Chapter 29

Li Qiang came over to call the two for dinner, and only then did Li Long and Tao Daqiang put on their clothes and go to the west room.

Seeing the plate of grass carp on the table, Li Long was amused. Sure enough, Li Qiang didn't care if revenge came early or late; he brought the grass carp back, and it was stewed that evening.

Besides the grass carp, there was fish soup made from small crucian carp, plus cornmeal pancakes, steaming hot and smelling very fragrant.

Li Juan was tidying up the knuckle bones on the kang; she must have just finished playing.

Everyone sat at the table, Li Jianguo picked up his chopsticks, and they started eating together.

Tao Daqiang still kept his head down and ate slowly. If it weren't for Li Long reminding him from time to time, he wouldn't even pick up much fish, just soaking his corn pancakes in the fish soup.

"Eat more fish meat." Li Long said with a smile, "This is Qiangqiang's enemy; let's eliminate it together."

"Mm." Tao Daqiang responded.

Li Qiang said he wanted revenge, but in reality, he only ate one chopstick of grass carp before turning to the crucian carp next to it. The grass carp meat was thick, and although Liang Yuemei had scored the back when stewing it, most of the fish meat still tasted a bit bland.

And it lacked oil.

Li Long was thinking that after selling the fish tomorrow, he had to go to the black market to see if there was any vegetable oil for sale. In these times, everything required coupons; they had some grain coupons at home, but not many other types.

"Big Brother, give me some grain coupons tomorrow; I'll buy some grain after I sell the fish." Li Long said, watching Li Juan and Li Qiang struggling with their cornmeal pancakes.

"There's still quite a bit of cornmeal at home." Liang Yuemei said.

"Buy some fine grain," Li Long said, "if they only eat coarse grain, look at Juan and Qiangqiang, they aren't growing well."

Liang Yuemei stopped talking. How could she not want her children to eat more fine grain? But the rations distributed by the team weren't much to begin with, and Li Long had been eating more of the fine grain at the time.

Fortunately, her brother-in-law had changed now and was also capable.

"Alright." Li Jianguo chewed on the cornmeal pancake, feeling it was exceptionally sweet.

Actually, Li Long knew that it would be fine after getting through the next half year. Next year, when land is distributed, even if everyone only has two mu of ration land, if they really farm it, the harvested grain, after paying the public grain, would be enough for everyone to eat.

Good days were about to come!

After the meal, Li Long gave Tao Daqiang some instructions, telling him to come over earlier tomorrow morning, and Tao Daqiang responded and left.

"Daqiang is a very honest child." Liang Yuemei said while tidying up the bowls and chopsticks, "We mustn't shortchange him."

"Mm." Li Jianguo rolled up some Mohe tobacco, and while rolling it, he began telling stories to the two children.

Under the kerosene lamp, the two children listened with rapt attention.

"...Our place here used to be known as 'Golden Plate and Jade Bottom' over a hundred years ago. Why do they say that? Because the Mahe River back then had gold mines at the bottom and jade mines at the source. Many wealthy families at that time lived in what is now the ruined city..."

Li Long, who had originally planned to go to sleep, heard this and slapped his thigh, saying with annoyance:

"How could I be so stupid and forget about this?"

"What?" The slap was so loud that Liang Yuemei in the kitchen heard it and hurried over to ask, "What did you remember?"

"Jade!" Li Long slapped his own head again, "There are jade mines in our Nanshan! And in the dry riverbed of the upper reaches of the Mahe River, aren't there jade boulders? The herdsman even asked me what to look out for, and I forgot about this!"

Mahe jasper has produced national treasures; jade mines were opened here during the Qing Dynasty. Although the jade quality is not as good as Hetian jasper, and most of it has black spots like fly specks, top-grade jasper boulders are also very rare.

Li Long remembered that when his older brother was still alive in his previous life, Li Juan once came home from school and told a story: her classmate's father had once received a piece of jasper boulder weighing over ten kilograms from a herdsman in the seventies for a dozen yuan, and by 1985, it was sold for over two thousand yuan.

Two thousand yuan in that era was a huge sum of money!

Halimu and the others had lived in the mountains for generations and certainly knew where the jasper was. When Li Long was in his thirties in his previous life, Mahe jasper had just become famous, and he went into the mountains to collect jade. By then, many herdsmen no longer had boulders but were privately using explosives to blast mountain jade in the jade mountains.

Li Long was an amateur, so the piece he received was mountain jade; it looked like stone on the surface, and while it was indeed jade when polished, unfortunately, the mountain jade was full of cracks from the blasting, so it was ruined.

In his previous life, from 1985 until Li Long passed away, whenever the riverbed dried up after floods in the Mahe area, many people would take mineral water bottles every day to pick up jade in the riverbed.

When they saw a stone that looked like jade, they would use a mineral water bottle with a hole drilled in the cap to squirt some water on the stone to see if it was jade.

At the beginning of the century, every year people would discover very heavy, large pieces of jasper in the upper reaches of the river, ranging from tens of kilograms to several tons.

"Then just go and ask when you have time." Li Jianguo smiled, "That thing won't run away. Jade isn't necessarily more important than grain right now."

The "important" he was talking about meant essential.

Li Long thought that was true too.

"Uncle, you're not stupid at all!" Li Qiang said loudly, "Uncle is the smartest! You can even catch grouse and trade them for knuckle bones—no one else has this ability!"

"Haha, Qiangqiang is the best." Li Long laughed.

!.

Back in the east room, Li Long thought about the grouse Li Qiang mentioned just now.

Since they were selling fish tomorrow, should he go and see if there were any grouse? Catching a few grouse to sell would also be fine.

Thinking of it, he did it. He banked the stove, grabbed his flashlight, put on his gloves and hat, went out, took the landing net and urea bag, and headed east.

After walking a few hundred meters, Li Long knew that this trip would probably be in vain.

Following the tracks he had left, there were footprints following along. Clearly, he wasn't the only one who wanted to catch grouse or knew where they were.

Fortunately, Li Long knew more than one place where grouse liked to hide. He carried the flashlight all the way to the spot where he had caught grouse last time, and sure enough, there wasn't a single one.

Then he would change places.

Turning south, walking through the snow, Li Long breathed heavily; he regretted it a bit, it was too hard to walk.

But since he had come and walked so far, the remaining few hundred meters didn't matter.

Suddenly, a black thing darted out from the side. Li Long was startled, turned on the flashlight, and saw a gray shadow with half a white butt.

A wild rabbit!

There really are so many good things in the wild!

Li Long watched the wild rabbit dart into the snow until it disappeared before turning off the flashlight.

To tell the truth, the rabbit didn't run very fast, but because it hadn't just snowed, the snow had accumulated for a while and was already quite firm, so the rabbit could run.

He planned to come back to chase rabbits and set some rabbit snares the next time it snowed.

This thing had more meat than a grouse.

Soon, Li Long approached the second place where grouse hid.

He slowed his pace and carefully crept forward.

Thanks to book friends Baifo Wo Weishou Douzhan and 20220308131935841 for the monthly tickets, and thanks to everyone for the recommendation tickets and support!

(End of chapter)