Night descended like thick ink, engulfing the entire county town.
Every household had turned off its lights. Only a few dim yellow streetlamps glowed forlornly at the ends of the alleys, stretching people’s shadows into long, thin silhouettes.
A slender figure carrying a bulging gray cloth bag melted into the darkness like a ghost.
Su Qiao had already changed into her disguise.
She wore old clothes that had been washed until they were faded and patched in several places. Her face had been smeared yellow with a mixture of soot and yellow earth. Her hair was tightly wrapped in a blue cloth headscarf, leaving only a pair of astonishingly bright eyes visible even in the darkness.
At this moment, she looked exactly like a typical rural woman weighed down by the hardships of life, with just the right amount of timidity and greed in her eyes.
During the day, she had already scouted the area.
On the outskirts of the county town, near the railway, stood a stretch of abandoned freight warehouses. This was the most notorious black market in the area.
All sorts of people gathered there. It was a channel for selling stolen goods and a gray zone for trading supplies.
Instead of taking the main road, she threaded through various dark and narrow alleys, perfectly avoiding every possible source of light and prying eyes.
Ten minutes later, she stopped in front of a huge red-brick warehouse.
The warehouse’s iron gate was covered in rust, with a large padlock hanging from it more as a symbol than anything else. But on the side, an inconspicuous little door was left slightly ajar.
Faint light and muffled voices drifted through the crack.
Su Qiao took a deep breath, sensing that familiar mixture in the air—the complicated scent of machine oil, sweat, greed, and opportunity.
She adjusted her expression, suppressing the sharpness in her eyes and replacing it with nervousness tinged with anticipation.
Well, well, she thought to herself. Here comes the fortune of a lifetime!
She slipped sideways through the small door, and the scene inside suddenly opened up before her.
Hundreds of people moved about inside the enormous warehouse.
Everyone tacitly kept their voices low. No one dared to speak loudly.
Most transactions took place beneath the faint beams of flashlights.
Buyers and sellers gathered together, using the light to inspect goods and count money. Once the deal was completed, they immediately separated and disappeared into the darkness.
The air was filled with a tense, thrilling, and mysterious atmosphere.
Su Qiao didn’t rush to make a move.
Like a fledgling bird making its first appearance in the outside world, she timidly leaned against a corner, clutching her cloth bag while rapidly scanning the entire market from the corner of her eye.
She was observing and memorizing.
The black-market slang, the prices of goods, and the divisions of power.
She saw someone selling eggs for ten cents each—nearly twice the price at the supply and marketing cooperative—yet people were still scrambling to buy them.
Someone else was selling home-raised chickens and ducks stuffed into burlap sacks, with only their heads poking out.
There were even bolder sellers directly offering pork. No ration coupons were required, and it cost one yuan per pound, thirty percent higher than the market price. Yet the fatty pork belly still made everyone watching drool.
These were all small-time operations.
Su Qiao’s gaze soon locked onto several people in the center of the warehouse.
Unlike the other sellers who wandered around hawking their goods, these people simply stayed quietly within their own “territory,” with an empty burlap sack placed in front of them.
Whenever someone approached them, they would exchange a few words in a low voice before taking the person to a more secluded corner to inspect the goods.
These were the real middlemen, the “dealers” who controlled the black market’s largest and scarcest sources of goods and sales channels.
After observing for about half an hour, Su Qiao had a good idea of how things worked.
She adjusted her headscarf, hunched her back, and walked toward the man who looked most like the leader among them.
He was a middle-aged man with a square face, wearing a slightly worn Sun Yat-sen suit. An unlit cigarette was held between his fingers, and his sharp eyes quietly surveyed the people coming and going.
Su Qiao walked up to him and, imitating the others, lowered her voice and spoke hoarsely.
“Big brother, got any ‘conscience’?”
“Conscience” was black-market slang for Dacron fabric.
