Chapter 7

"Then let's break up," Li Long said. "I won't drag you down. You can tell everyone we've broken up; it doesn't matter."

Li Long's expression was calm, which left Wu Shufen confused and surprised. Her face showed shock; this was so unlike Li Long's character. Given his temper, shouldn't he have been clinging to her, begging her not to break up?

What was going on? Had he found someone new in Wucheng this time?

When they met last month after he returned, Wu Shufen remembered merely expressing slight dissatisfaction at not seeing him for so long, and Li Long had immediately taken out his wages to buy a hair ornament at the commune store to coax her.

Why was he so indifferent this time?

However, Wu Shufen also had her pride. Hearing Li Long say this, although she couldn't quite make sense of it in her heart, she couldn't possibly tell Li Long she didn't want to break up in front of Li Jianguo, Li Juan, and Li Qiang. So Wu Shufen held back from looking at that squealing chicken, her face serious as she told Li Long:

"Then let's break up. Don't ever tell anyone you were my partner again!"

After speaking, she turned and walked out, taking long strides, and quickly disappeared behind the house.

"Xiao Long, are you okay?" Li Jianguo looked at Li Long, feeling that his younger brother was acting strange today.

"I'm fine, big brother. We need to put the squealing chicken inside the house; once it thaws, we can pluck the feathers."

"Alright." Li Jianguo didn't press further and went into the house with Li Long, carrying the squealing chicken.

Li Qiang and Li Juan's ears were frozen bright red, and they rubbed them vigorously. They felt nothing about their uncle breaking up with someone; they just watched the squealing chicken with great excitement.

"There really are five of them." Liang Xingmei was also happy. The family-raised pigs had become superstitious pigs, making this winter difficult. Now that her brother-in-law had caught squealing chickens, even if it wouldn't solve major problems, at least her son and daughter could eat meat.

In these times, eating a meal with meat was truly rare.

"Hmm, actually there were over ten. But after catching five, the others were startled," Li Long said. "It was too late; once they were startled, it was hard to chase them."

"Five isn't a small number," Li Jianguo said. "With such heavy snow, squealing chickens are hard to catch. Not many families in our team have ever eaten them. Let's cook them for lunch today."

"How many should we cook?" Liang Xingmei scooped the pickled vegetables out of the pot. After taking the pot off the stove, she wiped it clean inside using a steamed corn cake.

Liang Xingmei split the corn cake, which was sticky with vegetable oil and pickled vegetable scraps, in half. Li Juan and Li Qiang each took half, holding the corn crumbs in one hand and eating with the other, though their eyes remained fixed on the squealing chicken.

Li Jianguo's gaze turned to Li Long. Since Li Long had caught the squealing chicken, he had the final say.

"Let's cook two," Li Long said after thinking for a moment. "We'll clean two and take them to Juan's maternal grandfather's house. We'll keep the remaining one as a backup. Brother, sister-in-law, what do you think?"

Li Jianguo and Liang Xingmei exchanged a glance, both seeing surprise and astonishment in each other's eyes.

Li Juan's maternal grandfather was her grandfather, Liang Xingmei's father, and Li Jianguo's father-in-law's family. Previously, whenever Li Long had anything good happen, he never thought of the Liang family.

Had he truly grown up completely?

Connecting Li Long's earlier words to Wu Shufen with this, Li Jianguo felt it was incredible.

"Then let's do it that way," he said. "After we eat, we'll clean them up."

When the dishes were served, Li Long waited until Li Jianguo was seated and picked up his chopsticks before he started. He had really been craving this pickled vegetable for a long time.

In his previous life, until his older brother Li Jianguo passed away unexpectedly, he ate at his brother and sister-in-law's house. Winter pickled vegetables were essential. Even later when times were wealthier, they still pickled a jar of vegetables every winter.

But after Li Jianguo died because of Li Long's fall, Liang Xingmei viewed Li Long as an enemy and no longer let him eat at their home. Li Long drifted around until his forties before marrying a divorced woman with children.

They lived together, and although that woman also pickled vegetables, the taste was far inferior to Liang Xingmei's.

Eating the pickled vegetables in large mouthfuls with steamed buns, Li Long felt a mix of emotions.

Living a second life, he must make something of himself. He must also prevent the tragedy of his previous life from repeating!

After the meal, Liang Xingmei boiled water to scald the chicken feathers, while Li Qiang and Li Juan picked out the pretty feathers from the squealing chickens to prepare for making shuttlecocks. In these times, every household had some copper coins, and most were used to make shuttlecocks.

Watching the two pick out the pretty chicken feathers, Li Long suddenly remembered his older brother saying that over ten years ago, while plowing with the production team's tractor, they plowed up a money cache from a temple, dug out a huge pile of copper coins, and sold them with others for several hundred yuan.

That was several hundred yuan from the 1960s. Back then, a kilogram of copper was only one yuan, and according to Li Jianguo, there were many copper coins at the time, though the vast majority had rusted into dust.

When the weather gets warm, he would go there and take a look; perhaps he could find some loose change.

In these times, there was no law protecting cultural relics, and these money caches that had already been plowed up were not under protection, so it was worth checking.

!.

But that was something for later.

After all, having lived two lives, Li Long's horizons were now very broad. There were countless treasures in the mountains: deer velvet, deer antlers, deer penis, fritillaria, and so on. Not only did state-run pharmacies buy them, but private individuals also purchased them, and the prices were not low.

Moreover, in these times, the core militia trained for three to five months every year, and guns were handed directly into their hands. In autumn, to protect the harvest, villages and towns near the mountains would organize the militia to go into the mountains for a concentrated hunt of wild boars. With a gun in hand, weren't the good things in the mountains easily within reach?

In his previous life, Li Long had thoroughly participated in the core militia training. Before guns were collected by the county armed forces department in the 1990s, Li Long's shooting scores ranked high in the team during the winter militia competitions every year.

He wasn't a sharpshooter, but hitting a wild boar was no problem.

His thoughts wandered until Li Jianguo called him to assist in butchering the squealing chicken, bringing him back to reality.

The squealing chicken looked big, but after removing the feathers and internal organs, it weighed less than half a kilogram. The gizzard was to be kept, as were the heart and liver; these were the main ingredients for stir-fried chicken giblets.

Li Jianguo also specifically peeled out the chicken inner gold—the squealing chicken had that yellow skin layer. After peeling it off, he dried it on the fire wall. Once collected and ground up, it was a good medicine for children with poor spleen and stomach function.

The five chickens were cleaned up quickly. Liang Xingmei took two to the cutting board to prepare for chopping. Li Jianguo wrapped two and put them outside to freeze, planning to take them to the Liang family when he had time. The remaining one was hung in the spare room as a backup.

After finishing the cleaning, Li Long said to Li Jianguo:

"Big brother, I plan to borrow the team's cart tomorrow to go into the mountains and haul some wood back."

"No!" Li Jianguo glared at him upon hearing this, surprised by Li Long's words and somewhat resistant. "It's so cold now; the mountain roads might not even be passable. You don't know the area or the people. How will you go? What will you do there? Don't end up losing yourself in the mountains without even getting the wood; that would be trouble!"

Li Long said with full confidence:

"A colleague of mine at the food factory lives in Qingshuihe Commune. It's already at the edge of the mountains. He came back with me. This time, I'll go find him, and he'll take me into the mountains. I'll leave early and strive to return the same day—"

Seeing the determination in Li Long's eyes, Li Jianguo hesitated.

(End of Chapter)