Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Chapter 169 Xu Jianjun was punished for being greedy

Li Long ultimately failed to catch the fox—because Gu Xiaoxia didn't allow him to.

"She's so beautiful... Let's not hit her, she's so pretty..." Gu Xiaoxia begged Li Long.

It was the first time that Li Long saw Gu Xiaoxia's almost coquettish expression, and he said with a smile:
"I was originally going to make you a wool scarf after I captured it, but since you said you don't want to capture it, then I won't. Besides, I'm not sure I can capture it."

He put away the gun. Gu Xiaoxia glanced at Fox with satisfaction and continued to watch over the rice in the stew pot.

After a while, she felt that the rice was cooked and there was no burnt smell. Gu Xiaoxia carefully lifted the lid of the pot made of broom stalks. A burst of steam mixed with the aroma of rice blew towards her. She leaned back out of habit and waited for the steam to dissipate, revealing the white rice. She could see a circle of burnt rice crust on the edge of the pot.

"Very good!" Li Long took a look at the side and praised, "Not bad, not bad, I just can't control the heat. Come, I'll serve the rice."

"I'll do it, I'll do it." Gu Xiaoxia felt relieved at this time, and felt that she had not embarrassed herself. She took the bowl handed to her by Li Long, scooped two bowls of rice with a spatula, and asked Li Long:

"Do you want to eat the rice crust now or later?"

The amount of rice is not much, just enough for two people to have a flat bowl each, and the rice crust can now be removed completely.

"Wait a moment, let's eat now and have the rice crusts as snacks." Li Long said.

The two of them ate outside, using a wooden block and a wooden board as a simple dining table.

Looking at the blue sky, white clouds and green grass, and tasting the delicacies from nature, even Li Long, a country bumpkin, felt that this moment was a bit poetic.

It's just that the little flies come to disturb from time to time, which is a bit disappointing.

After dinner, the two of them cleaned up the dishes together. Gu Xiaoxia broke the rice crust into several pieces, wrapped it with the new cage cloth that Li Long had bought, and put it in her bag. Then she looked at Li Long reluctantly as she locked the door and prepared to leave.

“It would be great if I could come here every week.” She exclaimed sincerely, “It feels like a dream.”

"That's easy. As long as you can make time, I can bring you here every week. Of course, even if I can't come every week, it should be no problem to come twice a month." Li Long said nonchalantly, "It's not far. When we can buy a car, it will be more convenient to come here..."

Gu Xiaoxia's face turned red immediately. What she noticed was the word "we" from Li Long's mouth.

Is this planning for the future? A life together in the future?
Perhaps because they each had their own concerns, the two of them spoke much less on the way back.

When they arrived at the county town, the two of them felt like they had returned to reality from a fairy tale. The people coming and going in gray, black and white, the dusty streets, and the dilapidated houses made Gu Xiaoxia feel that everything in the mountains before was so unreal.

Li Long sent Gu Xiaoxia to the middle school dormitory, and then rode his bike back to the village.

When he arrived at the Weigou, Li Long was somewhat surprised to find that the original water channel in the Weigou was paved with a large cement slab, and slopes were built on both sides with earth, which made it much more convenient for both people and cars to pass through.

When crossing the flood in the past, the carriage had to go around the reed beach. Although the water there was shallow, the water surface was large, and people could sit in the carriage and cross without getting their shoes wet.

Now cement boards have been laid on the channel. Although it looks like it cannot handle heavy vehicles, it is still suitable for people to walk on.

I had only thought about building the bridge in two years, but I never thought of such a simple method - looking at this cement board, it should have been moved from some big canal.

In the 1960s, when water conservancy was being developed, many canals were paved with cement boards. Later, due to the passage of time, these cement boards became broken and rotten, and the canals returned to the shape of earth slopes. Because the soil is easily accumulated at the bottom of the canal after being washed by water, and it is easy for grass to grow, so there are voluntary workers to clean the canals twice a year in spring and autumn.

Li Long suddenly saw some thin threads swaying by the turbid water, and he was disgusted.

I used to play with this thing by the water when I was a child in my previous life. The old people told me that it was horsehair that had been soaked in water for a long time and had changed into something alive.

Li Long believed it at the time - each strip was about 20 to 30 centimeters long, and the thickness was indeed somewhat similar to horse mane.

It was just that when he was getting old in his previous life, the Internet was well developed and he could see all kinds of things in short videos. It was then that Li Long realized that this thing was a wireworm.

In the 1980s, there were a lot of these wireworms in the water, often tangled together. Children at that time were not afraid of them, and would even use sticks to break the wireworms out of curiosity.

It was not until he watched the Korean movie that Li Long began to feel annoyed by this thing.

