Shushan: Extinction

Chapter 8 Family
Lead-gray clouds pressed heavily towards the ground. It was only three or four in the afternoon but it seemed as if night was about to fall. The cold wind was howling, tearing off the withered branches and leaves wantonly.

At this time, Tian Yun was still washing clothes in the small river next to him. His hands were covered with frostbite and bloody cuts, but his expression was wooden.

Her frail body was shaking from the cold, her left cheekbone was bruised and swollen, and even her eyes were narrowed. It was so painful that it was caused by the beating she received from her angry husband yesterday.

Not only that, because of the brown sugar incident, Tian Yun was scolded by her mother-in-law after returning home. She went hungry for two meals, and several sisters-in-law rolled their eyes and made sarcastic remarks.

Tian Yun endured all this silently. She swung the laundry mallet mechanically while thinking worriedly:
"I don't know how Dachun is doing. If anything happens to him, how can I face my deceased aunt?"

As he thought about it, Tian Yun's eyes were filled with tears.

At this moment, a woman in the distance started shouting:
"Ah, Tian Yun, why are you still washing clothes here? Just now, a group of people saw that bastard Tian Dachun carrying a big knife and going to your house aggressively. Maybe now both of them are fighting and bleeding!"

The woman's tone was full of gloating. She was none other than the eldest daughter-in-law of the Xu family, who usually did not get along with Tian Yun.

After hearing the news, Tian Yun was shocked and then filled with unspeakable anxiety and fear. How could Tian Dachun, such a carefree man, really do such a thing!
For a moment, Tian Yun didn't even care about the clothes she was washing. She threw down the washing mallet and rushed back home. She fell twice on the way and didn't feel any pain.

Next, Tian Yun rushed into the house at the fastest speed, pushed the door open, and cried out in a sobbing voice:
"Dachun, stop it!!"

Then Tian Yun was stunned.

The fire pit at home was burning brightly, and a hot steam mixed with wine and meat blew in the air. My younger brother Tian Dachun was toasting with her husband, and the two of them were so close in their relationship that they almost burned yellow paper to swear brotherhood. There was no intention of fighting at all.

Seeing her mother coming home, Erya, who was wearing pigtails, ran over. Her hands and mouth were greasy, and her snot was half an inch long. She excitedly raised a half-eaten chicken claw and said:

"Ahm, Ahm! Meat, meat!!"

The huge contrast made Tian Yun speechless. She picked up Erya woodenly, stammered twice, wanting to say something but couldn't, and her eyes were covered by a layer of mist.

At this time, Gong Tianwu had already stood up and said enthusiastically:

"Sister, you're back. Come and sit down and warm yourself up."

The husband, Mr. Zhang, also made a 180-degree change in his attitude, and said with a big tongue:
"You're back? My brother came here specially to deliver medicine to San'er today, and also brought a lot of things. Hey, we're all family, why are you so polite?"

Tian Yun seemed to be in a dream at this moment. He sat down beside the fire pit in a daze, drank a few sips of hot wine, and ate a piece of smoked chicken wrapped in oil paper. Then he came to his senses and asked what was going on.

It turned out that after lunch, his younger brother came to the house and took out a bottle, saying that it was medicine he bought from Huichuntang, which was specially used to treat Sanwa's tuberculosis and cough. Then he brought a lot of things over.

As the saying goes, one should not hit a smiling person. Tian Yun knew that her husband usually loved to drink, and he would enjoy drinking even the lees mixed with water. So even though he usually had deep conflicts with his brother, the two of them just started drinking.

After hearing about this, Tian Yun hurried to see Sanwa who had taken the medicine, and found that the medicine was indeed effective.

Normally, when Sanwa was exposed to cold wind, he would cough bitterly. However, after he took a pill and washed it down with hot wine, he hasn't coughed once in almost two hours and is obviously more energetic.

