Chapter 158
Mu Nan was lying on the bed, autistic, picking at the pillow from time to time. Qin Huai was sitting on the sofa, tidying up the cleaned clothes, folding the vests, T-shirts and shorts neatly into a pile, and then taking them into the cloakroom. When he came out, he saw the salted fish on the bed, smiled and went forward to coax him, "Are you not going to get up yet?"
Mu Nan snorted: "He's paralyzed and can't get up."
Qin Huai gently combed Mu Nan's hair and said, "It's paralyzed now. This is perfect. From now on, our range of activities can be confined to the bed."
Hearing this, Mu Nan turned over in horror and looked at him with wide eyes: "Wow! You are so perverted!"
Qin Huai smiled and patted his head: "Okay, get up quickly, the chicks have hatched."
The chick has hatched, this is a big deal, Mu Nan didn't stay in bed anymore, he got up immediately, Qin Huai stood by and watched his agile appearance, and compared it with his completely paralyzed appearance when he woke up, groaning in pain and unable to move, his tone was slightly cold: "It seems that my information database about you needs to be updated again."
Mu Nan turned his head, not quite understanding: "What do you mean?"
Qin Huai smiled at him, reached out and pulled him, and tidied up his clothes that were messed up due to rolling on the bed: "It's meaningless, you don't have to understand, and you probably don't want to understand."
After smoothing out his wrinkled clothes and tidying up his messy hair, Qin Huai finally let him go: "Okay, go see your little chicken."
Mu Nan looked at Qin Huai suspiciously, and when he saw that Qin Huai went to tidy up the sheets and didn't intend to pay any more attention to him, he ran downstairs to see the newborn chicks. Calculating the time, it took about half a month from the time the eggs were laid to the time the chicks were born. Mu Nan flipped through the notebook and calculated the time. It was exactly more than twenty days, the same as the time he had found in the guide before.
He was also afraid that the hen would not hatch the eggs, so he bought an incubator. He planned to wait for a month, and if the eggs died and did not hatch, then next time the hen laid eggs with chicks in them, he would hatch the eggs artificially. Now the chicks have been born successfully, and although they are very small and their feathers are still fluffy, all four chicks were born successfully and they will probably be able to run around the house tomorrow.
Qin Huai took down a handful of alfalfa and threw it into the rabbit nest. Then he came to the door of the chicken coop: "Can you see clearly? If not, you can go in and take a look, but be careful or the hens will peck you."
Mu Nan didn't dare to go in. He always felt that any creature with cubs would be very fierce, rabbits and chickens. Anyway, as long as the cubs can grow up smoothly and become his meal, it doesn't matter whether he sees them or not. He just asked curiously, "I don't know if it's a rooster or a hen. Brother, can you tell the difference between male and female?"
Qin Huai: "It's still small now. When it grows up a little, we can tell it apart by looking at its paws and buttocks."
Mu Nan said "oh", and then remembered what Qin Huai had taught him before, and asked, "Then brother, do you want to castrate the rooster?"
Qin Huai: “…”
"I, your brother, am not capable enough to do this."
Although it involved an area Qin Huai was not good at, Mu Nan still generously expressed his understanding: "No one is perfect, it's okay if you can't do it."
Qin Huai pinched his face and said, "Thank you so much for your understanding."
Mu Nan was afraid that the hens would take him away, so it was Qin Huai who went in to add food and water. He watched from outside and then sent a message to his friends to tell them the good news.
Jian Chu also sent a photo back, showing a little yellow chicken that was already able to stand up and jump: "It was born last night, surprisingly, at the same time as you guys."
Song Jia: "Mine hasn't yet. There's no sign of it breaking out of the shell. I want to crack it open to see if there's anything wrong."
Mu Nan: "My brother said that next time it would be better to breed the roosters together and leave one hen to incubate the eggs. Otherwise, all the hens will be sitting on the nest and no one will lay eggs."
Jian Chu: "I had no experience the first time, but I understood it the next time. Suddenly I felt that life had hope!"
