Public Opinion

The two hurried out.

Li Ping turned to look at Zhao Danshi, more or less guessing what had happened.

Sure enough, once they were out the gate, Zhao Danshi said quietly to Li Ping, "Senior Brother, thieves broke into the strawberry field. Watcher told us to hurry over and take a look. If the strawberries get ruined, our losses will be huge."

The strawberry field was currently the family's most important source of income, bringing them thirty to forty thousand yuan a month. For that reason, Zhao Danshi had planted several more plots of strawberries a few days ago.

Li Ping grabbed a flashlight and hurried over with him. "Someone's probably jealous. Let's go take a look first. If we can drive them away, we will. If the thieves get aggressive, don't get too close. We don't want to get hurt."

"I know." Zhao Danshi gritted his teeth. "I won't confront them head-on. I just want to see which bastard dared set his sights on my place."

Li Ping said, "We're mainly going to identify them tonight. Don't force anything. If we can grow the first batch of profitable strawberries, we can grow a second. Even if this batch gets destroyed, it doesn't matter. Our bodies are more important. No matter how tough the thieves are, they're just local punks. If we can't deal with them today, there'll be plenty of chances later."

A powerful dragon could not crush a local snake. The two of them were outsiders; if they truly clashed with people from the village, they might not even know which side would end up at a disadvantage.

Zhao Danshi took a deep breath and nodded. "I know. Senior Brother, don't worry. We have Dou Dou. I know what I'm doing. But in the countryside, whoever has the hardest fist is the boss. We can't just let them off completely either. Just watch me later."

It took less than five minutes to get from home to the strawberry field if they moved quickly. They were especially anxious tonight and arrived in just over three minutes.

The thieves had never expected to be discovered while stealing strawberries in the middle of the night. When Zhao Danshi and Li Ping rushed over with flashlights, they were still picking strawberries one by one in the field. Two large sacks of strawberries already sat by the roadside.

"Watcher, do the thieves have weapons?"

After scanning them, Watcher answered with certainty, "No."

"That's good." Zhao Danshi hurriedly said, "Senior Brother, they don't have weapons. Come on, let's each pick one and beat them up."

As he spoke, Zhao Danshi raced over like the wind with a wooden stick in hand. He also grabbed a hoe that had been left by the field yesterday. With an explosive roar, "I'll fuck your ancestors!" he hurled the hoe.

He had excellent aim and deliberately threw it wide, so the hoe did not hit anyone. Still, the thieves in the field were scared half to death by the roar and the flying hoe. They abandoned everything and scrambled away in several directions on all fours.

Zhao Danshi had been waiting at the edge of the field. There were three thieves in total, but he could not make out any of them in the dark. He gripped his wooden stick as one thief happened to rush in his direction. Zhao Danshi charged forward, shone his flashlight directly into the man's eyes, then viciously swung the stick at the back of his knee. The man instantly dropped to his knees.

Zhao Danshi deliberately aimed for relatively safe areas—the waist, buttocks, thighs, and chest. His blows were fast and vicious, raining down on the man until he could not react at all. He could only clutch his head and roll around on the ground.

"Ow! Stop hitting me! Stop! Help!"

Zhao Danshi was entirely focused on beating him and ignored every word, continuing to swing the stick without mercy.

Li Ping had caught another one as well, swinging his stick down again and again.

"You little bastard, you still dared come steal strawberries! Do you know why I wasn't guarding this place? Did you really think I had no precautions at all?!" After Zhao Danshi beat the man thoroughly, the thief dodged left and right, then seized an opening, got to his feet, and fled in a panicked crawl.

Zhao Danshi did not chase him. He snorted coldly and shouted, "If you dare come again, I'll beat you to death right at the field's edge and dig a hole to bury you!"

Li Ping also deliberately let his thief escape.

Once all the thieves had left, the two used their flashlights to inspect the damage to the strawberry field.

The thieves had been extremely careless while picking strawberries. They had damaged many strawberry plants, and quite a few had even been ripped out by the roots. Ripe or unripe, the strawberries had all been tossed into the sacks.

