Chapter 116 Carrying a Fat Pig to Thank You

The next morning, Yue Feng opened his eyes as usual, put on his clothes, went to the thatched house to urinate, and then set up the big red eagle.

The big eagle was now completely relaxed, crouching on Yue Feng’s arm, with its feathers completely fluffy.

Yue Feng mounted the hawk and went out for a walk in the yard. In less than half an hour, several members of the team arrived at Yue’s house one after another.

After having breakfast together, the four brothers loaded their sleds and continued into the mountains to drag back the body of the blind bear that they had released into the mountains yesterday.

The place where we hunted the bear was about an hour’s walk from Xing’an Village. Including the way there and back, it would take less than a whole morning.

According to the normal script, after dragging the blind bear back, the brothers would have lunch early, then release a hawk outside their home in the afternoon to catch some chicks and rabbits and send them to the second canteen, and nothing would be delayed.

But here, Yue Feng and his three brothers were dragging a large sled into the mountains. They were still halfway back when a large group of people came into Xing’an Village beating drums and gongs.

Leading the way was a gong and drum team, followed by four sturdy men carrying a big fat pig with its front and rear hooves tied up. Behind them came the uncles and brothers of Lao Chen Pao’s family, Lao Chen’s two sons, his nephew, and all the adult males in the family. There were at least twenty people in the group.

Nowadays, no matter which family is getting married, it is not as grand as this. As soon as the team entered the village, the camp was immediately blown up. The villagers who heard the sound of gongs and drums immediately started to watch the fun and followed the team to Yue Feng’s house.

At this moment, at Yue Feng’s house, Yue Lei was leaning on the edge of the kang listening to the radio. He was startled by the sound of gongs and drums at the door and wondered what was going on.

Daughter-in-law Meng Yulan went out to see, then quickly turned around and went back into the house.

“Boss, hurry up and get ready to go out and greet the guests! Someone has come to visit Brother Chen from Fang’an Village, carrying a pig. Thank you, our son, for saving Brother Chen’s life!”

Hearing his wife’s words, Yue Lei could no longer stay still. He quickly changed into clothes suitable for meeting guests and walked out of the house on crutches.

The head of the Yue family came out. Chen Pao’s eldest son Chen Hongjun rushed to Yue Lei in one step. He pulled his younger brother and kowtowed to him three times without saying a word. Yue Lei was stunned.

“Uncle! Thank you Xiaofeng for saving my dad’s life! As for Xiaofeng, I have to thank him in person!”

“Good boy, get up quickly! My son and his friends went up the mountain to pull the bear, and they haven’t come back yet. Let your aunt go find him now!” Yue Lei helped Chen Hongjun up with his crutches, and immediately let the person who entered the house into the house.

These days, houses are small, and a family of twenty certainly can’t sit in plenty. Fortunately, Yue’s family built a greenhouse this year, so if there’s not enough room to sit in the house, staying in the greenhouse is much warmer than in the open air yard.

On the other side, the four Yue Feng brothers were pulling the sled back halfway when they saw Meng Yulan jogging towards them.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Yue Feng thought something had happened at home and looked nervous.

“Someone from the Chen family in Fang’an Village has come to our house, beating gongs and drums and carrying a fat pig to thank you for saving Chen Paotou’s life! Let Xiao Tao and the others pull the sled first, and you come back with me first!”

Yue Feng was stunned when he heard this. Carrying a fat pig to his house, this is a big deal! Even if ordinary people get married, they don’t have such a big deal!

“Oh! Okay, let’s go first!” Yue Feng responded, supporting his mother and rushing home.

Fortunately, Yue Feng’s family is a very respectful family in the alley. When they heard that there was a guest at home, Xiao Tao’s mother also came to help make arrangements. Later, Grandma Li from the neighboring house also came to help boil water. Even Yan Zi’s mother in the alley brought a stool from home.

Old Chen Pao and his two sons had been invited into the house by Yue Lei. They had known each other for many years, and now they had the added bonus of having saved each other’s lives, so the atmosphere in the house was quite good.

Half an hour later, Yue Feng and Meng Yulan rushed back home.

Seeing that the real boss had returned, Chen Hongjun pulled his younger brother Chen Hongliang, and the two brothers were about to kneel down to Yue Feng again.

Yue Feng quickly helped them up and said, “Brother Hongliang of the Red Army, if anyone goes up the mountain and encounters this kind of thing, they must not ignore it! I appreciate your kindness, but I won’t kneel down to show my respect!”

“No way! You saved my life, so it’s only natural for my son to kowtow to you!” Old Chen Pao said, regaining his full energy.

“Haven’t I already done it to my dad? I’m still young and not married yet. That’s how it is. Let’s stop being so stubborn!”

