect you, but you guys have plenty of connections."

Xia Maosheng said, "We're going to do everything: karaoke bars, dance halls, billiard halls, restaurants."

Old Hou said, "You could even run a shopping mall, selling clothes, shoes, daily necessities, home appliances, and all sorts of things. There are quite a few private businesses doing this now, but none of them can make it big. Your house here is several hundred square meters, that's enough."

Li Xing said, "Opening a bathhouse is fine, but it's too much trouble. You have to go to saunas and repair pools, which is a huge project, but it's profitable."

Xiao Wei looked around at this person and that person, and said, "How can you all be so ambitious? You haven't even started playing billiards yet, and you're already thinking about public bathhouses. Do you want to build a moon landing center? You might as well go to space."

Seven or eight people burst into laughter, and that was the end of it.

Xiao Wei took the keys from Li Wen and shoved them into Huang Laowu's hand, saying, "That's settled then. This house is yours now. Find time to get things done. We'll talk about the rest after this place is set up."

Hei Zi said, "How about the dance hall? We can set up both sides at the same time, just one stove will do."

Xiao Wei asked, "How do you set up a dance hall?"

Hei Zi said, "Just build a platform, big enough for a few people to sit on, and leave the rest empty. Build firewalls around it for seating, that's all. Oh, and it needs a sound system."

Xiao Hong tugged at Xiao Wei and said, "Xiao Wei, Xiao Wei, this is something we can do. I think it's more useful than the billiards side."

Xia Maosheng asked, "Why?"

Xiao Hong was a little embarrassed, and leaned her head against Xiao Wei, saying, "The house is so big, building a firewall won't take up much space. We can put a small stage in front, install a sound system, and then we can use it for banquets and events. For weddings and such, we can just set up tables inside. When there are no banquets, we can just dance. It can be used for everything."

Li Xing said, "If anyone wants to rent a place for an event, that's fine too. I'll charge a few hundred yuan a day. There are too few houses this big these days. It's freezing cold outside. We have long, cold days here. It's only hot for a few days in the summer."

Xia Maosheng said to Xiaowei, "Yeah, you can do it, that's really something. How did you two get your brains all crammed together?"

Xiao Wei nodded and said, "Let's do it then. It's good that there are people who need to do business here, so we don't have to make a mess of the building. Sister Zhang said the day before yesterday that if a few tables of people from the company come in a day, we should definitely not come to do business. It's tiring and troublesome, and it makes a mess of everything."

Hei Zi was bewildered and asked, "What do we do now? I've never done this before."

Xiao Wei said, "It's easy. Just build a firewall, stretch red cloth or something on the wall, hang some plastic flowers on top, and add lots of lights to make it bright."

Hei Zi said, "Then what about dancing? Dancing can't be too bright, we need UV lights too."

Xiao Wei said, "Just install one set of bright lights, and another set of colored lights like UV lights. You can just turn on whichever one you need."

Xia Maosheng said, "Then let's just set up the two bigger rooms at the front. We can use them together for business, since they're big and have lots of tables. When we're not doing business, one can dance and the other can sing, while the other can play billiards. We can leave the two middle rooms there for now and see how they go later."

Old Hou said, "If we build firewalls like this, each of us will have to build our own, and there won't be any way to connect them."

Li Xing asked, "What's behind that? Behind the house, what's that?"

Oguri Min shouted from the side, "There's a door here! There's a door at the back of this house!" While everyone else was discussing this, she had nothing to do, so she took the key and opened each door to check, and unexpectedly discovered a new world.

They all walked over, through the house, and through the back door to the back of the building. The back door wasn't locked; it opened easily, revealing a narrow, elongated open space, about three meters wide. The ground was paved with cement, and a row of sheds covered it. Judging from the structure, it used to be where the staff heated their meals and dried their belongings. At one end was a self-welded steamer for heating food, but instead of a boiler, it used a makeshift earthen stove, which had already collapsed. At the other end were several stools, strung together with wires, and an apron hung from them, fluttering in the wind.

The land behind the house was higher than the land in front of it. When the house was built, this area must have been leveled by excavating the land in front of it. One side of the open space behind the house was the original earthen slope, about two meters high, similar to the shed above. Xia Maosheng climbed up and took a look; it was just a wasteland with nothing on it. Houses were built along the road on three sides of the wasteland, and the shops on the road blocked the view, so no one noticed that there was such a large open space behind it.

Xia Maosheng jumped down, patted the snow off his hands and the dust off his clothes, and said, "It's quite a large area. You can't see it from the outside, so we don't know whose land it is."

Xiao Wei stood there staring at the earthen slope, lost in thought. After a long while, he asked, "Will rainwater get into the house in the summer?"

Li Xing looked back and forth and said, "That can't be right. The grain depot was here back then. If it had been flooded, it would have been finished long ago. There should be a ditch, but it's probably covered by snow." He pointed to the snow piled up below the earthen slope.

Old Hou said, "If you're worried about water flowing through, just wait until spring when it gets warmer and build a wall here. Dig this earthen slope a bit further back, pile up the yellow earth, and then leave a drain at the beginning."

Xia Maosheng said to Xiaowei, "Let's build a wall here, it'll save us trouble later, and we can just separate them."

Xiao Wei said, "That's fine then. Let's put a small boiler in the back here and let all the firewalls in the rooms go through here. We can clean up this middle room and turn it into an office. We don't have enough private rooms, so we can convert those rooms on the third floor into private rooms so that Geng Sheng and Lao Wu can work here."

Old Hou said, "How big of a boiler would that be? The firewalls in these houses combined would be several hundred meters long. Could they possibly power that?"

Xiao Wei said, "This requires a ground stove. I don't know how to explain it. Never mind, I'll get someone to do it. Setting it up is no problem, but how do we start the stove? We'll need to find a stoker." He asked Xia Maosheng.

Xia Maosheng turned to look at Li Xing, who was bewildered. Li Xing looked at Xiao Wei, then at Xia Maosheng, and finally turned to Huang Laowu, asking, "Should we look for it?"

Huang Laowu blinked: "Looking for it? Or not?" He looked at Lao Hou again: "Looking for it or not?"

Xiao Hong and Li Wen were laughing so hard they couldn't stop. Li Wen grabbed Xiao Hong's hand and squatted down on the ground, saying, "Oh dear, hehehehe, I can't take it anymore, hehe, my stomach hurts, hahaha." Xiao Hong laughed while pulling Li Wen to keep her from falling to the ground, her face turning bright red.

The two of them had the group of men completely bewildered by their laughter. They looked at each other, wondering what had gotten into them. Xiao Wei said, "Let's talk about it back at the hotel. It's too cold here. Are you two even okay? Go back and warm up before you start laughing. Don't hurt yourselves."

Xiao Wei helped Xiao Hong, Xia Maosheng carried Li Wen, and the group of people came out, closed the door, and returned to the restaurant.

Huang Laowu and his two companions took the keys and left. They still had a lot to take care of when they got back. They needed to prepare money and find someone to build a firewall.

I only got it fixed after the internet was down.

(End of this chapter)