Chapter 296 He Had Wrong Thoughts

Chapter 296 He Had Wrong Thoughts

With his biggest worry gone, Dr. Chen looked relaxed all day, while those who were eyeing the money in the village's public account all hid in their own houses and cursed under their breath.

In the past, when times were not good, the village's public account was often empty. Chen Lizheng had to pay out of his own pocket to help the poor households in the village. But now things are different. Over the years, the village's public account has accumulated a considerable amount of money.

Some people who were struggling financially, but were also lazy and unwilling to work hard, secretly set their sights on this money.

Before Chen Lizheng and the village elders decided to use the money to stockpile some medicinal herbs, these people had already tried countless times to get Chen Lizheng to take the money from the public account and distribute it to everyone in the village.

Of course, because some of them have large families and others have small families, their preferred distribution methods are not the same.

Those with many members in their household hoped that Chen Lizheng would distribute the money according to the number of people, while those with few members hoped that Chen Lizheng would distribute the money according to the number of households.

Before Chen Lizheng could even express his opinion on whether or not to divide the money, the two groups, each with their own preferred distribution plan, had already started arguing.

This left Chen Lizheng speechless; he hadn't even said he wanted a share of the money yet.

As for why they were unwilling to split the money...

Although he certainly wouldn't embezzle the money, he no longer wanted to use his personal assets to subsidize the village's impoverished households.

The village has limited land and forests that can be sold. The money from selling land and forests is dwindling as it is spent. Not to mention that natural disasters are unpredictable and could happen at any time, even if such a disaster doesn't occur, the poor households in the village still need him to provide financial assistance every year in order to barely make a living.

Of course, his status as a "person in need" is not something that just any family struggling financially can claim.

Only those families without able-bodied members, such as elderly people living alone, orphans who have no one willing to raise them, or families with elderly parents and young children, where the husband has unexpectedly passed away, leaving only a widow to support the family, or even where the widow has abandoned her elderly parents and young children to remarry, are families with extremely heavy burdens.

Chen Lizheng would not give a single copper coin or a grain of rice to families that had strong laborers but were lazy and unwilling to work.

As for whether they will cause trouble, let them. It would be perfect for him to join forces with the village elders and their own elders to teach these good-for-nothing bastards who are just loafing around and corrupting the village's atmosphere a lesson.

Those people knew very well that Chen Lizheng was not the kind of soft-hearted person whose judgment standards could be easily swayed by them, so they came up with another way—to stir up the villagers' covetousness and use their numbers to force Chen Lizheng to take out the money and distribute it.

Although this would inevitably reduce the amount of money they receive significantly, it's better to receive less than nothing.

To their surprise, while they were still arguing over the distribution method, Chen Lizheng had already persuaded the village elders to use the money to stockpile medicinal herbs.

How can this be? If Chen Lizheng and the others use all the money to buy medicine, what will they use to stockpile food to cope with disaster years?

They weren't wealthy families with surplus grain in their granaries and extra money in their chests. Even in years of good weather, their laziness would cause their families to go hungry, let alone in a year when a drought was imminent.

Although Tang County is not in the area where it has hardly ever snowed, it is still affected by the disaster because of its proximity.

And the first to arrive will undoubtedly be those poor families like them, who rely on wild vegetables and fruits to fill their stomachs from spring to autumn every year.

After all, those people were just like them, with no money and no food. If they didn't have the elm seeds, locust flowers, wild vegetables, and other things that used to grow all over the mountains every spring, they definitely wouldn't be able to survive the rest of the spring.

In order to avoid starving to death with their families, besides selling their children and wives at rock-bottom prices and relying on their families' blood to survive, their only option was to flee to other places as soon as possible.

As for borrowing money and food from relatives and neighbors, in the face of a major disaster, who, except for someone who is mentally ill, would risk the lives of their own family members to save the lives of others?

With these migrants competing with local residents for resources, Tang County will not only see a rise in the prices of necessities such as grain and salt, but will also experience a worse situation where jobs become more sought after and harder to find, leading to lower wages.

Even wild vegetables, tree bark, and grass roots that were originally everywhere would gradually become life-saving items that everyone would scramble to grab as the situation worsened and more and more people went hungry and searched for these dried fruits.

After all, even small animals like pheasants and rabbits, which are relatively easier to catch, are not something that ordinary people can hunt on a large scale.

Without real skills, ordinary people whose physical strength has been greatly reduced due to hunger will miss the great opportunity to fill their stomachs even if they encounter fresh meat walking by, because of their slow movements.

Ultimately, all they can obtain in large quantities are non-moving wild vegetables, tree bark, and grass roots.

These people were numerous and starving; when they scavenged for anything edible, they truly scavenged every inch of the land. In any place they roamed, you wouldn't find any wild vegetables to eat anytime soon.

As a result, the local poor people, who were already struggling and relied on fruits, vegetables and wild greens for most of the time, would also have to go hungry.

We all came from a time of war and turmoil, plagued by natural disasters and man-made calamities. Who wouldn't know how difficult it would be for them to live if a major disaster struck?

The mere thought of potentially starving to death due to food shortages, or being forced to sell their land, houses, children, or even their wives, instantly made those lazy men restless.

It wasn't that they couldn't bear to part with their wives and children; rather, in such a situation, people are the least valuable. Even if they sold all their family members except themselves, they wouldn't get much money or grain in return.

Not to mention that once they actually do that, they'll have no one to boss them around or exploit them anymore.

They can't spend the rest of their lives struggling to support themselves, can they? They're not the type to toil and work hard.