Chapter 396: Let Li Long be a bodyguard?

Of course, the fact that no fish was delivered today also had to do with Li Long not wanting to work today.

The original plan was to take the cart out tomorrow. Although the goods were all prepared today, it was a tiring job, and Li Long felt it was better to stick to the plan.

Li Long and Li Jianguo loaded a ton of fish into bags together. There wasn't much left, visually about a hundred kilograms or so, and Li Long's intention was not to pack it.

The hundred rabbits were also in one pile, and the rest were in another.

"I'm packing 106 this time, and I'll give the remaining six to them," Li Long said. "Consider it a favor to them."

"Alright." Li Jianguo was very clear about this aspect. He was okay at small trades, but when it came to doing business like this, he definitely wasn't as good as Li Long.

He just needed to raise his pigs and farm his land well.

He stacked the rabbits one by one in the cart box and pressed the bags of fish on top. As usual, the cart's shafts rested on a stool. This stool was one of the pieces of furniture made when Li Jianguo got married. The light yellow wood-grain paint on it had already peeled off in places, revealing the pine wood grain underneath, but the stool was still very sturdy and didn't show any signs of wobbling.

Looking at this stool, Li Long thought that when spring came, he would also have to haul some wood back to prepare for making furniture for his new home.

No, he couldn't wait until spring. When the snow melted in spring, the road from the team to the mountains would be a stretch of mud. At this time, the section from the team to the township was still a dirt road, not even paved with gravel. When the snow melted into water, the road became a mud road. The same went for the road from Qingshuihe Township to the mountains. At that time, neither people nor horse carts could pass, because people would step into thick mud, and even if they shoveled it away, it would soon be there again. Horse carts were even more miserable; the mud stuck to the wheels was hard to remove. At that time, if he let No. 76 haul wood into the mountains, it would probably be exhausted to death.

If they wanted to avoid the mud road, they would have to wait another five or six years for the authorities to allocate funds to turn this dirt road into a gravel road. It would be better then.

After covering these things with plastic sheeting and tying them up with rope, Li Long and Li Jianguo walked back into the house and closed the door.

Li Jianguo sat on the edge of the bed and started rolling a cigarette, while Li Long began to mentally calculate the earnings from this trip.

Selling the sheep earned about 200 yuan, and the main expenses for buying grain and such were about 300 yuan. Li Long would gradually make up for this to his friends in the mountains.

The fish could earn about 500 yuan, and the rabbits could earn a little over 100. He planned to give Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang 150 yuan each, and the money from selling the thirty-plus sets of sheep offal from his eldest brother's family would be left for his eldest brother's family.

There were still two sheep left, which counted as extra, and he still had some skins and sheep intestines that could sell for about 100 yuan. After this trip, he would earn about 500 or 600 yuan, part of which would be used to buy things to return to his friends in the mountains before the New Year.

Not bad. Although it wasn't as fast as hunting with Qi Jingyue and the others, the nature of this business was different. If they maintained a good relationship like this, such things would happen every year, but that wasn't necessarily the case with Qi Jingyue's kind.

It was highly likely a one-off deal.

After Li Long finished calculating, Li Jianguo's Mohe tobacco cannon was already rolled. He pinched off the little twist at the end, put the cigarette in his mouth, took out a lighter, pressed it to light it, took a deep drag, and then exhaled the smoke.

The lighter was bought for him by Li Long; otherwise, given Li Jianguo's current personality, he wouldn't have bought it. He would feel that matches were more cost-effective.

"Big Brother, keep all the money from selling the sheep offal," Li Long said. "I won't split the other money with you. After I come back tomorrow, I'll give you some more money for collecting the fish and rabbits."

"Why say that?" Li Jianguo waved his hand. "I was just about to tell you, I plan to take a set of sheep offal and half a sheep to Juan's grandfather."

"Isn't that what should be done?" Li Long said with a smile. "You also have to take some fish. I remember Uncle Liang likes to eat crucian carp, and he especially likes small crucian carp. Take more fish over there then."

"Alright." Li Jianguo nodded. "I still had to discuss it with you, no matter what."

"There's no need to discuss such things. In the past few years, because I was here, our family received no shortage of help from Uncle Liang's side, which made Juan's second aunt's husband unhappy."

"Hahaha, that's because he has no ability. They are in the same team; if he could stand up and handle things, Juan's grandfather would have much less trouble."

Li Jianguo suddenly remembered Li Long's reaction when the Liang family's land and the neighboring land had a dispute last autumn. He had really underestimated his younger brother before.

