Chapter 455: Adulterated

The whole day, every household in the village sat at their door, and not a single doorstep was without a mountain of piled-up shells.

By the afternoon, people were one after another pushing carts to the dock to deliver goods; sitting at their doors, they could see cart after cart in the distance.

The later it got, the more carts there were. Households without carts had to carry loads with shoulder poles, and look — the line kept growing longer, stretching over a hundred meters out from the dock.

This had never happened before, and the line was still growing.

It left them all clicking their tongues in amazement.

"Th-this many people? How are we supposed to sell anything? We won't be able to sell today." Ye Mother kept craning her neck, watching toward the dock.

Ye Yaodong glanced at the corner — two bags still left unsorted. The efficiency was really too low.

His father and mother had been busy at the old house fixing the roof and settling the pig, and only came over to help at two o'clock. The old lady helped watch the children, and whenever they got hungry and needed feeding, she'd call Ah Qing. The two of them could only count as half a worker each.

The two children couldn't sit still either — after eating they ran off to play. Only Lin Guang stayed with him sorting the whole time, but Lin Guang couldn't tell which had meat and which didn't, so he could only sort the various shelled ones by category. The scallops Ye Yaodong had to pick himself.

Just the two of them working was really too slow, and on top of that, the shells they'd gathered were more than the others' — two whole bags more than his eldest brother's and second brother's households.

More goods than others, fewer hands than others — the line at the dock was already stretching terribly long, and they could only sit at the door craning their necks to watch.

His eldest brother and second brother had also just finished sorting and gone to line up a step ahead.

"Once we're done sorting, just pile it all in the yard and we'll take it to sell tomorrow. Saves us from having to line up. Leaving it for a day won't spoil it," Ye Yaodong said, craning his neck at the long line. "It'd be good enough if we can get rid of half of it today."

Ye Father looked worried. "I'm just afraid tomorrow won't have today's prices. Suddenly this many scallops — it's going to mess up the market."

"Well, nothing we can do about it either. The dock has to be able to take it all in. Let's just get all of this sorted first. Good thing we already sent some over this morning."

"Dad, Ah Dong, come over and help carry these shells to that corner over there and pile them up."

Ye Ye Dasao finished sweeping the doorway, packed all the empty shells into hemp bags and tied them up, then hurriedly called the two men left at home to help carry them.

Ye Ye Ersao had also nearly finished packing and was tying the mouth of her bag. She also said, "Help me carry mine over in a bit too."

Father and son hurriedly got up to help carry the shells.

Even these empty shells had people coming to buy them. Though they weren't worth much, it was still better than throwing them back into the sea — you could sell them for a little money.

In the future, oyster farms would need to string these scallop shells on ropes, but in this day and age no one was farming oysters yet.

But feed mills would grind shells into powder and add it to duck or chicken feed to supplement nutrition for the poultry.

Or you could bake the shells into powder yourself and sprinkle it in the fields to kill bacteria, which helped crops grow.

Nowadays many places also used scallop shells to pave roads — paving with scallop shells could harden the road surface, and it held up very solidly.

After Ye Ye Dasao and Ye Ye Ersao finished tidying up, they brought over their little stools to help sort together, chatting as they worked. Three or four of the older children were also sent over to help.

Ye Chenghe's bottom was like it had been greased — he kept squirming, his eyes drifting toward the four little ones gathered at the doorway. He really wanted to go play!

"What are you looking at? Pick it up faster — once you're done, we knock off." Ye Ye Dasao saw him dawdling, holding a clam in his palm and squeezing it for ages, and quickly gave him a kick.

"I don't want to work anymore, alright? I've been sitting all afternoon and I still have to work — my butt hurts." His mind had already flown off somewhere.

Ye Ye Chengjiang also kept turning his head to look at the others playing, and grumbled, feeling it was unfair: "Why do they get to play and we have to sit here?"

"What's with all the complaints? Because you're older, that's why. All day long you only think about playing. Ask you to do a tiny bit of work and you have so much to say."

"Even if you're bigger, sitting too long still makes you tired and your butt still hurts. I don't want to do it anymore."

Ye Ye Ersao raised her hand to hit him, but the old lady quickly stopped her. "If you don't want to work, go play then. With this many adults we don't need you anyway. There's not much left anyway — go play!"

Normally when they disciplined the children, the old lady wouldn't intervene — she'd let them finish the beating and then comfort them. But today she saw the children had really been well-behaved and had already helped for a long time; hitting them again would be unreasonable.

With the old lady having spoken, the few of them glanced at their own mothers' expressions and immediately "poor little things" scurried off.

They kept busy until nearly dinnertime before finally finishing sorting all the shells.

By then the line outside the dock had already stretched over 300 meters along the shore. Some people were still standing at the road junction watching and chattering away.

A few of the neighbors nearby, because they'd gotten a head start and gathered more than others, had also been sorting up until now, and they were all standing at their doors hesitating.

"Damn, this line is so damn long — how long are we going to have to wait?"

"This is probably going to take all night, right?"

