Chapter 1017: The Truth Revealed: Integrity Is More Important Than Money

Looking at Sun Benchuan, who was smiling and greeting him, Li Long smiled and said:

"Mr. Sun, I'll say it again: I will not sell the jade. If you are interested in beef and mutton, then we can talk."

Sun Benchuan hadn't expected that before he could even speak, Li Long would block the path so directly; not yet ready to give up, his smile faltered for a moment before he asked again:

"Comrade Li Long, don't you want to hear my offer?"

"No need. Whether it's the previous twenty thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars, I will not sell. As I said, if you want beef and mutton, we can discuss it; if not, then there is nothing for us to discuss, so please leave."

This time when Sun Benchuan entered, Li Long didn't even invite him inside—mainly because after taking the phone call, Li Long had deduced the cause of events, suspecting this fellow harbored ill intentions and sought to kick someone while they were down, so he decided not to be polite.

Sun Benchuan took a deep breath, suppressing his bellyful of dissatisfaction; reason prevailed, and he still spoke with a smile:

"Very well, let's discuss the price of beef and mutton. If I buy all the beef and mutton you have in stock..."

"If buying everything, mutton is two yuan fifty, beef is three yuan." Li Long quoted a price he basically wouldn't have considered before.

"How can it be so expensive?" Before Sun Benchuan could speak, Luo Liwei objected, "I've asked around; your purchase price for mutton is below one yuan eighty, and for beef it's two yuan. With such a large volume, even if you raise the price by one mao per kilogram, you'd make enough profit. Now you've raised it so high, who would buy?"

"If this were a week ago and you were buying my mutton, maybe I would have sold it with just a one mao increase, but now things are different." Li Long smiled, "As for the reason—I think Mr. Sun should know better than I do."

Sun Benchuan's eyes suddenly widened—although his widened eyes still weren't as big as Li Long's, it was enough to show his shock.

Could Li Long already know that news? How was that possible!

In the end, neither side reached an agreement, or rather, Li Long simply had no intention of negotiating with this Sun Benchuan, and Sun Benchuan didn't want to spend a large sum to buy beef and mutton; although shipping it back at this price would still yield a profit, he felt the earnings were too little.

Most importantly, the original plan had failed to materialize, and that piece of jade was truly valuable.

"Should we apply pressure through official channels?" Back at the guesthouse, Luo Liwei suggested an idea.

Sun Benchuan shook his head and said:

"This Li Long has received national commendation, and he is also a representative of the county People's Congress. This is his hometown; we are unfamiliar people here, and leveraging connections would require going through several layers, so we likely cannot achieve our goal."

Clearly, Sun Benchuan had originally entertained such an intention, but after weighing the pros and cons, he abandoned the idea.

He needed to be careful and did not want to expose too much.

Helplessly, Sun Benchuan could only settle for the next best option and search for others in Maxian who could supply beef and mutton.

However, somewhat unexpectedly, not only in Maxian but also in several surrounding counties, cities, towns, and townships, there was no one capable of supplying large quantities of beef and mutton.

According to Sun Benchuan's thinking, the news originally shouldn't have spread this fast; it seemed Li Long now knew, but it was only Li Long.

The snow disaster affected a vast area; logically, there should have been a large number of small herders suffering disasters, slaughtering massive numbers of cattle and sheep to survive the winter safely.

But now it seemed the nearby areas were no good; Li Long's purchasing station had absorbed all the cattle and sheep slaughtered by the small herders.

Helplessly, he could only go to other places to find goods.

If he couldn't get the jade, at least he had to secure some beef and mutton to make a profit first.

After much deliberation, Sun Benchuan could only head west; there were still vast pastures over in Ili, where he should be able to obtain large quantities of cheap beef and mutton.

After Sun Benchuan left, Li Long thought for a moment, and when Sister Yang took over watching the child, he drove to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

Xiang Qian's office door was locked; he wasn't there. Li Long asked Zhou Yuan, the head of the Procurement Section, who said:

"The Director went to the county for a meeting; he left early this morning and should be back soon. If you have nothing urgent, why not wait here with me?"

Li Long thought that made sense, so he sat down in Zhou Yuan's office.

