Chapter 673: Is this money coming a bit too easily?

For a period of time afterward, until June, Li Long basically only went into the mountains once every week to deliver some supplies to Sun Jia Qiang.

What surprised him a bit was that Sun Jia Qiang truly stayed in the mountains, going to pick mushrooms every day when he had nothing to do.

He didn't just pick morels, but also other mushrooms. He didn't dare eat the other mushrooms he picked, so he dried them on the counter, waiting for Li Long to come and see.

When Li Long came to see, he found that the mushrooms Sun Jia Qiang picked were also a mixed bag, and it was only at this time that Li Long discovered there were so many mushrooms in these mountains that he didn't recognize.

He could only pick out the mushrooms he recognized as edible to "popularize science" for Sun Jia Qiang; as for the others, throw them away.

What surprised Li Long a bit was that in early June, black tiger palm mushrooms had actually started to grow in some places in the mountains; although they weren't big, they were truly there.

Li Long was a bit happy and told Sun Jia Qiang, letting him pay more attention to this kind of mushroom when there were no more morels later, saying it wasn't cheap.

As for the morels Sun Jia Qiang picked, he asked Li Long if he would collect them; if he would, he would take them away.

Li Long naturally collected them. After weighing them, Sun Jia Qiang had picked over two kilograms but less than three kilograms of morels in this week or so. Right now, Li Long hadn't asked about the price of morels at the acquisition station; last year it seemed to be over twenty yuan per kilogram, so Li Long collected them from him at fifteen yuan per kilogram, giving him forty yuan for less than three kilograms.

Sun Jia Qiang was quite happy; this was much better than working for relatives.

He took thirty yuan of it, and told Li Long the rest counted as rent and the cost of those supplies.

Li Long just let it be that way.

Besides the days in the mountains, Li Long also went to the pastoral team's holding point. Because he hadn't hunted during this period, he went directly to the meat stall of the Hui people in the county to buy a sheep, split it in half, and put half at Halimu's mother's place and half at Yushanjiang's home.

The children were still very happy to see Li Long. They would use their already quite good Mandarin to tell Li Long about their learning situation and the changes here. Li Long could still see people coming to the two families' pressure wells to get water from time to time, and it could be seen that not many people in the whole village were installing pressure wells.

Or rather, almost none.

It wasn't that everyone couldn't afford the money to install a pressure well, or some people were already used to it; anyway, there wasn't much to do, either go to the river to get water, or go to these two families to press water, which wasn't considered much effort.

Halimu's mother, the old lady, was also very happy to see Li Long come, bustling to cook for Li Long. Li Long let the children explain that his wife at home was pregnant and he couldn't stay too long.

He brought not only mutton for the two families, but also daily necessities like rice, flour, oil, salt, tea, etc., including school supplies for the children; these were things he was used to bringing, and he would think of them every time he came over.

Several children were truly happy; after all, the other family members of the pastoral team who were left behind didn't have this treatment.

After returning from the pastoral team's holding point, Li Long began to tidy up the remaining fritillaria and the morels he had brought back from the mountains, drying them thoroughly, and after cleaning them, took them to the acquisition station.

The price of morels hadn't increased much, twenty-eight yuan per kilogram for first-grade. Li Long also casually asked about the price of black tiger palm mushrooms, and what surprised him a bit was that the price of this high-yield mushroom not only didn't increase, but actually dropped a bit, becoming twenty yuan per kilogram.

Dried goods.

A bit different from expectations.

However, the pricing power was currently in the hands of others, and he had no way.

After the last batch of fritillaria was sold and he returned to the large courtyard, while Gu Xiaoxia was taking a nap, Li Long began to take stock of the fritillaria.

Originally, if there hadn't been that robbery incident, Li Long had expected to receive nearly eight hundred kilograms of dried fritillaria in the last few days, and these dried goods could sell for nearly forty thousand yuan. The cost per kilogram of dried goods was about fifteen yuan, meaning the net profit was over twenty thousand yuan, a bit short of thirty thousand.

But the seven bags of fritillaria harvested from the robbers' nest, although not completely dry and not particularly clean, gave Li Long nearly three hundred kilograms of dried goods. In the end, after this fritillaria season, Li Long sold nearly a ton of dried fritillaria to the acquisition station.

The total price calculated was about fifty thousand yuan.

