Chapter Fifty-Six: Getting Angry Is the Right Response (Please Continue Reading, Vote Monthly)

Qin Jun planned to train a group of people first, knowing that the real money would come later when they started firing bricks and tiles. Perhaps by then, they could earn a fortune of ten thousand yuan a month.

For now, Qin Jun was just passing the time, so he wasn’t in any hurry, no matter what he did.

Carrying his rifle, he approached a group of weary workers and stood still, watching them sweat profusely.

“Hard work breaking stones, huh?” Qin Jun’s sharp voice immediately grated on their nerves.

“Tiring, right? Look at all that sweat. Too bad, those who exert the most effort don’t make money!”

“Haha, can you believe my eldest brother actually got angry?”

Qin An, the village’s eldest bachelor and Qin Jun’s older brother, was already thirty-one this year.

“Get lost! We’re happy to work hard!” Qin An snapped back.

Qin Jun burst out laughing. “You don’t want to, but you have to! If you don’t work properly, I swear your big uncle will break your leg!”

Qin An’s face darkened immediately because Qin Jun was right.

These old bachelors remained unmarried partly because of family issues, but also due to their own flaws.

Take Qin An, for example. His inability to marry at first was surely due to poverty, but as he grew older, he had started slacking off.

Now that there was a chance to earn money and get a wife, if he still dared to slack off, it wouldn’t just be a matter of breaking one leg — it would be breaking three.

Satisfied that he had subdued his eldest brother, Qin Jun shifted his attention again.

“Feeling a bit frustrated? Look at my little brother here, he barely works half a day!”

“Hey, those must be the newcomers, right?”

“Looks like they haven’t done much farm work before. They don’t seem very strong.”

“Don’t be shy. You’re probably fresh graduates, right?”

“Come on, tell me, what’s your education level?”

Watching the young men blush one by one but stay silent, Qin Jun felt quite pleased.

They still had a sense of shame but no jealousy — that was good.

It seemed the batch Yu Aiguo had selected was not so bad after all.

“I barely got through elementary school. I didn’t learn much in school. What I know now is mostly self-taught out of interest.”

“Learning skills is good! Look at me — I’m a role model!”

“You saw me working this morning, right?”

“I avoid doing things with my hands as much as I can.”

“After working four hours straight at the kiln, I felt frustrated and didn’t want to continue.”

“Working four hours for just two yuan a day?”

“That’s so frustrating! Even just standing still and talking tires me out!”

“Only sixty yuan a month? Why bother working so hard?”

“By the way, you guys work yourselves to exhaustion for just thirty yuan a month. Isn’t that infuriating?”

“Ah, envy and anger won’t change anything.”

“Look at my afternoon — this is the dull, tedious day of a technician. Isn’t it maddening?”

“Heh, good, get angry. I almost forgot, your lives are even harder.”

“Workers sound nice, but they’re more exhausted than technicians!”

“So, who wants to learn my job?”

***

“You new guys probably don’t know, but I’ve said before: anyone who learns to fire the kiln, I’ll willingly step aside!”

“Anyone wants to learn?”

Qin Jun looked at the five young men, their faces flushed with embarrassment, but not one spoke.

Suddenly, Qin Jun understood — in these times, you could learn by stealth, but never openly admit it.

Everyone knew these young men wanted to learn his technique, but who could speak of it?

Not just the newcomers; even the village’s elder brothers wanted to learn!

It was good they wanted to learn. Qin Jun wasn’t afraid of being replaced.

“Looks like you all want to learn, so let me test your basics!”

“Who can tell me the proper name of the stone you’re holding?”

“Bluestone!” someone answered immediately.

Qin Jun was surprised — it wasn’t one of the five young men, but his own eldest brother, Qin Ping.

He looked at Qin Ping as if he were a fool—he hadn’t expected his brother to have a knack for comedy.

This guy would be perfect for playing a fool on stage — and hilarious.

But then again, it made sense. Qin Ping was born in the 1950s and went to school in the 60s and 70s.

Back then, there were few schools in rural areas, and even if there were, village kids didn’t learn much.

