An Jianping hadn’t expected his wife to be so observant. He had intended to gloss over it and offer a vague explanation.
But when he saw the rare seriousness in her eyes, all the words he had prepared got stuck in his throat.
Glancing around and seeing that no one else was nearby, An Jianping could only confess honestly.
“The total contracting fee was about fifty thousand.”
“About fifty thousand?” Bi Lizhu was somewhat skeptical.
Judging from the area she had just seen, it really didn’t seem like it would cost that little.
“The mulberry groves and fish ponds didn’t cost much. No one has wanted to take them on for many years now.”
“I agreed to contract four hundred mu in one go, at fifty yuan per mu. That’s only about twenty thousand in total,” An Jianping explained very carefully.
It wasn’t that he was exaggerating.
When the neighboring Lin Village was demolished two years ago, even short-term crops like rice paddies and vegetable fields were compensated at over five hundred yuan per mu.
Fruit trees were compensated per tree instead.
He’d heard that the village head of Lin Village had a longan tree that had been growing for decades, and just that one tree was compensated at a full two thousand yuan.
However, Lin Village had always mainly planted grain crops, with very few large fruit orchards, so An Jianping had no real reference for comparison.
“As for the fruit trees here, apart from some papayas and bananas on the edges, most of them were planted nearly ten years ago.”
“They’re basically all in their prime fruit-bearing period now, so the contracting price was higher, calculated at eighty yuan per mu.”
“I contracted a total of four hundred mu, which comes to thirty-two thousand.”
“So altogether, that makes fifty-two thousand.”
Fifty-two thousand was still acceptable, but—
Bi Lizhu eyed An Jianping suspiciously. “Where did you get that much money?”
“Didn’t you apply for homestead land for both Ayu and Axiang? How much will it cost to build four houses at once?”
“Well… about forty thousand per house,” An Jianping answered more softly than before.
He was afraid that if his wife kept asking, she would discover that he had taken his two daughters to apply for loans.
That would probably make her many times angrier than finding out he had helped both daughters apply for homestead land and build houses for them!
That was also why An Jianping hadn’t hesitated at all today and had brought Bi Lizhu straight into the village.
After all, the houses under construction couldn’t be hidden anymore.
He might as well let her see them when the time came.
What he hadn’t expected, though, was that unlike his daughters’ easygoing attitude, his wife reacted differently.
After seeing the several houses under construction, although her expression didn’t look good, she didn’t storm off in anger.
Instead, she continued following him around, touring all the mulberry fields and fruit orchards.
And so, all the things An Jianping hadn’t yet figured out how to explain were completely exposed.
Bi Lizhu could indeed tell something was wrong from her husband’s expression.
After all, how could she not know exactly how much savings the family had?
Just these four houses alone had nearly drained their entire savings.
What remained was money reserved for their son’s down payment on a new house.
Before today, An Jianping shouldn’t have touched that money.
So then, where exactly had the money come from to contract these mulberry-based fish ponds and orchards?
“I just… took out a bit of a loan,” An Jianping admitted, looking even more guilty.
At this moment, not only Bi Lizhu, but even An Songlin and An Songxiang beside them were staring at him intently, waiting for a more detailed explanation.
“Well…” An Jianping glanced discreetly at his future daughter-in-law, signaling to his wife not to push the questioning any further.
Bi Lizhu pursed her lips and could only suppress the urgency in her heart.
After leaving Jiang Village, An Songlin first drove Xuan Ying home.
On the way, Xuan Ying asked uneasily,
“Songlin, Uncle… isn’t he being a bit too aggressive?”
She had known all along that the money they had paid in full to buy their house had been used instead for development in Jiang Village.
But now, hearing that her future father-in-law had not only invested that money but had also taken out loans, Xuan Ying felt unsettled.
An Songlin thought for a moment before replying, “I don’t think so.”
“I just heard Grandpa and Grandma say that in about a week or so, the silkworm eggs will hatch.”
“Raising silkworms only takes about forty days before you can harvest the cocoons.”
“In a year, you can raise them four times.”
“Each time, calculated per mu, you can earn one to two thousand.”
“And there are actually a lot of mulberry fields in our area. Even those unattended mulberry trees can still be used to pick leaves to feed silkworms.”
“It’s just that unmanaged mulberry fields grow leaves more freely and are easier to harvest.”
“I just don’t know how big the silkworm house my dad built is.”
“One to two thousand per mu per season?” Xuan Ying widened her eyes in disbelief.
An Uncle had just said that he alone had contracted four hundred mu of mulberry fields.
Then… that would mean—
“That’s not how it works,” An Songlin said with a laugh, flicking his fiancée lightly on the forehead. Her greedy little expression was actually quite cute.
“Not to mention the costs of building silkworm houses and managing the mulberry fields and fish ponds.”
“Even out of those four hundred mu, it’s not all mulberry fields.”
“In our village, mulberry-based fish ponds are contracted together. Pure mulberry forest probably doesn’t even make up half.”
“It depends on the location my dad chose. We didn’t get a very close look today.”
“But even if it’s only half, and even accounting for the costs of building silkworm houses and managing the fields, it would still pay itself back very quickly!”
Xuan Ying felt that no matter how she calculated it, she couldn’t find a way for this to lose money.
“Then why does no one in your village raise silkworms anymore?”
“Because it’s too hard,” An Songlin said helplessly as he rubbed the top of his fiancée’s head.
Things were nowhere near as simple as she imagined.
He continued explaining carefully. “Silkworms may not look big, but they can really eat.”
“When they’re small, it’s manageable, but when they grow to full size, a single tray of silkworms can eat more than two hundred jin of mulberry leaves a day.”
“If one mu of mulberry trees can support five or six trays of silkworms, just imagine how many leaves you’d have to pick in one day.”
Xuan Ying roughly did the math and couldn’t help swallowing. “At least a thousand jin?”
She had never picked mulberry leaves before.
But just imagining that weight, with her limited strength, she probably wouldn’t be able to carry them from the mulberry fields to the silkworm house even if she worked from dawn till dusk.
So this was indeed hard-earned money.
No wonder Jiang Village had so many mulberry fields that eventually ended up lying idle.
Still, after An Songlin explained it this way, Xuan Ying no longer felt that her future father-in-law’s loan-funded contracting was too reckless.
She was just wondering how he planned to manage everything going forward.
And Songlin too—based on what her future father-in-law had said last night, even if they invested the down payment for their marital home, everything would still be under Songlin’s name.
Would Songlin end up having to manage all of this as well?
In the end, after thinking it over again and again once she got home, Xuan Ying didn’t tell her family about what had happened today.
She couldn’t yet fully judge whether contracting the mulberry fields and orchards, or raising silkworms, would ultimately produce sufficient returns.
And thinking back to her initial worries, Xuan Ying knew she didn’t understand the situation as thoroughly as An Songlin did, nor could she explain everything clearly enough to ease her family’s concerns.
It might be better not to let them know at all.
That way, they wouldn’t worry for nothing.
(End of Chapter)