After much persuasion, the matter of kowtow was finally brought to light.

“Uncle Chen, are you feeling better now? Come to our house today, don’t leave at noon, we’ll provide you with food, and we can have a good chat together!” Yue Feng said very kindly, holding Old Chen Pao’s hand.

“That won’t do. We have more than twenty people here! Wouldn’t that be a burden on your family?” Old Chen Pao immediately shook his head when he heard that Yue Feng would provide meals.

In this era, ordinary families are not rich. They have to provide meals for more than 20 people. Even if it is just home-cooked meals, they have to be prepared well in advance. Now it is almost nine o’clock, there is no time.

Even if they make it in time, entertaining more than 20 people is not a small amount of money, and ordinary families cannot afford it.

Yue Feng smiled and patted the brand new 56 semi beside him: “What burden is it? With this thing in our hands, eating a meal can be considered a burden!
Our Yue family came here from Guandong. We have relatives on my grandmother’s side, about a hundred kilometers away, but we don’t have any relatives in the village. From now on, we will treat each other as relatives. You are my uncle, and Hongjun and Hongliang are my brothers!”

Nothing is more convincing than 56. Old Chen Pao is an expert and knows what this 56 means. The Yue family used to farm all year round and were non-professional hunters who went up the mountain in winter. How could they afford a 56?

However, now is not the time to dwell on this. Old Chen Pao is a kind-hearted man with a very good family tradition. His children are also the kind of people who know how to behave and are grateful. Now that Yue Feng says he wants to become a relative of the Chen family, this statement, in the context of that era, represents a lot of sincerity, which means the other party’s extreme recognition and goodwill.

“Okay, then we won’t leave at noon today! Hongjun, Hongliang, you go out and prepare to kill the fat pig. We’ll have the pig-killing meal at Xiaofeng’s house at noon!” Old Chen Pao immediately agreed and directed his son to prepare to kill the pig.

When Yue Feng heard the old man asking his son to kill a pig, he immediately went up to the old man and whispered a few words. Then he took Lao Chen Pao’s hand and came to the place where the wild boar was buried at the foot of the south wall of the yard.

When he learned that six pigs were caught in one trip yesterday, Lao Chen Pao’s admiration for Yue Feng, the young hunter, was elevated to a new level.

Lao Chen Pao has been hunting in the mountains all his life but has never achieved such a record. You have to know that this is not something that can be achieved simply by having a good gun, but also requires suitable terrain, accurate shooting, familiarity with the habits of wild boars, and the right time, place and people. None of these can be missing.

Now, Old Chen Pao felt relieved. There were five wild boars buried in the snow in the yard, and they couldn’t even afford to feed them!

After it was finalized that Yue’s family would provide lunch at noon, almost half of the neighbors in the alley were mobilized.

Some boiled water, some set up stoves, and brought in the frozen skinned sows to be thawed and skinned early in the morning. They hung them on the racks and cut them up. The women in charge of cooking quickly started to process the food in the vegetable cellar. Then it was Yue Feng’s mother Meng Yulan, who pushed her bicycle to the village store. When she came back, the basket on the back seat was half full of canned luncheon meat, canned yellow croaker, canned hawthorn, peanuts, bottled liquor, cakes, peanuts and melon seeds.

With money in his pocket, he did things with a sense of generosity. This thank-you gift turned into a banquet hosted by Yue Feng’s family.

It was less than eleven o’clock, which made the villagers even more excited.

Xiao Tao and the Zhang brothers actually used a sled to drag a blind bear weighing more than 300 kilograms back to Yue Feng’s home.

Every year, villagers go into the mountains to hunt blind bears, but there are few skilled hunters in Xing’an Village, and bears are not very common. The most recent blind bear hunted in the village was two years ago, when the village party secretary Wang Jianguo took the village militia hunters to the foot of the mountain to hunt it down during the autumn harvest.

I didn’t expect the second kid from the Yue family to be so capable that he could even beat back the blind bear!
This bear is full of treasures. In addition to the bear gall, bear paws and nose ridges, the bear skin is also a good thing. Bear meat and bear oil are both rare items.

Although these things may not necessarily be sold at a high price, even if you cut down two pounds of bear meat and take the oil home, it is a rare delicacy. The oil cakes made with bear oil will still be soft even if they are left outside at minus 20 or 30 degrees Celsius for a night. It is a source of high-quality animal fat.

The wild boar meat version of the pig-killing dish was almost ready. Yue Feng had spent half the night cooking bear paws, which were also served at the banquet. It would definitely be too late to make them on the spot, but they happened to be ready when the Chen family came to Yue Feng’s house to express their gratitude.