However, Li Long didn't intend to swallow these last three hundred kilograms of dried goods all by himself. Although Hearing Bolati said he only wanted two thousand, and one thousand seven hundred of it was still stored with Li Long, Li Long planned to at least divide three or five thousand for him.

Just because Hearing Bolati didn't report him, for this point alone, Li Long couldn't treat him poorly.

When he first met Hearing Bolati, Li Long didn't think much of this person. Too many faults, too many things, and he was an alcoholic.

But sometimes, the more bottom-level people are, the more loyal they are; loyalty is often found among the butcher-dog generation.

Li Long felt it was mainly because reading books makes people rational, looking forward and backward, considering too much, and their thoughts aren't so simple.

Of course, those readers with firm beliefs are different; they are made of special materials and are different from ordinary people. What they do, ordinary people can't do, and Li Long can't do either.

So Li Long planned to keep the money here; as for Hearing Bolati's wish to buy a house in the county in a couple of years, he definitely had to help, and he would help even if he had to add money.

Actually, Hearing Bolati reporting him wouldn't have much impact on him, at most just a bit of trouble.

But since the person protected him, and also valued this quite highly, Li Long felt that he had to let Hearing Bolati know the value of this protection.

He didn't run into Hearing Bolati later in the mountains; Li Long had originally thought that if he ran into him, he would ask clearly where their home was, and then he could go send some things to his home.

Anyway, there would be opportunities later.

Calculating this way, for the fritillaria item, he earned nearly thirty thousand yuan, mainly because the cost truly wasn't as high as planned. Most of his fritillaria was exchanged for supplies, the meat among which was hunted by himself, and the other supplies were bought with double earnings, so it was considered quite a lot earned.

He saved a sum for every sum he earned; anyway, now this money, plus the twenty thousand or so he already had, meant there was already over sixty thousand yuan on the deposit slip.

With so much money, he couldn't think of where to invest it for a while, so he just let it be.

Anyway, the interest rate was high now.

Although he looked idle staying at home, there were more miscellaneous things.

Li Long's main work every day right now was supporting Gu Xiaoxia to walk around in the courtyard or on the street. The road conditions weren't very good at this time, and Gu Xiaoxia's month was big, so she didn't dare drive the jeep around anymore, so her range of activity was mainly around the large courtyard.

At most, go to the market to take a turn and see the fireworks of the human world.

Most of the time, she was still in the courtyard; with dogs, deer, and hedgehogs active in the courtyard, it actually wasn't lonely.

The troublesome thing was that as the wheat season approached, almost every day someone came to find him to buy a harvester.

They were all nearby farmers; some said they went to the Kuitun side, and people wouldn't sell to them.

Li Long was annoyed to death; some people drove tractors over and simply wanted to pull the harvesters in his courtyard away.

"Wouldn't it be fine if you went and pulled a carload back?" Gu Xiaoxia could see Li Long's expression was very impatient, so she said with a smile:

"I won't have any problems in a day or two. My dad, Sister Yang are all here."

"Then I still won't be at ease." Although the due date was still over half a month away, Li Long knew that giving birth at this time was different from later generations; medical technology wasn't that developed, and Gu Xiaoxia was pregnant with two, so it was better to be careful.

"Then they come over every day, and I'm annoyed too," Gu Xiaoxia said. "You just go once, pull a carload back, at least it can be quiet for a few days; going and coming, it's just a matter of two days."

Li Long didn't want to leave for two days.

However, it wasn't that there was no solution.

After eating lunch, while Gu Xiaoxia was taking a nap, Li Long let Sister Yang look after her, and he drove the jeep to the transport company.

"You say you want to run another trip? At night?" Captain Ma looked at Li Long and asked, "Where to run, is it still in the mountains?"

"No. Leave after work, I want to go to Kuitun, two cars, pulling goods. Cars run fast, I can return tonight."

Li Long's idea was to use the transport company's trucks to pull; they could pull more and faster, and he could return that same night—although he would return late, it wouldn't delay tomorrow's matters.

"If this is going to Kuitun, then the freight..."

"The freight is as you say," Li Long naturally understood. "I'll add the oil."

"So, when?"

"If there's nothing, tonight is fine," Li Long said.

Captain Ma flipped through the stack of dispatch schedules on the table, and after reading, said:

"Tonight won't work; the team's cars are going to the prefecture to pull goods today and will return quite late. The day after tomorrow, the day after tomorrow morning there's something, but in the afternoon there's nothing, you can leave a bit earlier, so that when you return, it'll be earlier. As for the freight... fifty per car."

