1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 481 Preventing Hanging
He was like an arrow, following the road outside the village and heading straight into the village.

Seeing an old farmer swinging a hoe in the field not far away with his head down, Liang Ziqiang stopped and asked him:
"Old man, I want to ask you, where do Tong Shichai and Tong Wen'an live in your village?"

"Their house? It's a little far away, but still easy to find!"

The old man paused his hoe, raised his head, and pointed in the direction of the village:

"See that place where the bend is? There's a little hill with a lot of trees and a tiled roof showing on top. If you keep turning that corner, the red brick house you see is his. It's better than any other house in the village anyway!"

"Red brick house?"

Liang Ziqiang grumbled. He didn't expect that Tong Wen'an's family was living in a pretty good place now. While most of the houses in the village were made of adobe and stone, his family lived in a red brick house.

"Yes, the red brick house has been built for two or three years. Have you seen those fish ponds on the roadside? They are the ponds where Tong Wen'an raises groupers. The young man is not very old, but he is still smart. In the past, his groupers sold well!"

"Grouper? Do many villages in Jinhao Town raise grouper?"

"Where do they come from? Anyway, as far as I know, the only family in Jinhao Town that raises grouper is Haoliu Village and Tong Wen'an's family. Two years ago, people from the fishery department came to visit and encouraged grouper farming!"

Liang Ziqiang was slightly stunned when he heard this.

There is a grouper farmer in Jinhao Town, and he knew about this a long time ago.

It was first mentioned by Station Chief Qi from the County Fisheries Department when he came to visit his shrimp pond in Changwang Village. He said that he had just visited the grouper farm in Jinhao Town the day before.

Later, Liang Ziqiang heard from Du Ziteng that some people from Jinhao Town came to their Yuehai Restaurant to sell farmed grouper. Unfortunately, the taste was not as good as the wild ones. Du Ziteng refused after trying it, and he didn't want it even if it was cheap.

Later, I heard from Wei Pan that farmers in Jinhao Town raise grouper in village ponds, and the taste is far inferior to Liang Ziqiang's products. They are now hardly selling, and he is unwilling to buy them even when they are sold to him.

But the problem is that these people only talked about "grouper farmers in Jinhao Town" in general terms, none of them mentioned Haoliu Village, and no one mentioned the name of the farmer.

The person who had appeared in my conversations so many times turned out to be the person I had been trying so hard to find, Qiu Dongzhi's child!
How could he have imagined this!

If you think about it carefully, in fact, at the beginning, the pond grouper from Jinhao Town would still have a market as long as the price was lower. But later, as the grouper farmed by Liang Ziqiang continued to be put on the market, the contrast was too obvious and the grouper from Jinhao Town was outstripped, making the market less and less interested in the grouper from Jinhao Town.

Thinking about it this way, Liang Ziqiang felt that he had somewhat impacted the grouper market in Haoliu Village.

Now that he found out that the breeder was Qiu Dongzhi's son, things were different. In a flash, he had decided to give Tong Wen'an some help in grouper breeding in the future.

If nothing else, it can be considered a way of repaying Lao Qiu.

"Thanks, old man!"

After getting the direction, Liang Ziqiang immediately strode towards the tile roof.

After turning the corner, the red brick house that was blocked by the hill appeared before our eyes.

The house is two-story, about as tall as Liang Ziqiang's residence in Juzipo, with a gray-black tile roof.

There were indeed quite a few trees near the house, including kumquat trees and carambola trees, and further away were overgrown weeds.

Liang Ziqiang walked towards the red brick house anxiously. What he wanted to find out most at this moment was whether Tong Wenan was still at home.

Before I even got close to the house, I heard a quarrel coming from the direction of the house. Listening carefully, it was not the main house, but the foot house. "Dad, put down the rope first! If anything happens to you, what's the point of me eating and drinking well in the city and enjoying a good life every day?!" A young man's voice.

"Why do you care about me? You'll have everything you want when you get there. Why do you still care about the life and death of a poor country boy like me? Just pretend that I never took care of you or raised you for more than 20 years!"

This is the voice of an elderly man.

Liang Ziqiang was stunned for a moment. Why did he mention the rope again? What was he doing?

Out of curiosity, he did not immediately run to the door to look for someone, but instead looked around, trying to find a place where he could barely hide.

From these simple conversations, we can tell that Tong Wen'an has not yet gone into the city. This is good, it is a blessing in disguise.

In this case, Liang Ziqiang is not in a hurry to show up to stop it. He can observe the situation secretly first, and then think about how to start the conversation and what is the most appropriate way to prevent Tong Wen'an from going to the city based on the situation.

He quickly looked around. Next to the hut were several carambola trees. The carambola trees were far from bearing fruit this month, and the branches were full of carambola flowers, pale purple, small clusters of them.

Under the carambola tree, there is a haystack and two rows of red bricks stacked together. They are probably the leftovers from building this brick house. They are stacked there like two low walls.

This is a good hiding place. Liang Ziqiang quickly tiptoed to the back of the red brick and squatted down.

The bricks were simply stacked together, leaving gaps, and some of the bricks were broken, leaving holes.

Liang Ziqiang squatted behind a low wall made of stacked red bricks, which completely blocked his figure, but he could see the situation in the foot house not far away through the holes between the red bricks.

The hut itself had wooden windows, and there was no glass in them. From Liang Ziqiang's angle, he could see the two people in the hut at a glance.

It could actually be considered a woodshed, as there were some chopped dry firewood in the room. There were two people inside, one old and one young. The old one looked to be in his fifties, with only half of his left ear sticking out. They were the ones that Old Lady Qin had mentioned who had bought the baby in Niujiao Village.

The younger one should be about the same age as Liang Ziqiang himself, but not as tall as Liang Ziqiang. He should be considered of medium height.

Needless to say, these two people are Tong Shichai and Tong Wen'an.

But what surprised Liang Ziqiang was that a hemp rope was actually hanging on the beam of the woodshed, hanging downwards and forming a loop.

Tong Shichai was holding the noose, apparently trying to hang himself, while Tong Wen'an on the side was trying to pull him out in a hurry, apparently trying to stop him from hanging himself.

Combining it with the conversation he heard earlier, Liang Ziqiang thought about it.

Could it be that Tong Shichai, out of concern for his adopted son's future, was willing to hang himself to persuade Tong Wen'an to go to the Ruan family and live with Ruan Jingcheng from then on?

But Tong Wen'an would rather stay with his adoptive father and live a relatively ordinary life, and refuses to leave until this point?

Things have evolved to this point, and there is a bit of deep affection between father and son. Although Liang Ziqiang didn't like Tong Shichai buying someone else's child, he had raised Tong Wen'an to adulthood with great hardship. The situation between the father and son now showed that their affection was no less than that of any biological father and son.

Liang Ziqiang decided not to get up yet and just wait and see for a while to see what result the father and son would come up with after persuading each other. Then, based on the information he had obtained from squatting here, he would be able to persuade them more effectively when he came out again.

He did not breathe a word, but continued to listen and wait quietly. However, what happened next was not quite what he had imagined...

(End of this chapter)