Chapter 237: Good people always get rewarded; look, intelligence has arrived!

Li Jianguo returned home and told Li Long about the matter.

"What are the six-color gifts?" Although Li Long had lived an extra life, he really didn't know much about this.

He looked at Li Qing Xia, who waved his hand:

"This is the Northern Frontier, ask your brother."

"Every place is different. Generally speaking, it means six different kinds of gifts, like cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, tea, and so on." Li Jianguo often acted as the general manager for people's weddings and had seen and heard plenty of these things. He explained:

"To be more specific, there must be meat, pork ribs are best, and there's talk of three ribs. There must be fish; this is 'abundance every year,' it's a blessing. Then there's cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, tea, pastries, and the like. The ones after that should all be in pairs."

"Then meat... fish..." Li Long calculated, "There are three days left. I'll go into the mountains now and see if I can hit a wild boar tomorrow morning. If I can't, I'll go buy it at the meat shop. Fish is easy to get; if I set a few nets the day before Sunday, I should be able to catch red carp... As for cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, and tea, I'll buy them as soon as I return from the mountains."

"Hey, for other people's engagements, the parents prepare everything, but you're something else, you're covering everything yourself." Du Chunfang sat at the door and said in a low voice, "His father, what are you doing?"

"What am I doing? What can I do?" Li Qing Xia smiled and said, "The son is too capable, so I'll just watch with a smile."

Li Jianguo and Li Long both laughed.

"Then you're really blessed!" Du Chunfang was still relentless. "Just don't go on the day of the engagement, it's embarrassing."

"That won't do, I definitely have to go. Without Xiao Long is starting a family, I have to watch. I'm still waiting to hold a grandson! I didn't get to hold Juanjuan and Qiangqiang, I have to hold Without Xiao Long's..."

"You're thinking too well! Juanjuan and Qiangqiang were raised by their mother until they were this big. You, the grandfather, have money, shouldn't you show something?"

Li Long looked at his mother with some surprise.

In his previous life, the relationship between Du Chunfang and his sister-in-law Liang Wenyu wasn't very good. He didn't expect his mother to be considering his sister-in-law now.

"That's for sure." Li Qing Xia said with a smile, "I have a plan for this in my heart."

Du Chunfang was about to say more, but Liang Wenyu said with a smile:

"Mom, I have money. Without Xiao Long gave me money when he earned it earlier, and I earned quite a bit from cutting poles this time. When we slaughter the pig in the autumn, there will be even more money..."

"That's one thing, this is another." Du Chunfang's tone softened. Having spent this time together, she could see that her eldest daughter-in-law was not bad. Taking care of this family and raising Li Long from a young age was something she, as a mother, should have done. This was her feeling guilty in her heart.

The matter was settled just like that. Li Long ate lunch at home, then carried his gun, rode his bicycle, and took his bag into the mountains.

Riding along the way, Li Long was also thinking. Going into the mountains in the future, although the bicycle was quite fast, it carried few things. A horse-drawn carriage carried more, but the speed was lacking.

If there was a chance in the future, he still wanted to get a sidecar motorcycle or a tractor.

Of course, it would be even better if he could get a 212—but that was impossible. After all, that thing was a vehicle only for county-regimental level officials. Even the township head rode a bicycle.

Arriving at the county, Li Long went to the courtyard to load some daily necessities. He planned to stay in the mountains until the morning of the day after tomorrow. If there was nothing on the morning of the day after tomorrow, he would return directly and go to the state-run meat shop to buy—

Originally, he could have saved this effort; Li Long mainly had itchy hands and wanted to go hunting.

By the way, he also wanted to see if he could run into that sharp-eared thing again.

By the time Li Long rode his bicycle to the wooden house, the sun was already slanting to the west.

Both locks at the wooden house were fine; it looked like no bad people had been hanging around nearby, and there might not even be anyone at all.

He put the bicycle into the small bedroom, locked the door, and carried the bag toward the mountains.

He planned to pick some mushrooms in the evening; one was to burn some mushroom soup to drink later, and the other was to dry some.

It was the early eighties now. Besides pickled vegetables, the vegetables that could be eaten in winter were cabbage, radishes, potatoes, and the like from the vegetable cellar.

There were very few dried vegetables, just vermicelli and the little bit dried in their own vegetable garden.

So Li Long planned to pick more mushrooms, slice them, and dry them, so there would be an extra delicious dish in winter.

Especially now that the black tiger-palm mushrooms were coming out, this thing came in patches, and they were large, so he could dry a significant amount.

Entering another gully, on the edge of the moss on the shady side, Li Long saw the black-striped, brown black tiger-palm mushrooms.

He dug one out from the edge of the moss; this one was as big as a vegetable plate, and there were several others nearby, large and small.

Li Long opened the bag and started filling it. In his previous life, he had seen bloggers pick them in short videos, but those were small, only the size of a palm.

