Chapter 7

"Then let's break up." Li Long said, "I won't implicate you, and you can tell people outside that we've broken up and have nothing to do with each other."

Li Long's expression was very calm, which made Wu Shufen feel very puzzled and surprised. An expression of astonishment appeared on her face; this was not like Li Long's personality at all. According to Li Long's temper, shouldn't he be pestering her and begging her not to break up?

What's going on? Could it be that he found a new partner when he went to Wucheng this time?

When they met last month, Wu Shufen remembered that she had only slightly expressed her dissatisfaction with not seeing each other for so long, and Li Long had immediately taken his wages to the commune store to buy hair accessories to coax her.

Why was he so indifferent this time?

However, Wu Shufen also had her self-esteem. Hearing Li Long say this, although she couldn't figure it out in her heart, she couldn't tell Li Long not to break up in front of Li Jianguo, Li Juan, and Li Qiang. So Wu Shufen endured not looking at the guagua chickens and said to Li Long with a serious face:

"Then let's break up, and don't tell people you're my partner in the future!"

After saying this, she turned and walked away, taking large steps, and soon disappeared behind the house.

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

"I'm fine, Big Brother. We need to put the guagua chickens in the house so they can thaw, and then it'll be easy to pluck them."

"Alright." Li Jianguo couldn't ask much more, so he and Li Long carried the guagua chickens into the house.

Li Qiang and Li Juan's ears were frozen red, and they were rubbing them vigorously. They didn't feel anything about their uncle breaking up with someone, but their eyes were still very excited when looking at the guagua chickens.

"There really are five." Liang Wenyu was also very happy. The pig they raised had become a "superstitious pig," and this winter was not easy to get through. Now that her brother-in-law had caught guagua chickens, although it couldn't solve a big problem, at least her son and daughter could eat meat.

In this day and age, being able to eat a meal of meat was truly rare.

"Mm, actually there were more than a dozen. But after catching five, the others were startled." Li Long said, "It was too late, and once they were startled, it was hard to chase them."

"Five is not few either." Li Jianguo said, "With snow this thick, guagua chickens are not easy to catch. Not many families in our brigade have eaten them, so we'll cook them at noon today."

"How many should we cook?" Liang Wenyu served the pickled vegetables from the pot, and after taking the pot off the stove, she wiped the inside clean with a corn pancake.

Liang Wenyu divided the corn pancake stained with vegetable oil and pickled vegetable residue into two halves, giving one to Li Juan and one to Li Qiang. The two of them ate with one hand holding the corn residue and the other hand holding the pancake, but their eyes were still fixed on the guagua chickens.

Li Jianguo's gaze turned to Li Long. Li Long caught the guagua chickens, so he had the most say.

"Let's cook two." Li Long thought for a moment and said, "Clean two and take them to Juan's grandfather's place, and keep the remaining one as a backup. Brother, Sister-in-law, what do you think?"

Li Jianguo and Liang Wenyu looked at each other, both seeing surprise and unexpectedness in each other's eyes.

Juan's grandfather was her maternal grandfather, Liang Wenyu's father, Li Jianguo's father-in-law's family. In the past, Li Long would never have thought of the Liang family when he had something good.

Has he completely grown up?

Li Jianguo connected this with what Li Long had said to Wu Shufen earlier and felt it was too incredible.

"Then let's do that." He said, "We'll clean them after we eat."

The food was on the table, and Li Long waited until Li Jianguo sat down and picked up his chopsticks before he started. He had really been thinking about these pickled vegetables for a long time.

In his previous life, until his eldest brother Li Jianguo passed away unexpectedly, he had always eaten at his brother and sister-in-law's house, and pickled vegetables in winter were indispensable. Even later, when life became prosperous, they still pickled a vat of vegetables every winter.

It was only after Li Jianguo died because of Li Long's fall that Liang Wenyu regarded Li Long as an enemy and no longer let him eat at home. Li Long drifted until he was over forty before marrying a woman who was divorced and had a child.

The two lived together, and although the woman also pickled vegetables, the taste was far inferior to Liang Wenyu's.

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

Living a new life, he must live it out to be something. And he must avoid the tragedy of his previous life repeating itself!

After eating, Liang Wenyu boiled water to scald the chicken feathers, while Li Qiang and Li Juan picked out the pretty feathers from the guagua chickens, preparing to collect them to make shuttlecocks—in this day and age, every family had some copper coins, and most of their use was to make shuttlecocks.

Watching the two picking out pretty chicken feathers, Li Long suddenly thought of what his eldest brother had said more than ten years ago, that when he was plowing the land with the production team's tractor, he plowed up a temple's coin cellar and dug up a large pile of copper coins, which he sold with others for several hundred yuan.

That was several hundred yuan in the sixties! At that time, a kilogram of copper was only one yuan, and according to Li Jianguo, the number of copper coins was very large, but the vast majority had already rusted into slag.

When the weather gets warm, he would go there to take a look when he had time; maybe he could pick up some leaks.

In this day and age, there was no cultural relic protection law, and these coin cellars that had already been plowed up were not under protection, so it was worth a look.

!.

But that was a matter for the future.

After all, having lived two lives, the current Li Long's vision was very broad. There were many treasures in the mountains, such as velvet antlers, deer antlers, deer penises, fritillaria, etc. Not only did state-run pharmacies collect them, but private individuals also collected them, and the prices were not low.

Moreover, in this day and age, the backbone militia trained for three to five months every year, and guns were issued directly to their hands. In the autumn, to protect the autumn harvest, villages and towns near the mountains would organize the militia to go into the mountains to hunt wild boars collectively. With a gun in hand, weren't the good things in the mountains easy to get?

In his previous life, Li Long had solidly participated in the backbone militia training. Before the guns were handed over to the county armed forces department in the nineties, Li Long's shooting results in the militia competitions every winter were ranked in the entire brigade.

Not to mention being a sharpshooter, at least hunting a wild boar was no problem.

His thoughts drifted, and he didn't come back to his senses until Li Jianguo called him to help clean the guagua chickens.

The guagua chickens looked quite large, but after removing the feathers and internal organs, they were basically less than half a kilogram. The chicken gizzards had to be kept, as well as the hearts and livers; these were the main ingredients for stir-fried chicken offal.

Li Jianguo specifically peeled out the chicken gizzard lining—guagua chickens also had that layer of yellow skin. After peeling it off, he placed it on the fire wall to dry, and when collected and crushed, it was a good medicine for treating children's poor digestion.

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

After cleaning up, Li Long said to Li Jianguo:

"Big Brother, I plan to borrow the production team's horse-drawn carriage tomorrow to go into the mountains to pull back some wood."

"No!" Li Jianguo glared at him when he heard this, very surprised by Li Long's words, and also a bit resistant: "It's so cold now, the roads in the mountains aren't necessarily clear, and you're not familiar with the place, how are you going to go? What can you do if you go? Don't end up not pulling any wood and getting lost in the mountains, that would be troublesome!"

Li Long said confidently:

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

Looking at Li Long's firm gaze, Li Jianguo hesitated.

(End of chapter)