Chapter 78

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Protagonist:

Li Xiulan

That evening, Zhang Zhongtian went to Li Xiulan's home.

At this time Li Xiulan was eating dinner with her three children; seeing Zhang Zhongtian enter, she stood up to greet him.

"Accountant Zhang, it's so late—what brings you to my home?"

Zhang Zhongtian actually didn't like others calling him Accountant Zhang very much; although he was still the village accountant now, he was also the Acting Village Committee Secretary, and he much preferred people calling him Secretary Zhang; even if not Secretary Zhang, calling him Zhongtian Brother or Zhongtian Uncle was better than Accountant Zhang.

However, he wouldn't quibble too much with a small woman like Li Xiulan who didn't understand human relations.

He put on a smiling face and walked into Li Xiulan's home:

"Nothing much, just dropping by. By the way, I spoke to Yang Xiaocai at noon today, asking him to tear down the wall at the entrance—has he torn it down yet?"

Li Xiulan suddenly realized:

"So it was you, Accountant Zhang, who asked Yang Xiaocai to tear down the wall! I was wondering how he could possibly suddenly and voluntarily tear down those two walls!"

Then she hurriedly thanked him:

"Thank you very much, Accountant Zhang!"

Zhang Zhongtian said with a laugh:

"No need to thank me; we're from the same village, helping each other is only natural. Besides, what Yang Xiaocai blocked wasn't just your family's path in and out, but also the paths of several other households. I'm now the Acting Village Chief—I certainly can't turn a blind eye to this kind of thing!"

Li Xiulan hurriedly said:

"Accountant Zhang, you're much better than Liang Yuanchao; you've really helped me out a lot this time!"

Li Xiulan had been transporting materials these past few days, exhausted to the point of being sick of it.

So now she sincerely thanked Zhang Zhongtian.

Zhang Zhongtian said:

"You don't need to be so polite; it's all what I should do. By the way, the Village Committee election is next year, and I plan to run for Village Committee Secretary. At that time, I hope you'll support me—remember to cast your vote for me!"

Zhang Zhongtian knew Li Xiulan's emotional intelligence was relatively low, so some things said directly worked much better than beating around the bush. Saying too many polite words indirectly, Li Xiulan might not understand the meaning.

"Okay, okay, I'll definitely vote for you then!"

Li Xiulan readily agreed and immediately made a guarantee.

Zhang Zhongtian had been so good to her, so naturally she was willing to cast a vote for Zhang Zhongtian.

Zhang Zhongtian got the answer he wanted, feeling very satisfied.

He exchanged a few words of small talk with Li Xiulan, then said goodbye and left.

The next day, Li Xiulan went to find Lao Huang, who drove the tractor in the village, wanting to ask Lao Huang to help transport the construction materials at the village entrance into the construction site.

But when Li Xiulan heard Lao Huang quote a price of 15 yuan per truckload, she was immediately not very happy.

"It's such a short distance—15 yuan to transport one truckload?"

Lao Huang explained:

"Don't look at the short distance, but you have to load it onto the truck and unload it from the truck. Loading and unloading are the hardest parts, and all that's included in the fee!"

Li Xiulan frowned tightly:

"Others transport it from outside for only 20 yuan per truckload! You want 15 yuan for such a short distance! I say at most 10 yuan!"

Hearing this, Lao Huang was somewhat speechless and laughed, saying:

"Then go find someone else—see if anyone will take it for 10 yuan!"

Li Xiulan then asked a tractor master from the neighboring village, who also wanted 15 yuan per truckload, and only then did she realize that 15 yuan was probably already the lowest price.

In the end she was unwilling to spend the money; after all, in that era when working in the city earned only five or six hundred yuan a month, a transport fee of 15 yuan per truckload was really too expensive for her.

Li Xiulan decided to still move and stack the construction materials piled at the village entrance by herself.

At worst it would take a few more days—just a bit of hardship and tiredness, nothing serious!

