Chapter 205 Extra
Looking at the whole freshly slaughtered lambs, steaming and bleeding, being carried by the farm workers into the trunk of his brother's new car which had not even been driven for half a month, Mu Nan didn't know whether he should feel sorry for these sheep that had not yet grown up or for his brother's new car.
This lamb is not cheap, it is almost one thousand, and his brother bought five at a time. Although they have a space, the space has been tested repeatedly to determine that there is no time flow inside, that is, the space is constant. These freshly slaughtered lambs are still fresh no matter how long they are taken out, but isn’t it a bit too much to buy five at a time?
There was also someone driving a truck nearby, also buying a lot at once, but Mu Nan quietly overheard and found out that they were buying together with some acquaintances.
Mu Nan couldn't remember where the serious avian influenza broke out in the past two years, but it was not here. However, their side was also affected. All traditional vegetable markets cancelled the sale of live poultry, and all meat had to obtain quarantine certificates before entering the vegetable markets.
Some people think that they don't know how long the meat has been stored and are unwilling to buy it, so many people will drive together to these suburban farms to buy fresh live chickens and ducks. Some people with wide channels can even know which farmers have native pigs, so they buy whole lambs. Some people from the city drive far away to buy several and then go back to share them with relatives and friends. Even his brother uses this reason.
But others really divided it up, while they kept it all for themselves.
After the goods were handed over and the balance was settled, the car drove onto the highway. Mu Nan then turned over to the back and put all the lambs in the trunk into the space with one hand. Then he rolled down the car window to disperse the bloody smell in the car: "Luckily I don't faint at blood, otherwise I really wouldn't be able to put them in. Brother, why did we buy so much? Is the lamb from this restaurant so special? Is it so delicious? Five lambs, how long will it take us to eat them all? And we have to cook them ourselves. We have to cut them up when we get home. It's a bit troublesome just thinking about it."
Qin Huai: "I bought a cutting machine so I don't have to work hard to cut it myself."
Mu Nan looked at Qin Huai with a puzzled look: "Are you practicing in advance because you want to open a restaurant? If we open a restaurant in the future, it should be profitable. We can collect a lot of cheap ingredients and store them. They won't go bad anyway, so we can spend a lot less on raw materials."
Qin Huai smiled as he drove, "So are you driving or am I driving?"
Mu Nan thought about it and gave up this wild idea: "Forget it, it's not worth it. You haven't even graduated from high school yet, but you can earn enough money to buy a car by working part-time. When you graduate from college, you will only make more money. Unless you open a chain restaurant, it will not be as much as the income from your part-time job now. But you buy so much, how long will we have to eat it all?"
"Eat slowly. When we get home, I'll make you roast lamb chops, roast lamb, and pilaf. Nan Nan, do you know how much this sheep cost three years ago?"
Mu Nan had never bought one, so how would he know? Qin Huai said, "You can buy one for 600 yuan."
Mu Nan exclaimed: "We bought more than 900 today!"
Qin Huai: "Yes, look back a few years ago, what were the prices then? What are the prices now? And things are getting worse and worse. In the past, pork was just pork. Have you heard of pork being pumped with water? So some things have slowly changed. In a few years, maybe you won't be able to eat naturally raised pigs, cattle or sheep anymore."
"You may not feel the difference very clearly with these meats, but take watermelon for example. Is there a big difference between the watermelon you ate when you were a child and the watermelon you eat now?"
Mu Nan nodded fiercely: "Big!"
The watermelons I ate when I was a child were so sweet, sweet and refreshing. The watermelons nowadays can only be said to still taste like watermelons.
Qin Huai: "So, now it's like this. In the future, all kinds of greenhouses and off-season fruits and vegetables, those that are not grown in accordance with the natural environment, do you think they will taste good? Now we have the conditions to stockpile more things, so we should stockpile more. In another ten years, others will eat artificially grown pork, and you will eat naturally grown pork. The goods you stockpile today will be your advantage in the future."
Mu Nan thought about it and immediately felt that it made sense. Apart from other things, milk powder used to be real milk powder, but now it is all something else. Not only is it synthetic, it is also poisonous. How terrible. In addition, various food problems have been exposed in recent years. People's hearts have really changed.