Such a change immediately made Tian Yun burst into tears while hugging Sanwa. After all, she was still full of guilt towards Sanwa because of the brown sugar incident.

Until her husband invited her over to drink half a bowl of wine, saying that it could promote blood circulation and relieve blood stasis - country men are very concerned about their reputation, so saying this was equivalent to apologizing to her.

The wine that Gong Tianwu brought this time was actually very bad. It was completely a second-rate product from the last squeeze of the leftover lees. It just tasted like wine. It was truly water wine, and it was good enough to have the taste of wine.

But in the barren countryside, such liquor is a high-end luxury that ordinary people cannot afford to drink all year round. What's more rare is that Gong Tianwu also brought a large gourd, which is at least five kilograms. Boss Zhang drank it so much that his face was flushed and he was in high spirits.

But women are always more careful. After Tian Yun was silent for a while, she said to her husband:

"Boss, I forgot my laundry by the river. You drink it first, and I'll ask my brother to go with me to get it back."

Boss Zhang was already half drunk at this time, and he was even more eager for Tian Dachun to get out so that he could have a few more drinks. He immediately said:
"Medium, mediocrity!"

Tian Yun then dragged Gong Tianwu out of the door and said with a fierce face:

"Damn it, you went to steal again? You must have spent a lot of money on these things, where did you get it?"

Gong Tianwu did not intend to hide it, and said straightforwardly:

"I went to the Ice Sea to make some extra money."

Tian Yun exclaimed immediately after hearing this:
"You're asking for your life! At least a dozen people in the village lost their lives there!"

Gong Tianwu sneered:

"Damn it, if I don't risk my life now, will I be able to avoid the Xianmen labor service later?"

After hearing this, Tian Yun suddenly became depressed and was speechless for a moment.

Gong Tianwu whispered, "To tell you the truth, the kid from the Gong family owed me a favor, so he told me a lot about his grandfather's experience in hunting corpses. This time when I went there, everything went smoothly, and there was almost no risk."

Tian Yun was surprised and said:

"Although the Gong family is now in ruins, they were indeed quite famous in the past. The two acres of irrigated land and the blue brick house in his family were all saved by hunting corpses. How could you have such an opportunity?"

Gong Tianwu obviously didn't intend to continue talking about this topic. After all, one lie would require ten lies to cover it up. He simply picked up the burlap bag next to him and took out a fat leg of lamb from it.

"I asked the doctor, and he said that in addition to taking medicine, San'er also needs to take some supplements. Just take it and don't refuse."

When Tian Yun saw it, he was shocked and hurriedly said no, and asked Gong Tianwu to go to the butcher to return it. However, Gong Tianwu could only smile bitterly and said that there was no way to return it, because Gong Tianwu did not spend any money on the lamb leg, but got it from the butcher Zhu when he passed by the county butcher shop.

It is rumored that the clothes on the zombies are full of evil spirits, and if they are worn when slaughtering pigs and sheep, they can wash away the bad karma brought by these animals, so Butcher Zhu has been looking for this thing for a long time.

Although Gong Tianwu was tempted, he still argued with Zhu the Butcher for a few words. The latter had originally only planned to exchange it for a pig's trotter, but he still bargained it down to a fat lamb leg.

Finally, Gong Tianwu persuaded Tian Yun by using the excuse that "his body was also weak and he also needed to be nourished" and asked her to accept the lamb leg, prepare it and eat it himself, and then went home to catch up on his sleep.

While the two were talking, they didn't notice that the eldest daughter-in-law of the Xu family had been peeking at them from a distance for a long time, her eyes almost blazing with anger:
"My God, a lamb leg that big must weigh at least 15-20 pounds! During the Chinese New Year, my family only took a piece of lamb weighing 15-20 pounds to make dumplings, and that was shared by more than 10 people in the family."

"It must have been stolen by Tian Dachun. Hasn't this bastard done enough bad things?"

