In 1992, a small village owner became the richest man in the village by owning a car.

Chapter 172 Little Mountain Climbing

But that was a long time ago.

That desolate forest was eaten up during the years of famine; you'd be lucky to find one or two pheasants or rabbits there.

However, every autumn and winter, some people still go to the wilderness for a stroll, mainly because the place has a variety of tree species, including wild pine trees and hazelnut trees.

When the harvest season arrives, people from nearby villages will go into the wilderness to pick hazelnuts and pine cones. The pine cones contain pine nuts, which don't need to be removed. They can be placed directly into the stove pit and roasted for a while until the pine nuts are cooked, and then they can be eaten.

That stuff is very oily, and eating too much of it can easily upset your stomach. Hazelnuts, on the other hand, are alright. Nuts are generally quite oily, but they're not greasy. It's just that the shells are so hard that if you don't have a good tool, you'll probably break your teeth trying to bite them with your teeth.

After driving for a while, the Fiat started to blow warm air from inside. It was Han Jingfan's first time riding in a car, and everything was new and exciting to her.

There were too many people yesterday, so she was too embarrassed to go forward and squeeze in. She was also busy with dinner in the evening and didn't have time to go out. Now, sitting in her own car, a sense of pride and happiness welled up inside her. The black car seat under her bottom was also very soft, and she didn't know what kind of leather it was made of.

Along the way, Han Jingfan was like a curious child, touching this and that, her big, blinking eyes like stars seeking knowledge in the night.

"Hehe, this car is called a Fiat 126p, but it also has other nicknames, like 'Little Potato' and 'Big Head Shoes.' It has a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine. You could say that currently, apart from the Volkswagen Beetle, there isn't a car like this. It has a high future collectible value." Yu Dawei's long-hidden desire to show off finally surfaced. He spoke while controlling the steering wheel, a smile playing on his lips.

This time, Han Jingfan didn't seem to know much about vehicles like when she bought the Hitachi excavator; instead, she looked at Yu Dawei with a thirst for knowledge.

"What else do you want to know?" Yu Dawei glanced at her, slightly satisfying his vanity.

"Mmm." Han Jingfan pursed her lips and shook her head, her eyes sparkling as she looked at Yu Dawei. "Brother, you're amazing."

After saying that, she couldn't help but kiss Yu Dawei on the cheek, then shyly buried her head in her arms, not daring to look at him.

"Ouch!"

After being kissed by his wife, Yu Dawei felt a little lightheaded. His hand loosened, and the car slid off the spot, turning ninety degrees on the snow before Yu Dawei managed to steady it.

"Are you alright?" Yu Dawei looked at Han Jingfan, who was holding onto the car door with a nervous expression, and patted her on the back.

"It's nothing." Han Jingfan calmed herself down a bit and couldn't help but look at Yu Dawei, "You guys didn't come back like this the whole way, did you?"

Yu Dawei paused for a moment, then nodded. "There's no snow in the south, only in our three northeastern provinces is there a lot of snow."

Before the robbery, the two of them had been thinking of finding a place to change their snow chains, but who knew that the incident would happen. Yu Dawei was a good driver, and with years of experience driving in snowy conditions in winter, he could drive even without snow tires and snow chains.

And so the two of them drove all the way to their hometown without changing anything.

Yu Dawei was thinking of changing the tires to snow tires in the next couple of days, and also changing the engine oil to antifreeze. Driving in Northeast China is fine in the summer, but there are a lot of chores in the winter, and maintenance alone costs a little money.

The car headed north, and Yu Dawei deliberately drove on unpressed snow. When he braked occasionally while turning, he used light braking. In addition, the Fiat is a small car that can't go fast, so the rest of the journey was relatively safe.

Unbeknownst to them, within thirty minutes, the two arrived at an intersection.

Ahead was the woods. The path on the left led to the town, while the path on the right led to Chu Hua and Jiang Xia Gou. Yu Dawei drove the car into the woods and stopped at a place with more dry grass.

"We're here." Yu Dawei turned to Han Jingfan. "You've probably never been here before, have you?"

"We used to graze ducks and geese here, but we never went inside. Mom said there were wolves in there. We came once in the summer and never came back." Han Jingfan stood quietly beside Yu Dawei, her bangs fluttering in the wind, revealing a glimpse of her snow-white forehead.

“Yes, but that was years ago. We’ll just wander around the edge of the woods and not go in.” Yu Dawei pointed to the edge of the distant wasteland. “There are hazelnut trees over there, and a small pine forest to the east. Let’s stroll around and pick some things up to see if we can find anything.”

"Okay." Han Jingfan tightened her sleeves, then turned around and happily went to the car to get the basket.

Yu Dawei watched his wife's retreating figure, a hint of guilt flashing in his eyes. He licked his chapped lips, followed his wife to the car, slung the hunting rifle over his back, and held a machete in one hand and a basket in the other.

