20 years of restarting life

Chapter 3483 Chicken Crying at the Foot of the Mountain
Riding high on the spring breeze, at around 7 a.m., there were hardly any other vehicles or pedestrians on the national highway, except for a few long-distance trucks.

Besides fields and barren hills, there were small restaurants on both sides of the road, but they were all closed, with signs saying they would reopen on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month.

These small restaurants have faced fierce competition in recent years, and many owners have launched promotional activities such as adding water with meals, washing cars while eating, and even watching DVDs and playing games with the staff while eating and staying overnight. After a year of being busy and tired, they take the opportunity to rest for a few days.

Zhao Chang'an sped along, arriving at the foot of the mountain north of Jiti Mountain in less than half an hour. There, a dirt road, paved with soil and gravel, meandered between the two mountains.

Zhao Chang'an drove onto a side road, then onto a winding mountain road nestled between two mountains, a road devoid of human presence.

The dry, cold air currents blowing from the north rise along the mountain slopes and meet the warm, humid air currents coming from the south. This creates a mist that swirls around the mountains along the high mountain line in the sky, obscuring the sun that has just risen in the east. The entire road becomes dark and silent.

The car traveled another two or three hundred meters before a paved uphill road came into view, separating it from the dirt road that continued into the mountains.

Zhao Chang'an turned the steering wheel to the right, and the car tilted upwards, entering the cement road.

The road was lined with dense trees. Although most of the trees had lost their leaves in winter, the messy woods completely blocked the view further.

After climbing the cement road up the hillside, a bright and open space suddenly appeared before me, a small open space paved with blue bricks, about two or three hundred square meters in size. It was surrounded by plum, osmanthus, papaya, and pomegranate trees, with winter plum and red plum blossoms blooming everywhere. These ornamental trees were also separated from the surrounding mountain forest, forming an independent little world.

At the end of the open space is a courtyard enclosed by a wall, inside which is a two-story building.

"Wang Wang!"

"Wang Wang!"

The sound of a dog barking drifted into the car.

Zhao Chang'an stopped the car, got out, and the crisp air was filled with the fragrance of plum blossoms.

Upon seeing the second floor of the courtyard, Hu Qian emerged from a room, waving to him with a bright smile.

It has a kind of "riding a horse and leaning against a bridge, with red sleeves beckoning from all over the building" feel to it.

"Wang Wang Wang!"

"Wang Wang Wang!"

The two large wolfhounds that ran to the gate and looked out through the big iron gate barked even louder.

-

Hu Qian opened the courtyard gate, laughed and spat inside, "Don't call us 'family'! If you do, we'll eat dog meat on the fifteenth of the first lunar month."

The two large wolfhounds immediately quieted down, wagging their tails and approaching Zhao Chang'an's thighs to sniff him.

However, after only one sniff, they all let out a "woof" and ran back to their doghouses with their tails between their legs, cowering in a sorry state.

Zhao Chang'an saw that in the shadows where the sun couldn't reach the doghouse, the two large wolfhounds' glossy fur was trembling.

The scent of the lynx he carried clearly frightened the two large wolfhounds.

That lynx in the mountains likes to eat venomous snakes as snacks, the more venomous the better, crunchy and juicy they are. It also likes to eat the brains of wild wolves and hyenas, like drinking tofu pudding.

"Is this dog afraid of you?"

Hu Qian looked on in surprise.

"Maybe they're afraid that if the new son-in-law comes over, they'll have to eat dog meat before the fifteenth of the first lunar month," Zhao Chang'an joked.

Hu Qian giggled with delight, giving Zhao Chang'an a charming glance.

From the look in his eyes, Zhao Chang'an knew that if he didn't leave something for Hu Qian today, he would truly disappoint her.

However, he came all this way so early in the morning to deliver a gift to Hu Qian, and now he's fully recovered and waiting.

Back then, Zhao Chang'an's father, Zhao Shubin, with the good intention of saving a life, saved Lao Zhou's life and prevented Lao Zhou's family from being torn apart.