Mu Nan, who was successfully brainwashed by Qin Huai's words, no longer doubted Qin Huai's hoarding behavior. When he followed Qin Huai to shop, he was still worried about buying too little, and even gradually felt the joy of hoarding.
For this purpose, Qin Huai also specially customized a lot of shelves and partitions. There are still several years before the natural disaster occurs. If they want to hide their actions, they cannot buy many things at once. Anyway, they still have time to stockpile little by little, so it is best to store the purchased items in a classified manner, which will also be convenient for Mu Nan to take.
The Chinese New Year this year was a little late, almost at the end of February. It was Valentine's Day and the final exams had not started yet, so Mu Nan's desk holes were filled with gifts. Of course, those gifts were not for him, but for his brother. Many of the gifts had no signature on them, only a small card asking him to please pass them on to Qin Huai. Mu Nan didn't know who to return them to, so he had to borrow a small trailer to transport all the gifts to Qin Huai.
Seeing the man who rolled his eyes and turned away after putting down a cart of gifts, Qin Huai pulled him back with a smile, stuffed a chocolate into his mouth, and put a bottle of hot milk tea in his hand. Then he said, "I just told my head teacher that I don't need to start school early for the winter vacation, so we have a month. Do you want to go to Saipan or the Maldives?"
Mu Nan quickly held up two fingers: "Can we both go?"
Qin Huai did not refuse: "Then let's go to Maldives first. If it's fun, we can stay there for a few more days. If it's not fun, we can go to Saipan. Anyway, these two places can get visas on arrival, which is convenient."
Mu Nan cheered, and just at that moment the bell rang. She happily ran to her classroom with her milk tea.
Jiang Xuan, who was sitting in front of Qin Huai, kept his head down reading a book. He didn't even turn his head from beginning to end, but he heard all their conversation.
He felt that the problems he had recently had were really big, so big that he couldn't help but start reflecting on when exactly this distorted mentality began.
After thinking for a long time, he remembered the first time he noticed Mu Nan. He was in the third grade of elementary school and Mu Nan was just in the first grade. At that time, Qin Huai was already the favorite student of many teachers. He was good-looking, had good grades, was young but had a steady personality. He was completely different from those little kids who would go crazy together after class.
Jiang Xuan has always wanted to be friends with Qin Huai, but Qin Huai ignores everyone in the class. Although he will respond when others talk to him, the feeling is still different. He didn't understand it when he was a child, but he understood it when he grew up. It is alienation, alienation that no one cares about.
He thought Qin Huai was like this to everyone until he accidentally saw Qin Huai coaxing a junior student with a scraped knee in the small flower bed downstairs during break.
The child, as white as a ball, was sitting on the flower bed, crying and sobbing. Qin Huai squatted on the ground, carefully cleaning the scratches that didn't look serious. From time to time, he looked up and coaxed the child with a smile, wiped his tears, and held him in his arms to comfort him.
At that time he didn't know that the child was not Qin Huai's younger brother. Although almost every household had one child at that time, there were some families that had two. However, he had already felt envy since then.
Later, he began to imitate Qin Huai in everything he said and did. He also wanted to be as outstanding as Qin Huai. The longer he paid attention to him, the closer he could not help but get to him. As he got closer, his envy for the special feeling Qin Huai gave to Mu Nan gradually turned into jealousy. Especially after he knew that Mu Nan had no relationship with Qin Huai at all, this jealousy became more and more out of control.
The root cause of this is probably that Mu Nan's parents often come together to pick Mu Nan up from school. His father carries Mu Nan on his back, and his mother hugs Qin Huai. If his grades improve a little, they can't wait to have a big meal to celebrate. If his grades decline, they still have to have a big meal to comfort him. All he sees is always all kinds of laughter.
This kind of happiness was something he had never felt before.
Mu Nan's parents seemed to have never put any pressure on them, which was completely different from most parents of their generation. In his own family, he had a father who went out early and came back late, and a mother who was silent and would only ask him if he had finished his homework. When he said he wanted to go out for dinner on his birthday, the response he got was always a rejection that a meal outside could buy enough food for a week at home.
