Chapter 137 Maltose

After Lin Yue returned home, he went to the kitchen with Zhang Yuandong and washed the pigs first. Lingling and Wanli each carried a winnowing basket and ran to the kitchen, shouting, "Dad, Mom, look, the wheat we planted has grown so tall!"

Lin Yue looked up and saw two people lifting the white cloth covering the winnowing basket, revealing a field of yellow-green wheat seedlings underneath. They were indeed growing well, and it was worth it for the brother and sister to water them twice a day. She praised, "Well, you guys really take good care of the wheat. It's better than what my mother planted!"

The two kids' eyes lit up after receiving the award. "Mom, can we make maltose now?" A few days ago, Xu Xiaodi teased the two kids, saying that when she was a kid, she made candy herself whenever she wanted and had as much as she wanted.

The two children believed it and had been thinking about making sugar since the New Year. According to Lin Yue's instructions, they each planted a basket of wheat seedlings and watered them diligently every day, although they didn't understand why they had to plant wheat seedlings before making sugar. Now that the wheat seedlings have finally grown to the expected height, the two siblings simply don't want to wait any longer.

Lin Yue kept moving her hands and smiled, "I don't know. You'll have to ask Aunt Xu." She had only heard of the method of making maltose, but she didn't actually know how to make it. Just like she had planted a lot of beets in the space, but she didn't actually make white sugar.

Lingling responded loudly, "Okay, got it!" Without waiting for her to finish, she dragged Wanli to run to find their Aunt Xu.

After a while, Xu Xiaodi followed the two children into the kitchen. She saw Lin Yue and Zhang Yuandong washing the pig's offal, and asked curiously, "It's still a few days before the Chinese New Year. If you cook it now, will it last?"

Lin Yue washed the last pig's trotter and asked Zhang Yuandong to put it on the beehive coal stove to roast the hair off the skin. She wiped the water off her hands and said with a smile, "How can we do it tonight? Wash it now and put it outside the window to freeze. We won't have to bother with it when we need it in a few days."

It was freezing outside, so it was a natural freezer. There was a wooden board sticking out of the kitchen window, which was used to store food that was not easy to preserve.

Xu Xiaodi nodded and reminded Lin Yue: "Then you have to be careful. I heard that an old cat has come to the hospital recently. Don't let the cat cause any harm."

Lin Yue smiled and said, "I know. I will fasten it."

Lingling couldn't wait any longer, so she tugged at Xu Xiaodi's sleeve and asked, "Auntie, how do we make candy?"

Xu Xiaodi placed one hand on her not-yet-prominent belly and stroked Lingling's hair with the other hand. She bent over and smiled, "Why are you so anxious, little guy? Making maltose is a slow process, so you can't be impatient. You should wash the wheat seedlings first and pick out all the bad and ungerminated seeds before you can proceed to the next step."

Although they didn't quite understand, they still sat on the pony poles obediently, each with a basin, and picked the wheat seedlings.

After Zhang Yuandong washed the pig offal, he went home to look after the two little ones. They had seen so many new things this morning, which was very exhausting for the two children of their age. Little Sisi had already fallen asleep on the way back, and now she and Little Mushroom fell asleep again, and they would not wake up for a while.

As soon as Zhang Yuandong left, Xu Xiaodi relaxed a lot. She whispered to Lin Yue: "Don't think your little Zhang is quiet, he is quite scary. I don't dare to talk to him."

Lin Yue smiled: "You are not as good as your Captain Lu. He talked a lot when he met Zhang Yuandong. He didn't even need anyone to talk to him. He could talk for half a day."

"Hey, that's because he's not a soldier under Captain Xiao Zhang. He doesn't have that much to say to Captain Gu. Captain Gu has such a good temper that he doesn't even dare to fart."

While they were talking, they were helping the two children to select wheat seedlings. Although it was not a hard job, Lin Yue did not dare to let Xu Xiaodi do more, and soon let her rest aside.

Xu Xiaodi was a bit restless, so she asked Lin Yue for some sweet potatoes and started peeling them.

Lin Yue looked at her skillful movements and asked, "Don't you say that glutinous rice is needed to make maltose? Why are you peeling sweet potatoes?"

"You can use glutinous rice, but who would be willing to use so much glutinous rice to make maltose? Who can afford it?"

Lin Yue thought about it and saw that she had quickly peeled the sweet potatoes and was about to chop them up, so he quickly took over the work in her hands and let her just stand by and give her instructions.

Making maltose is not difficult, but it is very troublesome. After the sweet potatoes are chopped, they need to be boiled with water, and then the chopped barley seedlings are added and mixed. The rest of the work is a long process of boiling, filtering, and then boiling again.

The pot was too hot, so Lin Yue didn't dare let the two children do it, so he had to do it alone. The two children were curious at first, but after a while, they lost interest and sneaked out to play.