Footsteps came from outside, sounding quite heavy. Li Long and Li Jianguo looked at each other, and Li Long said:

"Could it be the rabbit buyers?"

Li Jianguo stood up and said:

"I'll go see."

The door was pushed open, and Zhao Laoshi walked in—which surprised both Li Long and Li Jianguo.

"Old Li, Xiao Long, you're both here." Zhao Laoshi was empty-handed, obviously not there to sell rabbits. Li Jianguo let him in.

"We are. What brings you here?" Li Jianguo asked directly. Zhao Laoshi had gone to smash ice holes to catch fish to sell in Shicheng, but ended up being robbed. Li Jianguo found out about this later. What made him angry was that on the third day when Li Long went to Shicheng to sell fish, this Zhao Laoshi had hidden the matter. If it wasn't intentional, even a ghost wouldn't believe it.

So he wasn't polite to Zhao Laoshi.

"Hey, isn't it because I heard Xiao Long is going to Shicheng, so I came over to ask," Zhao Laoshi was actually not honest at all, quite smart, or rather slippery, with a peasant-like cunning. He said with a smile:

"We plan to go to Shicheng to sell fish tomorrow too, thinking of going with Xiao Long. I saw your cart outside was already loaded. Are you leaving tomorrow morning?"

"Leaving tomorrow morning." Li Long didn't wait for Li Jianguo to speak and snatched the conversation. He knew that if his big brother were doing it for his sake, he might refuse directly.

But he didn't want Big Brother Li Jianguo's image in the village to suffer any loss because of this matter, so he said, "Are you afraid of being robbed? Wouldn't it be better if more people went?"

"It's not a matter of people. No matter how many people we have, we are just unarmed. How can we deal with others?" Zhao Laoshi smiled bitterly. "I was thinking, don't you have a gun..."

"But I unload the goods and come back immediately after I go. I don't know if you can finish selling in a short while. I can't wait there for you, can I?" Li Long said again, "Besides, you will definitely run to Shicheng often in the future. I'll protect you this time, but what about next time? And the time after that? I can't protect you every time, can I?"

Li Jianguo didn't speak. He looked at the two people talking. If Zhao Laoshi wanted to force Li Long to take a stand, he would definitely push back!

Although Zhao Laoshi was older, Li Jianguo had more seniority and wasn't timid at all!

Zhao Laoshi knew this was a fact, but he didn't know how to break the deadlock.

Li Long knew he had been led around in circles, or rather, his limitations were too great, so he couldn't help but point out:

"If you are afraid they have guns, why can't you borrow a gun! The team has one, the brigade has one, and there are people in the township who have them. If you have one, you can resist others. What are you afraid of? At worst, give people a few fish. You don't mean to say you don't even want to pay that, do you?"

Li Long's words pointed out Zhao Laoshi's hidden thoughts. Once Li Long reminded him, he really thought about borrowing a gun, and even thought of several people.

But he really just wanted to "borrow" it; he really didn't intend to give anyone anything.

"I know, okay, okay, Xiao Long, Old Li, you guys go ahead and get busy, I'm leaving." Zhao Laoshi got the idea and left in a hurry.

"I don't believe he didn't think of this idea before." Li Long sat back down by the fire wall and said:

"He's just stingy."

"This person is just like that." Li Jianguo stepped on the cigarette butt of the cannon he had smoked down to the end and crushed it with his shoe, saying, "Maybe he suffered a disaster when he was young in his hometown. His family was poor, so he was reluctant to give anything away."

Li Long also sighed. People of later generations couldn't imagine what people of Li Jianguo's age had experienced. They were born in the old society, watched the country be liberated, witnessed social transformation, participated in the People's Communes, mutual aid groups, youth border support, educated youth going to the countryside, movements, and now the household contract responsibility system.

The complexity of this was far greater than what those of later generations had experienced.

So, in fact, even in later generations, even when the country opened its doors and was much better than many war-torn places abroad, some young people began to reflect, but in reality, the people most grateful to the Party were still those of this age.

Because they had truly experienced and witnessed people starving to death, dying in wars, and being too poor to go to school, all the way to later being full every meal, eating meat every meal, and even needing to lose weight and advocating green health.

So although Li Jianguo had the intention of looking down on Zhao Laoshi, after all, now was different from that era, he could slightly understand this person—different experiences, hard to comment.