Could it be that he was picking Northeast tiger-palm mushrooms, and those people were picking South China tiger-palm mushrooms?

After making up a cold joke, Li Long finished picking the dozen or so black tiger-palm mushrooms in this patch and walked forward.

After picking two piles, he felt that the mushrooms in the bag weighed over ten kilograms, and Li Long had some experience now. This thing grew in relatively damp places, basically on the shady hillsides, in the grass or moss clusters, and because they were large, they were easy to find.

Crossing a mountain gully and going to a flat valley, Li Long looked at the terrain and didn't think it looked like a place where black tiger-palm mushrooms could grow. When he turned his head to leave, he thought that since he was here, picking some straw mushrooms wouldn't be bad, so he went down into the gully.

Just as he went down, he saw that the gentle slope on the opposite side of the valley was covered with Tianshan red flowers; this thing was also called wild poppy, or corn poppy.

This thing grew in a large patch; some herdsmen's pastures also grew this, naturally growing, perennial, harvested every year, and continuing to grow the second year.

Li Long remembered that in his previous life, one year the team organized a trip to Nalati. When resting on the side of National Highway 218, in a place called Musi, there was a large patch of these flowers on the roadside, blooming very brightly.

At that time, the herdsmen used wire mesh to block off these red flowers. If you wanted to go in to take pictures, it was five yuan per person.

According to that herdsman, the money collected from this pasture every year was more expensive than the grass harvested later.

Later on, it was ten yuan per person, then fifteen. Later on, there was a great drought, and the red flowers were gone.

At that time, Li Long also saw a beekeeper there. Li Long knew that wild poppy was a medicinal herb, so he wanted to buy some honey. As a result, the beekeeper said they weren't harvesting honey these two days and had to wait a few days.

At that time, this kind of honey was still relatively cheap, twenty yuan per kilogram... it was a pity he didn't buy it.

Li Long was thinking about these past events from his previous life while walking down, and then he stood there.

He clearly saw that there was actually a tent there!

More than twenty wooden boxes were placed squarely on the side of the tent. Weren't those beehives?

The beekeeper had come?

Li Long was happy, carried the mushroom bag, and walked over quickly. Honey was still considered a rare item in these years, so buying some to take back to eat wouldn't be bad.

When he got within fifty or sixty meters of the tent, he felt that the bees around his body were increasing, buzzing, and some were even curiously circling around Li Long.

Li Long wasn't very afraid; he didn't wear perfume, there was no strange smell on his body, and he wasn't sweating, so these bees shouldn't have any interest in him.

However, he walked all the way to the tent and didn't hear any human movement.

Li Long couldn't help but shout:

"Is anyone here?"

His shout didn't elicit a response, but instead caused many bees to circle over again. The tent was very old, with many patches on it, and the color was no longer the early green, having faded quite a bit; he didn't know how many years it had been used.

A large bucket was placed outside with half a bucket of water in it. From the tent curtain lifted by the wind, he could see several bags of white sugar placed inside.

Having white sugar was normal. The climate in the mountains was cool in the morning and evening. If it rained continuously or hailed when they first arrived, the temperature hadn't risen, or the flowering period hadn't arrived, and there was no honey to eat, they could only eat sugar.

But at this time, the price of sugar and honey hadn't widened, so as long as there were flowers blooming, they wouldn't feed sugar.

A few wild mushrooms and a small bundle of wild onions were piled up by the sugar bag. The onion leaves were a bit wilted; it looked like they had been dug up two or three days ago.

Li Long shouted loudly again: "Is anyone here?"

Then he heard a faint sound from inside the tent:

"Help... save me..."

Li Long dropped the bag and hurriedly stepped forward, lifted the curtain, and then saw a middle-aged short man lying on the bed in the tent, his face flushed, his lips cracked—was this a fever?

Li Long walked to the man, bent over, and asked:

"Did you catch a cold? Do you have a fever?"

That person struggled to open his eyes, nodded slightly, and said something in a low voice, but Li Long didn't hear it clearly.

!.

He reached out and touched his forehead; the man's forehead was hot, and he guessed he must have a fever.

Li Long hurriedly went to find a rotten towel, poured the water from the bucket outside, wet it, and placed it on the man's forehead, then said:

"You wait, I'll go back and get some medicine..."

There was still some common medicine at the wooden house, so Li Long ran back quickly and brought it back.

With Li Long's help, the man took the medicine, and half an hour later, the temperature slowly dropped.

Li Long was glad that this person only had a cold and fever; if he had eaten poisonous mushrooms or been bitten by a snake, he really wouldn't have had any way to help.

Li Long poured water for this person again. It was too late to boil water, but fortunately, this person had a thermos, and the water inside was warm; he didn't know if it was from yesterday or the day before.

After more than an hour, the sun had already set on the edge of the mountain, and this person's spirit was significantly better, so he finally explained the situation clearly.

