Chapter 56 Trouble

  "Be careful, grandpa, slow down."

  Ming Fei watched as Pocky rode away on horseback before speaking up.

  "Fourth Master Ming, please return! I have disturbed Fourth Master Ming's elegance."

  Liu Bei rode his horse with both hands clasped together in a fist and said.

  The people of Kongjiazhuang were stunned, staring at the scene in front of them with their eyes wide open. They never expected that this Fourth Master, who was as elusive as a ghost, would actually be the one eating at Yangcai Restaurant. Fortunately, he ran into this situation, otherwise it would have been hard to know how to deal with him.

  "Don't let this kind of person disturb our drinking mood, you and I will continue to drink."

  As soon as Ming Fei entered the private room, he saw Gao Chuanliang sitting at the table with a pale face, and then he spoke up.

  "Four of our family members are down there. To be honest with you, the three members of the Red First Family are indeed in our factory, but that's also..."

  After waiting for Ming Fei to sit down, Lao Gao gritted his teeth and made up his mind to tell the truth to Ming Fei. Now that all six scars on Hong Shou's hand have been found, let's see if we can get to the bottom of this first.

  "You mean that the three rascals brought a woman named Chun Hong to your factory and had an illicit relationship, and were beaten to death by the security team in your factory?"

  After learning the cause of San Lai Zi's death, Ming Fei didn't know whether he should believe this statement. Apparently, if it wasn't Old Gao deceiving him, then San Lai Zi was really unlucky; otherwise, he wouldn't have died in such a way.

  "Our Fourth Master, our Eastern Master has said that as long as the Great Master is willing to take on this task and help us get through this difficulty, we are willing to offer 5,000 bags of foreign flour, 300 brand new Oriental 38-style guns, and an additional 5,000 yuan as a thank you gift. What does our Fourth Master think?"

  Since there's no need to hide anything anymore, what's left is just some real stuff. Old Gao opened his mouth and promised the conditions that Sima had promised, and at the same time, he took the initiative to raise the one hundred guns that Sima had promised to three hundred guns. Old Gao knew that even when the revolutionary party was recruiting these bandits, they hadn't invested such a large sum of money. With such a large investment, they shouldn't refuse, right?

  "This..."

  Even if Ming Fei had seen the world, he never thought that this shopkeeper would offer such a reward, especially those 300 East-made 38 guns. Don't mention anything else, just these few hundred guns are enough to make people's hearts move, after all, it is said that people die for wealth.

  "Although the price offered by your esteemed master is indeed reasonable, I must return and discuss this matter with our head of household before providing a response. Please do not take offense."

  Although the conditions are tempting, Ming Fei also knows that to get these things, he must first exchange his life for them. That one line of red is also a thousand-strong army.

  "That's it! That's all, thank you for your trouble, I will repay you heavily another day."

  Upon hearing Ming Si's response, he went back to discuss with Cao Xueqin. Gao Tianyi suddenly saw a glimmer of hope and hastily spoke out in excitement, his face regaining some color and no longer as pale as before.

  "Lao Gao, are you saying that Ming Si only replied and told Cao Xue about it later? Didn't he say anything else?"

  For such a result, Sima felt very surprised. These bandits should not have refused the fat meat in front of them. Although there was some risk in eating this piece of fat meat, the price he offered would definitely make most of the bandits unable to refuse. Old Gao added 200 guns on his own initiative, but if he could get Cao Shangfei to take over, it was also worth it.

  "Master, he promised to give us a letter within three days at most. When I saw him hearing the price we offered, his eyes were wide with surprise, and I think they shouldn't refuse!"

  Although the confidence is not enough, but deeply knowing those bandits' temperament, Hualian believes that these bandits will not refuse this price, this price is absolutely a life-taking price, especially those three hundred guns, the people on the grassland only have about a thousand guns, and now they can get three hundred new guns, whoever would not possibly refuse.

  Although the factory has only been built for a few months, due to product-related reasons, Sima simply divided the entire factory into several sub-factory areas according to products. There are no boundaries between these sub-factory areas, and the distance between them is probably just the distance between buildings.

  Like watch factories, flour mills, spinning mills, cigarette machines, electric motors, and foundries, most of them are composed of one or several factory buildings. The factory directors are also people from some big cities in the interior of China who were dug up by Sima. On ordinary days, the factory directors usually work in small houses near the factory buildings. Although there is no wall to separate them, each factory seems to be distinct and clear-cut.

  In the middle of the factory, there is a separate three-story building. This building is the core of the entire Northwestern General Machinery Company. The office and conference room are on the first floor, while the second and third floors are allocated to various technical departments, where many required technical documents are stored, mainly some traditional Chinese character versions of technical documents brought by Sima.

  The conference room on the first floor is a room of two rooms, with a conference table and about ten chairs around it. It's a very simple conference room, but since its completion, there has never been a meeting like today where all the factory directors from each branch participated.

