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

"Why?" Zhao Shanhe asked, somewhat puzzled.

He placed the purple clay cup back on the mahogany tea table, his eyes revealing an extremely frank doubt: "Is it because the Wenzhou gang has driven the price too high these past two days? Brother Jin, you don't need to worry about that. After the Wenzhou gang was arrested, there's no one to cause trouble in Changbai Mountain. I can make sure the purchase price returns to its original bottom price immediately tomorrow morning, without any problems."

After listening, Jin Wanfu shook his head wearily.

He took off his gold-rimmed glasses, rubbed his slightly swollen brow, and sighed.

"Shanhe, if it were simply about money, would I be asking you this? The problem is much more complicated than we imagine."

Jin Wanfu stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, which was covered with a thick layer of condensation. Looking at the wind and snow outside, his voice was filled with deep helplessness: "You've caused too much trouble down there lately. Now it's not just those old hunters in the deep mountains; do you know how chaotic the county is?"

Jin Wanfu turned around, his expression extremely serious: "Many workers at the tractor factory and fertilizer plant in the county below, whose performance was poor, have all taken sick leave and are not coming to work! Farmers around the county town have even abandoned their work in the fields; every household is carrying nets and rushing into Changbai Mountain like madmen to catch gray squirrels! This has seriously affected normal production in the area!"

Upon hearing this, Zhao Shanhe's usually composed face finally changed color slightly.

"That's not all."

Jin Wanfu walked back to the sofa and sat down, picking up his teacup to moisten his dry throat: "Because your purchase price is high, supply and marketing cooperatives in several counties below can't get any hides. The old comrades in those cooperatives call the municipal party committee every day, saying that you are blatantly undermining socialism! You are disrupting the rules of the state's unified purchase and distribution with high prices!"

Jin Wanfu looked at Zhao Shanhe, his tone extremely heavy: "Of course, all these complaints were suppressed by Director Li in a very forceful manner when they were sent to the city. But he called me privately and said that if we continued to collect money so openly, it would cause the factory to stop production or cause some kind of mass disturbance, and if it alarmed the province, it would become an extremely serious political incident, and he would definitely not be able to protect us."

After listening to this extremely thorough and dangerous analysis of the system's internal workings, Zhao Shanhe did not rush to refute it.

He simply sat quietly in the mahogany chair, took out the pack of Daqianmen cigarettes, and lit another one.

The smoke from the tobacco swirled around his face as he held a cigarette between his fingers, head bowed, and remained silent for over a minute.

When he looked up at Jin Wanfu again, there was no scheming in his extremely deep eyes, only utmost sincerity and openness.

"Brother Jin, we have a friendship, so I'll be frank with you."

Zhao Shanhe leaned back in his chair, his tone revealing a genuine, down-to-earth, and carefree attitude: "For me personally, stopping the acquisition is no big deal. If I don't want to do this business, I don't want to do it. I will never cause you or Director Li any trouble."

He shrugged and smiled very honestly: "I do have the idea of ​​making a lot of money, but all I want is for my family to live a good life. As long as I stay in the village and have a warm home with my wife and kids, I'm extremely satisfied and content with my current life."

These words were spoken with utmost clarity and openness, without any concealment, which warmed Jin Wanfu's heart and made him look at Zhao Shanhe with even greater admiration.

But Zhao Shanhe immediately changed the subject, his brows furrowing tightly.

"I can stop here anytime, but what worries me is, what about the Soviets?"

With a cigarette between his fingers, Zhao Shanhe and Jin Wanfu discussed their impending doom with utmost seriousness.

"Brother Jin, the kind of top-quality leather we got before is getting harder and harder to come by now."

Zhao Shanhe frowned and exhaled a puff of smoke: "The truly valuable creatures in Changbai Mountain are becoming increasingly scarce. In the past few months, seeing that there's money to be made, even workers and farmers who know nothing about the business have all rushed into the mountains to join the fun."

He sighed, shoved the cigarette butt hard into the crystal ashtray, his tone filled with deep helplessness.