The eldest daughter-in-law of the Xu family gnashed her teeth and suddenly came up with a plan! She took a deep look and walked away. That was not the direction she was going home.

***
After three hours,

Gong Tianwu lay on his broken bed at home and couldn't fall asleep. Although his body was still very tired, his spirit was very excited.
As soon as I closed my eyes, the hideous face of the Ice Corpse, the shameless face of Xiao Song, and the majestic face of Master Luo Wu all flashed in my mind like a revolving lantern.

He grumbled meaninglessly in annoyance, got up, and started practicing swordplay in the main room.

And he only practiced one move, and that was chopping!

There is a tree stump in front of us, with a white line drawn on its surface. Every cut must be made as close to the white line as possible!
When he chopped down, Gong Tianwu directly mistook the tree stump for the neck of the ice corpse!
At least three hundred dollars a day, no upper limit, this is the plan Gong Tianwu set for himself.

When he had chopped the fifty swords, Gong Tianwu was already sweating profusely and felt a slight pain in his heart, so he sat down on the bed next to him and drank some water to dry the sweat off his body.

Suddenly, he heard a slight sound from the fence door outside. He immediately sat up alertly and grabbed the makeshift machete. After all, he was now a wealthy man and had to be on guard.

Soon, a child's voice rang out:

"Uncle, my mother wants you to come over for dinner."

After hearing this, Gong Tianwu was actually a little hungry, and he knew that the dinner tonight would not be bad, so he immediately said:
"Okay, let's go together."

When he followed Erya over, he found that there were three full tables of people sitting at the Zhang family's side. It turned out that Tian Yun had invited his parents-in-law, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, etc., a total of four families.

Gong Tianwu's heart sank immediately after seeing this. Although the lamb leg was big, it was definitely not enough for these twenty people. If he came over, he would definitely face a tough battle for food!
When the three full pots were brought up, Gong Tianwu realized that after Tian Yun, who was good at housekeeping, took the lamb legs, he directly cut off a pound of the best ones and kept them, and then carried the remaining lamb legs to Zheng's house in the next village.

The old man of the Zheng family is a famous butcher in the surrounding area. Many people ask him to slaughter pigs and sheep, and usually they don’t have to pay him. His reward is to carry a pig’s head or a sheep’s breast.

The weather was cold at the time and it was easy to preserve, so Tian Yun exchanged it for a black pig head, a set of pig offal, and about twenty pounds of pork bones.

These things were the leftovers that the eldest son of the Zheng family had saved up over the past ten days or so. Although there were many of them, they were not valuable and could not be turned into cash like fresh lamb legs. So even though he knew that Tian Yun was taking advantage of him, he still sold them at a discount.

One leg of lamb was definitely not enough for the whole family, but the pile of scraps that Tian Yun got in exchange was different.

When she got home, she called her sisters-in-law to clean the bones and stew them in a pot. She also roasted the pig's head to remove the hair, boiled it, took it out and sliced ​​it, and then added it when she was ready to eat.

After the soup becomes thick and white, cut a few radishes, grab a few handfuls of dried wild vegetables from autumn and finally add salt and sprinkle some chopped green and white wild onions. It will be a delicious meal that even surpasses the Chinese New Year.

The world has been bad these years, and kids can only have two dumplings with meat during the Chinese New Year. Eating offal is something they only dream of now, after all, offal + pig head is also meat! Not to mention the comfort of eating around a hot soup pot when the wind is howling.

Gong Tianwu was not polite at the moment. As soon as the elder started eating, he opened his mouth and started to eat. He found that the taste was really good:

The frosted radishes are sweet, and the dried wild vegetables have absorbed the broth from the bones. They don’t taste as bitter as fresh ones, but instead have a unique flavor.

Not to mention the fatness of the pig's head and the chewy texture of the offal.

No one talked while eating. Even the children, who were usually very naughty, were stuffing food into their mouths with all their might. The sound of them slurping soup could be heard one after another.

(End of this chapter)