"No sleep then — probably going to have to take shifts? The whole village has come here to line up. The next village over must have come too, right?"

"Probably."

"I'm guessing there are still people who haven't gotten in line? This long a line is scary just looking at it."

"Hey hey hey~ three tractors are coming — they should be here to pick up the goods…"

The people in line, idle with nothing to do, had gathered in twos and threes chatting. Seeing the tractors come, they all made way for them. Luckily, since everyone usually pushed carts back and forth to the dock, this road was still fairly wide.

Ye Yaodong pushed all the sorted shells and shellfish back into his own yard, stacked them up, then said to his father, "Let's go together to take a look outside the dock? Feels like they're collecting goods really slowly."

"Mm, I was just thinking the same thing. Wonder how long it'll take to finish collecting."

Father and son didn't rest a moment and immediately headed back out toward the dock.

They couldn't help but care — altogether they'd sorted out two big bags of large ones, one and a half bags of smaller ones, and three bags of empty shells.

They'd also sorted several baskets and several crates of other shellfish — none of them full, but the quantity was really not small. He figured it was about two or three bags' worth.

It was just that they'd sorted so carefully, which is why they'd taken more time. Because selling at the dock in the morning also required sorting — big ones had one price, small ones had another.

By the time father and son hurried to the outside of the dock, they saw the chaos out there was insane — everyone was cursing up a storm.

"These are all pretty big, aren't they? What's the problem putting them in with the large ones?"

"We sorted them all properly and you still want to dump them out and pick through them again — what a waste of time. Before, they never did this…"

"Exactly, that's how the time got wasted by you people, which is why it's so slow now. The line behind is already stretching terribly long."

Ah Cai was hopping mad there, spitting everywhere as he cursed: "You bastards, one by one. Laozi thought at first there were a lot of people and figured I'd collect it all quickly so the folks wouldn't have to line up too long — damn chickens, who knew you lot were so damn sneaky, all mixing the small ones in with the big ones, and stuffing the empty shells in too."

Ah Gui from another collection point was also cursing there: "You bunch of grandsons, Laozi trusted you and you were all screwing us over — damn it, in every 100 jin you mixed in at least ten jin for me…"

People from the other collection points were also cursing there: "You sons of bitches, we could've finished collecting quickly, but now we're stuck picking through for ages — damn it. Hey, you in the back — sort yours out first, bring them back once they're sorted."

"Laozi even hired three or four people to sort for you…"

The group of villagers were also talking back: "Where did we mix anything in? We sorted the big and small ones separately, all proper…"

"Exactly, sometimes old folks' eyes go blurry and they can't tell big from small, or meat from empty shell — that's normal. How could it be that clean?"

"Right, everyone picked them properly, it's normal to have picked a few wrong by accident…"

Acai cursed again: "A few wrong? Look at all these shells on the ground, do you have any conscience? And you call that picking them properly? If it were just a few wrong we wouldn't say anything, who the hell would waste time here arguing with you over a few shells…"

"Every one of you so damn sneaky, stuffing in empty shells, don't you have any idea how much you've mixed in yourselves?"

"If you lot had cooperated, would we have barely gotten a few past the scale after all this time?"

"Furious. The tractor driver just came back and said the market side, as soon as the stuff was dumped out, said it wasn't as nice as what was delivered this morning. He grabbed a bag at random, and it turned out to be a pile of empty shells."

"Th-that… others doing it doesn't mean I did too, I picked mine properly…" someone said, sticking out their neck with righteous confidence.

Acai raised a brow, "There are honest people, and there are sneaky cheaters too!"

Suddenly, Agui burst out angrily: "Whose damn goods are these? This is almost thirty percent shells mixed in, did you think just because it's getting dark we're blind? Is this what you meant by the old man's eyesight being bad and picking a few wrong?"

"Do you take us for blind people, or idiots?"

"We need to discuss the purchase price."

"Huh?"

"Right, we need to discuss it, because the goods sent off earlier didn't pass, so they were discounted on the spot. Now all the goods behind have to be marked down too."

Instantly the crowd erupted, everyone buzzing and egging each other on…

"Nothing we can do, the market side is pushing the price down. We just picked a few people, you all saw what happened, right? Especially that whoever, almost thirty percent shells mixed in, and the small ones mixed in with the big ones too — taking us for blind, taking us for fools…"

……

Ye Yaodong and Ye Fu exchanged glances. No wonder the line hadn't moved at all for ages — this was the sticking point.

These… these sneaky, petty-cheating people, they're everywhere, you really can't avoid them.

You didn't mix in fakes, but that doesn't mean the others honestly didn't either.

"Now we're screwed… picking them one by one, when would we ever finish?" Ye Yaodong immediately felt it was a thorny problem — such a huge quantity.

Ye Fu also frowned, "There's definitely no way to pick them one by one, right? If we pick them one by one, we wouldn't finish a few even by tomorrow morning."

"How can their hearts be so damn vicious?"

"What are we gonna do? We all picked ours properly and honestly."

"Let's see what they decide after discussing — aren't they discussing right now?"