Zhao Danshi checked the field, growing angrier the more he saw. "If I'd known, I should've hit them harder and made sure they couldn't get out of bed for at least a week!"

"It's fine. You already hit them hard enough." Li Ping comforted him. "After getting beaten like that, they won't dare think about coming back for quite a while."

"Exactly! They got beaten that badly. Let's see if those bastards still dare come back!" Zhao Danshi was frustrated. "I just don't know who they were. I couldn't recognize them. When I have time, I'll ask around and see who got beaten up. And that one who ran away—I hope the other two go back and beat him up."

"Don't worry, they definitely will." There was a hint of laughter in Li Ping's voice. "What kind of good people sneak around stealing in the middle of the night? Three came, two got beaten, and the remaining one got away. How could he have an easy time afterward?"

Zhao Danshi and Li Ping gathered all the strawberries the thieves had ruined into sacks, then each carried one sack home.

"Our strawberries stand out too much, and they sell for a high price. There are probably plenty of people eyeing them. We need to strengthen our security from now on. Watcher, please don't be stingy with Bio-Energy for a while. Monitor our home around the clock."

Li Ping said calmly, "Please keep an eye on Grandpa and Dou Dou's safety too. If anyone tries anything with them, attack them. If they die, it's on me."

Zhao Danshi immediately agreed with murderous intent, "Right. If they die, it's on us."

Watcher said in Zhao Danshi's mind, "Don't worry. I know what to do."

After thinking for a moment, Zhao Danshi said to Li Ping, "Senior Brother, you don't need to worry too much either. The punks who stay in the village don't amount to much. This beating should be enough to scare them. If not, we'll give them a few more beatings until they submit. They definitely won't dare think about revenge."

"Mm. Better safe than sorry."

"That's true. I've already made quite a bit of money selling vegetables in just these few months since coming back. I've probably attracted plenty of envy. For a while, I should keep a lower profile and tie our interests to those of most people in the village. If we eat meat, we should leave them some soup too. Forget it, though. These things need to be planned slowly. They can't be settled in a day or two."

When the two got home, Grandpa was holding Dou Dou and worrying himself sick. "What happened? Why were you rushing out in such a hurry in the middle of the night?"

"Someone seemed to be stealing strawberries from the field, so we went to take a look. Oh, Grandpa," Zhao Danshi said, suspecting that it might be related to Grandpa's relatives, "when you go out these next few days, see if anyone has been beaten up."

Grandpa was alarmed. "You two got into a fight?"

"No. The thieves probably had some conflict among themselves and started fighting each other." After vaguely brushing it off, Zhao Danshi quickly changed the subject. "Grandpa, don't worry. We have two grown men in this house. What are we afraid of? Never mind me—look at Senior Brother. Those muscles, that physique. He even practiced kickboxing before. He can really fight!"

Seeing that they intended to rely on their fighting ability to confront people, Grandpa immediately said, "Even if you can fight, don't go looking for fights! Why should we risk our lives against scum like that?"

Zhao Danshi coaxed him. "Grandpa, if you don't trust me, don't you trust Senior Brother? Stop worrying. Nothing happened. Go back to sleep. Did Dou Dou wake up in the middle of the night?"

"He woke up once. I helped him pee and fed him formula."

Zhao Danshi took Dou Dou back to the room and placed him in the small bed. "All right, he probably won't wake up again tonight. Grandpa, go sleep. Senior Brother and I are going back to sleep too. We still have to get up at dawn to pick strawberries."

Seeing that it was indeed very late, Grandpa hurriedly urged them to go to bed.

After such a harrowing night, neither of them was sleepy. They did not know whether the strawberries had been damaged, and they could not leave them piled up. After spreading the strawberries out to air, the two returned to their rooms one after the other.

When he reached his door, Zhao Danshi paused. He turned to Li Ping behind him and hesitantly said, "Senior Brother, how about you sleep in my room tonight? It feels safer with two people."

Li Ping stopped and looked down at him, amusement in his eyes. "Are you inviting me?"

In the cool midnight breeze, his voice was magnetic and sexy. Tall, lean, and strong, he looked at Zhao Danshi with a touch of refined roguishness, and Zhao Danshi could not withstand it at all.