As it was getting close to dinner time, Yue Feng called the village secretary Wang Jianguo over and treated the guests with great respect.

Upon hearing that his nephew had saved someone, the whole family came to Yue Feng’s home to thank him for saving their life. As the village secretary, Wang Jianguo felt proud and agreed without hesitation to go to Yue’s house to help entertain the guests.

We didn’t have time to sit for lunch until half past twelve. There was no room to sit on the east and west kangs, so we had to sit at another table in the kitchen.

There were three tables and more than twenty people. This really gave us a glimpse into the wealth of the Yue Feng family.

Spare ribs, wild boar elbows, pork belly, pheasant, wild rabbit, bear paws…

Meat, all kinds of meat, meat cooked in various ways!

Anyway, there are not many vegetables, and the main feature is that it is high in calories and fat.

The standard is not as varied as the one prepared on August 15th, but there is plenty of meat and white flour buns!
How could an ordinary family dare to do this? Even during the Chinese New Year, they cannot get such treatment. The meal was so delicious that both the host and the guests were delighted.

Yue Lei also made an exception and drank a lot of wine today. When the chairman was in the audience, Yue Feng and Wang Jianguo were the main drinking companions. The meal made everyone happy.

After we had eaten and drunk our fill, the table was cleared and replaced with tea and melon seeds. We drank jasmine tea from the large coarse porcelain bowls used for rice, which was a scene in that special era. After all, there weren’t so many tea sets!

After eating and drinking some tea, Wang Jianguo had something else to do, so he said goodbye and left early.

After drinking too much tea, he went to the toilet frequently. Yue Feng had been serving him at the table. He could not hold it any longer. Seeing Uncle Chen going to relieve himself, Yue Feng also got off the kang and went to the toilet.

After peeing, on his way back to the house, Yue Feng noticed that Uncle Chen had been looking at the big eagle tied to Yue Feng’s greenhouse.

“What’s the matter, uncle? Do you like this big eagle?” Yue Feng asked with a smile.

“This eagle is not easy to train. More than ten years ago, a falconer came to the riverside. I treated him to several drinks and wanted to learn this skill from him, but he refused to teach me! Is this the young falconer from that year? He looks really majestic!”

Uncle Chen carefully reached out his hand and touched the big red eagle with an iron back. The eagle was not afraid of people and allowed the old man to touch it.

“Haha, this falcon training technique is passed down from our ancestors. If you like it, I can help you train one to catch rabbits!”

“This eagle that catches rabbits is a big animal. Let’s talk about it later!” Chen Pao waved his hand and went into the house.

Looking at the old man’s performance, how could Yue Feng not know what he was thinking? He definitely liked him 100%, but out of consideration for his relationship and because he thought the eagle was precious, he was reluctant to speak up when he first came to Yue Feng’s house.

More than an hour later, when Yue Feng went to the toilet for the second time, Chen Hongjun, who had drunk a lot of wine and had a red face, followed Yue Feng out.

“Brother, I want to ask you for a favor!” Just as he was about to go out after peeing, Chen Hongjun suddenly put his hand on Yue Feng’s shoulder and spoke abruptly.

“What’s wrong, Red Army brother!”

“My dad got into trouble this time when he went up the mountain. It’s really dangerous! My brother and I broke out in cold sweats after hearing this! Can you help me think of a way to stop my dad from going into the mountains to hunt again?”

“Uh, this… Uncle Chen is already that old, and he doesn’t listen to me!”

After listening to Chen Hongjun’s words, Yue Feng understood the idea of ​​being a child, but he couldn’t be the master of Old Chen.

“Well, I have an idea, listen to it…”

The more Yue Feng listened, the brighter his eyes became. Chen Hongjun used a trick to cut off the source of his father’s trouble and urged Yue Feng to ask for Uncle Chen’s dog.

Without the dog, I have to think twice before going up the mountain. After all, my legs and feet are much weaker as I get older.

“Okay, I’ll try? But it’s not appropriate to open my mouth at this critical moment today…” Yue Feng said after thinking for a while.

“Well, in a few days, you can come to my house to get acquainted with me, and I will treat you to a meal! Then you can say this…”

Chen Hongjun and Yue Feng whispered to each other beside the thatched cottage and soon decided on a general plan.

Yue Feng had long coveted the hunting dog in Chen Pao’s hands, and he would definitely not let go of such an opportunity. Not to mention not asking for money, even if word got out that the dog was for sale, Yue Feng would rather pay the highest price to get the dog.

However, he suddenly thought of the look that Uncle Chen had given to Daying from the Yuefeng family just now, and immediately came up with a better idea than simply cutting off the source of the problem.

“Brother Hongjun, I have a better way. Would you like to hear it?”

(End of this chapter)