Chapter 208 - 186: The Hope of the Great Tang

Chapter 208: Chapter 186: The Hope of the Great Tang

Hearing Chen Wenbin’s words and watching his gestures, a wide grin spread across Chen Yuan’s face.

Whatever Chen Wenbin had been like before — whether he’d been playing it safe, keeping his distance, or simply keeping his hands clean — none of that mattered now. That word "family" was as real as it got.

From here on out, Chen Wenbin would be his backbone in this village.

"How’s the construction coming along over at Old Pond?"

Chen Wenbin shifted topics smoothly.

"We’re past the halfway mark. Should be up and running in about ten days."

Chen Yuan pushed the office door back open and grabbed himself a cup of water on the way. "The planting over at Flower Sea Fruit Forest is mostly done, but the trees still need time to grow."

Fruit trees don’t just burst into bloom the moment you transplant them. At the earliest, you’d have to wait for them to settle and establish themselves before they’d flower and bear fruit. Right now, there was nothing on the branches.

"Over at Flower Sea, aside from the artificial flower scenic area, we’ve also transplanted a good number of summer-blooming flowers. We’ll be lining them along the village roads over the next couple of days, so there’s always something to look at year-round. The rest will have to wait for their seasons, but between everything, we’ll have color all four seasons."

Chen Yuan took a sip of water, set down the paper cup, and kept talking.

"Not bad at all."

Chen Wenbin was pleased.

Yu City Village was his turf. Nothing happened here without him knowing about it. There was no way he hadn’t been keeping tabs on a project as sweeping as Chen Yuan’s.

"A train only runs as fast as its engine pulls it."

Chen Yuan grinned.

"Save the flattery~"

Chen Wenbin shot him a look. Did the kid think he couldn’t smell a compliment from a mile away? Chen Yuan was basically saying Yu City Village turned out so well because of his great leadership — yeah, right, his ass.

"Here — last batch of contracts. I’ve talked to everyone on the outside. Some were asking too much, so I turned them down. Haven’t touched the village folks’ land either. If you’ve got opinions, speak up."

Not bothering to humor Chen Yuan’s flattery any further, he pulled a few documents from another drawer and handed them over.

"Heh, I’ve got no complaints. Uncle Bin’s already thought of everything — I’m happy to just follow your lead. Saves me the headache."

Chen Yuan wasted no time grabbing the pen off the desk to sign, then transferred the contract amounts straight to the village committee’s account. He’d been through this routine enough times to do it in his sleep.

"I think we’ve about hit the limit. You’ve leased most of the farmland in the village already — trying to swallow it all up just isn’t realistic."

Chen Wenbin genuinely appreciated this quality in Chen Yuan. The kid took what was offered without ever reaching for more. He knew exactly where the line was.

"Yeah, the villagers’ own fields are off the table — no question. Whether they want to farm grain or maybe follow suit down the road, they’ve got to have room to work with."

Chen Yuan was satisfied. The land Chen Wenbin had secured for him was more than enough to work with.

Flowers blooming in every season, fruit fragrant at every festival.

Once Flower Sea and fruit country became the labels people associated with this place, the results would be something to look forward to.

"There’s one more thing — the big pond, the one you care most about."

Chen Wenbin tucked Chen Yuan’s signed copy of the contracts into the drawer and reached for the cigarettes on the desk.

"The big pond — there’s actually a chance now?"

Chen Yuan was quick. The moment Chen Wenbin’s hand touched the pack, he already had a Hua ready and held it out for him.

"More or less."

Chen Wenbin took it, lit up, drew a long drag, and exhaled a slow stream of smoke.

"The lease rates you offered were pretty generous — enough to give people a taste of the money. Some got greedy and pushed for more, but a fair number thought it was a decent deal."

Every village had idle fish ponds sitting around. The big pond wasn’t doing anything just sitting there, so why not take something over nothing.

