My 1995 Small Farm.

Chapter 291 The Person Who Was Missed
After harvesting the honey, I delivered some to Liang Hongyu's family on my way home, arriving just in time for lunch.

The Mid-Autumn Festival had just passed, and with Wang Qingwen's family and two grandsons also present, his mother-in-law still cooked two meat dishes for lunch.

Although it was simple—one dish of eel and the other of stir-fried chicken pieces—it was still considered a feast compared to what most families would have.

Add a few salted duck eggs, some freshly picked vegetables from the garden, mixed with tofu as a cold dish, a plate of crispy fried peanuts, and sprinkle with some white sugar, and you're done.

Seeing this, Chen Ling also went into the kitchen and added two more dishes.

We just happened to harvest this much honey.

I made two dishes: honey-glazed yam and steamed eggs with honey.

Leaving aside the honey-glazed yam, the key is the honey-steamed egg. The eggs at home are already better than regular eggs.

Beat the egg mixture, add honey and water, and steam until the steamed egg rises and becomes smooth and bouncy, with a crystal-clear pale yellow amber color. It looks like jelly, as if it has a gelatinous texture.

At the same time, the aroma of eggs and honey is released by the steaming hot wok, filling the dining table with fragrance.

You scoop a spoonful into your mouth and eat it without chewing at all. Just a slight lick of your tongue and the steamed egg slides down your throat.

It leaves a rich and lingering aroma in your mouth, and upon closer tasting, you can also detect the subtle sweetness of honey, making it an unforgettable experience.

It's so good it's amazing.

After lunch, having a cup of honey mint tea, sitting in the pavilion outside the farm, playing chess, drinking tea, and letting the cool mountain breeze blow on you is a very pleasant thing.

As for dinner, no special dishes were prepared; it was just a simple meal, since Chen Ling was planning to take his family to Yaowang Temple to offer incense the next day.

After dinner, I packed my things. The original plan was to take Wang Susu and the child out for a trip.

Therefore, it's essential to prepare a full range of items, such as diapers. As the saying goes, "A poor family should be well-prepared for a rich journey," meaning that bringing enough supplies will keep you from panicking when you need them.

Everything was ready, and the car had been borrowed, but unexpectedly it started raining when we were about to leave in the morning.

The autumn rain began to fall softly and steadily, not heavily, but it had been falling all morning and showed no sign of stopping.

Unfortunately, their travel plans were disrupted, so Chen Ling and her family had no choice but to put their belongings away again and stay home to wait for the rain to stop.

After replying to his pen pals with thank-you letters, Chen Ling had nothing else to do, so he went to the hunting tool room and started tinkering around.

First, I cleaned up the heads of the two red muntjacs.

One was picked up from under the mouth of a leopard, and the other was taken from the mouth of a male wolf; both were quite well preserved.

Besides the red muntjac, the newly added wild boar tusks and other items were also tidied up.

After finishing these tasks, he continued writing his hunter's notes, adding recent accounts of badgers, foxes, leopards, and wolfhounds.

"This guy's writing is getting thicker and thicker. The cause, process, feelings and thoughts are quite readable... If this continues, he might even publish a book someday. Hmm, let's call it 'The King of Qinling Hunters,' and put dogs and eagles on the cover. Tsk tsk, that would be so impressive."

Chen Ling chuckled and daydreamed to himself for a while before closing the Hunter's Notes and putting it back.

Then he locked the door to the hunting tool room and entered the cave.

He came in to check on the bumblebees, wanting to see if there had been any changes to the ones he had brought in yesterday.

It has been quite some time since we discovered the grotto.

He discovered that things from the outside world—birds, beasts, insects, and fish—would undergo very drastic changes within the first three days, or even on the first day, when they first entered the cave.

Take, for example, the original rooster.

There were also two red eels later.

The common red eel is not as mysterious as people say.

Aside from the color, it's not much different from a yellow eel, and wild ones grow very slowly.

However, Chen Ling's two red eels were different; their bodies grew rapidly, reaching over thirty centimeters in just one month right before people's eyes.

This is why Lynx and Professor Han were so intrigued, and even offered such a high price.

Even if Chen Ling switched them, they didn't give them the original two options.

After they took it back, they made some significant research findings.

And as for the bees, that goes without saying.

Worker bees, in particular, are essentially underdeveloped female bees.

During their larval stage, they are closest to the queen bee's throne.

As a result, many artificially bred queen bees help worker bees defy fate during their larval stage.

The process is similar to when the queen bee in a bee colony has an emergency, and the worker bees quickly build queen cells, secrete royal jelly, and raise a queen bee.

However, once a bee misses the larval stage, it will remain a worker bee forever and will never have the chance to defy fate and become a queen bee.

Now that they have entered the grotto and come into contact with its rich spiritual energy, the chance to defy fate that they once missed and failed to seize is once again before them.