"You are right. Although he likes to take advantage of small things, it's not a solution to keep going like this. Some people just don't give up until they reach the Yellow River; they only think of ways at the very last moment."

Procrastination.

Li Long remembered that in his previous life, such people were represented by this term. Work reports were only done at the last moment of the deadline, web novels were only uploaded before 23:50, credit card debts were only thought of when they were due... and so on.

In fact, there were many such people.

"Is your gun okay? Do you want to take two more people tomorrow?"

"No need." Li Long waved his hand. "I'll just take the gun. Having more people is troublesome. Besides, it's mainly that section of the poplar forest. I'll take a different route when I come back tomorrow. Those people rob things with specific targets. I'm not going to the market tomorrow, so they can't scout me, and naturally, they won't go there to lie in wait."

What Li Long said made sense, so Li Jianguo didn't say anything more.

At noon, Liang Yuemei made pancakes and offal soup. The offal was washed very clean, and a layer of oil floated on the soup, along with bright green garlic sprouts, which looked very appetizing.

"Little Uncle, these garlic sprouts were planted by my sister and me!" At the dinner table, Li Qiang was there taking credit, and Li Juan smiled without speaking.

"Hmm, you two did a good job."

Li Long turned his head to look at the plate of garlic sprouts on the fire wall that had already been cut in half and said with a smile:

"In the middle of winter, being able to eat green leafy vegetables now depends on this."

"I'll sprout some mung beans tomorrow," Liang Yuemei finally came over with her bowl and said after hearing Li Long's words, "Eat them as a cold dish; they are crunchy and good too."

"I heard that some people plant chives in abandoned sheep pens, and they can eat yellow chives before the New Year in the middle of winter." Li Jianguo soaked the pancake in the offal soup and said while soaking it, "They say they sold them secretly during last year's New Year, over a yuan per kilogram. It's not cheap, more expensive than the price of meat!"

!.

Li Long had heard of this method. Replace the soil in the sheep pen, mix it with manure, and plant chive roots. After the chives grow, the roof of the sheep pen is removed in summer. As winter approaches, the roof is covered, and then old cotton quilts are covered over the chives. The chives grown this way don't see sunlight and become yellow chives.

Later generations were much easier; they directly used black triangular cone buckets to cover the chive clusters, which was more convenient.

It just wasn't suitable for a place like Northern Xinjiang where the weather was freezing. The method Li Jianguo mentioned was actually similar to the greenhouse vegetables popularized in later generations; in short, it was about keeping warm and not seeing light.

"That doesn't taste like anything. All year round, eat the vegetables of the season." Li Long remembered that in the two years before he passed away in his previous life, this saying had begun to become popular. There were actually things in out-of-season vegetables that were bad for the body. In the four seasons of life, eating seasonal things was naturally the best.

"For example, in this middle of winter, pickled cabbage with vermicelli and meat is the most delicious." Li Long tapped the table. "Pickled vegetables with meat are also good. Isn't spring for all kinds of wild vegetables, baby cabbage, chives, and summer is best..."

Li Qiang suddenly interjected:

"Little Uncle, are you saying this because you can't eat them? If you could eat green vegetables in the middle of winter, who wouldn't want to?"

Li Qiang's words broke Li Long's preaching. Li Jianguo laughed, and Li Long couldn't help but laugh too.

Yeah, it was too early to talk about health preservation and suitability. Now, the average level of the Chinese people's diet was still far from being well-off. What was the point of talking about suitability? Wait until everyone was wealthy and had more choices before talking about health, preservation, and longevity.

After eating two bowls of offal soup and a pancake, Li Long felt warm all over, and his stomach was full. At this moment, he just wanted to sleep.

Hadn't he made up for the sleep he missed these past few days?

Li Long said goodbye to Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei and walked back to the horse stable.

Old Luo Shu was listening to storyteller Dan Tianfang's storytelling in the stable. Li Long read for a while and then fell asleep again in the warm room.

He didn't sleep for long this time. When he got up and looked out through the window covered with plastic paper, the sky outside was still bright. Li Long climbed up, feeling completely rested this time. He walked out to take a look; the sun was slanting west, and the sunlight could only shine on the opposite wall. The courtyard couldn't be reached, and it was cold and chilly.

It was still a bit late, otherwise, Li Long thought it wouldn't be impossible to drive the cart to the county now.

