The villagers, accustomed to Li Cunzhang's methods, immediately called the village committee to place their orders.
Then, they hurried down the mountain to submit their savings books.
Within a day, nearly five million yuan was collected in the village.
Construction of the houses along the village road began.
The other three villages were filled with regret. Was Li Zhengguo not planning to leave them any room to breathe?
Li Zhengguo wouldn't take the blame.
A hundred buildings could only accommodate so many tourists.
With two suites on the second and third floors, even if each suite housed a family of four, that would only be sixteen hundred people.
Moreover, not all tourists would choose their suites. Many solo travelers or couples would opt for homestays.
If your hardware is subpar, just lower your prices.
The three village heads listened, their faces flushing. They must have tried to charge thirty yuan a night for homestays, angering Li Zhengguo.
Li Zhengguo: "..." You're thinking too much.
The simultaneous construction of one hundred buildings was a magnificent sight.
Villagers who had finished their work on the mountain and were returning home actively joined the construction sites.
The thirty off-duty security guards and the villagers of Wang Er Village on holiday also pitched in.
In just one month, the foundations were laid. Those left to guard the site were given leave, and everyone else went home.
Li Mu, feeling for her youngest son and daughter-in-law who were working tirelessly, prepared nutritious meals for them.
Their daughter, son-in-law, eldest son, and daughter-in-law came over for dinner, complaining about Li Mu's favoritism.
Li Mu retorted, "You only contribute physical labor, while Zhengguo contributes both brains and brawn. I don't know what Tiantian contributes, but it's definitely more than you. If you're here for the food, shut your mouths."
Ouyang Meihua sighed, "Mother is so brazenly partial that we have no words to refute her."
Tian Jing, while drinking the pheasant soup, had a different realization, "With more tourists on the mountain, there are fewer pheasants."
Li Mu's eyes lit up, "Zhengguo, can we bring some pheasants down to raise domestically?"
Li Zhengguo waved his hand and went to the village committee to announce via loudspeaker that anyone willing to raise pheasants at home should sign up quickly.
Who wouldn't want to raise them?
When tourists came, they'd eat wild pheasant and even want to buy them.
No one would be willing to sell; wild pheasants were too hard to catch. While raising pheasants might not bring in much money, every little bit counts.
Besides, pheasants would also boost KUSHAN Village's reputation.
Don't think they didn't know that Li Cunzhang had spent hundreds of thousands on advertising to make KUSHAN Village's hot spring valley famous.
What better opportunity than for the elderly who couldn't do strenuous labor, feeling like they were eating for free, to raise pheasants and contribute their efforts?
Everyone signed up?
Li Zhengguo was troubled. He would have to ask his wife to go into the remote mountains to catch the pheasants.
Tian Jing's seedling work was also finished, so this task would be a piece of cake.
Ouyang Meihua actively helped.
For more than half a year, she still couldn't figure out what Tian Jing's special abilities actually looked like.
The two sisters-in-law, without anyone else, entered the mountains with a few sacks.
Seeing the various vines extending rapidly around Tian Jing, Ouyang Meihua shivered.
"Tiantian, if one wasn't careful, they'd think you were a spider demon or an octopus demon."
Tian Jing retracted a vine and took a pheasant coiled around it, saying, "You guessed right. My true form is a spider. Don't tell Li Min."
"Pah!" Ouyang Meihua spat at her, "Do you think I'm as foolish as Li Min? For more than a decade, you've shown her, and she still hasn't figured out what you are. However, she has one advantage: she's not afraid of you. Anyone else with less courage wouldn't you eat them?"
Tian Jing chuckled, "I only value that one advantage of hers. Otherwise, during those years when she was acting possessed, I wouldn't have bothered with her."
As she spoke, Tian Jing retracted another vine. On it was a grey wild rabbit. She also put it into a sack.
"Let's take them back to raise. Rabbits multiply quickly, and we can keep their fur."
The sisters-in-law worked for three or four days, and each family had male and female pheasants and rabbits.
The Li family's pheasants and rabbits were kept on the first floor below the courtyard.
Xiao Xiao Hei had grown into a big dog, a big dog that only ate vegetables and no meat.
Without A Feng to cook chicken soup for Xiao Hei, Xiao Hei gnawed on vegetables alone, losing all its wolf-like ferocity.
Father and son were now much like the village's mongrel dogs. Therefore, the pheasants and rabbits in the village didn't realize they were living in the same village as the old wolf king and his son.
Li Zhengguo took Xiao Hei and his son for a walk, which also served as a patrol of the village.
The security team looked on with envy.
They secretly procured two female wolfdogs for breeding.
Li Zhengguo was speechless, "Wolves go into heat in spring and autumn. First, train the wolfdogs well. After breeding next year, no one is allowed to give them away. They must all stay with the security team."
"If your work doesn't improve, I'll find retired soldiers to replace you."
The security team members quickly assured him they would work harder.
Li Zhengguo also knew that these villagers who were part of the security team were already working very hard.
Unfortunately, the number of villagers in this village was still too small.
Therefore, KUSHAN Village issued another notice: Any young woman who chose to stay in KUSHAN Village and start her own family would be rewarded with a three-and-a-half-story building with a five-meter-wide single storefront along the village road.
While the fifty thousand yuan reward wasn't a lot, owning a building meant having a root.
With a root, there was no fear. And with the building as a business, income would be continuous.
Newly married daughters returned home. They wanted to come back to KUSHAN Village; life outside was not as good as in KUSHAN Village.
They hadn't starved, but they had to budget for meat, and buying clothes required careful consideration.
And they didn't have the pride of being villagers of KUSHAN Village.
They wanted to come back!
They could come back, but they had to discuss it with their in-laws and see if they would allow their sons to settle in KUSHAN Village. The surname of the children was not an issue.
Which in-laws would refuse? Even if it meant their sons were marrying into the family, they would agree.
KUSHAN Village was developing so well; who wouldn't want to be a villager there?
However, Li Cunzhang did not accept them. He said that even if villagers from other villages moved in without demanding shares, he wouldn't accept them, as he was worried that villagers from the other four villages would all become villagers of KUSHAN Village.
Now that a great opportunity was at hand, only a fool would miss it.
The following spring, the construction of the buildings continued. Among the one hundred buildings, villagers who purchased two were pushed by Li Cunzhang to the second phase.
The remaining thirty-two buildings from the first phase were modified into sixty-four, reserved for the young women who wished to stay in the village.
The villagers had no objections; they had daughters too.
The village provided dowry houses for the daughters, and they provided some dowry. The daughters could then start their own families, which was even easier than for the sons.
Those with more ambition tried to find the daughters they had previously abandoned.
The village quietly issued a warning: they would not recognize such daughters. It wasn't that the village was unreasonable; it was that they themselves had cast away their pearls. Wouldn't bringing them back now cause chaos?
From then on, villagers not only stopped valuing sons over daughters but also cherished their daughters dearly.
This was a later development. Li Cunzhang's policy was maintained even after he stepped down.
This was because KUSHAN Village had a small population, the hot spring valley tourist route required many hands, and children needed time to grow.