Chapter 635: The tribe is truly rich, the tribe is truly poor

By the time Li Long and the others rushed to that rocky hillside, the wolves had long since disappeared.

"There, at that time, that bear was in that position." Talihar suddenly pointed in a direction.

Li Long and Yushanjiang looked over there, the rocks were denser, he opened the gun's safety and touched over.

In a place hidden by several shrubs, there was a quite large cave entrance, and many branches of the shrubs at the entrance were broken. Li Long looked carefully, these were old broken marks.

Recently, there might be nothing in this cave.

Li Long turned his head and looked, obviously feeling that Talihar was still quite nervous.

Was he afraid that there was still a bear inside?

Yushanjiang said with a smile:

"There will definitely be nothing inside. That bear is not stupid. When the weather gets hot, it runs into the deep mountains. There is plenty of delicious food inside, and no one disturbs it."

Talihar didn't speak, tightly pursing his lips.

"Go, go in and take a look." Li Long listened carefully, there was no movement inside, not even the sound of breathing, so he said boldly.

He was quite confident in his hearing.

Talihar didn't move, Li Long continued to move forward, Yushanjiang said:

"Talihar, give me the gun, Li Long and I will go in first, you follow behind?"

Talihar hesitated, shook his head, carried the gun and chased after Li Long with big strides.

Li Long looked at Talihar on the side, smiled and said:

"There should be nothing here, even if there is, at most it's bear dung."

"At that time, I watched that bear right here, several wolves were on the rocks above, when that bear came out of the cave, that big open mouth, felt like it could swallow me in one bite, too big!"

Talihar said the fear in his heart, and felt much better instead.

The cave entrance was still that cave entrance, but it wasn't so scary.

Li Long was on the right, Talihar was on the left, Yushanjiang didn't go in, he also felt there was nothing inside, and watched near the cave entrance.

It was dark inside, and after walking in a few steps, he could smell a strong stench.

"Is this the bear's smell?" Li Long guessed, "So smelly?"

Talihar didn't reply, gripped the gun in his hand tightly, and opened the safety.

The two walked very slowly, adapting to the light inside while walking.

The reasons for the formation of this kind of cave were relatively complex, some were the squeezing of stones for millions of years, some were the erosion of limestone, and some were dug out by animals.

This was squeezed out by two stones, looking like it was dug out from the outside, but looking at the top after entering, one could see the stone slabs on top squeezed together.

The space inside was quite large when entering, slowly becoming smaller, then turning left, a small turn, and then turning right.

In total, it wasn't very deep, less than ten meters, and the light wasn't unable to reach the bottom, the ground was uneven, there were two stones blocking it, both people's eyesight was good, walking to the end, it was a stone pit.

There was grass, there was dung, no animals.

Li Long could hear Talihar let out a long sigh, don't know if it was letting go of his heart, or a bit of regret?

The two searched around again, unfortunately, there was no resource in this cave, legendary gems, night-shining pearls were even more impossible, instead it was very smelly, and the two soon retreated.

After coming out, they found that Yushanjiang was gone, Li Long immediately shouted:

"Yushanjiang?"

"Hey, hey, here!" Yushanjiang responded, Li Long looked at the source of the sound, and found that he was in the grass clump less than twenty meters away from this stone cave.

"What's wrong?" Li Long carried the gun and went over, asking while walking.

"There is a small roe deer... I know what those gray wolves were doing just now."

Yushanjiang held a small roe deer and came out. That small roe deer was about the size of a half-month-old lamb, struggling hard in Yushanjiang's hands, and the cry was very thin.

Li Long closed the gun's safety, carried it on his back, and went to look at the small roe deer.

"Its mother should have led the gray wolves away, this little guy stayed here, just now it should have been scared by our movement, moved a bit, I went over and saw..."

Li Long smiled. This small roe deer was actually born late. Many roe deer and red deer were born in early spring, when the snow hadn't melted, and by the time the green grass grew, the small deer could eat grass.

