Chapter 7: Going to the mountains? Are you trying to save your life? "Then let's break up." Li Long said, "I won't implicate you, and you can also tell others that we broke up and it doesn't matter anymore." Li Long's expression was very calm, which made Wu Shufen feel very puzzled and surprised. She showed a surprised expression on her face. This was not like Li Long's character at all. According to Li Long's temper, shouldn't he pester her and beg her not to break up? What’s going on? Does he have a new partner when he goes to Wucheng this time? When they met last month, Wu Shufen remembered that she had only slightly expressed her dissatisfaction with not seeing each other for such a long time, and Li Long immediately took out his salary and went to the commune store to buy a hairpin to please her. Why is he so calm this time? But Wu Shuhua also had her own self-esteem. When she heard what Li Long said, although she was a little confused, she couldn't argue with Li Long in front of Li Jianguo, Li Juan and Li Qiang. So Wu Shufen couldn't bear to look at the quacking chicken and said to Li Long with a serious face: "Then let's break up, and don't tell anyone that you're my partner!" After saying that, he turned around and walked out with big steps, and soon disappeared behind the house. "Xiaolong, are you okay?" Li Jianguo looked at Li Long and felt that his brother was a little strange today. "It's all right, big brother. We have to put the quack chicken in the house and wait for it to thaw so that we can pluck its feathers."
"Okay." Li Jianguo didn't ask too many questions and went into the house with Li Long carrying the quacking chicken. Li Qiang and Li Juan's ears were red from the cold and they rubbed them vigorously. They didn't feel anything about their uncle breaking up with someone else, but they were still excited when they looked at Gua Gua Chicken. "There are really five." Liang Yuemei was also very happy. The pigs raised at home have become superstitious pigs, and this winter is not easy. Now that my brother-in-law has caught a quacking chicken, although it can't be said to solve a big problem, at least my son and daughter can eat meat. These days, it's really rare to be able to eat meat. "Well, there were actually more than a dozen. But after we caught five, the others were alarmed." Li Long said, "It was too late, and it would be difficult to chase them once they were alarmed." "Five is not a small number." Li Jianguo said, "It's snowing so heavily that it's hard to catch quacking chickens. Not many families in our team have eaten them before, so we'll make them for lunch today." "How many do you want to make?" Liang Yuemei took out the pickles from the pot, took the pot off the stove, and wiped the pot with the steamed corn tortillas to clean the inside. Liang Yuemei divided the corn cake covered with vegetable oil and pickled vegetable residue into two halves, and Li Juan and Li Qiang each took half. They ate with one hand holding the corn residue and the other hand, but their eyes were still on the Gua Gua Chicken. Li Jianguo looked at Li Long. Li Long was the one who caught the quack chicken, so he had the final say. "Let's make two." Li Long thought for a while and said, "Pack two and give them to Juan's grandfather, and keep the remaining one as a backup. Brother, sister-in-law, what do you think?" Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei looked at each other and saw surprise and unexpectedness in each other's eyes. Li Juan's grandfather is Liang Yuemei's father, Li Jianguo's father-in-law. In the past, Li Long never thought of the Liang family when he had good things. Is this completely grown up? Li Jianguo thought back to what Li Long and Wu Shufen had said before and found it unbelievable. "That's it," he said, "we'll clean up after dinner." The food was served, and Li Long waited until Li Jianguo sat down and picked up the chopsticks before he started eating. He had really been thinking about this pickle for a long time. In his previous life, until his eldest brother Li Jianguo passed away unexpectedly, he ate at his brother and sister-in-law's house, and pickled vegetables were indispensable in winter. Even when he became richer, he still had to pickle a jar of pickles every winter. But after Li Jianguo fell to his death because of Li Long, Liang Yuemei regarded Li Long as an enemy and stopped letting him eat at home. Li Long wandered around until he was in his forties, and then he married a divorced woman with a child. The two of them lived together, and although the woman also pickled vegetables, the taste was far inferior to that of Liang Yuemei.
Li Long was eating pickles and steamed buns with mixed feelings. He must live a decent life in his next life and avoid the tragedy of his previous life from happening again! After dinner, Liang Yuemei boiled water to scald chicken feathers, while Li Qiang and Li Juan picked out the good-looking feathers from the croaking chickens, preparing to collect them to make shuttlecocks - in those days, everyone had some copper coins at home, and most of them were used to make shuttlecocks. Watching the two people picking up the beautiful chicken feathers, Li Long suddenly remembered what his eldest brother said about how he followed the production team's tractor to plow the fields more than ten years ago and plowed out a temple's money cellar and dug out a large pile of copper coins, which he and others sold for several hundred yuan. That was hundreds of yuan in the 1960s. At that time, one kilogram of copper was only one yuan. According to Li Jianguo, there were a lot of copper coins at that time, but most of them have rusted into slag. When the weather gets warmer, I'll go there when I have time, maybe I can find some bargains. There is no cultural relic protection law these days, so these plowed-out money vaults are not under protection, but they are worth a look. But that's a matter for the future. After all, having lived two lives, Li Long now has a much broader vision. There are so many treasures in the mountains, such as velvet antlers, deer horns, deer penises, and fritillaria, which are not only purchased by state-owned pharmacies, but also by private individuals, and the prices are not low. Moreover, the basic militias are trained for three to five months every year these days, and the guns are directly issued to them. In the autumn, in order to protect the autumn, the villages and towns near the mountains will organize the militia to go up the mountain to hunt wild boars. With guns in hand, wouldn't it be easy to catch the good things in the mountains? In his previous life, Li Long participated in the basic militia training. Before the guns were taken back by the county armed forces in the 1990s, Li Long's shooting performance was always among the best in the militia competitions every winter. I can't say I'm a sharpshooter, but at least I can kill a wild boar. His thoughts were wandering, and he didn't come back to his senses until Li Jianguo called him to help peel the chicken. The quack chicken looks big, but without the hair and internal organs, it is basically less than half a kilogram. The gizzards should be kept, as well as the heart and liver, which are the main ingredients for stir-fried chicken offal. Li Jianguo also specially peeled out the chicken's gizzard lining - the quack chicken also has that layer of yellow skin. After peeling it off, put it on the fire wall to dry, and then collect it and grind it into powder, which is a good medicine for treating children's poor spleen and stomach. The five chickens were quickly prepared. Liang Yuemei took two of them and put them on the chopping board to chop them. Li Jianguo wrapped two of them and put them outside to freeze, ready to take them to Liang's house when he had time. The remaining one was hung in a spare room for later use. After cleaning up, Li Long said to Li Jianguo: "Brother, I plan to borrow the team's carriage tomorrow and go to the mountains to pull some wood back." "No!" Li Jianguo stared at him, very surprised by what Li Long said, and somewhat resistant: "It's so cold now, the roads in the mountains may not be accessible, and you are unfamiliar with the place, how can you go? What can you do if you go? It will be troublesome if you fail to pull up the wood and leave people in the mountains!" Li Long said confidently: "One of my colleagues in the food factory lives in Qingshuihe Commune. It's on the edge of the mountain. He came back with me. This time I went to find him and he took me into the mountain. I set out early and tried to get back that day—" Looking at Li Long's determined gaze, Li Jianguo hesitated. (End of this chapter)
