sjar Chapter 886 Can’t Hold My Head Up
Chapter 886 Can’t Hold My Head Up
He opened the curtain and looked at the sky, then put his hands together and prayed again and again, "Gods and Buddhas in heaven, please bless my uncle to have a successful start and be invincible. Most importantly, don't get hurt and return safely."
After muttering, he thought of General Xu and bowed again, "And General Xu, this general is not an ordinary person, he is the savior of the world, and I also want to bless him to be safe, clear-minded, and live to be a hundred years old with vigor and vitality!"
After that, I thought that since General Xu had already recited it, my family members could not be left out and had to recite it as well.
He started to babble again, and kept on babble all the way.
Zhou Guo stayed at home and didn't go anywhere during the entire Spring Festival.
Li asked, "What's wrong this year? In the past, people would go out on the fifth or sixth day of the first lunar month. But now it's already the fifteenth day, and you haven't gone out yet?"
Zhou Guo was helpless, "You are really hard to serve. I left early. You said you didn't want to stay at home. You treated my home like an inn. You didn't have a good New Year. I stayed at home with you. You said why I didn't go out. Listen to yourself. Even the Bodhisattva would cry if he heard what you said."
The others laughed, it was true.
Li said quickly, "What nonsense are you talking about, you little brat? Can you just talk about the Bodhisattva so casually? Pah, pah, pah!"
Zhou Guo laughed and said, "Mother, how can you say 'bah bah bah' to the Bodhisattva? Isn't that disrespectful?"
Li was speechless. "Let me tell you, these gods are watching us. If you want to be afraid, how can you not be afraid of anything?"
Zhou Guo said: "I'm afraid, so I decided to wait until spring comes and bring a Buddha statue home so you can worship Buddha every day."
She had said this before, but Li didn't take it seriously. Now that she heard that she was serious, she nodded and said, "Okay, we are far from the temple. It usually takes seven or eight days to go there to worship."
……
When the first spring breeze blew to the north, Zhou Guo was no longer at home.
She squatted in various grain stores to sell new grain seeds. The key point was that she went to the villages where she personally sold seeds last year. She went again before the spring, and shamelessly begged them to buy from her. How could they not afford the seeds for one or two acres of land?
Next year, all the land at home can be planted with new crops, and the harvest will be much higher.
Everyone agreed.
The Zhou family’s golden signboard is here, so even if she doesn’t sell it so hard, most people will still buy it.
There was a family that was well off, who heard about this grain seed from somewhere and bought more than ten acres of land and exchanged all the seeds in the house for it.
Zhou Guo didn't care. After all, there weren't many families like this.
But a few days later, the situation was different.
I don’t know why, but these people come and buy six, eight, ten or twenty acres.
All of them!
There were too many people, so Zhou Guo could only write letters to each shop, allowing each household to buy a maximum of two acres of land, no more.
There are so many people in the north, and she only has so few seeds. If she buys them all like this, they will be gone in a few days and many families will not be able to buy them.
If the common people are not allowed to have their own grain seeds, they will probably not be able to afford them.
She sent Huzi and Erpang out.
Fortunately, there were not many grain seeds to begin with, and there was not much left in several prefectures. Each household had two acres of land, and the people below knew what to do even if they were pigs.
What she wanted people to see was whether there were people taking advantage of the situation, or whether the wealthy families were bullying the common people by using their power to buy seeds.
The wealthy families in the north got her promise last year, and even the Wang family didn't get any advantage from her. This group of people dare not do this for the time being.
You have to watch out for those short-sighted gentry.
After checking, we actually found two of them, in Ningping.
Ningping's manor is now managed by Quanzi. There are too many things to do at the manor in spring, and he has not yet found someone to take over.
He was busy on both ends and found out that Ning Ping had such a thing after checking. He was really anxious and angry, and reported it to Zhou Guo immediately.
Zhou Guo immediately rushed to Ningping. The first thing he did was to find the county magistrate and report to the authorities. "You also know that grain is related to people's livelihood and is a major issue. All the county offices in the north attach great importance to this matter. This kind of thing never happened last year. Isn't this a slap in your face? From now on, how can you hold your head up in front of the elders in the north? How can you speak with confidence? I'm afraid you will be inferior to them in everything!"
The county magistrate originally thought it was nothing, but after hearing Zhou Guo's words, he became serious. At the end, the corner of his mouth twitched, and he slammed the table and said, "Investigate it for me! Anyone who dares to do such a thing must be tired of living!"
Zhou Guo smiled and said, "Since you want to investigate the case, I won't delay you. However, many people in the north are victims. On the day when the court hears the case, I hope to invite these people and give them back what they deserve."
"Yes, yes, Master Zhou is right!"
Zhou Guo left with satisfaction and went to the shop to keep an eye on it personally. If anyone came to buy seeds, he would almost dig up their ancestors.
As they were shopping, they became unhappy. "Why do you have to ask so many questions? I have asked you questions for eighteen generations of my ancestors. You never asked me so many questions before I entered the city!"
"That's right, I feel like a criminal who's going to go to jail!"
"Can't I just not buy it?"
Zhou Guo said, "This is for everyone's benefit. These days, many people pretend to be ordinary people and come to the store to buy grain seeds. If others buy too much, by the time it's someone else's turn, the grain seeds are gone and all bought by one person. We are just asking casually. You can just talk about it and just treat it as a chat."
After hearing what she said, everyone put aside their grudges and became angry again, "How could there be someone pretending to be an ordinary citizen to buy grain seeds? What does he want to do with all the grain seeds?"
"Hey, what else can we do? This is a high-yield grain variety. Whoever gets more will naturally have a larger harvest. You still need to think about it. You can sell it to us at a high price next year, and we will make a lot of money, right?"
"What? These people actually planned this? Grain seeds are everywhere now, and they are still trying to steal them?"
After Zhou Guo's reminder, people no longer bought one acre at a time. Instead, they bought one or two acres of land at most. If the wealthy families were scrambling to buy it, it must be a good thing.
Within a few days, the county magistrate found out who did this.
When the two gentry were found, they were lingering in the brothel, living a life of drunkenness and dreaming about making a fortune in the coming year.
By the time he arrived at the court, he was half sober.
The county magistrate at the top was even more confused. They didn't do anything sneaky, so why were they arrested here?
The county magistrate did not allow them to speak. The north is so vast, with hundreds of counties, and such a thing happened only in his area. Isn't it a slap in the face?
What Zhou Guo said was absolutely right. He would never be able to hold his head up in front of these colleagues again!
When the two heard that all the grain seeds they had purchased in recent days would be returned to the people and half of their property would be confiscated as a punishment, they felt like the sky was falling!