Chapter 17: The fish in the Spicy Polygonum River turned their bellies upside down due to the spiciness.
Sparrows landed on the branches by the river, chirping, and the quiet little village woke up early after a night's sleep.
Lin Shu felt happy just by looking at the scene from afar.
She did not come closer to say hello, and continued walking upstream with Lin Xiaopu.
After walking for another quarter of an hour, the two finally saw the place where the river bends as Lin Dashan said.
The river wasn't too wide, with weeds growing on both sides, especially calamus. But the water itself was crystal clear, with pebbles of all sizes spread across it, and fish swimming happily. Because it was a bend, the current slowed down considerably, and many fish gathered there.
It is indeed a good place to fish.
Lin Shu even saw a big grass carp that was seven or eight inches long!
On the way here, she had been plucking Polygonum multiflorum, and now the bucket was full. The green leaves were mixed with clusters of pink Polygonum multiflorum flowers, as if the bucket was filled with the breath of summer.
Pour out all the hot polygonum officinale, crush it with pebbles on the shore to get the juice. After crushing them one by one for the first time, put them back into the bucket, fill it with water, and continue to pound it with a thick wooden stick, then stir it repeatedly to allow the juice of the hot polygonum officinale to better dissolve in the water.
In fact, the best effect is to boil the hot water pepper in a pot, but the iron pot at home is a treasure for cooking. No matter how much her mother loves her, she is embarrassed to harm the thing used for eating.
The two sisters took turns stirring for a while. Lin Shu looked at the white foam stirred up in the bucket and thought it was enough, so she went to move stones, specifically looking for big stones to place downstream of the river. She arranged them one by one and left an outlet on the side. This way, the direction of the water flow could be changed, so that the upstream river water could only come out from the only outlet.
"Xiao Pu, take the mat and go to the exit to stop the fish. Try not to let any fish escape."
Roll up the two ends of the broken rattan mat and tie it with thin hemp rope for easy gripping to make it a simple rattan fishing mat.
The fishing mat is placed at an angle towards the exit, allowing water to flow through the cracks in the mat, but the fish can be caught.
Lin Xiaopu nodded, opened the fishing mat, and his face was extremely serious.
After everything was ready, Lin Shu looked at the place with the most fish and poured a whole bucket of Polygonum hydropiper juice into the river.
Green juice spread out and white foam floated on the surface of the river. Not long after, all the big and small fish at the bottom of the river floated up, with their white bellies turned up, looking dizzy as if they were drunk!
The scene was spectacular, even a little scary, as if someone had poisoned the river and killed the fish in the water.
Lin Xiaopu knew that what the elder sister had thrown was not poison. He was only surprised and shouted excitedly: "Elder sister! There are so many fish! Ahhh, they are all floating towards me!"
Lin Shu didn't delay. After rinsing the bucket, she went straight to the river to pick up the fish.
The fishes that were stunned by the spicy water pepper had no power to resist. Lin Shu picked them up one by one, especially the big ones.
Lin Xiaopu was trying to stop the fish at the exit, screaming, "Sister, I can't stop it anymore! Ahhhh! Several fish have escaped!"
Lin Shu smiled, "If you run, then run. It's almost done after picking up these."
The spicy fish flavor of the Polygonum odoratum is time-sensitive. As new water continuously flows in from upstream, the juice is diluted, making it less spicy for the fish, and any fish that were stunned by the spiciness gradually recover. The few fish that escaped through the exit recovered particularly quickly. Shortly after escaping, their white bellies flipped back, startled their tails, and nimbly dove to the bottom.
After Lin Shu used the bucket in her hand to fetch clean river water from upstream, the fish that had fainted from the spicy smell gradually came back to life.
Lin Xiaopu put away the fishing mat and ran over to take a look. He stretched out his hand to count, but he couldn't count clearly after a long time.
"There are seventeen in total, two big fish of seven or eight inches, and the rest are small fish of four or five inches, including carp, crucian carp, and grass carp. Plus two eels." Lin Shu did not pick up those small fish and shrimps.
In fact, the small fish would taste better if they were directly coated with flour and fried, but we don’t have the conditions for that now, and no one in the village is willing to fry the fish, so it’s better to keep the small fish and let them continue to grow into big fish.
Lin Xiaopu's face flushed with excitement. Seventeen fish and two eels—that's a lot! And they were all so big.
The sister said the four or five-inch ones were small, but they weren't small. The two seven or eight-inch ones were even bigger, and she couldn't even hold them!
"Let's go home! There are too many fish and too little water in the bucket. I'll be suffocating soon."
Lin Shu was happy at the moment, but soon she couldn't smile anymore.
The first one to run out of breath was not the fish, but her.
The bucket was half full of water and filled with fish. It was very heavy and she couldn't carry it for more than a hundred feet. Her back and waist ached and she was gasping for breath.
When Lin Shu thought about the three-mile walk home, her eyes went dark and she wanted to pour out half of the fish in the bucket.
Lin Xiaopu tried to lift it, but couldn't, and was very distressed.
Lin Shu: "How about we release a few small fish?"
Lin Xiaopu refused, "This is the fish my sister and I worked so hard to catch."
Lin Shu was at a loss whether to laugh or cry, and thought to herself: It's not that hard at all, one is just catching fish and the other is picking them up.
In the end, it was Lin Xiaopu who was quick-eyed and saw someone familiar in the nearby rice fields.
