As Li Xiangdong entered the house, he overheard his younger brother and fifth sister lamenting that they wished they had a pig.

"You two take good care of this pig first. Once you're able to take care of the piglets on your own, you can each raise your own pig—no, one pig for each of you!"

"Second brother, really? Does that mean all the fattened pork will belong to me?" Li Jiabao's face flushed with excitement. He probably immediately imagined the grand scene of him eating all the pork on the table by himself.

That's a life only emperors could live!

"Don't listen to your second brother's coaxing. These days, only ten families are allowed to raise one pig. How could we possibly each raise one?" Li Ping calmed down after his initial excitement and poured cold water on his excited younger brother.

"Ah! Second brother lied to me!" Li Jiabao said with a look of disappointment. "Second brother, your nose will grow longer than a carrot."

Li Xiangdong had told him the story of Pinocchio, threatening him not to lie, or his nose would grow long.

snort!

Second Brother's nose will also grow longer.

"I'm not kidding you, you two should learn how to cook pig feed! But let me make this clear beforehand, if I let you raise them, you can't complain about the hardship or give up halfway through!"

"That's definitely not the case!"

"I need to fatten up the pig properly so that I can enjoy the pork for a whole year after it's slaughtered."

Li Jiabao and Li Ping soon regretted their confident words. They wished they hadn't spoken so harshly to their second brother. Now they wanted to take it back, but it would be too embarrassing.

Zhao Sufang chuckled inwardly as she listened to her three children's whimsical ideas. Xiang Dong was always good at coaxing these little ones, even offering each of them a pig! If the higher-ups allowed each family to raise one pig, she would be overjoyed.

"Alright, stop joking around. Who's going to feed the pigs?"

The pig feed was steaming hot, filling a large basin.

"Mom, next time put it in a bucket, and I'll carry it with me. This basin is so big, if even a little bit spills, it's easy to get burned."

"Your dad took the bucket to fetch water. You can push the cart over there!"

Zhao Sufang put a basin of pig feed on a small cart, and Li Xiangdong and his two siblings pushed it together to the pigsty of Lijiapo Brigade.

Lijiapo Brigade has a total of 120 households. In accordance with the rule of raising one pig for every ten households, they raised a total of 12 pigs. Each pig was raised for one year. If they reached the standard of 150 jin set by the slaughterhouse, they could be delivered to the slaughterhouse to sell for money.

The pigs were sold to the slaughterhouse at a price of 30 cents per pound. However, instead of giving the commune members 45 yuan, the slaughterhouse gave them "50 cents for buying and 50 cents for keeping meat coupons," which amounted to 22.5 yuan and 75 pounds of meat coupons. The commune members then used the meat coupons to buy meat at the slaughterhouse.

If you sell a pig you raised yourself for 30 cents a pound, you have to buy it back for 80 cents a pound. Where did the 50 cents difference go?

After a year of hard work, ordinary people don't have much money left to buy meat.

If this continues, who will remain motivated?

Since we can't get meat even if we raise pigs properly, why bother?

Isn't this like a blind man lighting a lamp—a complete waste of time and energy?

This is the most basic thought of ordinary people.

People like Zhao Sufang, who put in so much effort to raise the collective's pigs as if they were their own, are extremely rare. In Aunt Niu's words, she is one of a kind.

Because so many people thought this way, some people had bad ideas. They thought, "We go through all the trouble of raising pigs, but we can only eat a few bites of meat. So let's raise them to death. The dead piglets don't have to be handed over. At most, we'll get a few words of criticism from the brigade leader. If more piglets die, everyone can eat piglet meat earlier."

This idea didn't need to be spoken aloud; everyone understood it with just a glance. Li Jin, seeing the piglets dying one after another in the village and facing the constant questioning from Hu Shusong, the commune leader, was so anxious that his hair turned white. Finally, he came up with a solution: he dug pigpens next to the brigade's livestock shed, with each pig in its own pen, and had the caretakers watch over them. If anyone deliberately killed a piglet, it would be considered a crime of sabotaging production, an attempt to undermine socialism, and they would be subject to criticism and struggle sessions. This finally stopped the evil trend of killing piglets.

Now, people don't want to do anything to kill the piglets anymore, but they also don't feed them properly. Anyway, how they grow up isn't really their responsibility; the brigade will cover for everyone!

Li Xiangdong poured the pig feed into the trough of the pigs he had contracted, and then threw a large bundle of leaves he had broken off from the road into the pigpen.

The pig smelled the aroma of the pig feed, first staggered over to the trough and sniffed it, then went to the leaves and began to slurp them up.

The pigs around, smelling the pig feed, all started squealing loudly.

"Second Brother, look, Aunt Niu's family fed the pigs yesterday, but she definitely didn't. The pig feed bowls are all licked clean by the pigs, and there's not even any clean water in the trough." Li Ping pointed to the trough and showed it to Li Xiangdong.

"That lazy woman!" Li Jiabao said angrily, as this indirectly prevented him from eating meat.

"Second brother, second brother, look at the pigs that the Feng family feeds, and the pigs that our grandmother's family feeds, their tails are all rotten."

Li Ping pointed to a skinny pig on the far side, making his second brother laugh at him.

Li Xiangdong frowned as he looked at the twelve obviously malnourished pigs. The fattest one weighed thirty or forty pounds, while the thinnest one weighed less than twenty pounds!

This doesn't look like a pig that's been raised for half a year at all!

"We need to have a serious talk with Dad about this!"

As the group was discussing this, they suddenly heard a girl's faint cry for help coming from the cowshed behind them!

At this time of day in the afternoon, before everyone has finished work, no one would come to the cowshed or pigsty, so why would someone be calling for help?

Is this a thief, a rapist, or a murderer?

Li Xiangdong's nerves suddenly tightened. He touched his waist and found that he had left his small axe at home. He quickly bent down and looked around for a handy tool on the ground.

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