At Su Jie's command, Jieko Company received the order, and its employees hurried off in all directions, spreading the Bug Catch plan across the entire Mande City Region.
Especially in the more than one hundred towns and villages, the farmers scraping by on meager incomes celebrated as entire households, eagerly joining the ranks of the bug-catching teams.
For a time, streams of people could be seen wandering through the mountains and wilderness everywhere in the Mande City Region.
All of them had gone into the mountains to catch bugs so they could sell poisonous insects and snakes to Jieko Company.
At each sales station established by Jieko Company, long queues stretched out before the doors. From morning until night, people came in an endless stream, carrying freshly caught poisonous insects to sell.
The sudden surge in insects was more than the Thousand-Hand Centipede could digest all at once, so large tracts of land and warehouses were bought up.
Chen Yaoguang, whom Su Jie had specially summoned from Hua Country, brought a group of breeding experts and converted the warehouses into Insect Farms, allowing even more people to work for Jieko Company.
It was not only the rural areas—even large numbers of citizens in Mande City joined the bug-catching teams.
That was because the income from catching bugs far exceeded the meager wages they earned from their jobs.
Jieko Company's Bug Catch plan was unfolding with thunderous momentum, but some of the local rentier class merely treated it as a joke.
In their eyes, Jieko Company simply had money with nowhere to spend it. Before long, it would exhaust its fortune and quietly stop.
But after they waited ten days, Jieko Company was still thriving.
After twenty days, the purchasing stations of Jieko Company still saw an endless stream of people every day.
After a month, Jieko Company's expansion was still going strong. The number of employees it had recruited had even surpassed two thousand five hundred, and hundreds of thousands of people across more than half of the Mande Region were working for Jieko Company, catching bugs for it.
In fact, because there were too many people, and because the number of poisonous insects caught had fallen—causing the people's incomes to plummet—Jieko Company thoughtfully proposed the initiative of raising insects through human effort in order to protect the local insect resources.
It distributed poisonous insects to the local people free of charge and taught them how to raise them artificially. Its slogans rang out like thunder: "Build your fortune by raising insects," "Raise insects first on the road to a moderately prosperous life," "If you want to get rich, let Jieko lead the way," and so on.
Under this all-encompassing barrage of publicity and wealth, nearly all the labor force in the Mande City Region was swept into the raging tide of bug catching stirred up by Jieko.
This time, the rentier class of the Mande City Region could no longer sit still.
People were unwilling to work for them anymore and only wanted to run to Jieko Company.
A jeep drove up in front of the Jieko Company headquarters. Two military vehicles followed behind, and a group of soldiers in green uniforms jumped out, AKs in their arms.
An exquisitely dressed officer in a crisp military uniform and gleaming leather shoes stepped out of the jeep. Surrounded by the soldiers, he swaggered into Jieko Company.
The employees working inside the building stared in bewilderment, unsure what was happening.
It was only when they got a clear look at the officer leading the group that many of their expressions changed dramatically as they recognized his identity.
That face was simply too famous throughout the Mande Region.
He was Lu Wenbo, the de facto controller of the Mande United Army. More people called him General Lu.
He came from the Lu Family, one of the three great families. He commanded more than a thousand soldiers in the Mande United Army and possessed vast quantities of military equipment, including firearms and ammunition, light and heavy machine guns, mortars, and rocket launchers. He also ran businesses involving taxes, casinos, brothels, entertainment complexes, opium, fraud, and organ trafficking. He was the undisputed local tyrant of the Mande Region.
The most notorious thing Lu Wenbo had done in the Mande Region was when a large-scale escape broke out at one of his cyberfraud compounds. He sent troops to suppress it, shooting and killing or wounding who knew how many people. Half a street was dyed red with blood.
Lu Wenbo pointed at an employee and asked, "Where's the person in charge here?"
"The boss—the boss went to the countryside to inspect the Insect Farms."
The employee he pointed at trembled all over and stammered out an explanation.
"Are you playing me?"
A ferocious smile crept across Lu Wenbo's lips. He pulled the pistol from his waist and, without another word, squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
The employee who had been questioned was shot in the stomach. Blood gushed out, staining his clothes red, and he collapsed to the floor, writhing in agony.
"You. Where is your boss?"
Lu Wenbo pointed at another employee and continued questioning him. He was the very picture of arrogance, treating firing a gun in broad daylight as though it were nothing at all.
"He really went to the countryside! I don't know where the boss is!"
After seeing what had happened to the first unlucky man, the second employee nearly burst into tears.
None of the other employees dared to speak up. They all trembled in fear, because the other soldiers' AKs were aimed at them as well.
Lu Wenbo snorted coldly. He knew he had come at an inconvenient time; the employees did not have the nerve to lie to him.
"When your boss comes back, tell him to visit my barracks. From this moment on, your Jieko Company must pay a special business tax of eighty percent. If you don't pay, then tell him what happens to a Hua Country person who dares offend me here."
With that, Lu Wenbo aimed his gun at the ceiling and emptied the entire magazine.
Then he waved a large hand, clasped his hands behind his back, and led his men away.
Only after Lu Wenbo had gone far did the employees panic and lift the wounded man from the floor, rushing him to the hospital for treatment.
As for calling the police, not a single person even considered it.
The police station was nothing more than one of Lu Wenbo's dogs. What dog would dare interfere with its master?
Lazhi Village!
Su Jie was inspecting an Insect Farm here, with Chen Yaoguang accompanying him.
"President Su, we converted centipede and scorpion farms for the villagers according to the local conditions. The tropical climate and temperature here are very suitable for poisonous insects to grow. As long as there's no serious disease outbreak, raising them will be very easy."
Chen Yaoguang pointed at a small farm that had been converted from an abandoned earthen house. Centipedes crawled in and out among the cracks in the bricks and stones and the broken roof tiles.
A dark-skinned young man was working nearby, scattering mealworms inside as food for the centipedes.
Su Jie nodded and walked closer. He asked the dark-skinned young man, "What's your name?"
"This is our Jieko Company's boss, President Su."
Chen Yaoguang reminded him. Since he often went to the countryside to teach the villagers breeding techniques, many people recognized him.
"My name is Miao Lun. Are you Jieko Company's big boss?"
After hearing Chen Yaoguang's words, Miao Lun trembled all over. He excitedly wanted to come over and shake hands, but did not dare.
"The genuine article. I wanted to ask—are you satisfied with your life now?"
Su Jie stepped forward of his own accord, patted him on the shoulder, and asked with a genial smile.
"Satisfied. Of course I'm satisfied. Ever since Jieko Company came here, the money I earned from catching bugs cured my mother's illness and allowed my younger sister to return to school. Now my family has even bought a share in the village-run poisonous insect farm. This is the life I dreamed of day and night."
Miao Lun spoke passionately about the changes around him. When the villagers working near the farm heard that Jieko Company's big boss had arrived, they gathered around one after another, chattering their gratitude.
Su Jie smiled and responded to each of them. Just then, Liu Yingying came running over in a panic and shouted to him, "President Su, something's happened!"
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