A Thousand Tons of Ore Every Day, Selling It for Nothing but Not Spending a Cent

[Rural Revitalization] [County Development] [Leading Collective Village Development] [Realistic Fiction] [Career] [Keeping the Roots of Those Who Left Home] [Feel-Good Fiction]

After graduating from college, Chen Feng spent five years drifting in another province. Exhausted by the rat race, he could barely save any money by year's end. Countless people from his hometown were forced to leave their roots behind to make a living.

In a fit of anger, Chen Feng quit his job and returned to his home county, where he unexpectedly bound himself to the County Mineral Revitalization System!

Every person in the county gives me ten kilograms of minerals a day. That's a thousand tons of ore every day!

But the System has one rule:

He can't spend a single cent of the money earned from selling ore outside the county. Only by building factories in the county and processing the ore further can he spend the money however he likes.

More importantly, the larger the county's permanent population, the more ore it produces, and it can even unlock entirely new rare minerals, such as rare earths and lithium!

The richest man in the county? Think bigger!

While others only want to buy raw ore cheaply and resell it, Chen Feng pours money into factory buildings, better roads, and subsidies for people returning home to start businesses.

He works hard to attract those who left to return for jobs, and to bring in workers from elsewhere to settle down. Schools, hospitals, and industrial parks soon follow...

Faced with everyone's confusion, Chen Feng smiles faintly. "I don't just want to make money. I want this little city to keep everyone rooted here."

Years later, a reporter from Economic Weekly interviews Chen Feng:

"How did you turn a small, fifth-tier county town suffering from population loss into an international industrial city of ten million people?"

Chen Feng gently shakes his head. "I just wanted the folks who left to make a living to never have to leave their hometowns again."