Mu Nan: "Wait until you grow up to see if your rooster is male or female. I don't know if mine is male or female. If you are a male and I have more females, you can come and exchange. It happens that roosters can be eaten directly after they grow up, unlike hens, which we can't bear to eat and would rather keep for laying eggs."
Jian Chu had thought about it before, but he had never thought about exchanging with Mu Nan. He thought that if it was a rooster, he would sell it or something, and then borrow chickens from Mu Nan to continue mating, and the hens would be raised to lay eggs. However, if Mu Nan was willing to exchange, that would be fine. When his family raised two more, they would keep both male and female, the female would lay eggs, and the male would be killed to make chicken soup to replenish the body.
The three of them exchanged experiences in raising chickens in the group for a while, and then looked at the photos of eggs taken by Song Jia to comfort him, saying that maybe his chickens would hatch in a couple of days, so he should wait and not be impatient.
The few of them had almost finished chatting, and Song Jiacai said, "Did you notice that the noise outside is much quieter today?"
Mu Nan: "It seems that we handled it three or four times last night. Anyway, I heard the sound of cars several times. I guess most of the locusts have been killed. The remaining ones are already useless."
Jian Chu: "I saw someone coming out of the house today, wearing long sleeves and long pants, catching insects outside."
Song Jia: "My brother also received a notice and will go to work the day after tomorrow. I guess he saw that there were fewer locusts and the factory could resume operations."
Jian Chu: "It's good that we can start work. Starting work means that this wave of locusts has passed."
Mu Nan waited for Qin Huai to come out of the chicken coop, and then followed him upstairs: "Brother, how many residential areas have those locusts flown over? If every residential area is cleared with fire like we are here, then the locusts will all die, and I'm afraid they won't have a chance to move south. Are other provinces and cities just going to let the locusts destroy them?"
Qin Huai said: "It's not just this batch of locusts flying from north to south. They will also mate and reproduce along the way. What we can clean up now are just temporary stops. The main group probably gnawed a bit on the first day the locusts came and then continued to fly down."
Mu Nan sighed: "Do you think we will see all kinds of locust food in the online mall next? Dry-fried locusts, deep-fried locusts, cumin locusts, or even dried locusts, ground into powder, and mixed into flour to make locust cakes?"
Qin Huai glanced at him with a hard-to-speak look: "It's really a waste of talent if you don't create dark cuisine."
Mu Nan followed him into the house and into the bathroom. Seeing Qin Huai preparing to wash his hands, he followed him and reached out his hand: "This is also possible. After all, when there is nothing to eat, you can even eat soil. What is locust powder?"
Qin Huai pulled his hands under the modified faucet, rinsed them with water, and then squeezed out hand soap to scrub them for him bit by bit, even leaving the gaps between his nails. While washing Mu Nan's hands, he also washed his own hands. After rinsing them with water, he let him shake them a few times. Paper was scarce now, and they had enough, but they couldn't waste it, so there was no need to wipe it with paper if it could dry naturally.
Mu Nan walked out shaking his hands. When his hands were a little dry, he took out some potato chips from the space and prepared to eat.
Qin Huai asked, "Are you hungry?"
Mu Nan nodded: "A little." He got up in the morning, had breakfast, and then rolled around in bed. But it was not time for lunch yet, so he was a little hungry, so a snack would be just right.
Qin Huai asked, "Do you want to eat chicken?"
"What chicken?"
Qin Huai: "Hand-shredded chicken, the kind with cilantro."
Mu Nan hesitated for three seconds, then nodded: "Eat!"
Mu Nan doesn't like coriander. When he was a child, coriander and celery were not allowed into his house. The main reason was that the smell would make Mu Nan feel nauseous and unable to eat. He even felt dizzy when he smelled it. It was like this until Qin Huai left.
