Flip the table and divide the family property! Take his wife and daughter into the mountains and eat

The entrance to Kaoshantun Village.

It was completely dark, and a dozen or so high-powered flashlights and a few old-fashioned gas lamps were haphazardly hung on the bare branches of the willow tree.

The pale beams of light intertwined and slammed straight onto the muddy ground, illuminating the open space as bright as day.

The once magnificent mahogany round table had long been deformed by the frenzied crowd, with its two corners deeply embedded in the frozen mud.

The pile of gray squirrel pelts in front of the table grew higher and higher, spreading all the way over the hood of the Beijing Jeep and completely blocking the windshield.

The pungent smell of nitrous acid mingled with the raw, bloody odor of freshly peeled flesh, blowing directly into people's noses on the cold wind.

Ah Biao had long since thrown off his mink coat in his irritation. In the sub-zero temperatures, he was only wearing a thin silk shirt, the collar buttons of which had been violently ripped open.

Large beads of sweat streamed down his neck, soaking the fabric of his chest.

He stepped directly onto the knee-deep pile of leather, using both hands and feet to climb onto the roof of the jeep. He gripped a huge gray squirrel skin tightly in each hand, and swung his arms to slap the metal roof hard, making a deafening cracking sound.

"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!"

The veins on Ah Biao's neck bulged as he roared at the night sky, "I've traveled halfway across China and spent three years in the Northeast, and I've never seen so many first-class lashes at once in my life! This is fucking outrageous!"

Ah Biao grabbed the leather bag with both hands, raised it high above his head, and laughed wildly into the air.

In his eyes, this was no poor mountain village, but a gold mine, a ladder to financial freedom for the rest of his life.

Ah Biao suddenly lowered his head and pointed to the four underlings below who were frantically collecting goods around the table.

"receive!"

Ah Biao's booming voice completely drowned out the noise of the crowd: "Not a single one of them is to be missed! Bring them all in! If this batch of goods gets loaded onto the train and gets to the Heihe Port, I'll be washing my feet with bird's nest every day for the rest of my life!"

Ah Biao threw the leather bag off the roof of the car, bent down and grabbed the hair of a young man in a leather jacket standing under the front of the car, forcibly pulling the man's head up.

"Go to the county post office and find the person on duty to make a long-distance call to Mr. Huang."

Ah Biao released his grip, took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit it, and casually threw the matchstick at his underling's face: "Tell Boss Huang, Kaoshantun is a gold mine that can't be dug up! We've collected nearly ten thousand top-quality slaps today alone, and we've completely emptied the Zhao family's pockets!"

Ah Biao took a deep drag of his cigarette and blew thick smoke into his underling's face: "Tell him to hurry up and find a way to get another 200,000 yuan in cash! I'm working through the night!"

The younger brother nodded repeatedly, turned around and shoved aside the villagers who were desperately trying to push forward behind him, then ran wildly towards the county town along the muddy road without looking back.

The crowd below the jeep had gone completely mad, everyone was pushing forward desperately, their shoulders slamming against each other.

An old man from the next brigade lost his left black cloth shoe in the shoving. He didn't bother to pick it up. He stepped barefoot into the ice, grabbed a bulging fertilizer bag with both hands, and shoved the people in front of him, slamming it heavily onto the mahogany round table.

"Five dollars and fifty cents! Count the money!" the old man shouted, his eyes bloodshot.

The henchman behind the table ripped open the bag, shone the flashlight around casually, and without even checking the quality of the bills underneath, pulled out two bundles of ten-yuan notes from the artificial leather bag next to him, tore off a few, and threw the rest into the old man's arms.

The old man shoved the money tightly into his arms and desperately tried to squeeze out.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, a man behind him shoved the old man aside, panting heavily, and slammed seven or eight rusty wire snares, along with the bloody skin he had just peeled off, onto the table, blood dripping down the edge of the table.

"Take mine first! I just caught this from the back mountain! It's still warm!" the man roared, his tongue thick with slurred speech.

The younger brother grabbed the pile of bloody hides and threw them into the mountain of hides behind him, throwing out a few more banknotes in the process.

Liu Shuan, a young worker at the Hongxing Machinery Factory, also squeezed to the front.

His tattered cotton-padded coat was torn in several places by the branches in the old forest, with white cotton wadding coming out.

He clutched three gray squirrel skins tightly in his hands, which were trembling uncontrollably.

Liu Shuan laid the leather flat on the table, his eyes fixed on the money in his underling's hand.

