This was also why she hadn’t insisted on Yi Anguo marrying her.
Chen Ting was over seven months pregnant and due in another two. Her belly was quite large, and Yi Anguo asked after her with concern.
Just then, Yi Xiaolin called. He was excited, telling Yi Anguo that they had found a huge amount of Huali wood deep in the mountains of Haidao Province, in a village of the Li Ethnic Group. It wasn’t just logs, either. Many of the old houses throughout the Li village were also built from Huali wood. In addition, many of the old pieces of furniture in the hos of these Li residents were crafted from it as well.
"Have you taken stock? Roughly how much is there?" Yi Anguo asked.
"The quantity is insane. There’s no way I can tally it all at once," Yi Xiaolin replied happily. "That godforsaken place doesn’t even have landlines. My cell phone is useless for anything but telling ti—there’s absolutely no signal. I had to run out to a town outside the mountains just to make this call."
"Then what do you estimate it’s worth per ton? Can we buy it from them?" Yi Anguo asked. "And their old houses? Are they willing to tear them down and build new ones?"
"They’re definitely willing, but it’ll take ti. If they tear down all their houses at once, where will they live? They’ll have to build the new ones as they tear down the old," Yi Xiaolin said. "As for the price, we shouldn’t offer too much. The higher our offer, the more reluctant they’ll be to sell. They’ll just get suspicious and think we’re still lowballing them. But if we keep the price down, they might assu that’s all it’s actually worth and agree to sell."
"Shouldn’t there be a lot of timber rchants buying Huali wood at high prices there by now? Have the villagers really not heard anything? It’s impossible they don’t know how high the value of Huali wood has been hyped up, right?" Yi Anguo asked, puzzled.
"I’m not sure. In any case, this village is extrely remote. It’s deep in the mountains with no phones, no TVs... they don’t even have electricity!" Yi Xiaolin explained.
"Don’t tell there are no roads either. If there’s no road access, we won’t be able to transport the wood out even if we buy it!" Yi Anguo asked in surprise.
"It’ll be a hassle, but there should be a way as long as we’re willing to spend the money. Once we get it down the mountain, the rest will be easy," Yi Xiaolin said after a mont of thought.
"How did you even find such a remote place?" Yi Anguo asked again.
"We had no choice. Everything on the outskirts had already been bought up, so we had to go deeper into the mountains. Then we got lost. We were just wandering in circles, unable to find our way out. Luckily, we ran into a group of locals returning from the market in town. They were on a walk-behind tractor and brought us back to their village," Yi Xiaolin said with a laugh.
"When we got to the village, we saw it—Huali wood, the sa stuff that’s so hard to find anywhere else, was literally everywhere. We even saw a villager sawing it into pieces and splitting it for firewood.
"When we saw that, our hearts just broke. I honestly wanted to kick the guy a few tis just to blow off so steam.
"We rushed over and begged him to stop. What he was burning wasn’t firewood—it was stacks and stacks of cash!
"Even now, thinking about it makes my heart bleed. The pain was so real!"
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