However, looking at the Zhou family now that they have money, they realize that if they had spent money to hire a car and pay two or three hundred yuan for hospitalization, they would have been fine. Besides, they had already paid back the money Zhao Shubin had advanced. Although setting up a stall to sell mutton soup at the entrance of the market was Zhao Shubin's way of showing his respect, the Zhou family had already established a good relationship with the market's management, so Zhao Shubin was no longer involved.

So, if Zhao Chang'an wants to collect what the Zhou family owes him, he should first use Old Zhou's daughter-in-law to repay part of it. As for the rest, there will always be other opportunities in the future.

Zhao Chang'an remembered that Old Zhou and his wife would be gone in two or three years. Despite their aged appearance, Old Zhou and his wife were actually younger than Zhao Chang'an's parents. Back then, people in the countryside got married early, at the age of eighteen, so they were only forty years old this year.

Xiao Zhou got married earlier, getting married first and registering the marriage later. He is only 21 years old this year. Hu Qian is the same age as him, also 21.

Almost four years ago, Zhao Chang'an transmigrated and went to Zhou's Lamb Soup for the first time to drink lamb soup. At that time, Hu Qian had only been married to Xiao Zhou for two months.

In his previous life, Zhao Chang'an met Hu Qian ten years later. The reason was that he wanted to buy a bighead carp head from Peach Blossom Lake to make a fish head tofu soup, which was famous in the mountain city.

At that time, Hu Qian was only thirty-two or thirty-three years old. Wearing a dark green cheongsam, she was graceful, charming and alluring. She transformed a woman from a mountain town on the northeastern edge of Bachu into a stunning lady from the Jiangnan region, leaving an unforgettable impression.

So when he first went to Zhou's restaurant for mutton soup after transmigrating into this life, he saw Hu Qian, who was a few months younger than him and looked rather green. Although she was also very pretty, she was not even in the same league as the cheongsam-clad beauties of more than ten years later.

Zhao Chang'an sighed, wondering how the men around the market could have imagined that ten years later, this woman would become the vice president of the Zhengzhou Mountain City Catering Association, while they were all envious of Hu Qian's beauty.

Although this position is just a title with no real power, it is still quite remarkable that someone who is only thirty years old, with a daughter who is a few years old, has come to the provincial capital almost all by himself, and has been able to reach this position and gain the recognition of his peers in about six years.

As for how the Zhou couple were buried, Zhao Chang'an once remembered his father mentioning it casually, saying that the Zhou family used to pretend to be poor, saying they didn't earn much money. But when Hu Qian opened a mutton soup shop in Zhengzhou, he claimed to have spent hundreds of thousands of yuan, and that Ma Er, a street urchin who frequented the market—

Zhao Chang'an shook his head. It was none of his business, so he didn't have the time. Besides, he had already changed some of the events in the mountain city in this life. Who could know if those things would happen again in the future?

Hu Qian was wearing light-colored pajamas with small blue flowers. She let Zhao Chang'an into the courtyard and then locked the gate from the inside.

Zhao Chang'an watched her retreating figure. Although her pajamas were loose, the fabric was a thin, sheer linen that accentuated her graceful figure and revealed her slender waist beneath the pajamas—

"Where is my daughter?"

Zhao Chang'an asked with a smile.

"She's upstairs. She woke up a bit and started crying for food. I just fed her, and she's asleep again now."

After saying this, Hu Qian turned around.

Her words sparked a flood of thoughts in Zhao Chang'an, who looked toward the granary and saw that the linen tent had encountered the rainy season and was without any rain cover.

"I didn't have time, I didn't even have time to brush my teeth!"

Seeing Zhao Chang'an gazing at her with burning eyes, Hu Qian looked down and her heart pounded wildly, her pretty face blushing with embarrassment.

She reached out and gently pushed Zhao Chang'an into the house, her voice becoming sweet and coquettish without her even realizing it: "You haven't eaten yet, have you? I haven't either. There's hot food in the pot. Why don't we eat first after I brush my teeth?"