Ye Cheng nodded after hearing this, "I’ve already arranged for my brothers to search; we’ll have news soon."
"Can’t you guys be a little more ambitious? I’m worth at least a hundred thousand, and you’re only asking for fifty thousand. Can’t you do math?" Xiaonian couldn’t understand why they only demanded fifty thousand yuan.
"Cut the crap." The leader of the men wasn’t very old, probably just over twenty, "If it weren’t for the fact that we really can’t make ends meet, do you think we’d want to do this kind of work? Rest assured, as soon as we get the money, we’ll release you immediately, and we’ll all go our separate ways to look for legitimate jobs."
Xiaonian’s eyes swept over the group, which comprised about five or six youths, the oldest probably in their twenties, the youngest around sixteen or seventeen.
"Are you guys still students?"
"People like us, born poor, where do we have the money for school?" The leader took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, "Ever heard of Shihe Village in Imperial Capital? It’s the most remote and poorest village there. All of us here are villagers from there, but we aren’t content to spend our lives stuck in that place, so we thought about coming out to find work. We’ve been working for a few months, and one of our fellow villagers got his hand crushed by a machine in a factory. The factory owner refused to acknowledge it and kicked him out. We tried to seek compensation for him, but the factory kicked us out too."
The youth said this with mockery in his eyes, "We thought once we left the village, we could earn money and live a better life. But the first factory we worked in, we met with such an incident, such a boss. To save him, our village might pour in all its resources, but our village is just too poor."
"Don’t worry, we only need fifty thousand yuan, because the doctor said that to save our fellow villager, we need at least that much." The youth looked at Xiaonian, "Once we get the money, we will let you go. Whether you want to call the police or not, it’s up to you. Our village is Shihe Village, and my name is Zhao Youqian."
It was he who had led the young people from the village out to look for work, and now they had ended up in this predicament.
Xiaonian, upon hearing his words, clearly didn’t believe them, "That’s impossible, you must be making up a story. Don’t think that just because I’m a student and sympathetic, I will believe whatever story you concoct. You say you have no money, yet where did you get the car from? You say you’re poor, but your clothes look quite decent."
Indeed, she was a student, but she wasn’t someone who would believe just any story thrown her way.
They had used a van to abduct her and bring her here; being able to afford a car meant they certainly weren’t poor.
"This car, we borrowed it. It’s just to pull off this one job, to raise the fifty thousand yuan needed for our fellow villager’s medical treatment," Zhao Youqian flicked the ash from the cigarette in his hand, "Little sister, don’t worry, we just want the money, and we won’t harm you."
"Is your village really that poor? Are the villagers so poor they can’t afford to eat?" she had visited the underdeveloped Xijiang County and also been to her sister’s hometown, Lihua Village.
But life for the villagers of Lihua Village was still decent, with food self-sufficient; though living simply, they were at least happy, and they hadn’t reached a point of not being able to afford meals or seek treatment for minor illnesses.
Moreover, in this day and age, everyone’s lives were improving.
"It’s not to the point that we can’t afford to eat," Zhao Youqian snuffed out his cigarette, "We have our own grain and vegetables at home, so starvation isn’t an issue, but that’s just enough to keep us full. There are no other sources of income, which is why most children can’t afford to attend school after a few years."
"Then it must be because your villagers are too lazy. If there’s no income at home, you can go work for others," she said.
"Yes, that’s why we came out. Within the first month, our fellow villager had his hand crushed by a machine. To save him, we’ve already done all we could as a village. Because we fought with the boss for compensation, we all got kicked out."
"If it’s just a compensation issue, you could have come to me. Tell me which factory it is, and I’ll help you ask for it," she said. Going to work in a factory and being injured, if the boss refused compensation and even dared to deny it...
"You?" Zhao Youqian scoffed, "Do you have someone at home who can handle this matter?"
"Before you kidnap someone, you should at least check the personal information of the person you’re kidnapping," Xiaonian sighed lightly, "First, let me go. You have to trust me. If what you’re saying is true, I can help with this matter, really, I’m not deceiving you."
It was just a minor issue, but it had pushed them to the brink, almost driving them to a dead end.
If there really were such unscrupulous factories, she definitely wouldn’t stand idly by.