Especially for those who’d already settled elsewhere or even transferred their household registration out — they were the easiest to win over. At market-rate lease prices, spread over a ten-year term, each household stood to pocket several thousand yuan.

Free money. Who turns that down?

"From what I’ve counted so far, about two hundred households have agreed to lease out the big pond."

Chen Wenbin put a number on it.

"Two hundred households?"

Chen Yuan clicked his lighter but didn’t light his cigarette, his mind turning it over.

Uncle Bin had said you needed two-thirds of the village to agree before the committee could decide on usage rights for the big pond. Two hundred households wasn’t even half.

Not even close to two-thirds.

"Zhou Jianming deserves some credit for that. When word first got around that you were after the big pond, he was out there stirring people up to block it. But after Zhou Lin’s wedding, he flipped and started talking it up instead — and a lot of the non-Chen families stopped digging their heels in."

Yu City Village wasn’t all Chen family. There were other surnames too — families the government had resettled back in the old village chief’s era, people who’d fled famine or been displaced by floods and other disasters.

Zhou Jianming’s grandfather had been one of those resettled families.

Yu City Village had taken in quite a few of them, which was how it ended up with over five hundred households. That was precisely why the old village chief had built the big pond in the first place — the population had outgrown the Old Pond.

"Sounds like Zhou Jianming made a real difference."

Chen Yuan lit his cigarette and took a drag.

That was just how village life worked. When people had a grudge against you, they wouldn’t give you an inch. But once the air was cleared, they’d show you exactly what it meant to be straightforward, decent country folk.

"But two hundred still isn’t enough, is it?"

Chen Yuan smoked and watched Chen Wenbin, waiting for the rest. Uncle Bin had said there was hope — there had to be more to the story.

"Do you know how many households Yu City Village actually has on the books right now?"

Chen Wenbin asked with a smile.

Chen Yuan’s eyes lit up slightly.

Yu City Village used to have over five hundred households, but as the times changed and the pull of the cities grew stronger, people had been leaving the countryside one after another to build new lives in town.

On top of that, plenty had transferred their household registration out — for work, for their kids’ schooling, for all kinds of reasons. The village rolls were definitely much thinner now.

"Only four hundred households left on the books. Permanent residents are under a hundred. The ones who still come back for holidays and festivals — only about two hundred or so."

Chen Wenbin shook his head with a quiet sigh.

When he’d first taken over Yu City Village, it was still the village he remembered — packed and lively during every holiday, with opera troupes coming to perform and outdoor movies being screened on a sheet.

Everyone pitched in during the harvest rush, and neighbors sat around chatting during the slow seasons. Summer evenings were the best — after dinner, people would pull out stools to catch the breeze, swapping stories with whoever wandered over. You could drop in on any neighbor and find a warm welcome.

Children ran through the lanes in packs, their laughter ringing out across the whole village.

But now the drop-in visits had dwindled, the children had all gone to school in the city, and the village didn’t even have a school anymore. It had grown quieter and quieter, nothing like it used to be.

He’d always wanted to breathe life back into Yu City Village — to bring back that simple, bustling energy, neighbors stopping by for a chat, kids tearing around the courtyards.

But you couldn’t hold back the tide of the times.

"So going by four hundred households, you only need a few dozen more to get the big pond approved?"

Chen Yuan’s eyes brightened further. This was good news — the big pond was getting closer and closer within reach.

"And those two hundred I mentioned don’t include the households still living in the village."

Chen Wenbin nodded with a grin.

That made Chen Yuan even more excited.

There were still somewhere between eighty and a hundred households living in the village. Setting everything else aside, there was his own family and his uncle’s, then his second aunt’s family and the employees who’d already voiced their support.

That alone was over a dozen households right there.

Work the connections a bit more — Zhou Jianming and the other villagers still living here — and the big pond suddenly felt like it was genuinely waving him over.

"The Old Pond project is no small operation — you’re going to need to bring on more staff, right?"

Chen Wenbin flicked his ash, and from the look on his face, Chen Yuan understood exactly what Uncle Bin was getting at.

