Chapter Thirty-One: Everything Must Be Done According to the Rules

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At the thought of selling on credit, Qin Zheng’s expression naturally darkened. He was sure to be cursed out for it!

Qin Jun chuckled. “Isn’t this simple? We have a lime kiln. Will we still be short of lime in the future? And if we have lime, can we possibly be short of money?”

“But we don’t have any lime right now. That’s something for later. What are we supposed to do about the money we need to spend now?” Qin Zheng asked with a frown.

“Who says we don’t have money right now? Come on, I’ll show you our money.” Qin Jun sounded amused.

With that, Qin Jun pulled Qin Zheng over to Qin Shi, who was watching the villagers weigh their loads.

“Cousin, pay attention to this. No matter who comes from the village to haul lime, they have to pay first. We do not sell on credit!”

“What?” Qin Shi looked utterly confused.

Qin Jun said solemnly, “What do you mean, ‘what’? We’ve already opened a factory. Even if it’s a production-team-run factory, it’s still a factory. Everything has to be done according to rules.”

“I am following the rules. I’ve recorded every account clearly…”

Before Qin Shi could finish, Qin Jun cut him off.

“I’m not talking about that. I mean that lime is a scarce commodity right now, and quite a few families in the village are planning to build houses in the spring. So whoever comes to buy lime has to follow the rules. That way we won’t offend anyone. Otherwise, everything will descend into chaos.”

“Chaos?” Even Qin Zheng failed to understand.

“Exactly! We’re all family, and none of us is more than five degrees removed from the clan. It wouldn’t be right to offend anyone, so we can only follow the rules,” Qin Jun explained.

“We are following the rules. But what rules does the kiln have?”

Qin Shi soon began to understand.

From now on, he would be in charge of the accounts. Every bit of money coming in or going out would pass through him.

As Qin Jun had just said, everyone wanted to buy lime as soon as possible. That raised the question of how much lime the kilns could produce in a day. Judging by appearances, they could fire two batches, but Qin Shi knew that coal was a major problem.

With fuel limiting production, the amount of lime they could produce in the future would certainly remain small.

So if there were many buyers, they would have to line up.

And that created another problem. Everyone would want to be at the front, and surely some people would try to cut in line. Either way, someone would end up offended.

“You don’t understand the rule? Whoever pays first gets to use it first. Just give them a receipt stating the day they are to come and haul away their lime. First come, first served. No cheating anyone, young or old!”

“Pay first?” Qin Shi asked, startled.

“Of course! Doesn’t every lime kiln collect payment first and deliver the goods afterward?” Qin Jun said with complete confidence.

“Is that really how it works?” Qin Zheng thought the words sounded right, yet somehow not quite right.

“That’s definitely how it works. Make it clear from the beginning: whoever pays first gets to buy lime first. Absolutely no favoritism!”

With that, Qin Jun turned and walked away.

Qin Zheng saw him go and followed.

The moment the two of them had left, everyone present—the men selling limestone and the villagers helping with the weighing—turned and ran off as well.

As people began to leave, the scene grew lively.

“What’s gotten into them?” asked one person who had not yet caught on.

“Didn’t you hear the rule just now?” someone else replied, having understood perfectly.

“All I heard was ‘first come, first served.’” That was someone merely watching the commotion, none too bright.

“Exactly! From now on, anyone who wants to buy lime from the village will have to line up,” someone exclaimed.

“Those people running home must be going back to get their money.”

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The speaker was envious—intensely so.

After all, building a house was a major event for the villagers, and anyone who could afford to build one was considered fairly well-off.

“You really can’t tell which families have money until they start building houses!”

The man wore an unusually shrewd expression. Was he planning to borrow money?

“That’s true. Lime costs twelve yuan a ton. If you build five rooms, you’d need at least five tons, wouldn’t you? That’s sixty yuan!”

This man knew how to calculate, and he was very good at keeping accounts.

Qin Shi was completely stunned. He was considered a clever man himself, but his mind simply could not turn as quickly as Qin Jun’s.

Once he understood, all Qin Shi could do was smile bitterly.

Then he thought about it. Qin Jun could learn anything after watching it a few times. How could anyone compare with him?

“Is it really all right to collect the money in advance?” Qin Zheng asked nervously from nearby.

“What could possibly go wrong? Are we going to take the money and run? Or are these men, young and old, afraid that we’ll cheat them?” Qin Jun replied unconcernedly.

Qin Zheng considered this and realized that it was indeed true. They had no intention of cheating anyone, so why shouldn’t they collect payment in advance?

At once, Qin Zheng remembered the look on Accountant Feng’s face at the commune. When he had gone there to order lime, they had not even been willing to let him pay in advance and join the queue!

Compared with the commune’s lime kiln, their own arrangements were far fairer.

This rule was excellent. They would follow it from now on.

“How much money do you think we can collect today?”