The man’s eyelids lifted slightly. His scrutinizing gaze landed on Su Qiao, traveling from her worn-out headscarf down to the pair of cloth shoes on her feet that had been rubbed nearly to pieces.
“What quality? How much do you want?” he asked concisely.
“New stock from Shanghai. The patterns are the latest fashion.” Su Qiao was equally brief. Then she held up three fingers. “I’ll take three yards’ worth of coupons first.”
This was her way of making it clear that she wasn’t there to sell anything but to buy.
Buy first, sell later. That would reduce the man’s wariness and establish a basic level of trust.
The man nodded without saying anything and led her behind a pile of discarded cargo crates.
He pulled a stack of fabric coupons from inside his clothes and handed them to her. Su Qiao also took out several small-denomination notes from her pocket, and the transaction was completed.
“Sister, you look unfamiliar. First time here?” the man asked casually.
“My husband is sick. We need money for his treatment. I had no choice but to come out and make a little money.” Su Qiao lowered her head, her voice trembling with tears, perfectly portraying a rural woman driven to desperation.
The last trace of suspicion in the man’s eyes disappeared.
Su Qiao took the fabric coupons and walked around the market once. She soon found a fabric vendor and exchanged the coupons for cash at a slightly higher price.
She didn’t leave immediately.
Instead, she returned to the square-faced man.
This time, she lowered her voice even further, giving it a mysterious edge.
“Big brother, what if I have goods even better than ‘conscience’? Interested?”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
He stared at the ordinary-looking rural woman before him and suddenly felt that he couldn’t see through her at all.
“What kind of goods?”
Su Qiao didn’t answer. She merely opened the cloth bag a crack.
Under the faint light coming from a distance, the man caught only one glimpse before his breathing suddenly stopped.
Inside the bag was a glimmer resembling silk, along with a section of metal bearing a fine steel watchband.
His heart immediately began pounding!
“Come with me!”
He made his decision instantly, grabbing Su Qiao and taking her to an even more secluded corner where there was almost no light.
He switched on his flashlight, covering most of it with his hand and leaving only a weak beam to illuminate Su Qiao’s cloth bag.
Su Qiao calmly opened the bag.
Inside was a small roll of brand-new Dacron fabric in a bright, vivid color, a pair of crystal-clear nylon stockings wrapped in oiled paper, and a brand-new Shanghai brand wristwatch resting quietly on a piece of cotton cloth.
Any one of these three items was an exceptionally rare, top-tier commodity on the market at that time!
The square-faced man’s eyes went wide instantly, and even his breathing grew heavy.
“Y-You… where did you get these goods?” His voice had changed completely.
“Big brother, you know the rules of the trade. We don’t ask where the goods come from.” Su Qiao’s voice had returned to its calm tone, no longer carrying the timidness of earlier.
The man took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the shock and greed surging in his heart.
He knew that he’d encountered a very big fish today.
“How much do you have?”
Su Qiao held up five fingers.
“Fifty bolts of Dacron. Five hundred pairs of nylon stockings. Fifty watches.”
The square-faced man sucked in a sharp breath!
This quantity was no longer small-time business. It was enough to stock an entire department store!
He stared intently at Su Qiao, his eyes filled with shock and disbelief.
Who exactly was this seemingly insignificant woman?
“Name your price.”
He stopped wasting words.
Su Qiao quoted a figure.
The number made the square-faced man’s heart clench. It was almost the upper limit of what he normally paid for goods.
But he also knew that as long as he could take this shipment, he could turn around and make more than three times his investment!
“…I’ll take everything!”
He gritted his teeth and made his decision.
“But I don’t have enough cash on me. Come with me somewhere to get it!”
“Fine.” Su Qiao nodded. “But I want to see half the payment as a deposit first.”
“No problem!”
The moment the man finished speaking, a piercing scream suddenly rang out from outside the warehouse, shattering the tranquility of the night.
“The police are here! Run!”