Unexpectedly, after a few years, Mu Nan's taste has changed. Before, the world was not as difficult as it is now. At that time, the epidemic had just passed, and the terrible high temperature had shown signs but was not so fierce. He took Mu Nan to eat hot pot, and then saw that Mu Nan actually prepared a sauce with coriander and mashed garlic, two things that Mu Nan never touched before.
According to Mu Nan, as people grow up, their tastes will always change a little. Although he still doesn't like coriander, he kind of likes the taste it brings. For example, hot pot, cold beef, and hand-shredded chicken, which are flavored with coriander, have become his favorites.
For this purpose, Qin Huai also specially learned to cook a lot of dishes that require adding coriander. Mu Nan’s favorites are hand-shredded chicken and deep-fried baby chicken.
But now we can't wait until dinner time to eat the cooked baby chicken. This kind of food is best eaten when it is just out of the pot. If it is left to cool for a while, the chicken will become dry. Therefore, it is more appropriate to eat hand-shredded chicken. It is originally a cold dish. After soaking it in soup, it will be more flavorful when you eat it at noon.
The preparation of hand-shredded chicken is not complicated, but tearing the chicken is a little more troublesome. The chicken cannot be torn into large pieces, otherwise large pieces of meat like chicken breast will not be easy to taste. But it cannot be torn into too small pieces, otherwise the seasoning and chicken will be difficult to separate.
Mu Nan was sitting in the living room on the third floor, watching Qin Huai sitting on a small stool tearing chicken, and suddenly asked, "Don't you find it strange that I'm eating coriander now?"
Qin Huai glanced at him and asked, "What's strange about that?"
Mu Nan: “For example, being possessed by another soul?” Even rebirth has happened, so perhaps time travel is also possible.
Qin Huai smiled when he heard this: "It's normal for tastes to change. If you suspect that your soul has been penetrated just because you didn't eat it before but love it now, how many people are penetrated in this world every day?"
Mu Nan: "If I was possessed by a spirit, would you notice?"
Qin Huai fed him a piece of shredded chicken: "Do you think I don't know you well enough to find out, or do I have a low IQ to find out?"
Mu Nan thought so too. If one day his soul was transferred, Qin Huai would definitely be able to find out at a glance. Whether it was his understanding of him or his intelligence, he smiled and said, "I've read some novels before. In those novels, after a soul was transferred, it was easy to deceive family and friends."
Qin Huai: "If we don't write it this way, how will the story unfold later?"
Mu Nan bit the tasteless chicken in his mouth and asked curiously: "What if my soul was penetrated and you found that I was no longer myself, what would you do?"
This question made Qin Huai look at him with deep eyes: "I will probably lock up the person who occupies your body and keep him in a small dark room forever. If he wants to be free, his soul can only leave. If he can't leave, he will be locked up by me for life."
Mu Nan looked at him with a tut-tut sound: "You really have the potential to be a pervert."
Qin Huai tapped his forehead and said, "I wonder what you've been thinking about all day. Are all comic book writers' minds so eccentric?"
Mu Nan took out his phone and said, "I've read a lot of time-travel novels recently, and I'm writing this down based on my feelings."
Qin Huai lowered his eyes and asked casually, "You've seen the one about time travel, but have you seen the one about rebirth?"
Mu Nan paused for a moment, then said naturally: "Of course I have seen a lot of them. These were all popular topics in the past. Brother, if you were given the opportunity to be reborn, when would you like to go back to?"
Qin Huai withdrew his gaze from him, and while preparing the seasoning, he said, "Let's go back to the second year of high school."
In the second year of high school, he and Mu Nan separated. It was the first time he realized that even at the age of adulthood, he could not control his own life. If he could go back to the second year of high school, he would have a hundred ways to make that man pay for his tyranny.
"What about you? If you were to be reborn, when would you like it to be?"
Mu Nan thought for a moment and said, "I want to go back to when my parents are still alive and prevent any accidents from happening to them. That way, when we grow up and grandma is gone, my parents can adopt you. There are proper legal procedures, and even if your scumbag father comes back from abroad and wants to take you away, it won't be that easy. At worst, we can just file a lawsuit. Anyway, if we delay it until you are 18 years old, he won't be able to control you anymore. That way, our family can always be together and happy."