The abundant spiritual energy will cause their bodies to undergo drastic changes again, initiating a new transformation.

The best among them will seize the opportunity to become the queen bee.

The remaining worker bees may not appear to have changed much on the surface, but when it comes to reproduction, such as the drones they produce, the mutated genes deeply embedded in their bodies will play a decisive role.

If such a drone mates with the queen bee, that guy will be something else entirely.

This is the same principle as with red eels.

The common red eel is caused by a genetic mutation due to factors such as the living environment. Its offspring will revert to the color of a normal eel and become a yellow eel.

However, Chen Ling's two branches gave birth to new ones, and all of their offspring turned red.

This is why Chen Ling was so interested and wanted to come in and take a look.

He brought in several hundred bees yesterday and simply confined them in the thatched hut.

After entering the cave, two queen bees emerged.

They have now completed swarming and are planning to build their nest in the thatched hut.

Chen Ling used his mind to control the two swarms of bees, separating them into two different locations to prevent them from building nests in the thatched hut.

When dividing the bees, he also carefully observed the changes that occurred in the two groups of bees after they entered the cave.

"The darker a color is, the deeper the black; the more golden a color is, the more prominent the yellow..."

Chen Ling pondered, "It seems that, like at the beginning, collecting the entire hive with the queen bee would result in the least change."

"Is it because they get anxious when there's no queen bee, but not when there is a queen bee, because they're not facing a survival crisis?"

"We need to collect a few more beehives for observation."

Then, suppressing his thoughts, he returned to the area around the hut.

In the irrigation ditches in front of and behind the thatched hut, the population of red eels is growing stronger and stronger. A layer of bright red eels floats on the water. The original two red eels are now more than a meter long, incredibly plump, and with long whiskers. When they swim, they are followed by schools of fish of all sizes, swimming back and forth in the ditches, which is quite a spectacular sight.

Especially now that they have two little tufts of hair on their heads, they really look like two red dragon kings.

Many fish have these little tufts, and they don't grow dragon horns or anything like that, so there's nothing strange about it.

Chen Ling waved his hand at the irrigation ditch, and water splashed everywhere. One by one, red eels flew to the bank. He then summoned a knife from the thatched hut and killed them quickly.

Dinner dishes were ready.

This eel is delicious and very nourishing. As the saying goes, "Eel during the Lesser Heat is better than ginseng." The red eel in this cave is no worse than ordinary ginseng, and it won't have any of the drawbacks of over-nourishment.

It's a good product, but there's nowhere to buy it now, and the number of fish fry is still increasing. Why not eat all these fish?

"Hmm, it's time to release some of these golden pheasants out into the wild."

Chen Ling washed his hands and slowly walked to the back of the thatched hut.

Here, a flock of red-bellied pheasants are running back and forth amidst a profusion of flowers, weaving through the blossoms and pecking at the ripe grass seeds.

Upon seeing him, some were not afraid and continued to do as they pleased, while others flew up into the fruit trees and watched him quietly, very wary.

Let them be afraid. We'll release those who are afraid of him later.

Chen Ling laughed, stamped his foot, and waved to shoo them away. The golden pheasants in the tree fluttered up and flew away. Each one had bright red feathers and a golden crest on its head, like a phoenix, and was quite a sight to behold.

Now, after more than a year, they have started to multiply in the cave, and it's time to release a few out.

Just do it.

He slipped out of the cave; the rain was still falling outside.

He found an umbrella, called Heiwa, and left the farm.

After leaving the farm, we headed straight for Nanshan Mountain.

There are few wild animals on Nanshan Mountain.

After these golden pheasants were released, they had fewer natural predators, and the number of survivors was far greater than that of those in the western and northern mountains.

As for whether rainy days would be a problem, Chen Ling wasn't worried at all.

Upon reaching Nanshan Mountain, Chen Ling released the golden pheasants and watched them fly and run wildly through the forest in the rain, laughing heartily.

"I'll make you afraid of me."

"You're right to be afraid of me. I was just worried that if you let you out, you might see me and come looking for me."

Then he glanced at Heiwa and said, "Let's go back to the old spot and see if there are any traces of leopards."

Heiwa instantly understood and ran ahead in the rain, scouting the way and sniffing the air.

Rain will certainly wash away the smell.

However, a predator like a leopard has a huge appetite and cannot possibly stay indoors to drink water and forage for food.

Take a walk along the river and look for footprints. The footprints are clearer after the rain, making them easier to find than usual.

After nearly an hour, we returned to the usual spot and walked around the nearby riverbank and water source.

There were discoveries, but the results were still very disappointing.

"Judging from these footprints, it must have been several days ago. They must have suffered a loss at our hands, so they came to the water to drink and hunt, and left Nanshan after filling their stomachs."

