Return to 1983 Hunting Xing'an Mountains

Chapter 717 Ma Liu's property is going to be shared with his in-laws?
The journey to Baishilazi is long and arduous. If we really had to hike over mountains and valleys, Xu Ning and the others would be exhausted. It's not that they can't endure the hardship, but there's no need to force themselves. Why not use the car when we have it?

Xu Ning had originally planned to go into the mountains and see if he could run into Xiong Cang. Going to Baishi Lazi to hunt bears was just because he had nothing else to do lately. Otherwise, Xu Ning would not have bothered to go all the way to Baishi Lazi. He would have preferred to wander around the area around his home. If he could hunt bears, wouldn't that be more comfortable than hunting bears?
After Xu Ning made the decision, Li Fuqiang and Wang Hu went home to find their things. After dinner, Xu Ning went to the village headquarters.

Xu Ning had to tell Wu Zhouquan so that he and Han Fang wouldn't worry. When he arrived at the village office, he dialed a phone number. The village chief of Wanye Village answered again. He asked the young people in the village office to call Wu Zhouquan and his wife. More than ten minutes later, Han Fang answered the phone impatiently.

"Er Ning? I'm your aunt."

"Hey, ma'am, are you finished eating?"

"We've already finished eating, have you all finished eating too?"

"Yeah, I just finished eating not long ago. Didn't Haitao and that girl have a result? I thought I'd better tell you and my uncle as soon as possible."

Han Fang laughed and said, "What's there to report? We're not leaders, so just tell me directly, how are things going between Haitao and that girl? Have they hit it off?"

"She's got her eye on him! Haitao is good-looking and tall, and our family is well-off. How could she not like Haitao?"

Han Fang smiled silently upon hearing this, and then Xu Ning continued, "The girl's name is Pan Xiao. Her older brother and two younger brothers get along well with Hai Tao in Lengchang, so this matter naturally fell into place. Hai Tao was worried that you and my uncle would be anxious, so he was originally planning to find some time to go home..."

"No need! Erning, from what you're saying, Haitao is doing quite well at the farm, so let's not let him come back. How about this, your uncle and I will take a trip there and visit that girl and her brothers while we're at it. Isn't there no one else in her family besides these three brothers?"

“There’s no one else here. Her brother is older than me and he’s still not married. Didn’t I tell you before that he has a slight disability in his hand, but it doesn’t stop him from working? Otherwise, I wouldn’t have let him work in the workshop.”

"That's easy to handle... Your grandpa's grabbing the phone, you two chat..."

Wu Zhouquan grabbed the microphone and said with a smile, "Er Ning, your aunt and I know a lot about her family situation, so we're not worried about her. The main thing is that your aunt and I haven't met this girl before."

Xu Ning was in a dilemma. If Wu Zhouquan and Han Fang came to Qing'an, he couldn't possibly go to Baishilazi to get some fried pork skin. He had to entertain the old couple first and wait until they left before going...

“Didn’t my aunt just say she was coming over? Then come on over! I’ve been staying home these days with nothing to do, so I’ll call Haitao and Pan Xiao’s brothers to come down the mountain and get together.”

“Alright! It’s settled then. Your aunt and I… I have some work to do tomorrow, so I’ll head over the day after tomorrow. I think I’ll get to your house around noon.”

Xu Ning laughed and said, "Grandpa, why don't you leave early? You'll arrive just in time for lunch, so let's have lunch together."

"That works too, it won't take much time anyway."

"OK!"

Xu Ning chatted with Wu Zhouquan and Han Fang for a while on the phone.

The main purpose was to inquire about when Meng Ziyan would give birth, and also to ask about Wang Shujuan's due date, as the two sisters-in-law's due dates were only two months apart.

Han Fang implied that she wanted to send over the clothes that Guan Mei's child had worn. Xu Ning naturally wouldn't refuse. When a baby is first born, he needs a lot of clothes. He has to change them almost five times a day because the baby will wet or poop while sleeping.

Even though Meng Ziyan and Wang Shujuan made quite a few clothes during this period, they couldn't keep out the child's excrement and urine. Besides, don't think that picking up clothes to wear is something shameful; some families can't even find clothes to pick up...

However, Han Fang couldn't bring the clothes right away, since Guan Mei's child couldn't walk yet, but would be grown up by August next year, and there would be some discarded clothes.

Back home, Xu Ning told Liu Lizhen that Wu Zhouquan and Han Fang were coming over. Liu Lizhen smiled and said, "Your aunt must be worried about her son. When are they coming?"

"Noon, I'll go to Lengchang tomorrow morning and tell Haitao and the others that they can all eat at our house then?"

Xu Laonian said, "We definitely have to eat here. People came here specifically for our place. If we don't eat here, why would we go to the old house?"