He just felt a bit like he was running away—he wasn't sure if Zhao Laoshi would come to find him tomorrow to go together. He remembered hearing people in the village say that Zhao Laoshi went to Shicheng pulling a sled. He was robbed of his money at the time, but the sled wasn't taken away, or maybe others didn't look down on the sled he made himself. If he left now, it was hard to guarantee that Zhao Laoshi wouldn't say in the team—Li Long ran away first to avoid letting him follow.

He couldn't afford to lose that face.

Li Long followed Old Luo Shu to feed the wild boar, deer, and roe deer. The two deer didn't have much change, but the female roe deer seemed to have a bigger belly. Li Long asked Old Luo Shu, and Old Luo Shu smiled and said:

"It's either before or after the New Year. I'll spread some grass in the warm pen and make the curtain of the warm pen thicker. If it gives birth, it should be able to survive."

Looking at the male roe deer with a lame leg, Li Long didn't expect this guy to be quite tough!

The wild boar continued to make noise, grunting quite loudly, but it was much better than in the mountains. Seeing that it wasn't as irritable as the wild boars in the mountains, it was highly likely that it had already gotten used to the life of captivity.

There were still quite a few pens separated in the stable. Li Long was thinking that since these wild herbivores gave birth in early spring, late spring, or late winter, should he go into the mountains to search for a wave in early spring? If he could get more little deer, yellow sheep cubs, or roe deer cubs, life later on would be better.

After all, management was relatively loose now. When it came to later generations, when he wanted to farm, he would need to apply for some certificates.

If he made it a fait accompli now, it would be much easier to get the permits later.

He had already kept this old horse stable, and the next step was the things inside.

In the afternoon, he ate the black fish sent by Yang Yongqiang and the others yesterday with Old Luo Shu. Li Long ate and kept calling it satisfying. This kind of fish meat with garlic-clove-like flesh was really delicious, piece by piece, and the fine bones were easy to remove.

In the evening, Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang didn't come over. Li Long fell asleep early, thinking of leaving earlier the next morning. If Zhao Laoshi came to find him and he hadn't left yet, they would go together; if he had already left, he wouldn't wait.

The next day, when Li Long woke up, the sky wasn't bright yet. By the faint light of the stove fire, he saw it was already past seven o'clock. Li Long was already awake, climbed up, washed simply, and made breakfast. Old Luo Shu heard the movement and climbed up too. After the two had breakfast, Li Long went to his big brother's place.

Li Jianguo's family was also making breakfast. When Li Long went to the pen, he led No. 76 out, fed it, and after it finished eating and rested for a while, with Li Jianguo's assistance, he harnessed the horse cart. He dressed himself, stuffed the gun bag into the cart, and drove out.

Zhao Laoshi's family was in Old Zhuangzi. Li Long waited for a few minutes at Old Zhuangzi, but didn't see anyone. At this time, the white of the fish belly had already appeared on the horizon, so he drove the horse cart across the reed ditch and headed west.

An hour later, Zhao Laoshi, carrying a gun, pulled a sled out of the village with his son.

"Li Long must have already passed by." Zhao Laoshi's son said, "Should we hurry and catch up?"

"Catch up to what?" Zhao Laoshi patted the gun and said, "We have a gun, what are we afraid of? Not afraid anymore! If I had known, I would have borrowed a gun earlier..."

He was heartbroken over the money that had been robbed.

Li Long drove the horse cart to the county, bought a few big meat buns as usual, drank a bowl of hot tea in the big meat canteen, and continued on his way while eating the buns.

By this time, the sky had already brightened; a streak of red appeared in the east, and the sun was about to rise.

When Li Long arrived at the Shicheng Sugar Factory, the sun had risen quite high. The factory was already in operation, machines were running, and a continuous rumbling sound echoed throughout.

The guard saw Li Long, smiled, waved his hand to let him in, and then made a call to the logistics department.

Knowing that Li Long was delivering the New Year welfare goods, how could he not let him through as quickly as possible?

Although the horse-drawn cart was covered with a plastic sheet, the guard was well-informed and knew that it contained fish and rabbits. Thinking about being able to eat plenty of good things for the New Year, the guard was also very happy, and his attitude toward Li Long naturally improved quite a bit.

Section Chief Hu walked out and looked at Li Long; he was very satisfied.

He had said half a month, but Li Long had finished it in less than ten days; the efficiency was extremely high!

Yesterday, after delivering the sheep to the factory director's home, he received a round of praise from the director today, saying the mutton tasted good.

This made Section Chief Hu very satisfied as well, and he was also very happy to see Li Long! (End of chapter)