Chapter Ninety-Five: Is This Not a Double Blow?

Zhong Di hurriedly pulled out his phone and opened his elder sister’s messaging app.

There were several short videos and a number of pictures. Zhong Di looked through them one by one. Before seeing them, he had been slightly worried, but after finishing, he felt no worry at all.

The content was nothing more than an attempt to smear their free-range chickens, claiming that their chickens and their eggs were nothing special at all, merely the most ordinary goods, yet priced outrageously high.

It also called Zhong Di a black-hearted merchant, and even included a screenshot from an online shop, showing a product listing: a free-range chicken for a price of nine hundred ninety-eight, carry it home today.

When had they opened an online shop? Even Zhong Di had no idea.

“What do we do?” Zhong Hui asked anxiously.

“It’s fine. Ignore it. Just keep operating as usual. No need to pay attention, and no need to issue any clarification.”

In matters like this, the innocent need no defense. If there is nothing to it, then no amount of slander will matter.

Zhong Di guessed that this was very likely someone envious of their profits, or perhaps Hua Rui.

Either was possible. For now, there was nothing to do but keep ignoring it. With their current sales, just Dongyang alone could consume everything.

Their strategy for outside sales was to limit quantities, so this would not affect them in the least.

Zhong Hui remained a little bewildered, then went back to her work. Still, since Zhong Di had said so, she could not say much.

For Zhong Di, the matter of smearing the chickens was only a small interruption and could not affect anything of substance.

Soon enough, it passed. Zhong Di took a look at the ducks, the geese, the Imperial Consort chickens, and so on. To be safe, he even specifically fed the little animals water mixed with Wild Sand Immortal Sprout.

Though this could not guarantee absolute perfection, it could at least provide a basic safeguard.

After confirming that all kinds of poultry were fine, Zhong Di and Shao Hong began cleaning up the chicken manure. Rather than removing it, they simply piled it in the chicken pen to ferment.

Once it had fermented enough, they could haul it away with the electric tricycle and scatter it into the fish pond as feed for the fish.

After cleaning the chicken pen, Zhong Di discovered another rather fatal problem: the ground in the pen was bare and desolate. For an orchard, this was hardly a good thing.

Short term, perhaps nothing would show. But in the long run, serious problems would emerge.

If there were not even a blade of grass on the surface, the underground microorganisms would diminish, which in turn would affect soil vitality, air permeability, and more. Simply put, the earth would grow more and more lifeless.

And that was not all. As everyone knew, plants themselves, or more accurately, the roots of fruit trees, could absorb certain small-molecule organic compounds such as amino acids to support their growth.

Much of the amino acids in the soil, in turn, came from underground microorganisms.

That was only one part of it. There were many other effects as well. Zhong Di knew this had to be solved.

Even if he set aside all of that, he still had to consider aesthetics. A bare patch of ground was ugly enough on its own, and it would also encourage bacteria, which would then give off unpleasant odors.

As he worked, Zhong Di kept thinking of a solution.

For him, there were actually two directions to consider. The first was to let grass grow in the orchard: first confine the free-range chickens to one side, then plant grass on the other, using species with especially strong reproductive power.

The other method was to introduce earthworms. Earthworms could not only improve soil vitality, they could also decompose chicken manure.

Each approach had its own advantages and drawbacks. Zhong Di kept weighing them, and if necessary, he would simply use both.

Snap.

A sharp sound suddenly rang out in the air.

Zhong Di looked at the mosquito he had just slapped dead in his hand, and his teeth itched with fury.

“Zhong Di, there are more and more mosquitoes now!”

Shao Hong looked at the sky. It was already not far from nightfall. Work was like that: as you went on and on, time simply slipped away.

“Yeah. It’s autumn now. This is the season when mosquitoes are at their worst.”

Zhong Di did not have a very good solution for this either. In the height of summer before, it had been all right; at night there were not so many mosquitoes, and lighting mosquito incense was enough.

But once autumn arrived, the mosquitoes gradually increased in number, and even the incense was of little use.

Though they had planted some mosquito-repelling herbs in the orchard, there was not much of it yet. Even if it repelled mosquitoes, it only worked in that small patch; in other places, mosquitoes were still plentiful.

“All right, let’s call it a day,” Zhong Di said softly after thinking for a while.

By then, they had cleared less than half of the chicken manure that day. The area was not large, but because so much had piled up, it was still quite difficult to clean.

In the course of the day, the vegetables had been planted, the road through the middle had been repaired, and the only thing left was the house construction. At most, in another two days, the house should be finished.

As for the interior decoration, that was not something to think about right now.

Just as Zhong Di and Shao Hong were preparing to make dinner, the phone suddenly rang.

Zhong Di looked at it and saw that it was a call from Sun Miao Miao. Could it be that something had gone wrong with the lemon tree from before? That should not be; it made no sense.

“Zhong Di, I need to apologize. You can have whatever compensation you want. If that won’t do, I’ll just pay you with myself—no, I mean I’ll marry you.”

The moment the call connected, Zhong Di heard Sun Miao Miao’s familiar voice. The voice was still the same: bright and clear, with a certain sweetness to it, but damn, the content was seriously problematic.

What did she mean, pay us with you? What had she done that required her to torture herself like that—no, us? Wasn’t that a double injury?

“Just say what happened,” Zhong Di said, not taking up her words. She could talk, and he could listen, but he absolutely could not respond in kind; once he did, trouble would surely follow.

“It’s about your family’s free-range chickens being smeared. We got the news this morning, and immediately used our connections to investigate. We only just got results.”

“It was done by our competitor in Kunlun City, Hua Rui. You should have heard of them. This was their doing. But don’t worry: however many chickens you have, we’ll buy however many there are. We absolutely won’t let you be stuck with unsold stock.”

“And an apology is definitely necessary. If you don’t want to get married right now, we can get engaged first, or have both families meet—”

“Stop, stop, stop. Stop at the part about the chickens not selling. Don’t say anything after that.”

Before Sun Miao Miao could finish, Zhong Di cut her off. What she had said up front was normal enough.

If Hua Rui could not compete and its market share was being squeezed away, then of course they would try some methods.

Like this, hiring some internet trolls or the like cost little and was effective. But what on earth was all that at the end?

To be fair, Sun Miao Miao was beautiful, not merely beautiful, but far more beautiful than Wen Ya Ke, and she also had an elegant bearing. The question was, why did she keep bringing up marriage every so often? Well, perhaps it was only a joke.

So Zhong Di did not take it too seriously.

“What came before doesn’t matter, only the part after—”

“Mm, I know. But do you really think our free-range chickens will become unsold stock? All right, it’s just a tiny matter. No need to keep talking about it.”

After Zhong Di finished speaking, he prepared to hang up.

“Mm, yes, that makes sense. There’s no way they’d become unsold stock. No, wait, the important part is the later bit, the two families—”

Sun Miao Miao had not yet finished speaking when Zhong Di hung up.