  "Today, let's have a meeting with everyone and discuss some things. Although we've all been working in the same company before, this is also the first time we're sitting together to hold this meeting."

  Simar sat at the head of the conference table, looking at everyone and saying that he was familiar with most of the ten or so people attending the meeting, as Sima often participated in some technical matters and frequently interacted with these factory directors and various factory technicians.

  "I think everyone has some opinions about what happened over the past few days, regarding Liu Gong taking people from each factory to build walls. Today's meeting is to discuss this matter."

  Since Sima let Liu Jiyuan take charge of building the factory wall, Liu Jiyuan has almost transferred all the people from each factory to build the wall. Even the watch factory and cigarette factory have been affected, with workers being taken away, and production has almost come to a standstill.

  The directors of these branch factories have not hesitated to offer their opinions to Gao Chuanliang in the past few days. Due to confidentiality reasons, Gao Chuanliang can only temporarily placate them for now. Of course, some people also linked this matter with the two gunshots that night a few days ago, but they couldn't get confirmation.

  "Boss, since you brought it up today, let me say something. Our cigarette factory's orders are all being held up right now, and our Peony cigarettes have just started to open up sales channels. If there's a problem with supply disruptions, I'm afraid all our previous efforts will be wasted. To ensure production, I've even gone into the workshop myself. I really want to know, is repairing this wall so important that we need to take almost all the workers from each factory to do it? Like Director Sun's flour machine factory, except for him and a few masters, everyone else has been taken away, and the whole factory is now basically empty."

  The one who stood up to speak was Wang Yaqi from the cigarette factory. This person was introduced by Sidom and was originally the manager of the Tianjin No. 4 Factory of British-American Tobacco Company. Because he had been oppressed by foreigners for a long time, Wang Yaqui had long wanted to seek better opportunities elsewhere. As soon as he received Sidom's letter, he immediately quit his job and came here alone with just an introduction letter. He is completely a career-oriented person; otherwise, he wouldn't have come here alone with just one letter of introduction.

  Wang Yazhi has been holding back his anger towards Liu Jiyuan for obstructing his work, which has already seriously affected his own work. As soon as he heard the boss say that, he immediately took over and spoke up.

  "It's like this, boss. Now that Liu has yelled at the workers, production in the factory has basically come to a halt. There's no need to rush and repair the wall around the compound."

  Obviously, Wang Yaqi's words resonated with everyone. As a matter of fact, in the past few days, due to Liu Jiyuan taking workers away from the factory to build that broken wall, not only one cigarette factory was affected by the production, but also the factory directors of various factories had been arguing with Liu Jiyuan for several days. However, they were all rejected by Liu Jiyuan's explanation that this is the boss's arrangement. They wanted to find the boss to talk about it, but couldn't find anyone, so they could only find Manager Gao (the manager of Northwest General Machinery Company) who also claimed ignorance and just asked everyone to assist Liu Gong's work as much as possible. Today was a good opportunity, and as soon as Wang Yaqi finished speaking, the crowd took over. For a while, the entire conference room was in chaos.

  "Everyone be quiet!"

  Upon seeing the chaos in the meeting room, Sima said a sentence and at the same time pressed down with both palms facing downwards several times, only then did the conference room quiet down.

  "Liu Gong's act of drawing people from various factories was approved by me and is also necessary."

  As everyone quieted down, Sima spoke up and said that in the past when Sima had meetings, whenever there were contentious issues, the leaders would usually set the tone first.

  "But..."

  Wang Yazhi was about to say something else when Sima interrupted him.

  "Director Wang, I didn't bring everyone here today to listen to your opinions. We're facing a matter of life and death, so I hope you'll all understand."

  At this time, Sima didn't want to listen to everyone's complaints. In order to make the factory directors stop complaining, Sima could only rudely interrupt Wang Yaqi's words. Seeing that Wang Yaqi looked unhappy after being interrupted, he could only apologize silently in his heart.

  "Everyone heard the two gunshots on the night four days ago, and probably no one is clear about what happened. Now I can tell everyone, but this matter can only be mentioned once at the meeting, please do not disclose today's meeting content."

  The factory directors present fell silent after hearing what I had to say, and judging from their expressions, they seemed to have guessed that something was amiss with the company. Apparently, it would be easier for them to accept this now.

  "That night two of our company's security guards shot and killed two people!"

  Bang! Just as Sima's voice fell, the entire conference room was in an uproar. Two people were shot dead! How could such a thing happen?

  "Boss, is this... that... because of getting into some kind of trouble?"

  Thinking of the thickened walls that have been repaired in recent days, and Liu Jiyuan's day-and-night urging of the progress of the project, and the expansion of the factory protection team by hundreds of people in recent days, all of which are too abnormal, must have gotten into some kind of trouble because of this. Wang Yaqi stood up and said.

  "Because of those two shots, we've stirred up a big trouble! Among the people killed by the guards, there was one who was a Ma bandit, and he's the third son of the well-known Red Ma gang!"