Zhou Yuan poured water for Li Long and asked him:

"I heard you've recently purchased large quantities of beef and mutton; do you have a way to dispose of them? Do you want to send some over here? Although we can't digest much for you, a little is better than nothing."

"No need, no need, I can handle it." Li Long smiled and said, "Rest assured, Section Head; if I really can't handle it, I will definitely come to you."

Zhou Yuan could see that Li Long was truly not anxious, so what he said was likely true; thus, he stopped bringing up the topic and instead spoke about this year's snow disaster situation.

"Goods are harder to collect; in some places, snow has blocked the roads. Departments like the Road Maintenance Section have been clearing snow continuously, yet heavy snow falls every few days. They simply don't have time to clear the rural highways; just dealing with the national, provincial, and county roads is enough to keep them busy."

During this period, Zhou Yuan and his team not only stayed in various compounds to clear snow but also went to various towns and townships to purchase supplies, so they truly understood the grassroots situation.

"Who could have expected this year's snow to be so heavy?" Li Long also shook his head, "For farmers, it's a good thing; heavy snow means good soil moisture, but for herders, it's quite troublesome. It seems the entire northern region of the country is similar; the snow is very heavy everywhere."

"Then won't there be another major flood next summer?" Zhou Yuan thought further ahead, "Here in our Northern Frontier, it's somewhat better; with vast land and sparse population, floods don't have much impact, but other places are different. The situation 'inside the pass' is troublesome..."

Li Long nodded. The nationwide great flood that would occur in more than ten years, although he hadn't witnessed it personally, he knew about it due to the overwhelming propaganda and movies at the time.

Moreover, he later learned that floods didn't occur only in that year; actually, they happened every year, but that particular year was just larger.

Li Long hadn't expected Zhou Yuan to have such a compassionate heart for all living beings; after all, floods in the Northern Frontier actually didn't harm people. In the sixties and seventies, various water conservancy projects organized by the upper levels, which Li Jianguo and others participated in—including various reservoirs, artificial rivers, main canals, and branch canals—were sufficient to disperse floodwaters; once the pressure was distributed, the floods wouldn't cause much harm.

The floods 'inside the pass' that Zhou Yuan spoke of could truly drown people.

Even if they didn't drown people, flooding the farmland and causing total crop failure would be a huge trouble.

In Li Long's eyes, Zhou Yuan's ability wasn't particularly strong, not comparable to Xiang Qian. Usually, he always followed Xiang Qian's lead, seeming like someone without a backbone, completely different from how Xiang Qian was when he served as section head.

But today's conversation made Li Long look at him in a new light.

"My hometown is in a flood zone; whenever there's a major flood, to relieve pressure on the big cities, they divert floodwaters toward our hometown, and the crops are finished." Zhou Yuan's words carried a touch of desolation; one could tell his mood was not good when saying this.

So that was it.

However, Li Long felt that Zhou Yuan's appointment as section head meant he actually possessed considerable ability; perhaps he just hadn't seen it clearly for the moment.

Anyway, he didn't plan to stay in this system, so whether he saw it or not didn't matter.

"Then why not bring your family here?" Li Long was somewhat puzzled; he himself was an example: since his hometown was currently not as good as the Northern Frontier, he had simply brought his people over.

"They won't come. In their eyes, this place... is not as good as our hometown. Besides, they are getting older and don't want to travel too far; it's hard to leave one's native soil."

That was true.

Actually, only in this life had Li Qing and Du Chunfang come over, and their household registrations had also been transferred. In his previous life, due to various accidents, the elderly couple's household registrations remained in their hometown, and they spent their final years there.

For their generation, the difficulty of leaving one's native soil was no empty saying. Only with the advancement of science and the increasing development of information later on did the younger generation generally develop the idea of making a home anywhere, drifting wherever they ended up, or rushing toward wherever their ideal place was.

Li Long nodded and said nothing. The old generation's concepts were deeply rooted and truly not easy to change; people like his own father and mother were actually the minority.

In his previous life, people in the Fourth Squad around his own age, when they reached sixty or seventy, would still occasionally return to their hometowns to take care of their eighty or ninety-year-old fathers and mothers.