I chose one of four options at the start, and I chose the number one clan in Lingnan.

noon.

The Lin's Farmers Market was packed with people.

The spacious aisle was packed with townspeople buying groceries. The cries of vendors rose and fell in a cacophony.

Butcher Zhang chopped the ribs on the cutting board with a knife, wrapped them in oil paper, and handed them to the old lady across the table.

Old Wang's two baskets of bok choy sold out in less than two hours, and he was squatting on the ground counting his change.

In the very center of the market, ten thousand catties of golden fruit were piled up into a small, golden mountain.

The strong, exotic fragrance wafted for miles, attracting everyone in the entire town of Tazhai.

"Weigh out ten pounds for me! I'll take it back for the old man to try!"

"Don't push! I need twenty pounds! The money's here!"

The line of people buying fruit stretched from the central stalls all the way to the market gate.

Lin Fu, with a bandage wrapped around his head, sat behind the stall. He moistened his finger with saliva and turned a page of the ledger.

Several young men in the auditorium tied stacks of red hundred-yuan bills together with rubber bands and threw them directly into the burlap sacks at their feet.

The second floor houses the temporary office of Lin's Agricultural Trade.

Lin Ting sat in a grand chair by the window, twirling two walnuts in his hands.

Lin Fei stood to the side, holding a thickened seamless steel pipe in his hand. He looked down at the dense crowd below.

"Grandpa, ten thousand catties of golden fruit, sold out in half a day at the price you set at fifty yuan per catty." Lin Fei reported the wrong accounts.

"We made 500,000 yuan, and several big bosses from the county came in trucks to buy goods, but we turned them all away."

Lin Ting stopped playing with the walnuts and placed them on the solid wood coffee table.

"The Lin family's things will sell well." Lin Ting picked up a purple clay teacup from the coffee table and took a sip of Pu'er tea.

Lin Fei pointed to the road across the street outside the window.

"Grandpa, look, there's not even a stray dog ​​left in Liu Da Nao's Hongfa Market. All his thugs are sitting behind the roadblocks, just sitting there dumbfounded. He's completely bankrupt now."

Lin Ting didn't reply. His gaze went across the road to the end of the street.

A screeching sound of brakes rang out.

Ten dilapidated Jinbei vans and three Dongfeng trucks lined up in a long queue, driving recklessly into Tazhai Town and stopping directly outside the gate of the Lin's Farmers Market.

The car doors were pulled open with a "whoosh".

More than two hundred shirtless, long-haired thugs jumped off the vehicle. They wore military boots and carried half-meter-long machetes and rusty iron bars.

On the last Dongfeng truck, several people worked together to unload twenty large red plastic barrels. The barrels were filled with yellow gasoline.

A black Santana sedan was parked at the front.

Mr. Liu, wearing a floral shirt and carrying a black leather bag, climbed out of the back seat of the car.

He was accompanied by a man with a fierce-looking face.

The man was bald, with a dragon tattooed on his neck, and carried a machete. He was Big Fei, a notorious thug in the county.

"Clear the area! Everyone who has nothing to do with this, get out!" The bald thug, carrying a baseball bat, led the charge into the gate of the Lin's Farmers Market.

The baseball bat slammed into the stainless steel trash can next to it, creating a large dent and making a piercing noise.

The townspeople buying groceries were so frightened that they dropped their plastic bags.

"Someone's been stabbed!"

The crowd erupted into chaos, screaming as they ran toward the market's back door.

Big Fei stepped into the market wearing leather boots, his machete scraping a long trail of sparks off the iron rack.

Two hundred thugs carrying knives rushed in behind him, completely blocking the doorway.

The vendors were terrified, their faces turning pale. They scrambled under their stalls, clutching their heads tightly with their hands.

Butcher Zhang grabbed the pig-slaughtering knife from the chopping board and used it to block his meat stall.

Mr. Liu walked in with a swaying gait, a cigar in his mouth.

He looked at the rotten vegetable leaves scattered on the ground and the panicked crowd, and exhaled a puff of smoke.

Yesterday, the Lin family cut off his source of income, and today he's going to smash their rice bowl to pieces.

"Lin Fu! Tell your great-grandfather to come out here!" Boss Liu shouted at the top of his lungs.

Lin Fu stood up from the sack.

He glanced at the two hundred gleaming machetes opposite him, his legs went weak, but he still gritted his teeth and walked to the middle of the aisle.

"Boss Liu, what are you doing bringing so many people here? In broad daylight, do you have no respect for the law?" Lin Fu questioned Boss Liu, pointing at him.

