Reborn in 80: Starting with hunting in the mountains to get rich

Chapter 443 Land Prices Soar

People were coming and going at Li Ju'an's door, very busy, all of them villagers coming to borrow the telephone to make calls. At first, his mother, Song Lanhua, was a little resistant, feeling that there were too many people, and that he did nothing all day but come to serve people.

But she later discovered that none of the villagers came empty-handed. They would bring a basket of eggs, cotton wadding, or a pound of pork, and politely enter the house to borrow a telephone.

Song Lanhua was initially hesitant after hearing Qian Dingxiang's words, but her home had become much more well-stocked with food, daily necessities, and even diapers and formula for her baby. Some villagers, being shy, would simply slip her red envelopes if they had nothing else to offer.

Song Lanhua felt a little embarrassed accepting so many red envelopes, thinking she was unworthy of them all, since all she did was install a telephone at home.

After looking at it, Li Ju'an grinned and said, "This isn't just a telephone; it's very convenient. Come on, Mom, take a look. I made a blank notebook and wrote down Auntie and Second Auntie's phone numbers. If you sisters-in-law have anything to say, you don't have to go all the way to Captain Yang's office to make a call. You can just sit at home and make the call, and you can even chat and eat melon seeds while you're at it."

His mother, Song Lanhua, patted him and said with a mix of amusement and exasperation, "Who makes phone calls for free? Why bother eating sunflower seeds while making the call? It's such a waste of money."

His mother was reluctant to let him go, so Li Ju'an pestered his wife to teach her how to make a phone call, so it would be more convenient if anything happened later. Just then, the landline rang. Li Ju'an found it strange; why would someone call back at this hour? Could it be that one of the villagers had made a call that went unanswered, and now they were calling back?

"crooked."

Li Ju'an answered the phone and found that the other party was his second uncle's family.

It turned out that the mother, Song Lanhua, had just called her second aunt, but no one answered. After a while, the second uncle checked the phone number and dialed back.

Li Ju'an had just picked up the phone and shouted into the receiver when his second uncle hadn't yet realized who was on the other end.

"Second Uncle, I am Ju An."

Upon hearing this, Uncle Er was taken aback for a moment, then looked at the phone number and asked, "Ju'an, whose phone number did you use to call?"

"Second Uncle, this is the phone number for my house. Please write it down."

There was complete silence on the other end of the phone, followed by the voices of the second uncle's son and his wife, who came over and asked, "Did the third brother's family get a telephone installed?"

"They have telephones so soon? That's incredible speed. They can install them so quickly even in the countryside."

They couldn't believe it. Uncle Er thought for a moment and said, "Ju'an, your Aunt Er and I are planning to come to the village in a few days to check on that land. Could you keep an eye on it for me these next few days and see what the Sun family has planted and how the harvest is?"

"Okay, I'll keep an eye on it right away. It's just that the road there is a bit far, so I'll have to go in a couple of days."

"Your place, which's so remote it doesn't even poop, isn't far away," Uncle Er chuckled on the other end of the phone.

The second uncle was the quickest to discuss installing a telephone at Li Ju'an's house, mentioning it to the eldest uncle. Both the second and eldest uncles had leased their land to the Sun family for Sun's mother to grow corn. The two men decided they would make some trips to the village soon to check on the harvest. Seeing is believing, after all. And given Sun's mother's warm and generous nature, they figured she would definitely give them a couple extra bags of corn as a favor.

When the second uncle went to find the eldest uncle, the eldest uncle had just hung up the phone and was sighing.

"What's wrong, bro?"

"It's all because of that bastard Li Changqing. Our house is going to be mortgaged and sold by the bank."

"What? Banks can sell houses?"

Both of them were dumbfounded. Previously, when Li Changqing was doing business, he had borrowed money from all his relatives, but Li Ju'an hadn't given him a single penny. He could only ask his mother to mortgage the house to the bank to borrow money to continue doing business with Zhang Yingnian.

Now Li Changqing's business is losing money, and the bank is going to take over his house, which is making his aunt very worried.

The elderly couple sighed repeatedly. The old woman said, "If I had known, I shouldn't have sent my son south to do business back then. Now we've lost a lot of money."

The old man said, "They haven't come to urge us yet. Maybe things will turn around. As long as our son can plug the hole, our house won't be taken away by the bank."

The old man said this, but he was really anxious. After hearing this, the second old man suggested, "Why don't we sell the land? Just sell the land."

"If we can't sell it, who will buy it? We can't sell it."

The old man had considered selling the land. After the village distributed land to individual households, everyone had land. But this land was meant for villagers to cultivate; if they couldn't cultivate it, they could lease it out.

The old man sighed and said, "Let's go check on our land first. If we can get away with something risky, we'll take the risk. But we need to have the money in our hands first, that's the most practical thing to do."

What you can hold in your hands is money; money is what gives you peace of mind. Money can stop the bank from taking away your house, and it can also bring your wayward son back to you.

The old woman sighed and said, "If only we hadn't sent our son to the south, we might have a grandson by now. Song Lanhua is so happy holding her granddaughter lately. When will our family have grandchildren?"

The old man, looking equally distressed, said, "Don't say anything more, what's the point of saying all this now?"

The old man and his second uncle's family went back to Lijiatun.

The two families first inspected the irrigated land, and they were very satisfied with it.

The second uncle, being straightforward, said to the eldest uncle, "The two plots of land we were allocated back then were very good. If the village is demolished in the future, the compensation for our two plots will be really substantial."

The old man didn't say much, but he was secretly delighted and extremely proud. The land his two families had been allocated was better than that of the other villagers. Let the Lu and Sun families be envious.

The old man asked, "How's the third brother's family doing lately?"

"The third brother's family has installed a telephone; we should go and take a look."

"Let's go take a look."

The two old men, empty-handed, followed the old route through Changchonggou, relying on their memories to find their way towards the Li family's self-built house.

It was incredibly hot. In the sweltering summer heat, the two of them were drenched in sweat, and there were many mosquitoes in Changchonggou. Their foreheads were soaked with sweat, which clung to their clothes, so they had to take off their short-sleeved shirts and continue walking bare-chested. As a result, they were bitten by mosquitoes many times along the way.

There was a pond in Changchong Gully where they could drink some mountain water. The two of them were unbearably hot, so they had to push aside the dense foliage and run to the bottom of the pond to scoop water from their kettles. They had already drunk all the water they had brought, and now, as they scooped water from the bottom of the pond, the area around the edge was swarming with mosquitoes.

Tiger mosquitoes have white markings on their bodies, segmented in white, and their bites are highly venomous and very painful.

The two old men didn't think much of it at first, but they scratched their chests, leaving red marks, and joked, "This is the last time we're going to Ju'an's house, that dry land is too remote."

"It's so remote that even birds don't go there and dogs don't poop there."

"You can't say that. Ju'an keeps a dog, and the dog poops, hahaha."

The two joked along the way, thinking that the dry land that Li Ju'an was assigned was absolutely terrible.