His name was Lv Dafeng, a professional beekeeper. Originally, he was a beekeeper for the farm, but later, after the household responsibility system was implemented, he borrowed money to buy the farm's beehives and started keeping bees everywhere.

This year, he had just moved from the plains area. The mountain flowers here were quite good, the honey produced was good, and the price was high, so he thought about staying here for a month or two, and after the mountain flowers were gone, he would transfer to other places.

It was just that he didn't expect that he had only been here for less than a week. Two days ago, there was a heavy rain. In order to protect the bees, he worked overnight, and after getting rained on, he didn't handle it well, so he caught a cold.

Actually, he had taken medicine, but he didn't expect it to be so serious. After the rain cleared, he opened the beehives, didn't pay much attention to his own side, had a fever, and went straight into a delirium.

"Thanks to you, brother!" Lv Dafeng was very excited. "If it weren't for you, I'm afraid I would have died here!"

"Not necessarily, not necessarily..." Li Long said hurriedly, and then he asked again, "I thought beekeepers usually came as a family? You..."

"My hometown is in the south, and my wife is too." Lv Dafeng sighed. "Something happened in my hometown, and my wife took the children to handle it there. They'll be here in a couple of days."

"I see. Then that's fine. Since you're better, I'll be going. Being alone outside, you still have to take care of yourself." Li Long said while walking out of the tent. "This is something you should know better than me..."

"Hey brother!" Lv Dafeng struggled to get up and shouted:

"Don't go yet! Don't go!"

Li Long stopped.

"I don't have anything to thank you with here, take two bottles of honey." Lv Dafeng found a jar from the corner. "This is the honey I harvested at the last bee-picking point, sunflower honey. When you come in a while, the mountain flower honey will be ready, and the taste will be even better!"

"Then I won't take it, I'll come pick it up when your mountain flower honey is ready." Li Long said with a smile. "I live in the wooden house two gullies away."

"Are you..." Lv Dafeng asked suspiciously, "digging for medicine?"

"No, no, no, I'm a forest ranger for the forestry team, watching the forest, hunting wild boars and such." Li Long explained.

"Hunting wild boars? You can hunt wild boars?" Lv Dafeng's eyes lit up when he heard this.

"I can." Li Long patted the gun bag he had been carrying on his back and said, "This is a gun."

"That's great!" Lv Dafeng pointed to the gully diagonally opposite and said:

"In the gully over that mountain, there's a group of wild boars active every midnight, and they scared me to death! There must be more than a dozen in the group, and I don't dare to drive them away alone. When I hired a car to pull the beehives over, it was daytime, and I only saw the flowers; I didn't know there were wild boars nearby. These past few days, I've been terrified, afraid they'd go crazy and rush over, then my tent and bees would be finished..."

"Really?" Li Long was also happy when he heard this. "Then that's fine, I'll come over at midnight to hunt them. If I can hit them, I'll share some meat with you. If I can't, I can at least scare them away!"

When Li Long first came, he was still thinking about where to find wild boars. This was great.

Finally, no matter what, Lv Dafeng insisted on letting him take a jar of honey to drink. To prove to Li Long that the honey was good, he even took a spoon and ate a big mouthful himself.

Li Long couldn't refuse, so he carried a canned jar of honey and the bag of mushrooms and walked back.

Watching Li Long's back disappear, Lv Dafeng ate two more mouthfuls of honey, only then insisting on standing up to find something to eat.

Although he really didn't want to eat anything now, he was often outside and knew that eating something at this time was the only way to have resistance.

Li Long carried the bag back to the wooden house, put the bag down, found firewood, lit both stoves, and boiled water while burning mushroom soup.

Fresh straw mushrooms and black tiger-palm mushrooms were sliced and thrown into the water. After boiling for a while, a rich mushroom smell wafted out.

In his previous life, Li Long also liked digging for wild mushrooms. In the large gully east of the village, there were reed mushrooms, which could also grow quite large, the largest growing to about one kilogram. They could be dug in spring, early summer, and autumn. When dug, they were fresh and stir-fried that day. When he got tired of eating them, he would slice them and dry them.

When there were no mushrooms, these dried mushrooms could be soaked in water and stir-fried in various ways. When Li Long was lazy, he would put some in when boiling instant noodles, and the taste was very good.

Letting it boil in the water, he took out the gun cloth from the small room, spread it out, and began to slowly wipe the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle.

After wiping the gun and tidying up, he removed the fire under the stove and began to put seasonings into the mushroom soup. While waiting, he went to the small bedroom and took out a basket.

In the basket were the steamed bun pieces dried earlier.

There were no refrigerators at this time. To save time, locals usually steamed buns in two or three layers at once, more than a dozen or twenty large buns. These buns were prone to mold spots if left out, so what to do? The locals started drying bun pieces. Breaking the buns into pieces and putting them in a basket, they would be dried out under the hot sun in two days.

Easy to store.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 238 =====