Hunting 81: Gathering Goods in the Mountains, I Spoil My Ex-Wife to the Extreme

Seeing Li Yunshan stand up for her, Lin Xiulan felt a warmth in her heart.

Since fleeing famine and arriving in Guapigou Village, and marrying into Li Yunshan's family, the women in the village often say that she is a cheap wife that Li Yunshan picked up. Because she gave birth to a daughter, Li Yunshan doesn't like her and often bullies her. The women don't take her seriously at all.

"Xiulan, which fabric have you taken a fancy to?" Li Yunshan asked.

Lin Xiulan looked at the fabrics on the counter but felt at a loss. This fabric looked nice, and that fabric looked good too. She was having a real problem with making a choice.

But seeing her unsure of what to do, Li Yunshan felt extremely guilty.

Lin Xiulan, such a beautiful girl, has to do housework, work in the fields to earn work points, and bear his children since she got together with him. But he has never shown her any care. He is even clueless about how to choose a piece of cloth.

I haven't shown her enough care.

Thinking of this, Li Yunshan pointed to several fabrics on the counter: "Salesperson, give me five feet of each of these fabrics."

"Yunshan, this is too much!"

Seeing that Li Yunshan wanted to buy so much fabric all at once, Lin Xiulan quickly said that she was mainly worried about the money.

Although the reform and opening up has been implemented, and cloth coupons are no longer required to buy fabric in their area, a foot of fabric is still expensive. A foot of artificial cotton costs 50 cents, and Li Yunshan needs five feet of fabric for several of his designs, which will cost him more than ten yuan.

If you buy polyester twill or navy wool fabric, it will be even more expensive, costing two yuan per foot.

"Luckily, he bought cotton cloth."

Lin Xiulan felt somewhat relieved.

"Is it too much? No, not at all. A beautiful woman like my wife deserves to have more beautiful clothes made for her so she can dress up nicely."

Li Yunshan knew that Lin Xiulan was reluctant to spend money, after all, she had come from a life of hardship. But thinking of the debt he owed her in his previous life, Li Yunshan felt that it was worth spending any amount of money.

It means he doesn't earn enough money, otherwise he could buy Lin Xiulan navy wool fabric.

"Comrade, please take your fabric." The sales clerk took the money, packed up several fabrics, and handed them to Li Yunshan.

Some of the young women and wives who came to the market looked at Lin Xiulan with envy.

Don't be fooled by the patches on her clothes; when it comes to buying her things, her husband is incredibly generous.

Five or six different colors of fabric, five feet of each.

These words are so inspiring.

Lin Xiulan watched as Li Yunshan took the fabric from the sales clerk. Although she couldn't help but complain a few times about him wasting money, she felt a warmth in her heart. This was the first time Li Yunshan had bought fabric for her, and he was so willing to spend money.

After leaving the fabric counter, Li Yunshan stuffed a dozen or so loose coins into Lin Xiulan's hand: "Don't just look and not buy anything. Take these coins and buy whatever you want. I won't be happy if you don't spend all this money."

Although he only had a little over three hundred yuan in his pocket, far from being a "ten-thousand-yuan household," Li Yunshan spoke with the air of someone who was a "ten-thousand-yuan household" when he handed over the money.

"I don't want it. I haven't even spent the money you gave me the other day."

Lin Xiulan quickly stuffed the money back into Li Yunshan's hand.

"Take it and spend it. You can't keep this money if you don't spend it. It won't have any offspring." Li Yunshan stuffed the money back into Lin Xiulan's hand.

Lin Xiulan clutched the money, took a deep breath, and tried her best to control her emotions.

Li Yunshan's recent sudden change was something she had always dreamed of, but when the day actually came, she felt somewhat unaccustomed to it.

Li Yunshan is being too good to her now, giving her money and buying her fabric for new clothes; everything is so wonderful it's like a dream.

She feared that this dream would come too quickly, and leave too quickly, so quickly that it would all be over before she could finish the dream.

"Let's go check out the other counters."

Li Yunshan held the newly bought fabric in one hand and Dou Dou in the other.

Clutching the money, Lin Xiulan followed closely behind Li Yunshan, her eyes sweeping over each counter in the supply and marketing cooperative as she thought about what she needed to buy: "Needles and thread for the house, salt, soy sauce, oh right, toothpaste and a toothbrush... Oh, and a kettle too, in the dead of winter, it'll be convenient to have a hot water drink at night..."

Half an hour later, Lin Xiulan bought a bunch of needles, thread, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and kettles.

Seeing that Lin Xiulan only bought some daily necessities for the household, Li Yunshan couldn't help but think that Lin Xiulan was really thrifty and knew how to save money for him. The things she bought were all daily necessities for the household, and she didn't buy anything for herself.

He bought two boxes of face cream and handed them to Lin Xiulan: "It's freezing cold. Apply some face cream to your face every day to prevent your skin from getting frostbite and cracking."

Lin Xiulan carefully tucked the face cream into the inside pocket of her coat, then asked, "By the way, did you go look at bicycles earlier?"

"Yes, I'm planning to buy a bicycle."

"Why buy a bicycle? It's only five or six miles from the village to the commune, and it only takes an hour to walk there."

Lin Xiulan frowned, worried that Li Yunshan had acted on impulse and added items to the house.