After opening and closing his mouth, Zhao Danshi looked up and admitted, "Yeah. We're a couple, after all."

Li Ping gently pushed him back against the door and kissed him.

At first, it was only a tentative kiss, their lips brushing as their breaths mingled.

Li Ping held Zhao Danshi's lips between his own, and Zhao Danshi lightly licked his lower lip.

That lick was like a signal to attack. Li Ping's eyes darkened, and his assault immediately turned fierce as a storm.

Zhao Danshi's slender waist was caught in Li Ping's large hand. The heat of his palm nearly scalded him even through his clothes.

Under that heat, Zhao Danshi seemed to catch fire all over. He was dazed, and his thoughts stopped entirely.

After a long while, the two panted softly. Zhao Danshi rested his head in the hollow of Li Ping's shoulder as Li Ping rubbed his lips, lightly but firmly wiping away all the dampness there.

It took them quite some time to calm down before they returned to the room side by side. If the time, place, and circumstances had been more suitable, they might have gone further that night.

The next morning, a little after five, they woke to the ringing of a phone alarm.

Zhao Danshi's eyes were so sleepy he could barely keep them open. He reached for the phone to turn it off, but Li Ping was faster. He gently silenced it, then kissed Zhao Danshi's forehead. "Sleep a little longer. We're not picking strawberries today."

Zhao Danshi mumbled indistinctly, "Tell Zhao Chengjia not to come transport them. Call Boss Li at the fruit shop too. I wonder if he'll have a problem with it."

"What problem could he have? He's recently been complaining that we've been sending too many strawberries anyway. This is a good chance to leave him hanging for a bit, so he won't undervalue our fruit." Li Ping kissed his forehead. "Sleep. I'll go make the calls."

Their contract had been signed rather loosely. When Li Ping said something unexpected had happened at the strawberry field and they could not pick strawberries to sell today, Boss Li had nothing much to say. He only replied somewhat coolly that he understood.

Li Ping then called Zhao Chengjia and told him he did not need to collect anything today, since no strawberries would be sent to the county town.

Zhao Chengjia was startled. "Why aren't you delivering anything all of a sudden? Did your partnership fall through?"

"Nothing like that. Something came up on my end. Sorry to trouble you, but don't come today. I'll let you know in advance whether you need to come tomorrow."

"Ah, as long as it's nothing serious. Then I won't come today. Let me know on WeChat tonight, and I'll know whether I need to pick up your goods tomorrow."

Li Ping smiled. "All right. Thanks."

Zhao Danshi did not get up until six thirty. It was the first time in months that he had slept so late, and he woke feeling completely refreshed.

He went outside to brush his teeth. Seeing the strawberries spread all over the ground from last night, his heart ached again. He circled them several times and muttered, "Those bastards! They had no sense of restraint. They crushed so many perfectly good strawberries."

"It's fine. Crushed is crushed. We can use them to make preserves."

"Some of the strawberries the thieves picked weren't ripe yet. I don't know if they'll be sweet enough."

Li Ping held his shoulders and guided him to the ditch. "Brush your teeth first. It doesn't matter if they're ripe or not. Sweet-and-sour preserves will taste just right, and we can add more honey. Once you're done brushing, we'll go check the strawberry field together. Those thieves were rough last night. We don't know how many strawberry plants they damaged or whether they can still be saved."

"If they can't survive, we'll have no choice but to plant another batch. The strawberry seedlings we worked so hard to grow will take another month or two before they bear fruit again. This time, our losses will be huge." As Zhao Danshi spoke, he wanted to drag out last night's three thieves and beat them all over again.

The two went to inspect the strawberry field, but the situation was not as serious as they had imagined.

Watcher had noticed early, and they had arrived early too, stopping the thieves in time.

Only three rows of strawberry plants had been severely damaged. Plants were resilient, and only sixty or seventy had actually lost their roots and could not survive.

Zhao Danshi looked at the strawberry seedlings that had not yet withered, feeling great regret. Suddenly, an idea struck him. He asked Watcher, "Watcher, can Spirit Spring Water save these strawberry plants? Spirit Spring Water nourishes life, so it should be useful for strawberry seedlings too, right?"

