The Beginning of a Courtyard House: Sixty Years of Internal Strength

Li Jianguo thought to himself, as long as she's pretty enough, even a girl from the countryside would do. She's obedient and knows how to serve people. Girls from Beijing have big tempers, and we might end up fighting.

When the time comes, the dragon will wag its tail, colorful flags will flutter, and my wife won't make a fuss. That would be wonderful.

After finishing his meal, Li Jianguo went to the village committee, set up a table, and began packing up his things.

Most of them are eggs. It's too cold in winter, and most chickens don't lay eggs, so there are far fewer eggs than in summer.

There were some dried goods, wild mushrooms, etc., all dried in the summer, and I also received a pheasant.

There are no wild boars or anything like that mentioned in the book from my previous life. They're hard to hunt, especially in winter. They're not as easy to hunt as pheasants or rabbits.

The villagers are still very poor. At most, they can sell one or two roosters, and the hens are kept to lay eggs.

After collecting his belongings, Li Jianguo didn't visit Sijiucheng many times. He usually stayed at his grandfather's house for a few days, then went to other villages to collect his things before finally carrying his load back to Sijiucheng.

This time, Li Jianguo wasn't in a hurry, but he didn't plan to go to the neighboring village. With his current skills, he planned to go into the mountains.

Moreover, with his current internal strength, he also planned to go into the mountains to see if he could hunt some wild boars or something. With his current strength, he could kill a wild boar with a single slap.

The main reason is that if he can hunt wild boars, he can have a source of income and sell them directly to the steel mill.

The mission itself wasn't a problem. Aside from the space's resources, he had plenty of gold bars; a little fiddling with them and buying some more at Pigeon Market would be enough for his mission. The main issue was explaining the legitimate source of his money, since there were still many spies in this era.

Li Jianguo also planned to go to the market to see if he could buy more seeds, saplings, and bran for planting and feeding chickens.

Li Jianguo thought about the large livestock, cattle and sheep, and decided not to buy them for the time being, since the crops he planted hadn't even grown yet. He simply couldn't afford to raise cattle and sheep, there was no pasture, and he would have to buy a lot of bran, which would be too much trouble.

The next day, Li Jianguo began inspecting the Hanyang rifles in his home. At that time, gun control was not strict, and many families had old-fashioned guns or bird guns.

Nowadays, it's common to live off the land or water. Lijiazhuang is located near the intersection of the North China Plain and the Yanshan Mountains.

To the southeast of the village lies Tiger Valley Mountain, where villagers go hunting during their off-season.

It's just after the Spring Festival, and the period before spring plowing is the off-season for farming, so some villagers still go up the mountain to hunt.

"Grandpa, I want to go up the mountain. I'll see if I can catch any rabbits or pheasants," Li Jianguo said, fiddling with his gun.

"Little Li, it's too dangerous to go up the mountain. You already have a job in the city. Why don't you go to the neighboring village to collect some things? Gouzi's nephew was gored to death by a wild boar just before the end of the year," Grandpa said with a worried expression.

"Don't worry, I've already completed my task at the steel rolling mill. I won't go any further; I'll just stay on the periphery."

Grandpa thought about it and agreed. Being on the edge of the mountains, it was relatively safe as long as they didn't venture deep into the mountains. "Alright, then take plenty of bullets. The rifling on this Hanyang rifle is almost worn down; it's not accurate. If you encounter a wild boar, run up a tree as fast as you can, understand?"

"Okay, Grandpa, I understand."

After Li Jianguo finished speaking, he slung his gun over his shoulder, immediately attached a bullet belt, tied a rope around it, and slowly walked into the mountains with me.

At first, he didn't dare to use his lightness skill. He walked until he reached a dense forest and observed that no one was around.

He used his lightness skill to plunge directly into the mountains, not daring to fly among the treetops for fear of being seen and shot down. He hadn't yet tested whether he could dodge bullets.

The weather in January was still quite cold, with heavy snow blocking the mountains. Although it should be immune to heat and cold now, people were still shivering from the cold. Li Jianguo was also very puzzled, thinking that it was still not strong enough.

He channeled his inner strength to protect himself, wrapped his clothes tighter, and continued running into the deep mountains.

He went straight into the depths of the mountains. Now he doesn't even need a gun; if he encounters chickens, rabbits, or anything like that, he just chases after them, kills them with a single blow, and throws them into his spatial storage.

This thing is incredibly prolific. If you were to raise it, there wouldn't be enough space to feed it all.

After searching for a while, we found a small herd of wild boars, consisting of two large and three small ones, a total of five wild boars.

Li Jianguo chased after it in a few steps, and this time he killed four of them. He planned to use a gun on the third, since it would be difficult to explain if there were no external injuries by the time they reached the steel mill. Almost no one can kill a wild boar with their bare hands.

He immediately pointed the gun at the wild boar's head and fired a shot. Li Jianguo wasn't in a hurry; after storing the five wild boars in his spatial storage, he fired a few more shots before heading back.

As they neared the edge of the mountains, Li Jianguo released the wild boar, which weighed about 100 pounds. He then tied it up with a rope, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and headed back into the village. The villagers were all envious when they saw the wild boar on Li Jianguo's shoulder.

"Grandpa and Grandma, look what I got!" Li Jianguo shouted excitedly as soon as he reached the door.

Hearing the commotion outside, Grandpa and Grandma came out. "You're quite something, kid. You actually managed to kill such a big wild boar!" Grandpa's eyes lit up as he helped unload the boar.

They carried it straight into the kitchen and started breaking it down. Watching Grandpa's skillful dismantling technique, I couldn't help but admire him.

According to Li Jianguo's memory, his grandparents' hometown was also quite poor. He originally wanted to bring most of the items back with him, but decided against it and decided to leave most of them in their hometown this time.

There's actually quite a bit of meat left. A 100-pound pig, when completely butchered, only yields about 45 pounds of clean meat; the rest is offal and other miscellaneous stuff.

Li Jianguo calculated based on the steel rolling mill's recycling price.

Now it's only 2000 yuan per jin (500g), which is equivalent to 2 mao (0.2 yuan) in the second set of RMB: Is it really that cheap? If you take away 30 jin of meat, it won't sell for much money.

One pound of meat costs two mao (0.2 yuan), so 10 pounds of meat would cost two yuan. Therefore, 30 pounds of meat would cost 6 yuan. That is, 60,000 yuan.

In this day and age, with so little money to be made, how can things be so cheap? Wild boar meat is definitely not as good as domestic pig meat.

Based on my past memories, the best quality pork belly cost only 3.6 cents per pound, which was really cheap.

Chicken was more expensive than pork in those days, especially old hens that could lay eggs. No wonder an old hen in the original drama was worth two yuan.

The next day, Li Jianguo didn't leave either, but planned to borrow his uncle's donkey cart to go to the market.

"Jianguo, what are you going to buy at the market?" Grandpa asked.

"Sigh, not really buying anything, just some vegetable seeds for the neighbors. Does Grandpa need anything?" Li Jianguo casually made up an excuse.

"There's nothing I need to buy, you can go ahead."

Li Jianguo borrowed a donkey cart and it took him more than an hour to reach the market.