"Sister, that's Uncle San and Cousin Yushu!"
Lin Shu looked from afar and saw a middle-aged man and a thin boy bending over to weed in a paddy field.
One was using a hoe to dig the short weeds, and the other was using a sickle to cut the long weeds. They looked very busy.
"What is the relationship between our family and my third uncle's family?" Lin Shu asked.
Lin Xiaopu looked conflicted, and after a moment's deliberation, he said, "Things were pretty good before. Third Aunt made clothes for me, and my cousin Yushu even secretly gave me candy. But—"
"But later, when the family was divided, Third Uncle couldn't win the argument with First Uncle and First Aunt, so he wanted our father to get an extra acre of land. Because of this, there was an unpleasantness. Third Uncle was furious and said that our father only had two daughters, and they would all get married when they grew up, so why couldn't he get an extra acre of land? Then First Aunt started to make trouble, saying that our father, who had no family background, should be better to his nephew, and that his nephew would be able to take care of him in his old age. Although Third Uncle didn't agree with First Aunt, he kept silent and didn't refute. My father was very angry, and from then on, the two families had less contact. They still visited each other during the holidays, but they were not as close as before."
"Actually, I think Third Uncle is somewhat regretful, and Father has long since stopped being angry, but neither of them can bring themselves to do it."
Lin Shu understood that her eldest uncle's family had never had any contact with her, but she still had contact with her third uncle's family, but her father was upset and didn't have a good face towards her third uncle.
After figuring it out, Lin Shu immediately called out to the distance, "Third Uncle—Brother Yushu—"
Being too thin-skinned won't get you anywhere in the apocalypse. Lin Shu wasn't always so thick-skinned, but if she couldn't bring herself to do it, all the dirty work would be pushed onto her, and she gradually developed a thick skin.
Lin Shu's shout left Lin Xiaopu stunned.
The familiar voice calling out to an unfamiliar person also made the father and son in the field startled.
Lin Shu changed into a clean coarse linen dress today. The gray linen dress did not diminish her beauty, but instead made her skin look fairer and more delicate, like white jade.
Lin Shu waved at the two of them, "Uncle San, Brother Yushu, can you help me——"
After a while, Uncle Lin San in the field did not move. Only the cousin named Lin Yushu came over, washed the mud on his calves in the ditch at the edge of the field, casually put on the straw sandals placed on the ridge of the field, and walked towards the two of them hesitantly.
"Xiao Pu, what's the matter?" He was not familiar with Lin Shu, and for some reason he didn't dare to stare at her, so he asked his familiar cousin directly.
Lin Xiaopu stammered and couldn't explain clearly.
If it were in the past, she would have dared to bring this up, but in the past three years, after Lin Yushu grew up, he followed his uncle to work in the fields. The two of them met very few times and became quite unfamiliar with each other.
Lin Shu, standing by, smiled and said, "Brother Yushu, Xiao Pu and I went to the river to catch some fish. We accidentally caught too many and can't carry the bucket. Could you please help me carry them home? I'll treat you to a snack I made later."
Lin Yushu was normal when talking to Xiao Pu, but when talking to Lin Shu, he felt inexplicably nervous and quickly replied, "It's a small matter. You, you don't have to be polite."
"What do you mean you you you? You should call me Sister Shu."
Lin Yushu's tanned face flushed slightly. "Ah, Sister Shu, you're welcome."
Lin Shu looked at him for a few times and found that the boy had quite delicate features. If his skin was whiter, he would look more like a scholar than a farmer digging for food in the fields.
Lin Yushu didn't know what to say anymore, so he just picked up the bucket. When he lifted it up, he looked down and was stunned for a moment.
When he heard that there were so many fish, he wondered how many there were. It turned out that there were really a lot. The bucket was packed with them. There must be more than ten or twenty fish!
It was indeed heavy to carry, no wonder cousin A Shu couldn't lift it and had to ask him for help.
However, Lin Yushu was able to work in the fields. Although he looked thin, he was actually very strong. After being surprised, he didn't ask any more questions and just walked forward with a bucket of fish.
Seeing his honest appearance, which was so docile that nothing could be done with a single blow, Lin Shu couldn't help but tease him, "You're walking straight ahead with your head down, do you even know where your second uncle's house is?"
Lin Yushu replied dryly, "I know."
"Brother Yushu, why don't you dare look at me? Am I ugly or scary?"
"No, no."
"Who is prettier, your sister Ayao or me?"
"They all look good."
Lin Xiaopu covered his mouth and laughed.
It turns out that her elder sister didn't just "bully" her, others "bullied" her even more harshly.
Lin Yushu was already carrying a bucket of fish and had to deal with Lin Shu's terrible questions, so he was sweating profusely.
Lin Shu stopped teasing him and only asked him to rest a few times.
When they arrived at the courtyard gate, Lin Yushu didn't say anything about going in. He put down the bucket and walked back.
Lin Shu hurriedly called him over, fished out the seven or eight-inch grass carp from the bucket, tied a knot through the fish's gills with a piece of grass stem she had picked up on the road, and stuffed it into his hand. "I know you're feeling uncomfortable, so I won't pretend to invite you to dinner. Here, take this fish back and ask Auntie San to prepare a meat dish for you and Uncle San. Remember to ask Auntie San to throw in a handful of wine yeast to flavor it and remove the fishy smell."
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