Tao Jianshe hadn't expected such a strong reaction from Daqiang. Puzzled, he asked:
"What is it? Ma Jinbao drank a whole enamel mug of loose liquor and started talking nonsense. He was talking about... Xu Jianjun, I think. Something about what he said about you lot. What did Xu Jianjun go digging for? Didn't sound like he found anything."
By now, Tao Daqiang was almost certain that Xu Jianjun was the one who had dug up the Water Rat burrow he'd found!
Back in Small White Poplar Gully, Xu Jianjun had been at odds with Li Long and had said plenty of bad things about him along the way, too.
People had often talked about Tao Daqiang since he was little. Fortunately, he was actually extremely resilient and had accepted the fact that he was slower than other people, so their usual remarks didn't bother him.
But this time, Xu Jianjun's actions had directly caused a crisis of trust between Tao Daqiang and Li Long. That made Tao Daqiang very angry.
After their earlier partnership hauling timber, Tao Daqiang felt that Li Long's trust in him had already dropped a notch. Now this had happened. Although Li Long had confirmed and explicitly said that it had nothing to do with him, it still stuck like a thorn in Tao Daqiang's mind.
Until he pulled it out, it would keep hurting.
Still, he didn't tell Tao Jianshe about it. Tao Daqiang knew there was no point. Tao Jianshe would inevitably say the same thing as Li Long: until you caught the thing, it belonged to nature, and whoever caught it got to keep it.
But Tao Daqiang stubbornly believed that the Water Rats he had marked out were his. This had cost him quite a bit of money!
The one thing