Liu Lizhen nodded and said, "There are still fish and meat in the cellar. Let's use them all up. They'll spoil if we leave them for a few more days."

It definitely won't spoil. The temperature in the cellar isn't as cold as outside, but the fish and meat are frozen solid. As long as the weather doesn't get warmer, they'll stay fresh even after two months...

Wang Hu and Li Fuqiang were not discouraged when they learned that they couldn't go to Baishilazi. They figured they could go whenever they wanted, since they had already made a lot of money this year and didn't care about having a little fun.

The next day, Xu Ning came to Lengchang and told Wu Haitao about it. Wu Haitao was a little nervous after hearing it and kept patting his chest, saying, "Brother, my parents can't possibly not like it, right? Oh my, my heart is pounding, I'm so nervous."

Guan Lei laughed and said, "What's there to be nervous about? It's all over. Doesn't your brother Yan know that you and Pan Xiao are dating? You should tell your parents when they come over. Let's all go down the mountain and have a meal together tomorrow."

Wu Haitao blinked twice and said, "Why don't you talk to him? I'm afraid he's not prepared..."

"Can't you show some manly courage? You're so afraid of everything, how come you're so decisive when it comes to dating Pan Xiao?"

Wu Haitao grinned and said, "I've never experienced this before, but I do have some experience with dating. So I'll just tell you the truth."

“You definitely have to tell the truth. This is no joke. If you pass on the wrong information, your parents and Pan Xiao’s brothers will likely feel uncomfortable, you know?”

"I know, I'll go find him now."

Xu Ning instructed, "Tomorrow morning around 10 o'clock, have Brother Jun take you down the mountain."

"okay!"

After Wu Haitao left, Xu Ning asked, "How much money did Pan Yan make at our farm?"

Guan Lei said, "It should be around 80 yuan. His two younger brothers earn less, but they still make about 70 yuan. These three brothers are really hardworking. When they first came, I asked Pan Yan to cut down trees. Later, I thought I would let him do something lighter, so I asked him to go to Guileng. After a while, he came to me and said he wanted to do tree cutting again because tree cutting earns more than Guileng."

"It's only been two months, and you've already earned this much. How are Da Zhi and Feng Ye doing?"

"They're both pretty hardworking. Now they're team leaders, each leading more than ten people to manage a specific area. My uncle said he'll have them deliver timber after the New Year."

Xu Ning wandered around Lengchang for a couple of minutes before going to chat with Ma Liu. Neither of them was in a hurry to go down the mountain, and since they had nothing to do at home, they might as well catch up with the people nearby.

Ma Liu was very satisfied with life in Lengchang. It was much more interesting than living in his dugout in Dongshan. During the day, he could chat, play chess, or brag with Lao Yang and Zhao Shengmin, and in the evening, he could have a few drinks.

"Didn't you go for a stroll in Baishilazi?"

"Oh dear, we're busy with research, everything's ready, we just need to call home to let them know we're coming, then we'll have to wait a while."

Ma Liu sat cross-legged on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), the warm kang behind him, and grinned, "Now that we've fought tigers, leopards, jackals, bears, and wild wolves, aren't you a little lacking in spirit?" Hearing this, Xu Ning slapped his thigh and said, "Absolutely! Besides lacking spirit, I'm also getting a little arrogant. Now, no one calls me 'Little Xu Cannon' anymore, they all call me 'Xu Cannon'! Yesterday, before I went home, I saw some people from Shengfeng Village, and when they called me 'Xu Cannon,' I was a little confused. I was wondering who they were calling."

"Hahaha……"

Ma Liu laughed upon hearing this and said, "Logically speaking, you're quite mature and shouldn't have this kind of mentality, but I understand you quite well. When we met a year ago, your family was considered well-off in the village, but it was much worse than it is now. Isn't this life something you earned with every single shot you fired?"

Xu Ning smiled tactfully and said, "Sir, it can't be said that I fired every single shot. Actually, I'm a bit cunning too..."

"Haha, who isn't cunning? Being cunning is a good thing."

Ma Liu lit a cigarette and continued, "This thing called 'spirit' is a bit mysterious, but I think you should know what it's all about."

"I know, I was a little depressed in the fall. There was a brown bear back then, and I was thinking about killing it all the time. But after I killed it, I felt much better. Now I'm just looking forward to the birth of my child."

Ma Liu smiled and asked, "You have time now? Shall we go for a stroll in Dongshan?"

"Let's go, we have nothing else to do anyway."

Ma Liu got up, picked up his cotton-padded coat and put it on. Then he and Xu Ning left the shack one after the other. Wang Hu and Li Fuqiang were making a fire in the open space. When they saw Xu Ning leaving, they thought he was going home.

Xu Ning waved his hand and said, "I'm going to Dongshan with my uncle. You guys wait here for a while."