Looking at the string of leopard footprints left by the river and the bones of two wild boar pups at the edge of the woods, Chen Ling could tell that it had been quite some time.

"Damn it, this leopard has its eye on a wild boar? Is it only going to eat wild boar?"

But then I thought of my own wild boar cubs.

Chen Ling couldn't help but smack his lips. Wild boar meat was indeed delicious, and roast suckling pig was the most fragrant.

This leopard has good taste, but it just doesn't seem to have a connection with him.

He had originally planned to take it into his cave if he could find it, treat its injuries, and raise it if he had the chance to catch it again in the future, so that it could have a few litters of offspring.

Letting them out during a hunt sounds exciting.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find it.

So I had no choice but to turn back. On my way home, I stopped by the reservoir to check on the garlic plants.

They collected some water from the reservoir and then played a game of creating clouds and rain, with lightning and thunder, in the cave. After having their fun, they finally went home.

On the 17th day of the eighth lunar month, the rain stopped for a while, but it started raining again in the middle of the morning.

This frustrated Chen Ling: "I finally wanted to go out for a while, but now I can't."

After saying that, Chen Ling was even more frustrated when he saw his wife sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the baby in one arm and engrossed in reading a book on medicinal botany with the other, not paying any attention to talking to him.

I had no choice but to go over and pick up my son, and we wandered around the upstairs corridor, watching the rain together.

After wandering around for a while, someone suddenly called out to him.

"Fugui, come out and play chess."

He looked in the direction of the sound and saw Chen Dazhi standing on the corridor by the lotus pond, waving at him.

Huh? When did Chen Dazhi arrive?
Chen Ling glanced outside the farm and saw that his father-in-law and brother-in-law were there as well.

He went back to his room, handed his son to Wang Susu, and went out with an umbrella.

As we walked outside the farm, we saw several people sitting in the pavilion in the bamboo grove. "Hey, Brother Dazhi, Fourth Grandfather, when did you get here?"

Chen Dazhi smiled when he saw him: "You've been here for quite a while, and you've already played several games of chess. We thought you were taking a nap because of the rain, so we didn't call you."

At this moment, Chen Gannian, who was sitting by the chessboard, also looked over and asked, "Fugui was looking at the dolls just now, wasn't he?"

Chen Ling was stunned for a moment.

When Chen Gannian saw him most of the time, he would call him by his father's name, and rarely by his nickname.

If he doesn't recognize him as his father now, then he's clear-headed.

She quickly replied, "Yes, I brought the baby."

"Are kids easy or difficult to manage?"

"It's been pretty good lately. The weather's gotten cooler, and she takes two short naps in the morning without making a fuss."

"Oh, that's good."

Although Chen Gannian was now lucid, his aged eyes were still somewhat cloudy.

Chen Ling then said, "It's raining outside, let's move the chessboard inside and play."

As soon as he spoke, his father-in-law and brother-in-law echoed his sentiments and invited the two of them inside.

As they walked home, Chen Dazhi whispered to him.

For some reason, Chen Gannian was awake for quite a long time this morning.

I hadn't eaten breakfast, so I went up the mountain and stayed at my fourth grandmother's grave for a while.

My fourth grandmother passed away around this time last year, less than a month apart.

The old man is probably feeling unwell again.

After returning home and having dinner, he wandered around the village visiting neighbors and friends from previous years.

Chen Yongsheng and his wife had no other choice.

After following for a while, Chen Dazhi saw him and led the old man to visit several houses in the village.

When they were about to leave, they ran into Wang Cunye leading a cow and a little yellow dog toward the farm. They exchanged a few words, and Fourth Grandfather, knowing that this was Chen Ling's father-in-law, insisted on coming along, not for any particular reason.

He just pulled Wang Cunye aside to talk.

Wang Cunye didn't take offense, so he called Wang Qingwen over, and the two of them played chess outside the farm, talking as they played.

"Fugui, why do you still have half a leopard's tail hanging from your head? Is there another leopard roaming the north mountain behind you?"

After leading them to the first floor of the bamboo house, and having just brewed tea and set out a chessboard for the two of them, Chen Gannian pointed to the leopard tail hanging on the pillar under the eaves outside and asked a question.

Chen Ling was greatly surprised upon hearing this, "Fourth Grandfather, you recognize this as a leopard's tail?"

"Of course I know him. When I was little, I even saw someone hunt a leopard on the North Mountain."

The old man took off his cap, wiped the rain from the back of his head, and said casually.

"This……"

Chen Ling and his father-in-law exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with surprise.

Not to mention the father-in-law and son-in-law, Wang Lixian asked all the elderly people in the village at the time.

Isn't it just that Fourth Grandfather was overlooked?

No one would have imagined that this muddle-headed old man would know about such a thing.

(End of this chapter)