110: Chapter 110: Thoughts 110: Chapter 110: Thoughts The next morning, after having some food, the two cousins set out to handle their respective affairs.

Sun Jinzhong headed to Brother Qiang’s place in Yanbei Village, while Chen Hai went alone to Liuyuan No.1 Middle School to find Director Tao.

At the school gate, the makeshift wall still encircled the construction site, leaving just a gap for people to freely come and go.

However, Liuyuan No.1 Middle School also had another side gate apart from the main gate.

With it being the summer holidays and no students in the school, only some faculty members needed to enter and exit the school gate.

Knowing that the site was under construction, most people used the side gate to access the campus.

Chen Hai squeezed through the gap in the makeshift wall to check the condition of the excavation pit.

Zeng Zhiguo and his crew had indeed worked hard the day before.

The large pit, over seven meters deep, had been completely filled in.

However, although the pit was filled, it would still take some time before the concrete surface could be completely redone.

It was around nine in the morning, and Zeng Zhiguo’s workers were bustling about, paving the concrete surface.

Zeng Zhiguo himself, however, was nowhere to be seen by Chen Hai here.

Of all the construction workers, Chen Hai was somewhat familiar with only three of them—Wu, Hei, and their group.

These three guys were currently manually mixing cement, and upon seeing Chen Hai, they were slightly taken aback.

After exchanging glances, they whispered among themselves.

When they looked back at Chen Hai, there was even a hint of resentment in their eyes.

The double wages Zeng Zhiguo promised them the day before had naturally disappeared the moment they climbed out of the pit.

Maybe because Zeng Zhiguo had been reprimanded himself, he scolded Wu, Hei, and the others severely after work yesterday.

He even threatened them, saying that if they kept up this behavior, they could no longer work for him!

In these times, city workers were being laid off in droves, and the number of surplus labor in rural areas was even greater.

Wu, Hei, and the others had only been working with Zeng Zhiguo for a year or two.

Their work, which was mainly manual labor, didn’t require much skill.

If Zeng Zhiguo fired them, he could easily find replacements.

Without this job, they really wouldn’t know where else to earn money!

Perhaps, these were the reasons they seemed to even resent Chen Hai!

Chen Hai furrowed his brow slightly as he felt the resentful gaze from Wu, Hei, and the others.

The incident with the skeleton excavation yesterday had indeed been rather unpleasant!

But from Chen Hai’s perspective, he truly didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

After all, it should have been the responsibility of Zeng Zhiguo and his crew, who were hired to work on the No.1 High School site, to excavate the skeleton buried underground.

That skeleton underground did seem somewhat sinister, which was true.

However, Chen Hai had repeatedly assured that Wu, Hei, and the others would absolutely be fine, in addition to paying them quite a bit extra!

In the end, after those guys left with their burdens, he had no choice but to call for Sun Jinzhong to come down, and the two of them dug out the skeleton themselves.

If anything, Chen Hai had really gone above and beyond!

After excavating the skeleton with Sun Jinzhong, and feeling displeased, couldn’t he complain a few words in front of Zeng Zhiguo and Director Tao?

He was too lazy to bother much with these guys bearing resentment towards him!

Glancing around to confirm Zeng Zhiguo wasn’t there, he strode towards the inside of the campus.

“Brother Wu, Brother Sheng, I went inside No.1 High School to use the restroom earlier, and I chatted with an old man there for a bit!”

“You guys know, that Chen Hai kid who just left, guess how much he got paid for this job?”

Leaning close to the other two, Hei glanced around and whispered.

Among the three of them, the other two are both over thirty—only Hei is in his twenties.

In their little construction squad, whenever Hei meets anyone else, he has to call them “Brother.”

“How much could it be?

A hundred?

Or two hundred?”

“This Chen Hai, digging up that skeleton from the ground, must have some skills.”

“In our countryside, those mages and witches who perform exorcism spells, they charge a few hundred for a session and people call them black-hearted.”

“This Chen Hai, the money he got from No.1 High School, couldn’t be in the thousands, could it?”

Holding a shovel, Wu stirred the cement and casually replied,

“Bullshit thousands, Brother Wu, let me tell you, for handling this thing, this Chen Hai kid…

he got this much…”

With a mysterious look, Hei stretched out two fingers and waved them in front of Wu and Brother Sheng.

“What?

Two thousand?”

“That can’t be possible, right?

We dug that deep pit for a solid two or three days!”

“But that kid, these past few days, he’d just leisurely come by here twice, and not until the third day did he actually start working a bit!”

“We bust our asses for less than ten yuan a day, and if he’s making two thousand, I’m the first one to object!”

Brother Sheng exclaimed in shock, his face filled with rage as he gazed at the faintly disappearing figure of Chen Hai in the distance.

“Hei, you must have heard it wrong, confusing two hundred with two thousand, right?”

“How could he possibly make that much for the little he did?”

On the side, Wu clearly didn’t believe Hei and skeptically asked for confirmation.

“Two thousand?

I’m talking about twenty thousand!”

“Brother Wu, Brother Sheng, if you don’t believe me, you can ask around at No.1 High School!”

Grinding his teeth, Hei’s face darkened as he continued, “We work ourselves to death for a pittance.”

“Those who leisurely stroll around, scared of getting sunburnt so they sit under parasols, those guys can make a killing.”

“The world is so unfair, tell me, are you guys content with this?”

Wu and Brother Sheng looked at each other and fell silent.

“Content or not, what does it matter?”

After a long sigh, Brother Sheng finally spoke again, voicing his sentiment.

Next to him, Wu’s gaze flickered, and who knows what was going through his mind at that moment!

“I have a buddy who lives by the national road.

A lot of people there are civilians by day, bandits by night.

They live quite decent lives!”

“Just a few days ago, when I was drinking with him, he told me, these days, the timid starve while the bold thrive.”

“If you want to make money, you can’t be old-fashioned, you have to throw all that righteousness and morality out the window!”

“A mage nearby our village, beaten up by two young lads, what’s the use of knowing a little spell, a single hit and you’re down!”

…

With a fierce expression, Hei leaned in close to Wu and Brother Sheng, beginning to whisper in low tones.