After riding across Wei Lake, it took Li Long a while to put the matter aside because he saw something even more infuriating.

Li Qiang and a group of children were on the roadside, using long reeds to poke a sparrow's nest on a big poplar tree. The old sparrows were chirping and cursing beside them, but they were powerless to do anything.

"Qiangqiang, what are you doing?" Li Long stopped the car, supported himself with one foot and asked.

"Digging out old birds!" Li Qiang didn't think there was anything wrong with what he did, he did it every year.

"Don't dig them out!" Li Long said coldly, "The old sparrows are good now, they eat insects, you can't dig them out, quickly break the reeds, remember, don't poke them!"

"Why? Don't we eat old sparrows in winter?" Li Qiang still didn't quite understand.

"Because the old sparrows eat wheat and grass seeds in winter," Li Long couldn't explain the truth to him, so he could only start with the simplest explanation. He was also explaining this to other children:

"In summer, old sparrows eat insects. They have a belly full of insects. Once they eat the insects, there will be fewer insects in the wheat and corn in the field! Besides, if you kill the old sparrows now, the young ones won't be able to grow. In winter, there will be fewer old sparrows, and they will be harder to catch."

"Yes." Li Qiang was very smart and reacted immediately. He threw the long reed in his hand to the ground and stepped on it a few times. "I won't poke it anymore."

"I won't poke it either!" another child followed suit.

"Not only can you not poke old birds, you can't poke big-headed finches, hoopoes, and swallows either, do you understand?"

"Got it!" the children said in unison.

"So good! Come to our house and I'll give you candies!" Li Long waved his hand, and the children cheered and ran to Li's house.

There was a child who was hiding the reed in his hand - the reed was the thickest one he chose, and it was like the golden hoop of Monkey King. He stepped on one end of it, wet it, and poked it into the sparrow's nest. Then he turned it and stirred it, and the nest would be pulled down.

Now which one should I choose between sugar and reed?

Seeing that the other children had run far away, the child made up his mind, threw the reed into the bitter bean bush on the roadside, and then ran after the children.

Li Long returned home and saw Li Juan chopping pig grass in the yard. He parked the car and said with a smile:
"Juan, are you exhausted?"

"Not tired." Li Juan said with a smile, "Just now when we were picking grass for pigs, Tianfeng and I went to play in the big canal in front for a while." Zhao Tianfeng was Li Juan's classmate, similar to her current best friend, and the two children had a very good relationship.

Li Juan looked at the kids in the yard with some surprise and confusion. Li Long went into the east room, found a handful of candies and handed them to Li Qiang:

"Qiangqiang, go and share it with them."

Li Qiang took the candy and raised it happily:
"Everyone line up and come one by one!"

Li Long smiled. It seemed quite realistic.

He handed two fruit candies to Li Juan:

"Juan, you eat too."

Li Juan took it with a smile, peeled one and put it in her mouth, then carefully folded the candy wrapper and put it in her pocket.

In the evening, Li Long went to see the wild boar and fawn in the stable. The wild boar was still very happy, but the fawn was a little wilted.

"Xiaolong, this deer may not be easy to raise." Uncle Luo said embarrassedly, "I thought it was the same as raising sheep. It seems that this deer is very delicate..."

"It's okay." Li Long reassured him, "No one among us has ever raised one before. This is the first in the whole team, not to mention the whole township. It's a blessing if he can be raised, and it's normal if he can't."

"Okay, I feel relieved when you say that." Lao Luo was obviously not under so much pressure. "I'll try to use more concentrated feed and let them run around more often."

The next day, Li Long rode his bicycle up the mountain again. Before going up the mountain, he went to the big yard to look at the two roe deer antlers. The salt mud outside had dried thoroughly, but they still felt heavy. The antlers inside should not have dried in the shade yet, so he decided to leave them there for a while.

Riding his bike and carrying his gun, Li Long arrived at Xiaobaiyanggou. He smelled the familiar smell of smoke again. The people from the sideline team were still busy there.

Seeing Li Long coming, they were already used to it and greeted him normally. Li Long greeted Gu Boyuan and chatted for a few words before he went to the nearby ravine with his gun on his back.

Seeing Li Long so leisurely, most of the others showed envy, especially for the gun on Li Long's back, they were really envious and jealous. Having a gun in the mountains is like a fish in water!

There were no more small animals in the ditch where Tao Daqiang and I had hunted roe deer. The feces had dried up and grass had grown, but there was no movement.

Li Long went into a few remote ditches and was surprised to find that the Fritillaria and Codonopsis seedlings had grown up. Codonopsis needs to wait until autumn and winter to dig it, but Fritillaria can actually be dug now. It's just not as full.