Hire villagers, earn goodwill, kill two birds with one stone.

And if the numbers still came up short, they could start working the big pond angle directly.

"We definitely need more people."

It wasn’t just Old Pond — the guesthouses would need staff too. With Flower Sea Fruit Forest, Hot Spring Paradise, and the indoor children’s park all coming online, the guesthouses would be officially opening for business as well.

Same as always — he’d leave the staffing outreach to Chen Wenbin.

"Oh, Uncle Bin — with so many households having moved away from Yu City Village, have their old homestead plots been taken back by the village committee?"

Chen Yuan had his eye on building guesthouses.

The way the policy worked, villagers were members of the collective economic organization and legally entitled to use collective land. But once your household registration was transferred out of that collective, the homestead land you’d been using was supposed to revert back to the village collective as a matter of course.

Once you were no longer part of the collective, you were no longer entitled to its benefits.

And the village committee had the authority to handle those reclaimed plots however it saw fit.

"Not all of it’s been taken back yet."

Chen Wenbin shook his head, and seeing the puzzled look on Chen Yuan’s face, he gave a brief rundown of the current policy.

The way things worked now was that the land followed the house.

Under normal circumstances, once an entire family transferred their registration out, the homestead land would revert to the village collective. But because the land followed the house, any structure standing on that land was still the private property of the villager — the village committee had no right to touch it.

Only if the house collapsed or was destroyed by natural causes could the committee step in and reclaim the land outright.

When Chen Wenbin said not all of it had been reclaimed, he meant there were still privately owned houses standing on those plots.

But that was a problem that could be worked around.

"Uncle Bin, I want to lease those homestead plots."

Chen Yuan came right out with it — no point dancing around things with Chen Wenbin.

He even laid out two options.

The first: he leases the plots himself and builds guesthouses on them, paying the full rent upfront just like he’d done with the fish pond leases.

The second: a partnership with the village committee.

The committee provides the land, they develop the guesthouses together, the committee takes a stake in the operation, and collects dividends at the end of each year.

The first option was clean and simple.

But Chen Yuan was hoping for the second.

Since coming back to the village, Chen Wenbin had cleared the path for him at every turn. Chen Yuan had been wanting to show his appreciation for a long time, but whether out of caution or principle, Chen Wenbin had never accepted anything. He’d even turned down the back-payment of rent for Chen Kingdom’s use of the small pond.

It was only just now, in this very office, that they’d truly become family.

So Chen Yuan was willing to tie himself closer to Chen Wenbin.

Chen Wenbin listened to both proposals and sat quietly thinking, brow furrowing occasionally. Chen Yuan didn’t push. He refilled Chen Wenbin’s tea, then settled back in his chair to smoke and wait.

"If the village committee takes a stake — would the investment firm go along with that?"

Chen Wenbin asked after a few minutes.

The moment he heard that, Chen Yuan knew exactly where Uncle Bin stood.

"Absolutely no problem. I have full decision-making authority over the fishing operation, and besides, we’d only be signing a contract specifically for the guesthouse side of things — it wouldn’t affect much at all."

Chen Yuan said, handing him a cigarette as he spoke.

Chen Wenbin had been so deep in thought that his cigarette had basically burned itself down to nothing. It had gone out entirely by now.

Chen Yuan figured Chen Wenbin was about to make a call.

But instead, Chen Wenbin lit the new cigarette, took two hard drags, and said,

"The homestead business isn’t urgent. Let’s wait until your place is up and running, see how the guesthouses actually perform, and go from there. Otherwise it’s another massive investment on top of everything else."

"Sounds good. I’ll follow your lead, Uncle Bin."

Chen Yuan understood the hesitation.

If it were just a straight lease, Chen Wenbin would probably just remind him to think it through carefully — and if Chen Yuan was set on it, he’d give the green light without much fuss.

But this time, with the village committee potentially taking equity, it made sense to see how the guesthouses performed before committing to anything.