"Brother, why did you suddenly decide to come here?" Han Jingfan put the pig-slaughtering knife in the basket and then gently closed the car door.

The term "brother" came about some time ago, before Yu Dawei went to Qingcheng. He and his wife were inseparable, and when they snuggled into bed, Yu Dawei made a small request to Han Jingfan.

Over time, it will naturally come out unconsciously; the reasons behind this are best left unsaid. "Don't be polite with this old car when you close the door next time." Yu Dawei reopened the car door and then slammed it shut before closing it again. "It's too weak to close properly."

He locked the car again with the key before leading his wife toward the pine forest to the east: "We came here mainly because it suddenly occurred to me. I don't think we've ever really prepared wild game together. From the time we met until now, we've hardly ever picked mushrooms together."

Han Jingfan nodded, somewhat understanding. The two of them rarely went out to pick wild game together, not counting what they found in the garden.

She followed closely behind Yu Dawei, her broad shoulders blocking most of the cold wind and making him feel safe.

There are actually some things that Yu Dawei hasn't said, and can't say.

One winter, near the Lunar New Year, Han Jingfan wanted to come with me to this forest to take a stroll and pick some wild game.

I was thinking, "What can I possibly find at this point? Everyone's already picked them all up."

After that, she never brought up going anywhere with him again.

Actually, he could guess that she wanted him to take him out for a walk, but he was too lazy at the time. It was the dead of winter and the temperature outside was minus twenty or thirty degrees Celsius, so he really didn't want to move.

And so, one night in his old age, he dreamed of that scene again. After waking up at three or four in the morning, he couldn't fall back asleep. He felt regret and complicated emotions that were hard to explain.

Now, whenever he has free time, Yu Dawei will take his most beautiful young wife out for a drive, and since they have a car, they are not afraid to go very far.

He would go even to the ends of the earth.

"This forest is really big! Look, so many little birds have fluttered out!" Han Jingfan, like a happy little girl, ran happily to a tree and pointed to a flock of sparrows flying out in the distance.

Under the blue sky and amidst the snow-covered ground, a beautiful girl with a ponytail and bangs framing her face, like a princess from a winter wonderland in a movie, sometimes runs across the snow, sometimes picks up a few pine cones from the ground and presents them to her beloved knight as if they were treasures.

Apart from the trees, snow, and birds in nature, there were only the two of them. The winter was not cold; it seemed as if a special warmth was gently flowing between them.

The pine forest is just a part of the wild forest; it's like a mixed-breed dog, with a bit of the bloodline of various breeds.

Han Jingfan and Yu Dawei chatted happily while picking up pine cones from the ground. They discarded the ones without seeds, but threw the ones with seeds into their basket.

In the winter, people in the villages of Northeast China usually eat two meals a day. It was around eleven o'clock, and the two of them had already eaten lunch and were not very hungry. They simply and happily walked through the woods.

Yu Dawei followed behind Han Jingfan with his hunting rifle on his back, occasionally picking up some pine cones she missed. He could feel that since coming here, Han Jingfan seemed to have become a different person, with no more shackles or constraints on her.

In Yu Dawei's view, she is very similar to Bai Zhongsheng, also known as Xiao Bai, in some ways. They both love to be close to nature, love to be independent of the world, quietly watch the spring, summer, autumn and winter, and count the years that have passed.

Perhaps life is only truly pure in the presence of such people, as pure as the white snow on the ground.

"Brother, look at these footprints on the ground!" Han Jingfan suddenly squatted down in the distance, then turned around and looked at Yu Dawei with the curiosity of a child.

"Hehe, I thought you were so knowledgeable and knew everything." Yu Dawei's vanity couldn't resist the urge to show off, so he quickly walked up to Han Jingfan, ready to boast. But when he looked down and saw the footprints, he immediately lost his composure.

He stared intently at the row of footprints on the ground, measured them again and again, and finally breathed a sigh of relief: "They should be dog footprints. I wonder whose stray dogs came here. There were about two or three of them."

He compared them carefully just now and was afraid that they really were wolf footprints that hadn't appeared for more than ten years.

Fortunately, wolf footprints are generally longer and more even than dog footprints, and the distance between the front and hind paws is also greater than that of dogs. Moreover, these footprints do not overlap. Northern wolves usually walk in a straight line in the snow, and their hind paws will cover the tracks of their front paws.

The footprints in front of me clearly belong to a silly dog ​​and have nothing to do with wolves.

"Huh?" Just as Yu Dawei was about to get up, he spotted another set of footprints in the distance, but they were partially covered by the wind and snow.

"What's wrong?" Han Jingfan followed Yu Dawei, quietly squatting down to watch him tiptoe around, digging through the footprints in the snow.

"These look like wild boar footprints." Yu Dawei raised his eyebrows, not expecting such an unexpected discovery during his trip to the wilderness.

(End of this chapter)