Otherwise, if he were to go back to when Qin Huai was in his second year of high school, he would be just a little kid registered under someone else's household registration. How could he compete with such a rich adult? So it would be better for him to go back to a younger age and prevent the accident of his parents, so that he could accompany Qin Huai to grow up again.
If he could grow up with Qin Huai again, he would definitely be very, very good to Qin Huai and never be as willful and noisy as he was when he was a child. He would also start making money early and work hard to make a lot of money, so that if he was lucky enough, he could get another chance to grow up, and he would have a lot of time to prepare for the future.
When Mu Nan was enjoying ten thousand possibilities of rebirth, Qin Huai suddenly said, "Nan Nan, come here."
Mu Nan looked at him: "What?"
Qin Huai: "Come closer."
Mu Nan walked over, and was kissed on the mouth by Qin Huai, and immediately covered his mouth: "Brother!"
Qin Huai looked at him and smiled: "What's wrong, can't we kiss?"
Mu Nan stepped on his foot and said, "No kissing!" Then he turned and went into the room. He kissed me so fiercely yesterday that my lips were all chapped, and he still kissed me!
Looking at the back figure running back to the room, the smile on Qin Huai's lips faded little by little. Rebirth is not something worth looking forward to. If you want to be reborn, you must experience death once.
After lunch, it was around six or seven in the afternoon. The light outside was still there, but not strong enough to get sunburned in a minute. Qin Huai changed into thick denim long-sleeved trousers and went to take down the quilt hanging on the window.
The quilts and sunshades have been almost completely eaten by the locusts, with only a few fragments left hanging outside. There are not as many locusts as at the beginning when they covered the sky, but there are still quite a few, so these things need to be cleaned up, otherwise they will attract many more locusts to gather around.
Mu Nan did not dare to go out. He felt that he would probably suffocate if surrounded by locusts. However, he opened the sunshade in the house and looked outside. There were still many locusts flying in the sky. They immediately became excited when they saw people. Although there was still a large group of them, judging from the number, there was probably only one-tenth of the locusts that attacked on the first day.
Seeing Qin Huai clearing the cover outside, the people next door also came out. Yu Zibai was wearing his own clothes, and Yu Feng was obviously wearing Xu Ming's clothes. The length was suitable. After all, Xu Ming was quite tall, but thin, so the clothes were a little tight for Feng, but at least he could wear them, and it made his muscles look tighter.
Yu Zibai looked at Yu Feng and teased, "You have a nice figure."
Yu Feng flexed his biceps and raised his eyebrows: "Not bad for a man, eh?"
Qin Huai on the side smiled and asked, "What are you going to do with those locusts?"
Yu Feng pointed to the yard downstairs and said, "After the remaining locusts fly away, we will spread them out in the yard to dry. I guess the farm will recycle them."
The planting areas only need water and fertilizer, but the livestock areas have always been short of food. Now that food is falling from the sky, we naturally cannot let it go.
Yu Feng said: "It is estimated that the higher-ups will issue a notice soon on how much money will be charged for a pound of locusts. Only if there is profit can everyone be mobilized to take action. Otherwise, it will be difficult for the government alone to clean up the locusts that linger here."
Looking at the locusts outside, which were far fewer in number than on the first day, Yu Zibai said, "Now is the best time to act. The government should issue an announcement now to mobilize the people."
Qin Huai grabbed a palm-sized locust in the air, looked at its sharp legs, and said, "Not yet. There are still too many of them. If we don't have thick clothes and protective equipment, it's still dangerous. We have to wait a little longer until the government cleans it up again."
The windows on the third floor can be cleaned from the rooftop, but the windows below can only be cleaned one floor at a time. After throwing all the obstructions that could be cleared with long sticks into the yard on the first floor, several people went downstairs, dragged the things to the river on a tricycle and threw them down. When they came back, they just happened to close the yard door that had not been closed in the past few days.
