In less than 20 minutes, Wang An arrived back in the county town streets.
Driving straight to the supply and marketing cooperative, Wang An walked in and bought 100 jin of the most expensive liquor yeast.
Normally, 1 jin of yeast could ferment 100 jin of grain. Wang An felt that preparing 100 jin of yeast would definitely be enough—likely enough for several years.
As for the yeast itself, it wasn't particularly expensive. The cheapest was 2 yuan per jin, said to be made from wheat bran, while the most expensive was 3.5 yuan per jin, said to be made from wheat grains.
Of course, there were mid-range options, but Wang An didn't even look at them.
Regardless, he was brewing the liquor for his own family to drink. More importantly, Wang An wasn't short on money, so he naturally had to buy the most expensive kind!
After buying the yeast, he bought 50 cartons—one case—of classic Ice City cigarettes in one go, and then drove to the blacksmith shop.
There were many blacksmith shops in the county town, and in terms of scale, they were all reasonably large. In any case, there were plenty of masters and apprentices hammering away "ding-dang ding-dang" all day long.
Wang An parked his car in front of the largest blacksmith shop and walked into the courtyard.
Seeing Wang An enter, an old master set down his hammer, tossed a piece of iron blank held by tongs into the charcoal fire, gave a few instructions to someone beside him, and then walked over to greet Wang An.
Seeing the master approach, Wang An greeted him with a smile
"Uncle Geng, keeping busy, I see?"
Wang An knew this blacksmith, and naturally, the other man knew Wang An.
Because back when Wang An was messing around aimlessly in the county town, the weapons used by the gang he led—such as cleavers, hacking knives, pipe knives, daggers, stabbing spears, and tri-pronged spikes—were basically all forged here.
This Boss Geng was quite meticulous; he never produced sloppy weapons. The hacking knives and daggers he forged were of genuinely good quality.
After Wang An spoke, Uncle Geng said with a beaming smile
"Little An is here! Hahaha, it's been a few years since I've seen you. I heard from your little brothers that after you beat someone up badly that one time, you hid in the countryside and never came back?"
During the period when Wang An was reborn, the reason he stayed at home was indeed as Uncle Geng said: it was caused by a large-scale brawl.
Because too many people were involved in that fight, several thugs were crippled in the chaos.
After the fight ended, the news Wang An's group heard was that someone had died in the hospital. Consequently, Wang An's group scattered like birds and beasts; everyone ran or hid, fearing they would be caught up in a homicide case.
Mainly, things worked that way at the time—as long as no one died, it was just a matter of "dogs biting dogs."
To the public security officers and neighborhood defense members, people like Wang An were nothing but useless scum who disrupted social order. They didn't care how badly they were beaten.
There was no helping it; hooligans and drifters were simply an existence that everyone found annoying.
But regardless, once a life was lost, the matter instantly became huge. Those involved in the fight would certainly be dealt with severely, or even used as examples and executed by firing squad.
Therefore, Wang An and a few of the ringleaders huddled together and decided that they would all temporarily avoid showing their faces in the county town, or simply quit the hooligan circle.
However, in his previous life, after staying home for over a month, Wang An found out when he returned to town that the two people who died in the hospital weren't thugs involved in the fight at all, but two workers from a stone quarry.
Those two workers had been injured by flying stone shards while using explosives to blast rock, and they died after failing to be saved in the hospital.
It just so happened that too many people were sent to the hospital that day, leading people to mistakenly believe that thugs had been beaten to death.
Thus, in his previous life, Wang An resumed his aimless drifting after learning the truth. But the reborn Wang An took this opportunity to exit the hooligan circle entirely.
After Boss Geng finished speaking, Wang An smiled slightly and said
"Yeah, I suddenly felt there wasn't much point in being a drifter, so I stopped mixing with them, hehehe."
Uncle Geng gave a gratified smile and said
"You're right not to mix with them. Fighting and causing trouble every day—what's the damn point? In the end, you're either beaten to death or you end up in the fence eating a bullet. There's no good end to it."
Wang An didn't refute Uncle Geng's admonition, but continued to agree with a smile
"Yeah, you're right, Uncle Geng."
After exchanging a few more pieces of useless small talk, Wang An got straight to the point
"Uncle, I came because I want you to make two stills' head-pots and two pot-collars for distilling liquor, for use with 12-inch large pots. If you have thick iron sheets, you can just weld two using those."
In this era, the liquor most people drank was bulk liquor; basically, every village had someone specializing in brewing and selling it.
However, quite a few people brewed for their own consumption, so many people came to the blacksmith shop to have head-pots and pot-collars forged.
After Wang An finished, Uncle Geng blinked and asked
"Little An, you planning to open a liquor shop in your village?"
Wang An shook his head
"I'm not thinking of selling it. It's just that there's a bumper harvest of grain this year, so I thought I'd brew some extra liquor to store and drink slowly in the future."
Uncle Geng nodded and said with a bold air
"Those two things don't need to be custom-made. I've got a whole pile of them ready in my warehouse. I've got ones for 9-inch pots, 10-inch, 12-inch, 13-inch, and even 15-inch."
Wang An was momentarily stunned and instinctively asked
"Why on earth did you make these things? Does anyone actually buy them?"
Uncle Geng laughed loudly, his face full of pride
"Isn't it because the land has been allocated to households? Every family has a bit of surplus grain now. Consequently, the number of people coming to me for head-pots and pot-collars is quite significant!"
"I saw that more and more people were brewing liquor at home, so I figured that's where the money is! So I made a huge batch of pot-collars and head-pots of various sizes, hahaha... Well? Isn't your Uncle Geng quite talented?"
It had to be admitted that this Boss Geng was indeed very talented. No wonder there were so many blacksmith shops in the county, yet his was the largest in scale, had the most workers, and the most booming business.
His foresight and willingness to invest generously were not things an ordinary person could compare to. While many blacksmith shop owners were still worrying about how much iron material and cost would be tied up, he had already produced them and started selling.
One must realize that all humans share a common trait: they dislike waiting.
Yes, they simply dislike waiting! (End of Chapter)