Yang Xiaocai saw that the road had already been cleared for Li Xiulan, yet Li Xiulan still chose manual labor; he was very puzzled inside, couldn't help but secretly laugh, thinking Li Xiulan was so stingy that she deserved to suffer!

He muttered behind her back:

"With that small frame carrying such heavy things—if she throws out her back, that'll be funny!"

As it turned out, Yang Xiaocai's jinxed words really came true!

That day Li Xiulan was carrying two pieces of wood inside; at the corner, the wood bumped into the wall corner. She didn't react in time, and as a result the wood jolted her, and she threw out her back.

She gritted her teeth and carried those two pieces of wood to the construction site.

After throwing the wood onto the ground, she could no longer bear it.

She immediately held her waist and squatted down, pain making her break out in cold sweat all over.

She rested for a full half hour or more before she could barely stand up.

Because of this, she had to suspend the moving work again.

She rested at home for two days, but her waist injury still didn't improve.

And it became increasingly painful.

Unable to bear the pain any longer, she went to the health station at the village entrance to find Zhong Jianguo.

Zhong Jianguo examined her, asked about her situation, and quickly determined the illness.

"You have a lumbar muscle strain—you carried something too heavy and accidentally pulled it. You need rest and can't do heavy work for now, otherwise it will only get worse!"

Hearing this, Li Xiulan was very discouraged:

"I still have a lot of materials that haven't been moved in! Dajun Shu and the others are waiting to start work!"

Zhong Jianguo sighed:

"I'm not saying this to blame you, but now Yang Xiaocai has already torn down the wall blocking the road. You could just hire a tractor to haul the materials in. Why do you still insist on moving them yourself? Just to save those couple of yuan?"

Li Xiulan fell silent and stopped speaking.

She really was doing it just to save those couple of yuan.

"You, you! To save those couple of yuan, you ended up spending even more money!"

Zhong Jianguo gave Li Xiulan an IV drip and prescribed seven days of medicine to help relieve the pain in her waist. This directly cost Li Xiulan over thirty yuan out of pocket. Now it was all for nothing — the medical expenses were even higher than the freight cost, and she suffered for it on top of that!

Most importantly, in the end, those construction materials at the village entrance — she ultimately still had no choice but to hire a tractor to transport them in. In the end, she still had to pay that freight cost!

Because Zhong Jianguo told her she couldn't do any heavy work for at least a month. Otherwise, if she injured it again later, she might be left with a lifelong illness.

She couldn't wait a month to go manually haul those materials. She could wait, but Lin Dajun and Zhou Hongwei couldn't wait. And she was too embarrassed to make them wait that long!

On the day the tractor was hired to transport the construction materials into the construction site, Li Xiulan called to notify Lin Dajun and Zhou Hongwei to come over and resume work.

Lin Dajun really couldn't hold back this time, and he said a few extra words:

"Xiulan, I'm not saying this to blame you, but if every time materials are brought in it drags on for ten or eight days, then us workers might as well drink the northwest wind. If you keep doing it like this, my workers won't want to work anymore!"

Actually, it wasn't just his worker Zhou Hongwei who didn't want to work anymore — he, Lin Dajun himself, didn't want to work anymore either.

Taking on Li Xiulan's project counted as him having eight lifetimes of bad luck!

Li Xiulan could only wear a face full of apology:

"Dajun Shu, I'm truly sorry. Please rest assured, this kind of situation won't happen again. The road has already been connected. From now on, tractors can directly transport the materials in!"

Lin Dajun immediately froze:

"Really? You'd better not be deceiving me!"

"I wouldn't deceive you. You'll know when you come to start work tomorrow — the road really is open!" Li Xiulan answered like this.

Lin Dajun's mood only then eased slightly:

"That's good. Then we'll go start work tomorrow! We have to seize the time to work. We can't delay any longer. I recently took on another project. Once I finish yours, I have to hurry over to do that one!"

Lin Dajun used these few days of rest to go negotiate another construction site, agreeing to start work in half a year.

So he had to finish Li Xiulan's construction site within half a year.

……