Fortunately, there are too many locusts outside these days and the damage is too high, otherwise, if the yard door was left open like this, I don’t know how many people would come in.
After cleaning up the dead locusts in the yard, Yu Feng found a bag and put all the locusts in it. He then piled them next to the courtyard wall. Then they looked up at the sky.
The locusts in the sky were still flying, circling around them from time to time, but because there were not many of them, they were easily driven away.
Yu Zibai said: "After a while, we should seal off the entire yard."
If they had sealed off the entire yard when they were drilling the well, at least the yard would be cleaner this time. Besides, no one knows what will happen in the future. If some flying insects appear again, it would feel safer to build an enclosed compound. However, this also requires waiting for the locusts to pass and the family to save some money. Now they have no money or food and are very poor.
Seeing them cleaning the yard downstairs, Wu Zheng, Song Jia and Cai Wentao also came out. The big men quickly cleaned the yard. They probably hadn't been out for two or three days, so they took a break. Cai Wentao even borrowed a big bag from Wu Zheng's family and was trying to catch locusts.
Qin Huai saw Cai Siqi also coming out, but she didn't come over. Instead, she took the prepared food and knocked on the door of the girls' building. The girls' door opened quickly, but for fear of locusts flying in, they only opened a crack. Cai Siqi quickly got in, and after a while, she came out with a ball of cloth.
Qin Huai didn't ask any more questions. It was not easy for him to ask about things between girls, and he himself was not very curious.
However, Song Jia saw Qin Huai and Yu Zibai looking over there, and said with a smile: "If you want, you can ask Yang Jing to leave some for you."
Yu Zibai's head was full of questions: "I want it, what do you want?"
Song Jia said: "Cloth scraps, sew some small scraps of cloth together, make small ones the size of a handkerchief, and larger ones the size of a towel. Now there is no paper, so this is the only way."
Yu Zibai understood immediately. After all, they had no paper at home, but fortunately they had no shortage of water. After going to the bathroom, they could just wash with water. But before that, they were cutting some old cloth for clothes in the house, and they didn't think about the remaining cloth in Yang Jing's hands. Now Song Jiayi said that he could go back and add Yang Jing's number to ask. They didn't lack cloth for the time being, but if they could save more, that would be fine.
Qin Huai reacted for a moment, then realized their predicament. Now there were no green plants, and all the paper was the stock before the earthquake. Paper was not food, and it was not afraid of the sun. At most, it would be damaged by the sun and dry yellow, but it could still be used. His family was not short of paper, so although they were frugal, they were not to the point of having no paper. I didn't expect that their family, who had no paper, would actually live like this.
A few people took a short break in the yard. Except for Cai Wentao who was still following Yu Feng to learn how to catch locusts, everyone else went into the house. Qin Huai told Mu Nan what happened just now: "So be careful when you put things away in the future. Put away these tissues too. These things are temporarily out of stock, so be careful when you use them."
Mu Nan asked, "How about I buy some cloth from Yang Jing?"
Qin Huai: "That's not necessary. We still have some cloth left. We can ask Yang Jing to make a few towels."
Before Mu Nan had the chance to contact Yang Jing, Daniu contacted him first. Although Daniu looks rough and sloppy, he is sometimes very thoughtful. Probably to avoid suspicion, even though Daniu was also in the compound group, he did not send a private message to Yang Jing, but planned to do it through him.
When Mu Nan saw the message sent by Daniu, he told Yang Jing without thinking much.
Daniu now works in the neighborhood committee. Although he is a contract security guard, he is still a staff member of the neighborhood committee after all. Therefore, when someone inquired through the base's missing person system, Daniu received the message first. After all, it was someone he knew, so he informed them first.
Mu Nan sent a message to Yang Jing: "It seems your parents have come to find you. Daniu said that the missing persons office is checking your residence record at the neighborhood committee."
Yang Jing: "Is it too late for me to report the death information now..."
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