"You take it back, we can't raise it." Yushanjiang stuffed the small roe deer into Li Long's arms, "How many do you have?"

"Seven or eight." Li Long smiled, "Two were born last winter, and they are quite big now."

He planned to take this back to the county courtyard first, so Gu Xiaoxia could have something to watch.

"Hey, it's a group." Yushanjiang took the gun from Li Long's hand, carried it and walked back, "Let's go."

"Go." Talihar's face also showed a smile, his eyes swept over the small roe deer.

Don't know why, the small roe deer wasn't so nervous in Li Long's hands.

Li Long guessed if it was because he often returned to the old horse number, and had the smell of roe deer on him?

Maybe.

The three returned to the winter quarters. The water ditch here had been buried, and the women processing the mutton were already using the water flowing down from the water pipe.

Old lady Sana's voice was especially loud, Li Long could feel the joy in her voice.

Being able to use tap water, the women were especially happy.

Much more convenient.

Sana saw Talihar come back, she could feel that her grandson's mood had obviously changed, and looked at the small roe deer in Li Long's arms, called out, hurriedly came over to take the small roe deer, went to get a wool rope to tie it and tie it to the side of the winter quarters, and put a bowl of milk on the side.

The small roe deer was a bit scared at first, Sana dipped some milk from the bowl with her finger and wiped it on the small roe deer's mouth, it smelled the milk, and soon lowered its head and drank it in large gulps.

Easy to raise.

Li Long felt relieved.

The smell of mutton permeated, but what was more rich was the smell of flour.

Naan had already been roasted in a basket, and naan was still being roasted in the naan pit.

Li Long went to wash his hands under the water pipe, then went to the basket to pick up a naan, broke it into two pieces, handed half to the young man passing by, and gnawed on the other half himself.

Fragrant, truly fragrant. This was flour made with milk, and green onions were sprinkled on the leavened naan, the taste was truly very good.

"Eat mutton later." Halimu put down the tools, sat beside him, and reminded.

Li Long broke off a piece from the part he hadn't gnawed and stuffed it to him, eating and saying vaguely:

"This... is also delicious."

Halimu smiled, wiped the mud on his hands on his clothes, took the naan and ate it too.

"Really good." He looked at the water pipe that was continuously flowing water, and suddenly said.

Li Long looked in the direction of his gaze and smiled.

It is indeed, really good.

After eating, it was rest time. Old lady Sana walked to Li Long's side, behind her was Talihar, Talihar held a flat round stone weighing seven or eight kilograms in both hands.

Li Long looked at it for the first time, thinking that if his sister-in-law saw this stone, she would definitely like it very much. This stone was extremely suitable for pressing pickles in a jar.

Rural women pickled pickles in the autumn by the jar, large jars, the kind that could hide people.

After the pickles were pickled, those vegetables couldn't be exposed outside the water, otherwise they would go bad. At this time, a good stone for pressing pickles came in handy.

Most good stones were found in the river channel, and they needed the kind of stone with relatively high density, ordinary sand and stone wouldn't work.

Usually a good jar-pressing stone could be used for many years. In spring, the pickle jar was emptied, the stone was taken out and washed clean and placed on the flower wall of the courtyard. This kind of stone was not afraid of wind, sun, and rain, and waited until autumn to wash it clean and press it into the jar.

Cycle after cycle.

Li Long looked at the stone Talihar was holding and it was not bad—it's a pity that this stone was emerald green, no one was willing.

Yes, this was a top-grade Mahe jade, deep green all over, with a piece of skin the size of a palm, the skin was gray-black, and other places were polished translucent green.

"This stone was picked up by us this year, that place flooded, and it was washed down." Old lady Sana spoke, Talihar translated, "You, young man is not bad, did a lot of good things for us, we all remember it. This stone, it's yours."

Then Talihar handed the stone to Li Long.

The stone was really beautiful, or rather, the jade stones Li Long had picked up or exchanged before, none were as beautiful and regular as this one.

It was simply like a fake. Don't know how much grinding this jade stone experienced in the riverbed before being picked up by old lady Sana to become what it was now.