After saying that, the old man and the young man walked towards the east mountain. Along the way, they saw many tracks, including those of roe deer and deer, as well as tracks of wild boars, jumping cats, and pheasants.

“Look at this East Mountain. People come here to stroll around almost every day. Why don’t the livestock leave? It’s because there are many frozen fruits on East Mountain. Even if they rot, they can still fill our stomachs. In the past, when there was a famine in our area, we would pick the tender buds from the trees and throw them into the pot to cook, not to mention the fish in the river.”

Xu Ning said, "Poplar buds mixed with pig's head meat? I've had this dish before, and it tastes pretty good."

"That's because there were seasonings. We didn't have any seasonings back then. Even if it tasted bitter, we had to swallow it. Conditions are so much better now than before."

"Yes, conditions will only get better in the next twenty or thirty years."

Xu Ning understood what Ma Liu was telling him; it boiled down to two words: responsibility! Xu Ning used to scoff at this word, but now he understood its meaning.

If he had any sense of responsibility before, he wouldn't have done something worse than an animal. Now that he's been back for over a year, he knows what responsibility means.

After arriving at Dongshan, the two did not head towards the dugout, but followed Ma Liu's footsteps to the bottom of a sheltered slope. There was a pile of large blue stones at the bottom of the slope. They stepped on the large blue stones and jumped into a deep ditch. Ma Liu pointed to the old oak tree at the bottom of the ditch and said, "See this old oak tree?"

“The roots under this oak tree were all rotten. I cut off all the rotten roots a couple of years ago, and then the tree came back to life. There’s a hole under the roots where I’ve hidden some things. You could say it’s what I’ve accumulated over the years. Go and dig it out.”

Xu Ning turned his head and said, "Why dig it out? Just leave it here."

"Oh dear, it's been sitting around all winter, it should be thrown away. We'd better dig it up quickly. The top layer is frozen clods of earth; just kick it a couple of times..."

Xu Ning walked to the tree roots, kicked the frozen clods of earth twice. The clods of earth were not frozen to death; they loosened after he kicked them twice. He then kicked the clods of earth aside, squatted down, and peeked into the hole.

Ma Liu laughed and said, "What are you looking at? There are clods of dirt on the outside and inside. I did it this way on purpose, just in case someone discovers this tree hole. Take out the clods of dirt inside and reach in to dig around."

After Xu Ning did as instructed, he reached into a burlap sack and found a wooden box inside. He took the box out with both hands, turned around, and said, "Is this all your savings from all these years?"

"How could that be? They say a cunning rabbit has three dens, but I'm using this whole tree hole as my lair? I'd be even more foolish than a leaping cat... There are still several other places. I'll show you around later and take everything out while we're at it."

Xu Ning placed the wooden box at Ma Liu's feet, looked up and said, "Aren't you going to give up? Why did you take it all out?"

"It's just sitting there on the mountain anyway, so I might as well let you take it home. I don't really need it. I'm getting old, how many more days can I enjoy my retirement?"

"Oh, don't say that. We're living a pretty good life now, so let's enjoy it as long as we can."

Ma Liu laughed and said, "Life is really good now. Let's go for a walk and take everything out. Then I won't think about it anymore."

Xu Ning, holding the wooden box, asked, "What's inside?"

"There should be 5 deer penises. There are two layers in the box, one layer of moss and one layer of black soil."

"You must have hunted a lot of livestock in the mountains all these years."

Ma Liu laughed and said, "So you think I'll just play on the mountain?"

Seeing that he was smiling quite happily, Xu Ning teased, "Grandpa, how about I find you a companion?"

"Get the hell out of here! Why are you talking such inappropriate things? How old am I? Why are you still bringing this up?"

Xu Ning laughed loudly: "Hahaha, I was just worried that you would be lonely living alone. It would be so much better to find a companion, and someone would even heat the kang (heated brick bed) for you."

"Go away, go away, you're getting more and more ridiculous..."

The two of them walked around Dongshan for a long time. Under Ma Liu's command, Xu Ning dug six holes in a row, including tree holes, stone holes, and a cellar dug by Ma Liu himself.

In total, they took out 4 bear skins, 9 deer skins, 8 roe deer skins, 2 musk deer skins, 6 dried deer antlers of varying sizes, 5 bear gallbladders, 5 deer penises, and a bag of musk, which weighed about 2 ounces. The rest were all small animal skins, such as flea skins and greyhound skins.

This is all of Ma Liu's assets, and now he has given it all to Xu Ning.

"I'm taking them all home?"

"Well, otherwise there's no use for me keeping them. Keep those five bear gallbladders for my two grandsons so they can buy clothes for the holidays. You can figure out the rest yourself."

Xu Ning laughed and said, "Alright then, I won't stand on ceremony."

Ma Liu waved his hand: "Why are you being so polite with me..."

(End of this chapter)