Now that he understood, Qin Zheng began to feel excited at the thought of all that money.

Qin Jun truly had no idea how many families in the village wanted to build houses.

But looking at his own family was enough to tell him that the number could not be small.

“If our family hadn’t already fired all the lime we needed, there would have been demand for at least four kiln loads,” Qin Jun said.

“Right. Your family had to go to the commune’s lime kiln before, and even though you had the money, you still couldn’t buy any!”

Qin Jun glanced at Qin Zheng. He suspected that Qin Zheng had somehow gotten the better of Accountant Feng, but he had no proof.

“Then we should thank Accountant Feng,” Qin Jun said. What else could he say?

“Haha, exactly! We ought to thank Accountant Feng. If not for him, how would you ever have thought of firing lime? And without that, how could our village possibly have its own kiln factory?”

Thinking of this, Qin Zheng felt proud. Among all the villages within ten miles, whose village had a factory?

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” Qin Jun cautioned. “Our village isn’t a source of limestone, after all. If we want to keep firing lime on a large scale, we’ll still have to find a solution.”

Qin Zheng, however, was not worried in the least. In fact, he was brimming with confidence, as though he could command the world.

“It’s fine. In these times, as long as you’re willing to pay, someone will deliver it to us. Believe it or not, if I spread the word today, people will come tomorrow with trucks—and they’ll bring it in large quantities.”

Qin Jun stared at him in surprise. Could things really be that easy?

For once, Qin Zheng was pleased with himself. At last, there was something Qin Jun did not know.

“You didn’t know that, did you? Limestone costs three yuan a ton. A tractor can haul three tons when fully loaded—that’s nine yuan right there!”

“We don’t produce limestone here, but the area around Greenstone Mountain to the north is covered with that kind of rock.”

“And you know Greenstone Pass, right? The road between the two Greenstone Mountains, where the mountains were split apart—that’s Greenstone Pass. Could they possibly be short of greenstone there?”

“If we spread the word that we were buying greenstone without limit, what do you think would happen?”

Seeing the smug look in Qin Zheng’s eyes, Qin Jun suddenly understood.

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There were not many tractors in those days, but they were not exactly rare either, especially among the wealthier production teams.

During the busy farming seasons, tractors naturally helped with agricultural work.

But during the slack seasons, those tractors could not simply sit idle.

So their drivers took on sideline work—in other words, transportation.

Transport fees were not low. Within ten miles, the usual charge was five yuan.

Beyond ten miles, the price had to be negotiated separately. Generally, twenty miles cost around ten yuan.

Villagers hauling a small amount of goods would naturally be reluctant to hire a tractor.

But if the lime kiln factory truly wanted to purchase limestone in large quantities, that would be a different matter.

In places where limestone lay piled as high as mountains, the stuff was practically worthless.

For a business that cost them nothing, tractor drivers from every production team would certainly be willing to take part.

Whether it was Greenstone Pass or Greenstone Mountain, neither was more than ten miles from their village.

A tractor could haul three tons of limestone in one trip, leaving four yuan in profit after the transport fee.

If it made four or five trips a day, that would mean ten or twenty yuan!

As the saying went, there were simply too few ways to make money in those days. Even owning a tractor did not guarantee work every day.

If such a profitable opportunity truly appeared, then every idle tractor in the surrounding production teams would come running.

The real problem was that they probably did not have enough money to buy limestone without limit.

Once the limestone problem was solved, only the coal problem remained—and that one had no easy solution.

In an era of centralized purchasing and unified distribution, raw materials were allocated according to plan. The fact that Qin Zheng could secure a monthly quota of ten tons of raw coal was already remarkable.

“There’s no need to worry about coal either. The commune will certainly find a way.”

“And once we get through this initial rush, anyone who wants to fire lime in the future can bring their own coal.”

“Our quota is small, but every team gets a quota of three to five tons a year.”

“That coal is meant for winter fire prevention, guarding against theft, and keeping patrolmen warm. In truth, it can be diverted for other uses.”

“So even if we can’t obtain an official quota ourselves, most families who want lime will still have some way to get hold of coal.”

What else could Qin Jun say?

In his previous life, he had been only a child during this period. No one caused trouble in the bitter winter, and he had done nothing but huddle at home through the cold season every day.

The following year brought another season of hard work, yet the entire family earned only a little over a hundred yuan.

Later, stirred by news from outside, he went south with several older brothers from the village to find work after the New Year of 1981.

After that, he was away for decades. Although he returned from time to time, he merely hurried home for the New Year, so he truly knew little about what happened in the village.

But none of that mattered now. He had come back.

Even if he knew what had originally happened in the village and the surrounding areas, the present would certainly be influenced by his return, and many things would change.

“Look, someone’s coming back.”

Following Qin Zheng’s gaze, Qin Jun saw someone hurrying toward them.

“Come on. Let’s go take a look.”