PCJ – Chapter 249 The Road to Entrepreneurship

“Father wrote that Jiaohua has taken on a gardening project at home. The tea he made even won a gold medal in the province. He wants us to go back and help Jiaohua manage the garden. What do you think?” Liu Qiaoye knew her husband’s thoughts without needing to ask. Zhang Youping had a strong sense of masculinity, and the idea of going back to enjoy an easy life wasn’t something he could bring himself to do.

“Let’s talk about it later,” Zhang Youping seemed calm, but his hands were clenched into fists, and the muscles in his arms bulged.

Liu Qiaoye glanced westward.

Home felt so far away; she wondered if the cloud on the horizon was the same one floating over their hometown.

When it was payday, Zhang Youping collected his wages and calmly told his wife, “I’m planning to quit.”

Liu Qiaoye didn’t ask why. “So what do you plan to do afterward?”

“I’ve been wandering around the area recently. The recycling station buys cardboard for twenty cents a pound. The price seems to be going up. There’s construction everywhere, and more factories are being built, so there’s a high demand for packaging paper. I found out there’s a packaging paper factory nearby that offers a higher price for recycled paper than the recycling station. I’m thinking of using our wages from the past few months to start a recycling station. There aren’t many people collecting waste paper from the nearby factories. These factories are run by our fellow townspeople, so I’ll find a way to get them to sell me the waste paper from their factories at the recycling station’s price. I’ll then take this waste paper to the paper mill, and I can make a big profit. Just look at our factory—there’s a huge pile of packaging paper used for materials and parts every day, and no one has noticed it yet. If I can set up the recycling station here, these few factories alone will be enough for me to make money.” Zhang Youping had been skipping overtime lately, wandering around the area, and finally saw an unnoticed opportunity.

“If you’re sure, go for it. I’ll support you,” Liu Qiaoye understood her husband’s ambition. If she forced him to stay in the factory, he wouldn’t be happy. It seemed their son had put too much pressure on his father. Thinking of this, a smile appeared on Liu Qiaoye’s lips.

“I need to set a good example for our son,” Zhang Youping felt relieved when he saw that his wife didn’t object.

When Xiao Lihua and her husband heard that Zhang Youping had quit his job to start a recycling station, they were also supportive.

“Brother, you have the courage. I’ve thought about quitting my job many times to start something on my own but never made up my mind. You’ve only been here for a short time, and you’re already doing it. You’re stronger than me. I’ll go withdraw all the money we’ve saved in the past two years. You need money to start your business, and we don’t have any use for it now, so take it and use it. Pay us back when you’ve made a profit. If I ever make up my mind to quit, you can’t just stand by and do nothing.” Zhao Hongbing placed a neat stack of hundred-yuan bills into Zhang Youping’s hands, a few thousand yuan in total, which was a huge amount at that time.

Over the next few days, Zhao Hongbing accompanied Zhang Youping in searching for a place to set up the station, treating Zhang Youping’s business as his own.

Zhang Youping had already built good relationships with the factory’s cleaning staff and security guards. In some factories, Zhang Youping could directly take away the discarded packaging without anyone realizing it was valuable. However, Zhang Youping was farsighted. Even though he could take those materials for free now, he knew that in the future, when people realized their value, he might not be able to get them even by paying. So, he took the initiative to buy the waste packaging from them at a low price. Once he had a truckload, he would call a truck to take the waste to the packaging paper factory.

After a few trips, Zhang Youping had doubled his assets. But he wasn’t satisfied with just the nearby factories; he started looking toward the more distant industrial parks. He set a small goal for himself that year: to save up enough to buy a small truck so that he could stop relying on others for transportation.

If Zhang Jiaohua knew that everything he did not only failed to bring his parents back home but also put immense pressure on his father, making him determined to stay in Guangdong, he wouldn’t know how to feel.

While Zhang Youping was happily counting money, Zhang Jiaohua had already fallen asleep in bed.

In his dream, Zhang Jiaohua once again saw his long-lost old Taoist master.

That night, the old Taoist master taught Zhang Jiaohua the “Flipping Altar Curse”: “I respectfully invite Zhang Wulang to the altar, our two grandmasters to descend to the altar… If an evil master comes to fight, carry water with a vegetable basket to sprinkle the altar. Everywhere there is a name before the altar, everywhere there is a banner and spear before the hall, an iron-armored golden body appears in the clouds, flying clouds and galloping horses come quickly, the disciple respectfully invites the flipping altar ancestor to descend in person!”

He also taught Zhang Jiaohua a few other spells, all of which were related to battling evil masters: the Flipping Altar Curse, the Five Thunder Curse, the Zhang Wulang Curse, the Battle Law Presage, the Copper and Iron Poles, and the Wall-moving Method…

It was a strange dream; he spent the whole night watching his old Taoist master fight with other evil masters. The old Taoist master had just recovered from an illness and was still weak, but the evil masters took advantage of the situation to attack. The old Taoist master struggled to fight back while Zhang Jiaohua could only watch anxiously, as if watching a story unfold in a dream, unable to do anything to help, no matter how much he wanted to. However, he memorized the curses his master used clearly. When Zhang Jiaohua woke up drenched in sweat, the dream felt as if it had really happened. After that, he couldn’t sleep anymore, so he got up.

Zhang Jiaohua practiced Meishan boxing in the yard. Though he was young, his punches showed a bit of the true essence of Meishan boxing. Zhang Jiaohua hadn’t practiced much, but in his dreams, he had seen everything. Moreover, Zhang Jiaohua could feel the intent behind the punches in the dream, so practicing them was like second nature to him.

After practicing for a while, Zhang Wenrong and the others arrived in a hurry.

“Jiaohua, why are you up so early?” Zhang Wenrong quickly jumped onto the plum blossom poles and began practicing.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I got up early. You guys should master the pole techniques first. Later, I’ll teach you some routines,” Zhang Jiaohua hadn’t planned on teaching them real martial arts, but seeing how much they’d changed, he decided to change his original plan.

Before he knew it, the rice in Zhang Jiaohua’s field had grown heavy. The ears of rice looked particularly long, even though the same type of rice planted by others in the village was quite different from what Zhang Jiaohua had grown in his field.