Also, although he had good grades and often scored 100 in elementary school, his father never praised him when relatives and friends asked him about it. He just kept telling him not to be proud and to keep working hard. He also often told relatives and friends that he was not good enough and denied what he said.
Now he understands that this is the humility of an adult, but when he was a child, all he felt was denial, denial, denial of all his efforts.
The results in primary school were not very obvious. The subjects were very simple. Although there were rankings, there were often many students ranked first. It was not until junior high school that the results began to separate. With more subjects to learn, it was difficult to get full marks. It was at this time that Qin Huai's excellence became more eye-catching.
Yet, such an outstanding person gave all his preference and specialness to Mu Nan, a girl who had no special talents other than crying and being clingy.
He really wanted to be favored like this, and wanted someone to tell him that he didn't have to work hard and just be happy. But he couldn't. No one favored him, and his family couldn't accept him not working hard.
This desire lasted too long and the obsession was too deep. Year after year, it made him go from jealousy to a stubborn desire to completely replace it.
Originally, this thought could be suppressed by reason. After Mu Nan lost his parents, his life could be said to be much worse than before. Although Qin Huai treated him better and better, his conditions were limited after all.
Sometimes when he was at their house, he saw Qin Huai helping Mu Nan with his homework. He would explain an equation in detail, even down to the addition of one and one, but he was so stupid that he had no idea how to solve it when he changed the numbers. He felt a sense of joy. Sooner or later, Qin Huai would fly very high, and Mu Nan, who could not even grow wings, would be left behind.
But before he waited for that day, he saw Qin Huai, who had grown wings, carrying Mu Nan on his body and flying without feeling tired. Mu Nan didn't need to grow wings at all, he could just lie on Qin Huai's body and smile happily.
So he lost his mind and his mentality became distorted. Why do some people work so hard but still can't get what they want, while some people can easily get what others desire most without doing anything?
If such a strong contrast were far away, he would not even feel envy, because he knows that people in this world are born unequal. But the distance is too close, right in front of him, with the same living environment and the same starting line, but such a huge gap.
It was not until Qin Huai pushed his shoulder that Jiang Xuan came back to his senses from his twisted resentment. Seeing the pen that had pierced the exercise book, he quickly relaxed his strength and turned back: "What's wrong?"
Qin Huai said: "I'm asking you if there is any gift you want. I'm going to take Nan Nan to the Maldives for the winter vacation."
Jiang Xuan shook his head. He had never been out of the province, so he didn't know where the Maldives was. It was even the first time he heard the words Maldives Saipan, so even if Qin Huai asked, he didn't know what he wanted: "I'm fine, just take a souvenir."
Qin Huai said okay, and opened the exercise book to prepare for the questions.
Jiang Xuan turned around and looked at him: "You're not spending the New Year here?"
Qin Huai hummed without even looking up, "It's too cold here. Nan Nan is afraid of the cold and always catches a cold every winter. Let's take him to a warm place this year to see if he will catch a cold again. Anyway, there are only two of us in our family and we don't have to visit relatives. It's also nice to go to the beach to swim in the sea and bask in the sun."
After a while, Jiang Xuan asked again: "Where is Maldives?"
Qin Huai then raised his head and said, "It's an island country in the Indian Ocean, in the tropics, so it will be very comfortable in the winter."
Jiang Xuan: "You guys are going abroad again. I've seen you taking Mu Nan out to play a lot recently."
Qin Huai smiled and said, "Take him out to practice speaking. Before he goes abroad to study, he can get out and see more. Then he won't be so uncomfortable when he goes abroad. Anyway, you don't have to worry about my grades, and you don't have to worry about his grades. If you have time, just go out and walk more while you are energetic."
Qin Huai finished speaking, and then said: "The final exam is coming soon, how are your preparations going?"
In the monthly exam at the beginning of the school year, I almost fell out of the top 100. My grades kept going up and down afterwards, and by the time of the midterm exam, I had completely fallen out of the top 100.
Jiang Xuan had borrowed notes from Qin Huai before. Qin Huai didn't really need notes in class, but he had always had the habit of taking notes, from elementary school until now. Because his notes would be kept for Mu Nan in the future, he would do it even if he didn't need them.