"Three." Liu Shuan swallowed hard and said.

The young man didn't even look at it before pulling out sixteen yuan and fifty cents and handing it over.

Liu Shuan grabbed the banknotes, spat heavily on them, counted them twice by rubbing them between his fingers, then stuffed them into the deepest pocket of his underwear, turned around, pushed through the crowd, and ran back.

"Set three more traps, and we can catch three more," Liu Shuan muttered obsessively as he ran.

The mahogany round table creaked as it was bumped by the crowd, and the cash on it dwindled.

The younger brother threw out handfuls of banknotes, and pieces of leather of various sizes flew one after another toward the jeep.

……

The Zhao Family Compound.

The thick wooden door of the main room was tightly closed, and the gaps in the windows were all stuffed with tattered strips of cloth.

Three kerosene lamps were lit inside the room, their dim yellow flames flickering restlessly within their glass covers.

Four large iron pots were placed on four charcoal stoves, where pickled cabbage, pork belly, blood sausage, and vermicelli were bubbling violently in boiling water.

Thick steam filled the room, and water droplets dripped down the windowpane.

The room was crammed with more than twenty people, all of whom were men who worked for Zhao Shanhe.

No one spoke; the only sounds in the room were the tearing of large pieces of white meat, slurping of vermicelli, and swallowing of strong liquor.

On the kang table in the center of the main room, all four artificial leather bags were unzipped.

More than 50,000 yuan in cash were neatly stacked on the table, one bundle next to the other.

The dark, ink-colored background gleamed with an alluring sheen under the light of the kerosene lamp.

Da Zhuang sat strutting on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), put down the large, rough porcelain bowl in his hand, stretched out his two large, fan-like hands, grabbed the two bundles of banknotes on the table, raised them into the air, and slammed them together with a crisp sound.

"That bastard A-Biao shouted so loudly at the village entrance today that his voice cracked."

Da Zhuang grinned and laughed out loud: "Like a complete idiot, spending tens of thousands to buy our worthless hides made from Glauber's salt, and he still treats them like treasures."

Erga sat to the side, picked up a large bowl of 65-proof sorghum liquor with his uninjured left hand, tilted his head back and took a big gulp, then casually wiped the liquor off his chin.

"That kid was even jumping around on the jeep." Ergazi laughed along, "I think he's lost his mind, spending a bunch of real gold and silver to buy our rotten leaves that can be broken with a single poke."

Upon hearing this, the twenty-odd men in the room all stopped eating and burst into laughter.

The men patted each other on the shoulder, clinked their wine bowls together, and hurled cheerful curses.

Zhao Shanhe sat in the armchair next to the stove, picked up the sorghum wine in the rough porcelain bowl in front of him and drank it all in one gulp. Then he slammed the empty bowl heavily on the wooden table, making a dull thud.

The room fell silent instantly, with more than twenty pairs of eyes fixed on Zhao Shanhe.

Zhao Shanhe took out a bottle of Daqianmen cigarettes from his military overcoat pocket, lit a match, took a deep breath, and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.

"All the goods I had on hand have been sold."

Zhao Shanhe leaned back in his chair, calmly surveying the men in the room, and said, "If you still have any rotten hides at home, bring them all—those infested with maggots, those that have stagnant, those that have lost their fur, those whose bottoms have been gnawed by rats."

Upon hearing this, the men all stood up excitedly.

"I'll get some sodium sulfate solution for you to re-stretch and dye."

Zhao Shanhe, with a cigarette between his fingers, pointed out the window towards the village entrance: "Once you're done, take it all to the Wenzhou gang to exchange for money. You keep the money for yourselves; don't leave me a single penny."

Da Zhuang slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "Thanks, bro!"

The men inside simultaneously picked up their wine bowls and let out a deafening roar.

Zhao Shanhe threw the cigarette butt with the filter tip onto the blue brick ground and stubbed it out forcefully with his leather boot.

"Hurry up and get ready, don't dawdle." Zhao Shanhe stood up and said, "This God of Wealth bought a bunch of dead skin that will crumble at the slightest touch. In a few days, he'll be coming after us with bloodshot eyes."

Zhao Shanhe tilted his head back and burst into laughter.

The twenty-odd men in the room simultaneously picked up their wine bowls and burst into loud laughter along with Zhao Shanhe.

The rough laughter pierced through the thick wooden door of the main room, crashing heavily into the swirling snow.