I am chasing a rough man in the 80s
Chapter 258: Always Able to Fool the Idiot

Chapter 258: Chapter 258: Always Able to Fool the Idiot

The outcome of Yu Jingting’s rage has serious consequences.

His anger, vented out at home, was directed towards restoring the dignity of the household head, so he ended up selling wild ginseng for 1500 per piece.

Fan Hua was stunned to hear this price.

Despite wild ginseng being rare these days, it’s not impossible to find. With a little effort, one could always find it.

A hundred-eight price is already not low.

But now, starting at 1500— that’s the "special leadership price."

Even Suizi feels that the price he set is too high and unlikely to be sold.

When Yu Jingting dumped a fistful of banknotes in front of her, Suizi was genuinely shocked.

"How did you manage to pull the wool over Fan Hua’s eyes? There’s no way he’s foolish enough to fall for that, right?"

"Woman! You have no idea of my capabilities."

Yu Jingting finally regained a bit of his pride as the head of the family, hands on his hips, quite pleased with himself in front of Suizi.

"How did you manage to sell the ginseng?"

"I simply— hold on, what do you mean by ’selling myself off’?"

Suizi sneakily stuck out her tongue. Alright, this guy was indeed quick-thinking; it was truly difficult to score a verbal victory over him.

Yu Jingting explained to Suizi how he had fooled Fan Hua.

First, he tricked Fan Hua by saying that this ginseng is not ordinary wild ginseng. It was handed down from his ancestors.

He told a story that one day, his great-great-grandfather went into the mountains and saw a chubby kid who was fair and fat, with big double-lid eyes, and dimples when he smiled.

While saying this, his eyes never left Suizi, who could feel the barely concealed mischief within.

"You wouldn’t have used me as the model, would you? Did you portray me as the ginseng kid?!"

"If I didn’t make it a realistic story, would he believe it?"

She was even ready to push her husband to cosy up with Wang Jialan just to sell some ginseng, so what’s the big deal about using her as a blueprint for the ginseng child?

Suizi decided not to argue with him over the money and signaled for him to continue speaking.

Yu Jingting tricked Fan Hua by saying his great-great-grandfather followed the chubby child, who resembled Suizi, deep into the mountains. Then, in a foggy spot, the child suddenly disappeared.

"The ground was covered with all kinds of weeds. My great-great-grandfather parted the weeds, and lo and behold, there was a huge piece of ginseng! He roared out, ’Stop in your tracks!’,

At that moment, the ginseng darted forward as if in a 100-meter sprint. My great-great-grandfather swiftly unspooled a red string, used a trick called ’monkey steals the peach,’ and immobilized the ginseng."

Suizi was dumbfounded. What a load of nonsense!

"If I remember correctly, your great-great-grandfather’s method of catching ginseng should be lines from a storytelling performance, right?"

Lately, spy stories had been replaced with martial arts ones.

Yu Jingting made up this jumble of a story, which was laughable just from hearing it.

"Mixing truth with fiction, the actual process of digging up ginseng involves the use of red string and shouting ’stop in your tracks!’. With three parts truth and seven parts fiction, I will be able to bewitch any fool."

In Yu Jingting’s eyes, Fan Hua was just a colossal fool. If not him, then who should he bewitch?

"Did Fan Hua believe it?"

"He was probably sceptical but allowed me to convince him anyway. But don’t forget, I started assisting our mother with her spiritual performances in the village when I was ten. What could be more convincing than pretending to communicate with spirits?"

Wang Cuihua walked by with her basket, overheard him, and hit him on the head with it.

"What do you mean ’pretending to communicate with spirits’? We earned our food with our abilities!"

His response came from underneath the basket.

"Look, the highest state of pretending to communicate with spirits is just like mother right now. Deceive the person until they start to believe it themselves."

"You little rascal! What do you mean deceive? How many people have I helped? Old man Yang from our village, who had nightmares every day. Didn’t I help him get better by performing a ritual? And Wáng Lǎosān from Wang Village was also cured by me..."

Wang Cuihua counted all her past ’victories’ on her fingers.

With the basket still on his head, Yu Jingting spoke through the gaps in the basket.

"The essence of pretending to communicate with spirits is to have enough accomplices to back you up. With a few people claiming they saw it too, no one would disbelieve. Mother’s method of fooling people in the village was modified and used to fool Fan Hua."

The same tactics, a new soup but old medicine.

He fooled Fan Hua by saying that this was a wild ginseng with a backstory and swore that the people who went into the mountains with his great-great-grandfather saw it too.

Fan Hua was left reeling and confused, so he went to the Wang family for confirmation.

Yu Jingting had prepared his accomplices well in advance, and their accounts matched his, winning over Fan Hua immediately.

He paid 1500, which was the "special leadership price," to buy a piece of ginseng from Yu Jingting.

Suizi sorted through the whole process and found it was eerily similar to the tactics used by health product scammers on elderly people.

"You not going into pyramid sales is a huge loss for the industry..."

Suizi didn’t know whether to praise her husband’s cunning or laugh at Fan Hua’s lack of insight.

That a factory director overseeing thousands of people was bamboozled by Yu Jingting, using the same tricks as those used to fool old country women into believing in spiritual performances, was unbelievable.

"You’re really something." Wang Cuihua clicked her tongue disapprovingly, but Suizi just handed her the stack of cash.

Both the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had a fondness for counting money. Wang Cuihua, while counting the stack of banknotes, had a big smile on her face.

"The debt from our tractor can now be paid off."

"Why don’t you find me despicable now while counting the money?"

Yu Jingting removed the basket from his head and looked disdainfully at the money-minded duo of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.

He noticed that his wife’s money-loving smile eerily resembled his mother’s!

"Jingting is not immoral at all. This is simply robbing the rich for the poor. Mother, think about it, how much does Fan Hua, as a factory director, earn in a month? He could easily take out this much money, does that money seem clean to you?"

Suizi didn’t feel sympathy for Fan Hua at all. Such an unpleasant idiot—he’d take his money without being obliged to return the favor.

"That makes sense, but Tiegen is still working under him, so Fan Hua might retaliate against him after he realizes what happened."

Wang Cuihua was a little worried.

is quite a large sum. A regular person would realize the trick after a few days, and retaliating at that point would not be good.

"He’s busy bringing the ginseng as a gift, where would he find the time to worry about whether it’s real or not? Not only can he not cause issues for us, but he also needs to thank us."

No sooner had Yu Jingting finished speaking then the nanny from the Fan family arrived.

"Jingting, the factory director asked me to bring you some stuff."

Chickens, ducks, fish, meat, cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, tea, all spread on the ground.

Yu Jingting gave a triumphant look to Wang Cuihua and Suizi. See what he was saying?

The nanny from Fan family was a straightforward person. Suizi was able to easily coax some information from her during their idle chatter.

After Fan Hua got the ginseng, he immediately telephoned his elder in Beijing, repeating verbatim the ghost story Yu Jingting had fed to him.

The nanny’s original words: After the factory director ended the phone call, he was red-faced with excitement, apparently receiving heavy praise from his elder and in a very good mood.

He asked the nanny to select some gifts that others had given him from the storeroom and send them to Yu Jingting as a major affirmation for his help.

Suizi was inwardly laughing at the absurdity. Fan Hua was really a wronged patient seeking a quack doctor. In order to live a few more years, he even believed the ghost story that Yu Jingting fabricated for him.

No wonder in her later world the victims of health product scams often included former bureaucrats and scholars. Older people were really easy to trick.