There were some small mud spots on it, in fact, if you look closely at this jade stone, there were also small pits on the surface, fortunately there were no cracks, it was a complete top-grade jade stone.

Li Long guessed that if this jade stone was taken to the jade carving factory, it would be at least two hundred per kilogram—of course, he wouldn't sell it now.

Later, there were still many raw jade ores in the Mahe mountains, but most of them had black spots like fly droppings, and this kind of relatively pure one was very rare.

Li Long took the jade stone to the water to wash it, and under the reflection of the water, this stone was even more beautiful.

Halimu and Yushanjiang came over to look at this jade stone, praised it, and then went to do their own work.

Other young men were also like this.

Li Long felt that in their view, this jade stone was just a relatively beautiful stone.

Nothing more.

Looking at this stone, it's not as important as measuring the pipe and thinking about how many meters of pipe his family needs.

This made Li Long feel a bit emotional.

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If you say they don't know that this stone can be sold for a lot of money outside, that's impossible.

After all, the jade mine in Maxian has existed since the mid-Qing Dynasty, although it was stopped later, most people nearby know the value of jade.

But for them, this jade stone is really not necessarily more important than a bag of rice and flour, or a few pieces of brick tea.

The values are different.

After resting for half an hour, the young men got up under the greeting of Yushanjiang and Halimu and went to another winter quarter.

The other winter quarter was less than two kilometers away from here, and the small roe deer and jade stone were left here for the time being.

The women also stayed here, because the young men still had to come here to eat meat and naan in the evening.

Li Long carried the iron shovel and carried the rifle and followed them to walk to the winter quarters over there.

He found that the road ahead was not directly south, directly into the deepest mountains. The winter quarters of these tribal families were scattered, for example, Halimu's winter quarters were on the outermost periphery, Yushanjiang's was southwest of Halimu's winter quarters, and Talihar's was southeast of Yushanjiang's winter quarters.

The distribution of winter quarters was not where people wanted to be. South of Maxian, the pasture was limited, all in small pieces, where there was pasture, there were winter quarters.

It's not like places like Nilka Gongliu in the Central Tianshan Mountains, there are no trees in the mountains, all are large grasslands, so it's relatively casual to build winter quarters.

There are also Kazakh pastures over there, and some even have kinship with this side.

After all, from the very beginning, there were so many Kazakh tribes.

But the mountains isolated their communication.

When they went to another winter quarter, everyone was already familiar with this work.

Yushanjiang and Halimu determined the route of digging the ditch together, and the next step was for each person to divide a section. No need to measure anything with a ruler, just measure it with steps, and then dig. No one cares who has half a meter more or half a meter less.

They were also laughing and talking when digging, but the work was absolutely not ambiguous.

This time Talihar joined the ranks of digging ditches, while Li Long came to the water source at the very top.

What surprised Li Long was that the water source here was actually a hot spring.

The spring eye was about one hundred and twenty meters away from the winter quarters, and the drop between the top and bottom was about twenty meters. The water here came out of the stone cracks, and the temperature of the water after coming out was touched by Li Long, about forty degrees, and it felt slightly higher than body temperature when touched by hand.

Hey, it's really a good place!

The entire Tianshan Mountains are an earthquake zone, and once had a volcanic zone. Now there are mud volcanoes in Shawan and Wusu.

So it's normal to have hot springs.

After Li Long sighed, he found a place to dig a pit. With this hot spring, the water here is definitely not afraid of freezing in winter, and it is very convenient to wash things with warm water in winter.

Endowed by nature.

Yushanjiang came over after allocating the work, looking at the steam rising from the water, and after touching it, he also sighed:

"Bieke's water is really good."

Actually, the water used in the winter quarters was at the stream forty or fifty meters away from the winter quarters, and the water there had already reached normal temperature after a section of open-air flow.

But using a pipe to divert it over, that's different.

"At least our shoes are wet, it won't be so uncomfortable." Li Long made a joke, and then continued to dig the pit.