"When we were out walking around just now, we saw someone selling wild boar meat. The wild boar meat we sold in the village last time only sold for 70 cents a pound, and quite a few people thought it was too expensive. But the wild boar meat at that pork stall just now sold for 80 cents a pound."

"I was thinking, if I bought a bicycle, I could take any wild boar or other game I hunted to town and sell it for a higher price; if I took it to the county seat, do you think I'd get an even higher price?"

Li Yunshan spoke of his inner thoughts.

"A pound of wild boar meat can sell for an extra ten cents, ten pounds is a dollar, a hundred pounds is ten dollars... Last time we sold a wild boar that weighed almost two hundred pounds, and we lost more than ten dollars..."

Lin Xiulan counted on her fingers, and the more she counted, the more she felt she had to buy this bicycle.

"But... bicycles are too expensive, over a hundred yuan, and you need bicycle tickets or industrial coupons, which we don't have at all!"

"Yes, we don't have industrial coupons or bicycle tickets, so we need to find a way to get them!"

Nowadays, you still need coupons or industrial vouchers to buy big-ticket items such as bicycles and televisions.

Bicycle tickets were very rare, and industrial coupons were also scarce. They were mainly for employees of state-owned enterprises such as factories, government agencies, and supply and marketing cooperatives. You could get one industrial coupon for 20 yuan of salary, and two for 40 yuan of salary. Many employees of state-owned enterprises would save the industrial coupons they received for emergencies, and very few of them were circulated outside.

Of course, the fact that fewer industrial vouchers flow out doesn't mean there aren't any; it just means the cost of trading them is higher.

If Li Yunshan had enough industrial coupons or bicycle tickets, he would have bought the only old bicycle in the supply and marketing cooperative just now.

"Let's go back first. I'll figure out how to buy a bicycle myself."

After saying that, Li Yunshan and Lin Xiulan walked out of the supply and marketing cooperative.

However, they hadn't gone far when they heard someone call out behind them, "Xiulan!"

Li Yunshan turned his head and saw that it was Gao Hongmei and Su Lihua, who were running from the direction of the commune's fertilizer station, each carrying a wicker basket on their backs.

"Hongmei, Lihua".

Li Yunshan stopped and greeted him with a smile.

Unfortunately, Gao Hongmei and Su Lihua completely ignored him, making him feel like he had made a fool of himself.

At this moment, Gao Hongmei and Su Lihua's eyes fell on the net bag that Lin Xiulan was carrying. When they saw that it contained needles and thread, toothpaste, toothbrushes, towels, and even two boxes of face cream, their eyes lit up.

"Li Yunshan, you're really generous! You even bought me face cream. When I was with you, why didn't you ever buy me a box?"

Given Gao Hongmei's fiery personality and her entanglement with Li Yunshan, she couldn't help but provoke him every time she saw him.

Li Yunshan was also troubled, but he still said with a smile, "I used to mess around and didn't have any money in my pocket. Now I have money. Wait a minute, I'll buy you two boxes too."

With that, Li Yunshan ran off in a flash.

"Eldest sister, second sister."

"Xiulan, I heard that Li Yunshan killed a red deer and a three-headed wolf yesterday?"

As soon as Li Yunshan left, Gao Hongmei started chatting with Lin Xiulan.

"Um."

Lin Xiulan nodded, and then recounted exactly what she had heard from Li Yunshan.

"That bastard, how did he get so lucky? The hunters in our village are lucky if they can even catch a roe deer when they go into the mountains, and he actually managed to catch a red deer. And those wolves aren't easy to mess with either, does he have the guts of a bear and a leopard, daring to shoot at a wolf?"

Gao Hongmei said in surprise.

Although she had never hunted before, she knew that encountering wolves while hunting was a very dangerous thing.

Especially now, in the dead of winter, some of the animals in the mountains have already hibernated, and with the food source reduced, the wolves are probably already starving.

According to Lin Xiulan, Li Yunshan was not afraid of the hungry wolves. Instead, after shooting down a deer with one shot, he fired three more shots, taking down the three wolves.

Before, she thought Li Yunshan killing a wild boar was just luck, a stroke of good fortune, but now...

Is this the same Li Yunshan she knows, with this kind of courage?

"By the way, Xiulan, has Li Yunshan been treating you well these past few days?"

At this moment, Su Lihua, who had been aloof and silent all along, suddenly spoke up and asked.

"It's alright. After selling the venison and wolf meat yesterday, he even bought White Rabbit candy for Dou Dou. This morning, he insisted on bringing me to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy fabric," Lin Xiulan said truthfully.

Su Lihua was quite surprised that Li Yunshan actually bought White Rabbit milk candy for Dou Dou? Didn't he always look down on Dou Dou for being a little girl?

How could he have really changed his personality in just a few days?

She couldn't help but recall the words Li Yunshan had said a few days earlier, when she and Gao Hongmei broke into Li Yunshan's house to rescue Lin Xiulan, as if Li Yunshan had suddenly had a breakthrough.

Is he serious?

Moreover, upon hearing that Li Yunshan had even bought fabric for Lin Xiulan to make new clothes, Su Lihua, who was usually aloof, felt a pang of jealousy.

That bastard Li Yunshan, when we were together, never thought of buying fabric and making new clothes for others.