But unexpectedly, when he asked Qin Huai to borrow his notes, Qin Huai said that he had given the notes away because he had decided to take Mu Nan abroad and would not need to take the college entrance examination in China, so those things were no longer needed. Moreover, Qin Huai really did not take any notes later, and he became unable to organize his studies properly.
Now that the final exams are approaching, Jiang Xuan is becoming more and more resistant to the exams. The resistance that comes from the bottom of his heart makes him irritated and afraid.
The bell rang for the end of get out of class. Qin Huai was packing his schoolbag. When he heard the familiar sound of running, the corners of his mouth curled up before he even turned around.
Sure enough, after a while, someone knocked on the window where he was. Qin Huai looked up and saw Mu Nan standing outside waving at him, so he opened the window.
Mu Nan quickly poked his head in: "Brother, can you leave too? We finished school early today, did some cleaning in the afternoon, and have the final exam on Monday, so we can leave today without going to evening self-study."
Qin Huai said, "You can go now. It's rare that you don't have to go to evening self-study and you don't have to go to class on weekends. Do you want to go to the hot springs? Let's go today and be back on Sunday night."
Mu Nan was so happy that he wanted to jump out of the window: "Go, go, I want to go." He had never taken a hot spring bath, but because he watched a lot of anime, he always wanted to try it.
Students in the first year of high school can skip evening self-study before the final exams, but students in the third year cannot. However, Qin Huai was given a special pardon, so he carried his schoolbag and took his brother home from school amid the envious looks of the crowd.
Someone sighed quietly: "A genius student is a genius student. He has final exams coming up and instead of going back to review, he went out to soak in a hot spring. I'm tired of saying the word envy."
Some people may not know Qin Huai that well, so they asked out of curiosity: "How are his brother's grades? If he is in the first year of high school, he will take the final exam on the same day as us."
"The grades are not very good, so the academic god has already prepared to take his brother abroad when the time comes. He will not take the domestic college entrance examination, so he doesn't care about the grades."
"I'm so envious. The college entrance exam is next semester and I'm already having nightmares."
"If your grades are not good, then you can go abroad. But you probably won't learn anything there. You can just get a nice diploma."
"What do you know? People don't just go to college when they go abroad. His brother's grades are average, but he has a talent for painting. I heard he's very good at it. He'll study fine arts when he goes abroad. Maybe he can hold an art exhibition when he returns. Anyway, I think it's better to have a specialty than us who don't even know what major to study in college."
Listening to other people's discussions, they said that the academic god is worthy of being the academic god, and that if he is not obsessed with the exam-oriented education in China, he may really be able to cultivate a painter in the future, and that there is no need to use mountains of schoolwork to wear down the spirituality of the future young painter.
The more he listened, the more deep scratches appeared on Jiang Xuan's exercise book.
Hot springs are for soaking, so Qin Huai specifically chose a resort with complete facilities, including private hot springs and public baths. Although he is not a germaphobe, he doesn't really want to soak in the same pool with a group of strangers. Mu Nan, on the other hand, likes to go to the big pool outside. He comes to soak in the hot springs, but Mu Nan comes to swim. It's just that the water in the pool is not deep enough, so it's not easy to swim.
In addition to the hot springs, there is also an orchard here. The main products of this orchard are oranges. Qin Huai and Mu Nan saw the orchard while strolling after dinner in the evening. They bought a pound of oranges and tasted them. They were very sweet, and every orange was very sweet.
When Qin Huai asked Mu Nan if he wanted some, Mu Nan nodded repeatedly. He was most afraid of eating sour oranges, and he accidentally bought such sweet ones, so he had to stock up on them.
So Qin Huai negotiated with the farm the next day, but there were not many fruits that could be picked. Qin Huai wanted them all anyway, more than a dozen boxes, filling up the back seat and trunk of the car.
Mu Nan, who felt the joy of stockpiling, looked at the full pile of goods at the back and sighed, "We should buy a truck, this one is not big enough."
Seeing how Mu Nan so easily accepted his brainwashing talk of stockpiling goods, Qin Huai couldn't help laughing. It turned out to be better to keep him by your side. Some people's brains were more suitable to be kept intact.
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