He remembered Halimu saying there were Fritillaria ditches near his winter nest and near their winter nest, which were full of Fritillaria. If he couldn't find anything, should he take some time to make a tool and then go over and dig?
During lunch, the man who mentioned that he had discovered the wild boar spoke again. His name was Wei Zhonghua.

"Okay, I'll come and call you at five or six tomorrow morning, and you take me over to have a look." Li Long thought that since there was nothing to do, he might as well go over and take a look.

"Then why don't you stay here at night and just squeeze in with someone else in the winter nest." Wei Zhonghua thought that Li Long had gone back to the team and came here so early in the morning. He thought it was too much trouble.

"No need, I have a place to live." Li Long didn't explain in detail.

The next morning, Li Long came over with a gun. He woke up Wei Zhonghua, and the two of them went to the east side of the machine.

It was already dawn, and the two men were barely able to move forward along the narrow path.

"It's just below the slope of the ditch ahead." Wei Zhonghua whispered, "Are we here too early now?"

Li Long didn't say anything. He touched the top of the slope, then stretched out his hand to feel the wind, and then took Wei Zhonghua to the leeward side.

The two men lay in ambush until dawn, but they didn't see the wild boars coming, and they were a little disappointed. Li Long went down to take a look and found that the wild boars had indeed dug up a large area of ​​grass here. Judging from the dryness of the soil, it should have been three to five days.

He put his gun on his back and said to Wei Zhonghua:

"This group of wild boars should be roaming around, not fixed. Let's come back and take a look in a few days."

The two men returned empty-handed, and the others who had been waiting to eat wild boar meat were also a little disappointed. However, everyone understood that it was nothing, after all, no one could get a reward with the first try when hunting.

In the following days, because the trees grew fast and more strips were cut, the progress of weaving the handles was much faster. Even Xu Jianjun, who was the slowest, had woven about thirteen or fourteen handles in total.

Li Long came to check the quality of the handles every day. These days, he found three unqualified ones and asked them to be reworked. Although the two people who edited the handles had some complaints, they still reworked obediently. Everyone knows that this money is not easy to earn, but there are many people who want to earn this money.

Running from Dongwozi to Xiaobaiyanggou every day, Li Long felt that he had exercised and his physical strength and leg strength were much stronger than those of ordinary people. Then he also found that there were more people in the mountains, and occasionally he would meet people riding horses or walking. When these people saw Li Long carrying a gun, they basically didn't interact with him or talk to him.

Li Long guessed that they should be members of the forestry team, or people who came into the mountains to collect herbs and deer antlers.

It had been a long time since he had picked up antlers.

Although I collected a lot from the herdsmen, to be honest, I didn't pick up many myself.

That morning, he cooked porridge and mixed wild vegetables for breakfast in his winter home. When he slowly came to Xiaobaiyanggou, Xie Yundong said to him anxiously:
"Xu Jianjun has been arrested!"

"What? Caught? Caught by whom?"

"They said it was the forestry team. They said Xu Jianjun secretly went to dig Fritillaria in the forestry team's area, so they arrested him! Xu Jianjun didn't come back last night, and we went out to look for him but couldn't find him. We thought he might have lost his way and would be back today.

Unexpectedly, a man came here on horseback early this morning and said he had been arrested, and asked us to go to Dadonggou in the east to pay the money and pick him up. "

"Fuck it!" Li Long was so angry that he wanted to curse.

It was obviously a very simple task, just cutting strips in Xiaobaiyanggou and weaving them into handles, but Xu Jianjun had to do this!
Doesn't he want to do it anymore?
"Xiaolong, what should we do?" Xie Yundong looked worried. "What should we do? Our team's letter of introduction is not recognized by them!"

In the past, when he led people to do side jobs, they just did the job. The mountain is so big that no one cares.

Now I didn’t expect that Xu Jianjun couldn’t go back even though this was going well!
"It's okay, let the others continue to edit, you and I will go to lead the people." Li Long reassured him, after all, the others were watching. Those people looked a little panicked, they must be worried that the next step would be to stop them from editing.

"Okay." Li Long spoke, and Xie Yundong felt more confident and nodded vigorously.

"Everyone, just work peacefully. We have the note, the certificate, and the letter of introduction. As long as we form a group here, we will be fine." Seeing that Xie Yundong was still distracted, Li Long said loudly to the others, "Let's go and bring Xu Jianjun back - but he violated the rules, so he will be punished when he comes back!"

Those who had been hoping for a lucky break immediately gave up when they heard this - even if they brought the person back and paid the fine, wouldn't all their work these days have been in vain?

(End of this chapter)