"Fine," Li Long agreed.

At dinner when he returned, Li Long told Gu Bo Yuan about this matter.

Gu Bo Yuan felt it was also fine. He said while eating: "When the time comes, you go do yours, I'll stay in the courtyard; if there's anything, I'm here."

Fourth Team, when the sun set, the tractor chugged back to the Li family's courtyard.

Li Jianguo killed the engine, Liang Yuemei got down from the back bucket and untied her headscarf.

"Finished?" Du Chunfang, who had already fed the pigs, asked.

Li Juan and Li Qiang also came out of the room, helping their mother take the tools for work down from the tractor bucket.

"Finished," Li Jianguo responded. They went to the melon field to hoe weeds. The melon seedlings were growing well, but there were quite a lot of weeds in the field.

Right now, watering was done by flooding, and there was no plastic film pressing it, so the weeds in the field grew very fast and had to be hoed every once in a while.

Right now, herbicides weren't very popular, and some stubborn ones like reeds and crabgrass would grow again not long after the surface weeds were hoed.

And that kind of wild amaranth, one plant could grow thousands of seeds by autumn; even if one percent of them sprouted, it would bring great trouble to those farming.

So if you want good crops, regular weeding is unavoidable—it's best to hoe a few days after watering when the field isn't completely dry; it's easier to hoe at this time.

Li Qing Xia came over from the front courtyard. Although Li Long and Gu Xiaoxia didn't live there often, the front courtyard would be tidied up often, and the vegetables were planted quite well.

(No errors in the content, read on!)

Originally, Li Qing Xia's intention was for him to follow to the field to work, but Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei didn't let him.

The old couple could help look after the house, and the two of them could handle the work in the field.

After the work in the field was finished, when they were cooling off in the courtyard in the evening, Liang Yuemei said:

"Tomorrow, let's go to the county to see Xiaoxia. She's about to give birth, and now we don't know what the situation is."

"That must be seen," Li Jianguo nodded. "Tomorrow is the weekend, let's all go as a family."

After speaking, he looked toward Li Qing Xia and Du Chunfang.

"Let's all go, let's all go," Li Qing Xia nodded. "Just right, tomorrow morning take the net, don't sell the fish, take it over to Without Xiao Long and the others."

Du Chunfang also nodded. Although she was a bit "lazy," as a mother-in-law, her daughter-in-law was about to give birth, so she still had to go see.

Actually, Liang Yuemei herself didn't think about letting her mother-in-law take care of her; she thought that the big work at home was finished, and Li Jianguo had also returned from weaving carrying poles, so after Gu Xiaoxia gave birth, she would go take care of the month of confinement.

She didn't even think about letting Du Chunfang take care of Gu Xiaoxia from the beginning, not because she looked down on Du Chunfang, but mainly because this mother-in-law of hers truly wasn't someone who could take care of people.

Moreover, Gu Xiaoxia was someone she watched grow up; although nominally she counted as a sister-in-law, actually she was almost like a daughter-in-law. Gu Xiaoxia had no mother, so no matter what, she had to be the one.

She had thought about this matter long ago, it was just that she was proposing it at this time.

She believed Li Jianguo would definitely agree. After all, Li Jianguo actually treated Li Long like a son in the first few years.

It was just unexpected that this little brother suddenly grew up in these two or three years and didn't need Big Brother to take care of him.

He even started to feed back to Big Brother and Big Sister-in-law's side for a period of time, which made Li Jianguo feel unaccustomed at first.

No matter what, Gu Xiaoxia was about to give birth, so the Li family definitely had to send someone.

"Then it's settled," Li Jianguo said. "Juan, Qiangqiang, you two sleep early, tomorrow you also go see your little uncle and little aunt."

The Lu family opposite returned from work a bit late. They couldn't afford a tractor yet, and when the horse cart returned from the field, besides people sitting on it, there was a large bundle of grass. This was for the horse to eat at night, and it had become a habit.

After that side was settled, Lu Yingming and Lu Sister-in-law walked into the Li family's courtyard to chat together.

Li Qiang, who was grilling salted fish at the stove, picked up the grilled ones and distributed them to everyone; Lu Yingming and Lu Sister-in-law also had some.

