Chapter 40: Black Market Trading

Lin Yi went to buy some vegetable seeds. She was not good at growing vegetables, but she had an expert like Wei Luan at home, so she did not have to worry about planting vegetables.

After that, Lin Yi bought another 30 catties of rice and 20 catties of flour. She had spent almost all of the food stamps. She asked the store manager if he could arrange for the staff to deliver the food supplies to the donkey cart before she paid.

The store manager knew how to do business. Seeing how generous Lin Yi was, he readily agreed.

After buying the food, Lin Yi went to buy some seasonings and spices. These things were the key to determining whether the food was delicious or not, so she could not scrimp on them. She had to buy everything she needed.

Lin Yi went to the butcher shop and bought a few catties of pork belly. She planned to make barbecued meat for Wei Luan and Liuliu for dinner. There was no refrigerator in the countryside, and they had set up traps at the back of the mountain. From time to time, they could eat wild game, so Lin Yi did not buy much meat.

After shopping, Lin Yi put everything on the donkey cart. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon, so she bought a few buns from the bun shop next door.

Liuliu took a bite and felt that the buns weren’t as good as Lin Yi’s. He could not help but raise his head and say to Lin Yi, ” Sister Lin Yi, if you open a restaurant here, business will definitely be good!”

Lin Yi smiled and patted Liuliu’s head. “You’re so young, yet you’re so good at praising people.”

After finishing her bun, Lin Yi instructed Liuliu to keep an eye on her things. She then went to the train station to find out the distance between the town and the surrounding cities and their ticket prices.

It was already three o’clock when they got back from the train station. Lin Yi and Liuliu were about to drive the donkey cart home.

On the way home, Lin Yi saw a few uniformed police officers dragging a few people into the truck. Lin Yi was curious, so she asked the old ladies beside her, “What did these people do?”

“What else could it be? They must have sold something illegally or resold their stamps! The audacity, really!”

“They might have run into bad luck and got caught, but those who didn’t get caught have earned a lot of money!”

“It’s better not to be greedy for that kind of money. You might not live to spend it.”

…

In this era, resources were scarce, and the trading method was rather special. Many things could only be bought using specific stamps. Even if one had money, one might not be able to buy things.

Only special organizations were qualified to distribute stamps. The channels to obtain them were very limited.

Hence, ticket traffickers and private goods transactions emerged on the market.

Ticket dealers could obtain stamps through special means and trade them in the black market.

Private transactions were even simpler. In the black market, as long as both parties reached an agreement, they could exchange their goods for other people’s goods.

In this era, these two types of transactions were strictly prohibited. Once they were discovered, they would usually be sent for labor reformation. In serious cases, they might even be shot.

Re-education through labor did not sound like a serious matter, but in this era, it was even more serious than prison. It was a very humiliating and embarrassing thing.

Lin Yi felt a little emotional as she watched those people being locked up in the truck and sent to God knew where for labor reformation.

If not for the unreasonable rules of trading, an abnormal trading method involving high risk and high return would not have appeared. She had once heard from an elder in her family that there was a famous tycoon in the south who relied on the black market to make a name for himself.

That person earned a large sum of money through black market transactions. He happened to be around when reformation happened, so he used the money he earned to invest in real estate. In time, property prices soared, and the money he invested increased by hundreds of times. In just a few years, he quickly accumulated lots of capital.

As Lin Yi thought about this, her heart began to flutter.

It was probably because she came from decades later that she did not have much respect for the unreasonable system of this era. As the saying went, in troubled times, ambitious people appeared. As a woman, she did not want to be an ambitious person, but it was probably not a problem for her to earn some money with her own ability.

Although Lin Yi’s family background was pretty decent, she could not rely on her parents and two brothers for the rest of her life.

She was the descendant of an important family in the Su embroidery industry. She had once taken on the responsibility of the entire family alone. After transmigrating to this era, Lin Yi was still the same ambitious woman.

Lin Yi took this matter to heart and drove the ox cart back to the village.

The sky had turned dark, and Lin Yi could see that the door to her house was wide open. She guessed that Wei Luan must have arrived home and was waiting for her to return.

Lin Yi smiled. She jumped off the donkey cart and walked through the gate. Just as she was about to call out to Wei Luan, she suddenly heard a woman’s voice.