Chapter Fourteen Overseas Entrepreneurship

  "Rent a stall?" The thin man stopped the middle-aged woman who was about to speak with his eyes and said, "This is a prosperous stall here, at least five gold coins per day."

  Du Le smiled and said, "Uncle, I heard everything you just said. If I had cash on me, I would have bought this shop from you for 10 gold coins a long time ago."

  The middle-aged woman glared at the thin little man, blaming him for talking too much just now.

  A thin, small man saw the middle-aged woman's eyes full of resentment and had to avoid her. He unwillingly said to Du Le, "This is the capital of Chu State, where every inch of land is precious. Moreover, you seem to want us to help you sell it together, so the cost can't be low!"

  Du Le thought for a moment, then pulled out an orange from his bag and handed it to the thin man, saying, "I have a whole bunch of these oranges, making money shouldn't be a problem. It's just that my hometown is currently embroiled in war, so I couldn't go back home, and had to find a place to settle down."

  A middle-aged woman snatched one, looking at the mouth-watering orange and exclaimed, "Are there still such good oranges now? Where did you transport them from? How many are there?"

  Du Le smiled and didn't answer. The middle-aged woman saw Du Le's smiling face and thought he didn't want to tell her the source of goods. After all, business people generally don't want others to snatch their business away.

  "We won't rob you of your business, as long as you have a basket full of oranges as collateral, I'll take charge and mortgage the store to you. To be honest, if we didn't want to leave Jinyang City, you wouldn't have been able to get this storefront at such a good price. You just need to give us at least two days' time." The thin man said resolutely.

  Du Le slowly calculated in his heart, this was actually a good idea. Moreover, the thin man obviously intended to make another haul before leaving.

  "A basket of one hundred tangerines, the store will come to collect two days later. If you agree, we'll sign a contract and seal it with our handprints, then I'll go back and bring them over." said Du Le.

  The slender young man said with a smile, "Good, it's settled then." Such good oranges, I estimate they can sell for two gold coins each. One hundred oranges would be 50 gold coins, which is already the highest price in the store. Moreover, with his accumulated popularity from selling fruit in Jinyang City, he was sure to sell all one hundred oranges within a day.

  The matter of signing the contract was not complicated. Although Chu State was attacked by Qi and Jin States, the government office for handling such matters remained open. As long as a middleman could be found to serve as a witness, going to the office to sign and affix one's seal would complete the transfer of the property deed.

  After settling the details of their collaboration, Du Le borrowed an excuse to move oranges and left the fruit store.

  Du Le didn't directly find a secluded spot, take out the oranges from space, but instead wandered around Jin Yang City. It wasn't that Du Le didn't value the agreement they had just reached, he wasn't blind to the benefits, but there was an urgent problem that needed to be solved. That is, Du Le couldn't stay in Jin Yang City for a long time, he would return home at any moment, and the six-hour buffer period would cause a certain gap in time. If he bought the fruit shop, people wouldn't be able to effectively take care of it, and all sorts of problems would arise at any moment.

  Du Le strolled around while thinking and finally decided to hire at least one employee to watch the store and sell things for him.

  Because Du Le cannot manage the industries in Jinyang City in a timely and powerful manner, the employees needed by Du Le must first possess these qualities, and they cannot just be good at operating and making money, but also need to be honest, responsible, and preferably have a grateful heart.

  However, honesty, responsibility and gratitude are not things that can be seen in a short period of time. So the conditions for Du Le's help are relatively simple: the employee should have a family and their living situation shouldn't be very good, they need to be helped.

  However, after walking around Jinyang City for most of the day, Du Le felt that there were many people who met the above conditions. Now in Jinyang City, there are indeed many refugees with families.

  Perhaps it was fate, Du Le walked around in a big circle and ended up back at the entrance of the alley where he first appeared.

  According to Du Le's understanding, this alley is the coordinate marked by the positioning transmitter. Next time he transmits again, he will still be in this alley. Without an energy stone, he can't re-engrave the coordinates and locate for the time being.

  Returning to this alley, the scene that night appeared in his mind again. Du Le suddenly had an urge to go in and take a walk.

  As he walked into the alley, Du Le didn't see any corpses on the ground, but instead saw another heart-wrenching scene.

  There is a refugee family living in this alley, with old and young people, a family of five, all focusing on an old bowl.

  "Son, you drink this bowl of porridge." The old mother said to her middle-aged son.

  "Mother, I'm not hungry, you eat." The son said with tears in his eyes. His wife and their two children, a boy and a girl, were all huddled at the foot of the alley wall, although they looked bewildered on their faces, their eyes kept glancing at the bowl of porridge.

  Mother slapped her son in the face, "I'm old, this family can't be without you, and only you can protect Jia Wang and Jia Xin. Our family can't end with no descendants."

  "Mother..." The son choked out.

  Du Le didn't know what was wrong with him. The recruitment conditions he had just thought of were thrown to the back of his mind, and a strong bitter feeling surged up in his heart.

  "I have a job, I don't know if you are willing or not." Du Le immediately stepped forward and said to them.

  The old mother was stunned for a while before she understood Du Le's meaning, and excitedly struggled to get up, saying: "Quan'er, stand up and thank the old master."

  A middle-aged man knelt down in front of Du Le: "Our whole family can become your family slaves, just beg you to accept our whole family."

  The old mother knocked on the middle-aged man's head and said to Du Le, "Master, please forgive me. I only ask you to take in Zhao Quan so that he can support his wife and children."

  Du Le heard the implication in his old mother's words, she wouldn't be a burden to him.

  Du Le's nose turned sour and he shook his head, saying: "What I need is all of you as a family, including the elderly. My request is very simple, that is absolute loyalty to me!"

  "We've met the master of the house!" The family of five knelt down happily to thank Du Le. This scene made Du Le very uncomfortable, he actually just wanted to hire an employee and didn't want to be a "master of the house".

  However, Du Le was not a stubborn person, but someone who could easily adapt to new environments and accept new things. Since collecting house slaves was popular here, Du Le wouldn't refuse, anyway he really needed a "loyal" subordinate.

  Du Le soon found out about their situation, the middle-aged man was named Zhao Quan, his wife Wu Lan, seven-year-old son Zhao Jia Wang, five-year-old daughter Zhao Jia Xin, and the old woman was Zhao Quan's mother, Mrs. Zhao.

  They were a family of farmers from the northern mountains, who fled to Jinyang City to escape disaster. However, due to soaring prices, their limited gold coins were almost depleted, and what was left couldn't even buy half a kilogram of rice. They could only rely on Zhao Quan queuing up to grab the limited porridge available to get by each day.