The hot spring water here was better than the one on his side of the hot spring ditch, although the water flow was small, there was no strong sulfur smell, which was quite good.

When Li Long dug out a pit, Yushanjiang also dug a ditch on the side. However, the stones here were relatively messy and many, so the ditch was dug relatively slowly.

It wasn't until the water ditches behind were all dug that the ditch here was dug out.

Bieke and Talihar had already come to help. They straightened the pipes, Li Long put down the iron shovel and started to wrap gauze on the pipe mouth, while Talihar followed to tie the iron wire.

After the water pipe was handled well and buried, Bieke excitedly straightened the pipe and walked down little by little.

Li Long and Yushanjiang skillfully pressed the picked gravel at the pipe mouth, and then large stones.

Li Long looked at this hot spring waterway and said:

"There is little sand here, Bieke and the others might not need to manage the pipe mouth here for two or three years."

"Really comfortable." Yushanjiang nodded, he walked twenty steps downstream of the water pit, then found a flat place, took off his shoes and soaked his feet in the water.

There was a drop of three or four meters from Li Long, Li Long looked at the terrain, if he dug a pit, he could really make a hot spring pool there.

It's just a pity that there was no cover around here, so it was not easy to take a bath.

Li Long also went over, took off his shoes and socks, went to the opposite side of Yushanjiang, and soaked in.

Water got into his shoes in the morning, and his socks were wet, he hadn't cared about them all along, now looking at his feet, they were wrinkled from soaking.

But to be honest, his mood was really good. There were exclamations from downstream, obviously feeling the temperature of the water.

People who had buried the water pipes gathered towards the water pipe head, wanting to feel the temperature of the hot spring.

Halimu went up, saw Yushanjiang and Li Long soaking their feet, and came over to soak together.

"Still comfortable here! If my side was a hot spring, it would be great!" Halimu sighed.

"I think so too." Li Long washed his socks while soaking. Anyway, Bieke and his family wouldn't use the water downstream anymore, so it should be fine to soak his feet and wash his socks here.

The work actually didn't take much time, all the work was faster than Li Long imagined. Of course, this was mainly because he set the workload of the water ditch to be only half a meter deep. For this kind of black soil under the turf, digging this ditch was really not a difficult thing.

Of course, Li Long didn't intend to change the depth temporarily, there was no need.

After the work here was finished, the young men stepped firmly on the backfilled soil, although it was still a section higher than both sides, it would slowly sink.

Next, they would return to Talihar's winter quarters and eat a delicious dinner there. According to Talihar, there would be stir-fried potato slices for dinner.

Kazakh stir-fried potato slices are relatively famous in Ili in later generations, and equally famous are milk tea, baursak, and milk lumps.

Of course, most people can't get used to the last kind.

Before leaving, the young men saw Li Long and Yushanjiang soaking their feet there, and a few followed to soak, while a few were embarrassed and went back.

Li Long soaked for a while, the sun slanted to the west, the mountain blocked the sunlight, and the position he was sitting in was a bit cool, so he didn't soak anymore, put on his shoes and socks and walked back.

After eating dinner at Talihar's winter quarters, the young men dispersed and returned to their homes.

Before leaving, when Li Long took the jade stone, he entered Talihar's empty winter quarters.

The furniture in this winter quarters had all been replaced with new ones, looking quite beautiful. But the winter quarters itself had been there for many years, there were many pits on the wall, and the inside wall was also black.

It could be seen that this condition was worse than almost any family in the Fourth Team.

But whether it was old lady Sana, or Talihar and other family members, the smiles on their faces were sincere, and one could feel that they were happy.

This feeling was quite wonderful. They could easily give away things worth several thousand yuan, and they could also live a life that was not wealthy with relish.

Quite good.

ps: Someone sent me a message on Douyin, saying why the last dozen chapters couldn't be seen completely, and some said why the last dozen chapters were chapters of other novels? I reacted for a long time before replying to them: You are reading pirated versions, I really can't solve this, unless you go to read the genuine version... (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 636 =====