"Hey, Qiangqiang is truly generous," Lu Yingming took the grilled dry salted crucian carp and praised with a smile.

Li Qiang smiled proudly and then went to take a large handful of salted fish and put it by the stove hole to grill.

Lu Sister-in-law asked what the Li family was doing tomorrow, and Liang Yuemei said they were going to see Gu Xiaoxia tomorrow.

"That's right, Xiaoxia should be giving birth, right? After giving birth, is she staying in the county for the month of confinement, or coming back?" Lu Sister-in-law asked curiously.

She guessed she should come back for the month of confinement; after all, in the team, it would be convenient for Du Chunfang and Liang Yuemei to take care of her.

No matter what, Gu Xiaoxia was a state cadre, but she was also someone who went out from the team. Staying in the team for the month of confinement, at least it would be convenient for the women in the team to come and see.

"Don't know, listen to Without Xiao Long," Liang Yuemei shook her head. "Maybe in the county, after all, it's close to the hospital, and if there's any situation, it's easy to handle."

She had given birth to children, and at that time she gave birth at home, so naturally she knew the danger of giving birth; the closer to the hospital, naturally, the better it was to handle sudden situations.

"In the county, then who is going to take care of her?" Lu Sister-in-law's gossiping mood was still so strong.

"I'll go," Liang Yuemei said as a matter of course. "Anyway, the big work is basically finished, at most it's waiting for the wheat harvest in July. There's a harvester, so don't fear anything."

Giving birth to a child at this time, there was no help for it.

Du Chun said weakly:

"Then it should be me..."

"Old Mother, stay at home," Li Jianguo smiled. "When the time comes, Juan's mother will go."

The matter was settled just like that.

The next morning, Li Qing Xia went to take the net, and the whole family picked the fish. Tao Jian She heard they were going to the county, so he didn't want the fish either, just saying to take it to Li Long and the others.

Tao Jian She didn't leave either, helping pick the fish, and even packed the fish nets into bags and took them back, saying Li Qing Xia didn't have time to pick them, so he would take them back to pick, and then put them down later.

The Li family put the fish in a bucket, ate breakfast, fed the pigs, tidied up the whole family, picked quite a few vegetables from the front and back courtyards and put them on the tractor, packed a basket of eggs, caught four chickens, tied them up and put them in a bag, and then prepared to go to the county.

Lu Sister-in-law brought some eggs and handed them to Liang Yuemei, who was sitting on the tractor bucket:

"There's nothing good at home, take these eggs to supplement Xiaoxia's body."

Supplementing the body in the countryside at this time meant eggs and old hens.

There were no other good things.

When the tractor drove west, they would run into people working in the team, and they would stop to greet them.

When they knew the Li family was going to the county to see Gu Xiaoxia who was about to give birth, they were all quite gossipy and quite happy.

As the first pair of young people in the team to make a name for themselves after the reform and opening up, Li Long and Gu Xiaoxia were still quite focused on by everyone. Now that these two were going to have children, those who were slightly older also sent their own blessings.

They also slapped their thighs one after another, complaining that Li Jianguo should have said something, and they, the elders, should have brought some things over.

Some even planned to join together to go see after Li Jianguo and the others left; they looked for the Tao family and the Xie family, after all, these two families had tractors and were good at pulling people.

In the end, it was some women who said it was better to wait until after the birth to go see.

This was a custom.

The reason everyone wanted to go see was largely due to the fact that they had received quite a lot of favor from Li Long in the past two years, and the Fourth Team's life was clearly much richer than other teams; although some people were a bit shallow-sighted, most people still knew what was good.

When Li Jianguo drove the tractor to the large courtyard, Li Long had just sent away someone who wanted to buy a harvester.

He had already promised the person to come over and pull the harvester in three or five days, and that person strongly requested to put down a deposit, but Li Long didn't accept it, saying there would definitely be one when the time came.

After all, two cars, how could they not pull back ten or twenty machines.

It didn't matter if there was one or two missing.

Once the Li family arrived, the courtyard suddenly became lively. Liang Yuemei was the first to discover that Gu Xiaoxia's stomach was a bit abnormally large, and after everyone finished asking, she quietly asked Gu Xiaoxia:

"Is it twins?"

Gu Xiaoxia didn't expect this "Big Sister-in-law" to have such sharp eyes and see it all at once. (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 674 =====