Lin Yue noticed what the two were doing but did not stop them. Instead, he pushed Xu Xiaodi out of the kitchen and asked her to go home and have a good rest. He continued cooking in the kitchen alone.

It was getting close to evening and there were sounds of footsteps coming from the corridor. Several other kitchens were already busy preparing dinner, but Lin Yue was the only one in the kitchen. She wasn't cooking yet, but was watching over a pot of thick liquid that was boiling for two hours.

There was no other sound in the kitchen except the bubbling of the pot and the stirring of the spoon. Lin Yue could vaguely hear Lingling and Wanli talking downstairs. She leaned her head down and saw the two children walking back with lunch boxes in their hands, arguing about something.

The two children grew up together, and although they have a deep relationship, they also have constant small frictions. Wanli likes to reason, while Lingling is a bit strong in physical combat, and Lin Yue has often judged lawsuits for them.

Sure enough, after the brother and sister got home and put down their lunch boxes, they hurried to the kitchen and asked Lin Yue to judge the matter for them.

It was all a trivial matter. Two children went to the cafeteria to get food and had an argument over what dishes to order. Lin Yue found it funny and used chopsticks to dip a little sugar juice from the pot. After it cooled down, he passed it to the two children and said with a smile, "Okay, don't be angry anymore, eat some sugar to sweeten your mouth!"

This sweetness lasts until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.

Since the two children got maltose, they would dip a little with chopsticks and taste it every day. Sometimes when the children came to play at home, they would casually tell them that the maltose was made from the wheat seedlings they grew, and they would also exaggerate the difficulty of growing wheat seedlings and say how hard they worked to grow them.

Lin Yue thought it was funny, but he didn't expose them and just let the two kids brag about him.

As the New Year came to an end, the relationship between Wang Tingting and Captain Gu became increasingly tense. Lin Yue still remembered that on the day she made maltose, the two of them went to Commander Wang's house for dinner together, and they were happy when they came back. But after the New Year, for some reason, the two of them quarreled even more fiercely.

Wang Tingting was stubborn and would pretend nothing had happened even if she felt upset. Lin Yue couldn't ask her directly about the two of them, so he could only ask her out often on days when she wasn't at work.

Wang Tingting knew very well that Lin Yue was worried about her, so she picked a few things and told him about them.

Her mother-in-law has always been upset, thinking that although Captain Gu and she were married, they were both very filial to Commander Wang, while the couple rarely saw their son several times a year, making it like they were marrying into the family.

Wang Tingting was such a sensitive person that she could see through her mother-in-law's thoughts soon after getting married. But it was not because Captain Gu came to this military region with her, but because they were in the same military region that they had the opportunity to be introduced to each other.

She had a bad temper and her mother-in-law treated her badly, so she naturally wouldn't stick to someone who didn't like her. A few days after getting married, she urged Captain Gu to return to the team.

Her mother-in-law, seeing that she didn't give her face, became even angrier. Even though they were thousands of miles apart, she still had to make things difficult for her. Recently, she was even more dissatisfied with her for not being pregnant.

Captain Gu was caught between his mother and his wife, and he felt exhausted physically and mentally. But Wang Tingting was not willing to compromise for him at all. After being married for so long, she had hardly ever returned to her hometown with him, which made him even more unhappy.

After listening to this, Lin Yue fell silent. Conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law have always existed since ancient times, and Wang Tingting is a person who follows her temper in everything, so it is impossible for her to take the initiative to give in to her mother-in-law.

Wang Tingting added, "Since my father went to Beijing for a meeting a few days ago, his family's attitude has become increasingly strange. My mother-in-law even called my workplace and said something incomprehensible."

Lin Yue patted her shoulder to comfort her and did not think too deeply about it until later, when the situation became increasingly serious and the articles in the newspapers became increasingly radical. Within a few months, the movement completely broke out.

Lin Yue really didn’t understand politics. In her previous life, she didn’t even quite understand the root cause of this great movement. It was not until she was there that she realized how terrible it was.

Commander Wang was labeled a "rightist" and was to be sent to a farm. Wang Tingting cried for a long time. For the first time, she put aside her pride and took the initiative to ask her in-laws for help. She was bullied by her mother-in-law for a long time, but she only waited until Gu Qingping was forced by his parents to divorce her.

Commander Wang had been very kind to Zhang Yuandong, so he could not let Commander Wang suffer. However, at this moment, no one could influence the direction of history. Seeing no hope, Lin Yue began to persuade him to use his connections to have Commander Wang transferred to their hometown, after all, the leaders there knew that a great movement would break out.

Zhang Xiaohui's description of the scene at the time was too crazy, and the reversal ten years later was too huge. Lin Yue and Zhang Yuandong believed that the situation in their hometown must not be too bad.

After Wang Tingting divorced, she moved to the hospital dormitory alone, and Director Gu also moved elsewhere. Although only one family left, Lin Yue felt that the entire family building was empty.