"It should work, maybe. My database doesn't show that the Spirit Spring has healing effects, but why don't you try it? It won't use much Spirit Spring Water anyway."

Zhao Danshi looked at Li Ping, who nodded. "Let's try it. If it works, maybe we can use Spirit Spring Water to water plants in the future."

So Zhao Danshi bought half a jin of Spirit Spring Water on credit from Watcher, poured it all into a bucket, and soaked the more severely damaged strawberry seedlings in it.

He could not bring himself to directly water the strawberry seedlings with Spirit Spring Water so lavishly. Soaking them would let them absorb plenty. If that still did not work, he would rather replant new seedlings, since that would cost less.

After soaking the seedlings, he and Li Ping replanted the damaged strawberries, then diluted the remaining Spirit Spring Water and gave each plant a little.

The thieves had not picked many strawberries yesterday, and more than half remained unpicked. The two carefully harvested the ripe ones into the baskets they had brought, spending two hours picking all the red strawberries.

"Watcher, let me see the recipe for preserves."

Watcher obediently gave him a recipe for fruit preserves. "First wash the strawberries, then let the moisture dry off briefly. Cut them into suitably sized strawberry slices. Soak them in light salt water, then soak them in sugar water. The ingredients for the sugar water are listed here. You don't have enough of some things at home, so you need to buy them quickly. Also, this recipe includes three methods for strawberry preserves: sun-drying, shade-drying, and air-drying. See which one is suitable."

"It's definitely too late to buy a machine now, so we'll sun-dry them. The weather has been sunny lately, and the sun-dried strawberry preserves should turn out well. Even if we can't sell them, we can keep them for ourselves. Our strawberries taste so good that they shouldn't turn out badly as preserves either."

Everything else was fine, but they were most worried about manpower. There were so many strawberries to wash and cut that another morning passed in the blink of an eye.

Today was market day. The eggplants and cucumbers they had picked yesterday were still piled inside the house. If they did not set up a stall, those eggplants and cucumbers would go bad.

The market usually did not end until eleven thirty, so there was still time. Zhao Danshi and Li Ping carried the strawberries back and spread them out, then pushed the baskets to the fields on a handcart to pick green beans, chili peppers, and sweet potato leaves.

They were now familiar with Zhao Liwei, who drove a three-wheeler. Zhao Danshi specifically called to hire his vehicle to transport the vegetables to the market.

A little after eight, Zhao Liwei arrived. Looking at the vegetables they had harvested, he said in surprise, "Not bad. You already have so many vegetables to sell this early in the season."

Zhao Danshi smiled. "I planted early and was willing to invest, so my vegetables naturally ripened a little earlier than other people's. But this is the first batch, so they're not really that much earlier. In a few days, everyone else's leafy vegetables will be ready too."

The group loaded the vegetables onto the three-wheeler, and Li Ping and Zhao Danshi followed it out to set up their stall.

They had a regular spot right outside Renfu Supermarket. Zhao Danshi was familiar with the supermarket owner, Miao Yingzhuo. He had mentioned it to him yesterday, and Miao Yingzhuo had agreed to save them a place.

Zhao Liwei helped them transport the vegetables into town, then helped unload and arrange them. Zhao Danshi paid him generously for the ride and also gave him a bag of vegetables to take home.

"You're here?" Seeing them arrive, Miao Yingzhuo came out especially to greet them. "Why are you a little late today?"

"We overslept." Zhao Danshi grinned.

As soon as they put out their vegetables, someone was already asking how much they cost.

Zhao Danshi hurriedly said, "Eggplants and cucumbers are three yuan per jin. Green beans and chili peppers are three fifty, and sweet potato leaves are two."

As he spoke, Zhao Danshi briskly set out the signs he had written at home.

"Why are they so expensive?"

Miao Yingzhuo chimed in, "Ma'am, you don't know, do you? Their vegetables taste especially good. Lots of regular customers specifically come looking for their produce. It's normal for them to cost a little more."

"Really?" The middle-aged woman asking about the price was suspicious.

