For now, Xiao Liang had no interest in untangling the old grudges within the Xiao family. What mattered most was getting his own household back on track as quickly as possible. Only if he played his first move right would he have the leverage to deal calmly with all those lingering resentments—whether they had surfaced or not.

Xijiang lay just across the river from Dongzhou, but in the 1990s there was still no bridge connecting the two. Xiao Liang met up with Zhang Feili and Liu Weiwei at the long-distance bus station. They caught the 2 p.m. coach, transferred to a ferry to cross the river, and finally arrived in Xijiang’s urban district around five in the afternoon.

Xu Lihuan, Wu Qiyan, Xu Xiaodong, and the others had arrived two days earlier. They had already rented a warehouse near the newly opened wholesale market on Zijiang Road, and even transferred two ordinary workers from the factory to guard it.

Aside from arranging a small room at a nearby hostel for Wu Qiyan, Xu Lihuan and the rest—including the two workers—had been sleeping on the floor in the warehouse for the past two days.

“These Wenzhou traders are really something else,” Xu Lihuan grumbled, pulling up his sleeve to show his arms, which were covered in red welts. “The mosquito nets we bought at the market were cheap enough, sure—but the mesh is so wide you could stick your pinky through it. Look at what the mosquitoes did to us!”

The warehouse they rented was in a nearby village—rows of makeshift corrugated metal structures put up by locals, mostly leased to vendors from the wholesale market for storage.

By mid-June, Xijiang was already sweltering. The warehouse was damp and stifling, and just twenty or thirty meters away ran a foul-smelling ditch. Even in broad daylight, swarms of tiny mosquitoes hovered, diving at any exposed skin.

The warehouse was still empty—no goods had been shipped in yet—but to save on lodging costs, Xu Lihuan and the others had made do. Wooden pallets were laid out over the damp ground, topped with planks, straw mats, and reed mats. Mosquito nets were strung up above—instant beds. But the cheap nets from the market were useless, and the small, vicious mosquitoes of Xijiang had left them all covered in bites.

Back in Dongzhou, people had long complained about low-quality mosquito nets sold by Wenzhou traders. Over the years, counterfeit goods from the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region had only deepened that reputation. Now, staring at his own battered arms, Xu Lihuan couldn’t help but vent his frustration in that direction.

“The two workers should stay here to guard the warehouse,” Xiao Liang said, standing at the entrance, visibly reluctant to step inside. He didn’t even set down his travel bag. “But give them extra lodging allowances. And buy proper mosquito nets—ones that actually work. Get electric fans too, but make sure the wiring is safe.”

He glanced back at the others.

“As for the rest of you—even if it’s just for appearances—we should be staying at the hostel.”

Wu Qiyan had already checked into a nearby hostel. After some bargaining, she secured a room for three hundred yuan a month. The team had scraped together thirty thousand yuan in cash from what little remained in the factory’s account, and there were expenses everywhere—they couldn’t afford comfort.

Now that Zhang Feili and Liu Weiwei had arrived, they could share Wu Qiyan’s room. The group rented three more rooms: Xu Lihuan, Xu Xiaodong, and the other four men split into two rooms, while Xiao Liang took one room alone.

It wasn’t preferential treatment. His room would double as their meeting space, office, and dining area. He even had the hostel remove the bed, replacing it with two long tables pushed together and covered with cloth, forming a makeshift conference table so all ten of them could squeeze in.

Xu Lihuan’s team had used the past two days not only to secure the warehouse but also to gather contact information for local distributors and wholesalers. They had even printed a batch of promotional flyers, now stacked in Wu Qiyan’s room.

At three hundred yuan a month, the hostel offered no luxury. There wasn’t even a telephone in the rooms.

With two tables placed by the window and six or seven chairs squeezed in, there was barely room to turn around. The lack of seating meant Wu Qiyan, Zhang Feili, and Liu Weiwei had to sit on the edge of the bed during meetings.

A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, casting dim light. Cobwebs clung to the exposed wiring. A fan whirred loudly, pushing around the thick, humid air. Outside, rain threatened but hadn’t fallen, making the room unbearably stuffy.

Even with the women present, the real reason no one dared strip off their shirts was Xiao Liang himself—neatly dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and trousers. The others followed suit out of respect, sweating profusely as they waited for him to assign tasks.

Xiao Liang sat curled on a chair by the window, using a glass of water as an ashtray.

“To rebuild market channels,” he began, “we’ve already missed this year’s provincial sugar and liquor trade fair. So the standard approach is to hit wholesale markets, contact food distributors and supply companies, reconnect with our previous dealers, and place ads in Xijiang’s morning and evening newspapers, as well as on TV.”

He tapped ash into the glass.

“We’ll do all that—it’s necessary. But if that’s all we do, there’s no way we’ll hit three million in recovered funds within two months. You all think the same, don’t you?”

Xu Lihuan frowned deeply.

“We’ve never done sales before, but after scouting around these past couple of days, we’ve got a rough idea. The better distributors might agree to take stock and settle accounts every two or three months based on actual sales. That’s already considered decent. If we run into the worse ones… they might delay payments indefinitely, or even default entirely. Some might just disappear overnight.”

Zhang Feili stared at Xiao Liang, her wide eyes unblinking.

What Xu Lihuan described matched their expectations. But if payments only came every two or three months, there was no chance they could meet their recovery targets. Would the factory even survive that long on trickling returns of a few hundred thousand?

She had no idea what kind of miracle Xiao Liang was planning.

“Did anyone prepare a map of Xijiang?” Xiao Liang asked.

“Yes, yes—” Wu Qiyan quickly went to fetch them. Not just one, but a whole stack, as Xiao Liang had instructed earlier.

“We’ll carry out the standard approach,” Xiao Liang continued, placing the maps on the table. “But that alone won’t solve our immediate problem.”

He looked around the room.

“Have any of you estimated how many retail endpoints there are in Xijiang? I mean all the small shops—corner stores, village wholesalers, street-side vendors—not the high-and-mighty state supply depots or department stores, but the places where our juice would actually reach consumers.”

Xu Lihuan shook his head. “No idea. You’d probably have to ask the city’s commercial bureau for exact numbers.”

“I’ve never been to Xijiang before,” Xiao Liang said, “so I’m using Yunshe Town as a rough reference. Yunshe has nineteen villages and 238 production teams. Scattered across them are nearly three hundred small shops and wholesalers. Surprising, isn’t it?”

He leaned forward slightly.

“Business at each of these shops isn’t huge, but every half month or so, they restock from their upstream distributors. That means, in a single township, seventy to a hundred and fifty retail outlets feed market signals back to wholesalers every week.”

He paused, letting the numbers sink in.

“Now think in reverse. If a distributor serving a township starts getting frequent inquiries about a particular product—seventy, eighty, even a hundred times a week—what do you think their reaction will be?”

His gaze sharpened.

“And when we approach them at that point, do we have the leverage to demand cash payment upfront? To insist they pay before we even deliver stock?”

The room fell silent. Most of them couldn’t quite follow his train of thought.

Zhang Feili blinked, still dazed.

“But how do you get that many retail outlets to start asking about Nanting Lake Juice?” she asked. “What are you, some kind of immortal? Or do you practice qigong—sit in a room and send out energy so that hundreds of shops suddenly run to their distributors asking for our product?”