Boss Liu stepped forward and slapped Lin Fu hard across the face with a backhand.

Lin Fu was knocked back two steps, his waist hitting the edge of the vegetable stall.

"The law? In Tazhai Town, I, Liu Da Nao Tou, am the law of the fresh food market."

Mr. Liu, carrying a bag, pointed to the corrugated steel roof above his head.

"You're robbing my businesses and cutting off my livelihood. Does your Lin family really think you can turn the world upside down by building a tin shed?"

A dozen or so young men from the auditorium grabbed carrying poles, trying to rush forward to protect Lin Fu.

Big Fei kicked the young man at the front of the group to the ground. Two hundred thugs simultaneously raised their machetes.

"Anyone who dares to touch me! I'll chop him up today!" Big Fei roared.

The young man in the auditorium was forced back by the back of the knife.

Boss Liu threw his cigar on the ground and crushed it with his leather shoe.

"Brother Dafei, stop wasting your breath on them. We're paid to do what we're paid to do. Brothers, pour gasoline!" Boss Liu ordered.

A dozen or so thugs carrying plastic buckets full of gasoline rushed into the passageway.

Unscrew the lid.

Yellow gasoline spilled from the bucket, splashing onto the wooden vegetable stall and into the corner filled with cardboard boxes.

A few drops of gasoline splashed onto Zhang the butcher's cleaver, and the gasoline flowed down the cracks in the cement floor into the sewer.

The pungent smell of gasoline instantly masked the aroma of the golden fruit.

The merchants hiding under the stalls were so frightened that they scrambled to the deepest, most secluded corner of the market.

Mr. Liu took out a metal windproof lighter from his pocket.

With a "snap".

The lighter emitted a flame.

"Lin Ting! I know you're watching from upstairs!" Boss Liu looked up and shouted at the glass window on the second floor.

"I'll count to three, then you get down here and kowtow three times. Sign the papers, then take your men and get out of Tazhai Town."

Mr. Liu, holding a lighter, slowly approached a cardboard box covered in gasoline.

"Otherwise, I'll burn this dilapidated shed to ashes. And roast all those thousands of pounds of golden fruit along with it!"

In the office on the second floor.

Lin Fei gripped the steel pipe tightly, his knuckles turning white.

"Grandpa, that bastard bribed Da Fei in the county. They brought two hundred men and actually dared to set fire," Lin Fei said angrily.

Lin Ting put down his purple clay teacup and stood up.

He pushed open the office door and walked to the tin-roofed balcony on the second floor.

Lin Ting gripped the railing with both hands, looking down at Boss Liu and Brother Dafei below.

"Big Head Liu," Lin Ting called out.

Boss Liu looked up at Lin Ting on the balcony.

"Old Master Lin, you've finally shown yourself? I thought you were a coward, hiding up there too ashamed to show your face," Boss Liu sneered loudly.

The two hundred thugs below joined in the commotion, banging their machetes against the iron railings.

Lin Ting ignored the thugs' shouts.

He glanced at the stalls in the market that were covered in gasoline, and then at the bread carts parked outside the gate.

"You bring two hundred street thugs and a few buckets of gasoline, and you dare to come to the Lin family's territory to beg for food?"

Lin Ting placed his hands on the railing, his voice carrying through the empty market to everyone's ears.

"Do you think everyone in the Lin family is a dead man?"

Boss Liu sneered.

"Lin Ting, stop playing tricks on me. You had 10,000 people building the house yesterday. Today is the opening day, and your people have already gone back to dig sand."

Aside from a few accountants, your market is full of elderly, weak, and disabled vegetable vendors.

Mr. Liu held the lighter close to the cardboard box, and the flame almost scorched the cardboard.

"I'm here to cause trouble. What can you do about it?"

Big Fei raised his machete and pointed it at Lin Ting on the second floor.

"Kid, get down here and kowtow! I won't sheathe my knife until it draws blood!"

Lin Ting looked at the knife in Brother Dafei's hand.

He turned around and picked up the purple clay teacup from the office coffee table. The cup still contained half a cup of piping hot Pu'er tea.

Lin Ting took his teacup and walked to the edge of the balcony.

He flipped his wrist, and the purple clay teacup fell vertically from the second floor.

"Snapped!"

The teacup shattered on the cement floor at Boss Liu's feet. Brown tea splashed onto Boss Liu's gleaming leather shoes.

Mr. Liu was so frightened that he took a step back.

The teacup shattered in the empty market.

That's a signal.

"Splash!"

Around the market, the dozen or so large roller shutters that were originally closed suddenly emitted a piercing metallic scraping sound.