"These are homegrown vegetables, not wholesale goods. Walk around and compare them, and you'll know. My vegetables look different from everyone else's." Zhao Danshi explained patiently. "If you're not in a hurry, compare prices and take another look before choosing?"

The middle-aged woman said, "All right. I'll go look around and come back later."

While she was speaking, several old customers who knew Zhao Danshi had already gathered around. "Danshi, you and Li Ping are selling vegetables again today? What do you have?"

"Eggplants, green beans, cucumbers, chili peppers, and sweet potato leaves. Take a look at whatever you like."

"Why are your vegetables so cheap this time? Come on, give me two jin of each."

Li Ping neatly packed the vegetables into bags, weighed them on the electronic scale, then collected the money and gave change.

Another customer kept asking, "Danshi, will you be setting up a stall at the next market too?"

"Probably not. The fruits and vegetables in the field don't grow that fast. We probably won't come again until the market after next." Zhao Danshi explained, "This is also the first batch of vegetables from our family."

"Oh, then I need more. Give me five jin of each."

Zhao Danshi advised her, "Can your family finish that much?"

The customer laughed heartily. "It's fine. We have a big family, and we'll finish it in a few meals. Besides, your vegetables are delicious, so we always have to cook a little extra."

The middle-aged woman from before had not gone far. She had happened to hear their entire conversation. Turning back, she saw that they did not look like paid shills. Then she saw Zhao Danshi's vegetables selling quickly, each customer buying several jin, and a large pile disappearing in no time. She began to panic and squeezed back into the crowd. "Hey, boss, give me one jin of each too."

"Sure." Zhao Danshi bagged and weighed the vegetables for her, then briskly took the money. "Don't worry. I set up stalls here to sell vegetables often. If they don't taste good, you can come back and find me. My name is Zhao Danshi. Everyone here knows me."

Before long, a large crowd had gathered in front of Zhao Danshi's stall, and the vegetables were almost snatched clean.

Watching their bustling business, Miao Yingzhuo cracked sunflower seeds and said admiringly, "I don't think anyone in this town, or even the entire county, does business better than your family."

"My vegetables are genuinely good." Zhao Danshi jokingly said, "Look at my Senior Brother. He's such a distinguished-looking man, graduated from a prestigious university, and his family runs a company. Why did he come back to the countryside with me to grow vegetables? Isn't it because my vegetables are truly premium products?"

"You talk a big game. What premium products?"

"You've heard of organic vegetables, right?" Zhao Danshi smiled. "Search online. Those vegetables that sell for dozens or even hundreds of yuan per jin—that's the kind we plan to grow. We came back to start a business. Our vegetable farming is different from other people's. Watering, fertilizing, weeding, loosening the soil—we do every step in turn. Forget anything else; just look at my vegetable leaves. Aren't they different from other farmers' vegetables? Mine are green, lively, and especially clean."

Miao Yingzhuo nodded in agreement. "That's true."

"I grow my vegetables carefully. We even installed a computer at home specifically so we can consult agricultural university professors. Selling them here is only testing the waters. Once we get things going, we'll send them to big cities."

"Can that really work?"

"Why not? I'm even filming videos to advertise my vegetables now. You have no idea how much I've invested in the fields. I put at least six or seven thousand yuan into every mu of land. At the vegetable prices in our county town, I can't even make my money back."

Zhao Danshi did not even blink while boasting. He had already made up his mind to market the vegetables as high-end and exaggerate the costs as much as possible. He had to make sure everyone in town knew they were growing organic vegetables with high costs and strict management—vegetables ordinary farmers could not grow. They would not compete with regular vegetable farmers either, so as not to make them jealous.

Miao Yingzhuo clicked his tongue. "You're investing so much. Wouldn't you lose a fortune if they don't sell well?"

Zhao Danshi smiled with narrowed eyes. "Yeah. But young people have to go out and give things a try. Whether we lose money or not, we'll talk about that later."

The owner's face showed admiration. He raised a thumb at Zhao Danshi. "You've got guts!"

Li Ping lowered his head as he packed things up and listened to Zhao Danshi boast, his eyes full of amusement.