"These guys aren't top-notch hunters at all. They don't know how to set traps; they just use homemade guns and shovels. This has led to two fatal problems. First, the quality of the pelts they collect is getting worse and worse. The finest otter pelts are sieve-like from the iron shot, the fox pelts are caked up with blood and mud, and even the lynxes and wolves they occasionally encounter have their heads smashed open with hoes, completely ruining the appearance of the pelts!"

As Zhao Shanhe spoke, his eyes grew colder, revealing with remarkable clarity the true reason behind his large-scale collection of gray squirrel pelts.

"Secondly, the rare animals in the mountains have been scared away by their indiscriminate hunting and have long since fled into the depths of Dead Man's Gully. That's why I started buying up gray squirrel pelts. Because the good stuff is hard to find, the most numerous animals in the mountains now, and the only ones these laymen can hunt in large quantities, are gray squirrels."

Zhao Shanhe crossed his hands on his knees and stared into Jin Wanfu's eyes: "If I stop buying gray squirrel pelts now, the purchasing network in Changbai Mountain will completely collapse. Once the network collapses, we won't even have a channel to pan for gold in the sand. If we can't collect the top-quality otter, snow wolf, and lynx pelts that the Soviets specifically requested, then the task you repeatedly told me to collect the goods will be completely ruined."

Dead silence.

An extremely oppressive silence fell over the VIP suite.

The sound of the cold wind howling outside the window seemed extremely jarring at that moment.

Zhao Shanhe's candid words pinpointed the current predicament, a dead end that left them with no way out.

It wasn't that he wanted to buy such low-end goods, but rather that he was forced by the market and these laymen to rely on large quantities to maintain the distribution channels.

If it stops, the task Jin Wanfu assigned to collect top-quality goods will fall through, and the overall situation of trade with the Soviet Union will be completely thrown into chaos.

Jin Wanfu leaned back on the sofa, his expression extremely solemn.

Several minutes passed before Jin Wanfu finally managed to exhale a long, labored breath.

He took off his glasses, rubbed his temples in extreme frustration, looked at his younger brother who had a very clear understanding of the situation, and made a decision.

"Shanhe, I'm sorry to trouble you. You should go back and stop the large-scale acquisitions for now. You must first calm down the old comrades and absolutely not cause them any political trouble."

Jin Wanfu's voice carried the responsibility of an elder brother: "As for the shortage of those top-quality leathers that Vasily needs... I'll try to pull some strings in the next few days and figure something out."

Seeing Jin Wanfu's extremely troubled expression, Zhao Shanhe nodded decisively.

"Okay, Brother Jin, I'll do as you say. I'll get back and take care of it."

Zhao Shanhe stood up, walked to the door, reached for the slightly damp old military overcoat, put it on, and prepared to leave while buttoning it up.

The instant his hand touched the brass doorknob.

boom! ! !

The extremely heavy solid wood door was suddenly kicked open violently from the outside.

The immense impact knocked all the screws off the door lock, and the solid wood door slammed against the wall with a deafening crash.

A young man, covered in snow and with bloody scratches from tree branches on his face, tumbled and crawled onto the Persian carpet in the room.

He was vomiting large wafts of white steam tinged with blood, and he even lost one of his shoes in the process. His bare foot had frozen into an extremely frightening purplish-black color.

Zhao Shanhe's pupils contracted instantly.

He recognized the half-grown boy on the ground who had almost lost his life at a glance; he was Mudfish, the most agile of Ergaizi's men!

Mudskipper clung tightly to Zhao Shanhe's trouser leg, its fingernails digging bloody marks into the carpet, its voice hoarse as if sanded, emitting an extremely mournful wail.

"Brother!! Quick... quick, back to the village!!"

Mudfish raised its face, smeared with tears and ice shards, and wailed desperately, "The compound is surrounded by hundreds of people from surrounding villages! Big Zhuang has been forced to pull out his homemade gun! Green Dragon bit off someone's thigh... They've all gone mad! They're going to kill people!!"

Click.

Jin Wanfu, who was standing by the coffee table, was so shocked that he dropped the extremely valuable purple clay teacup in his hand and it shattered on the ground.