“Calcium carbonate!” Just as Qin Jun felt a little disappointed, a voice responded.

This time it was another brother from his family.

Qin Jun glanced at the five young men; their schooling years were precisely in the last six or seven years.

During this period, without dedication, they wouldn’t learn much.

“Who else knows? What does calcium carbonate turn into after high-temperature calcination?”

“Who doesn’t know that? It’s calcium oxide, isn’t it?”

Qin Jun looked again — it was still that brother, Qin An.

Qin An and Qin Ping were from the same family, sharing the same grandfather, cousins.

Qin An was about twenty-five this year, and he was in junior high roughly ten years ago.

At that time, if one applied oneself, one could indeed learn something.

“What does calcium oxide produce when mixed with water?”

“What is convection?”

“What is atmospheric pressure? How is it measured?”

Qin Jun kept asking, and Qin An could answer all of them.

Then Qin Jun asked some English words and related physics knowledge.

Unexpectedly, Qin An answered fluently, showing a solid foundation in basic knowledge.

“Brother, with your level, why didn’t you take the college entrance exam in ’77?”

Qin Jun wasn’t sure if Qin An’s level was sufficient for this year’s exam.

But for the exams in ’77 and ’78, given Qin An’s current knowledge, while the top schools might be out of reach, ordinary universities should have been attainable.

If he couldn’t get into good universities elsewhere, how could he fail to enter the local science, agriculture, or medical universities?

Their region, which later became a prefecture-level city, had several universities.

Yet, despite this, Qin An was still farming at home. Something was wrong.

“We didn’t even know about those two exams. We only took one this year and didn’t pass!”

Qin Jun was speechless. Their small team was somewhat remote but not deep in the mountains or isolated.

Now that he had this answer, Qin Jun could only say someone must have sabotaged them.

Otherwise, the problem must lie with Qin An or his family.

He shook his head and stopped asking.

“You might not get into university, but you can still learn.”

“More skills won’t weigh you down. Now, focus on learning how to make quicklime!”

“Once you master it, you become a technician with a minimum salary of twenty-seven and a half yuan.”

“Don’t think that’s little. Think about what Qin Han is doing right now.”

Everyone turned to look at Qin Han.

As a technician, Qin Han was responsible for quality control, inspecting whether the stones the workers broke met standards.

This was crucial: stones too big wouldn’t burn through; too small would break easily and cause trouble when taken out of the kiln.

The ideal size was about as big as two adult fists.

But stones don’t obey orders—you can’t just break them to any size you want.

There was technique and patience involved.

“Being a technician pays less but is easier. Besides, it has better prospects.”

“If you can independently produce quicklime, your salary is at least thirty-five and a half yuan.”

“If you can save coal like me, the salary goes up to sixty!”

“Interested? Want to be a technician?”

“Burning five tons of lime can save one hundred kilograms of coal. Hard, isn’t it?”

“Hard or not? Watch how I do it. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s not hard for me; it won’t be hard for you. Learn it, and you’ll earn sixty yuan a month!”

“Work hard, and if you do well, next year I’ll help you build a big house!”

After speaking, Qin Jun grinned mischievously and walked away.

He carried his rifle and swaggered off to slack off.

The kiln site was in a hilly area. Apart from the location of the small furnace, the rest was overgrown with weeds and some shrubs.

Such a place naturally had plenty of birds, but herbivores were probably limited to rabbits.

Rabbits were rare and hard to catch, so Qin Jun mainly aimed to hunt birds.

There were still many birds in the wild, though large birds were scarce.

The most common were sparrows and turtledoves.

Among these, the turtledove was the largest, followed by magpies, cuckoos, crested larks, and so forth.

Qin Jun chose a high spot from which he could overlook a nearby hillside.

That hill was covered with jujube trees and some spiny shrubs.

In winter, the seeds of these shrubs ripened and fluttered in the wind at higher elevations.

Birds often gathered there in flocks to feed.

Finding a comfortable spot, Qin Jun lay down on a flat granite rock.

Adjusting the rifle mount and setting up his gun, he prepared to test his skills.