Li Xiangdong carefully felt the area of the mantle attached to the clam shell to see if there were any pearls. The mantle is the scientific name, commonly known as the skirt edge, which is also edible.
After searching for a long time without finding anything, Li Xiangdong did not give up. Wild pearls are rare. Even if he was lucky after being reborn, he would not find a clam with a pearl inside!
"No pearls! My little necklace." Li Ping was a little dejected.
“If you don’t have pearls, you have clam meat and dried scallops! Eating them will surely make you even more beautiful!” Li Xiangdong teased his younger sister.
Li Xiangdong first tore off the skirt, then took the clam meat out of the shell, and discarded a large, dark, striped area—the clam's gills, which were very dirty and inedible.
Then, remove the black, thin membrane covering the inside of the clam; this is the clam's viscera.
The remaining adductor muscles were also cut off along the shell with a knife. Not a single bit could be wasted, because these become dried scallops!
After Li Xiangdong finished dealing with the situation, he saw that Li Jiabao's face was flushed red and he was still struggling to cut it open with a knife. He couldn't manage it for a long time, so he had no choice but to take the knife and open the clam himself.
With experience, this one was done much faster. I opened more than a dozen large river mussels in a row, and the mussel meat filled a small basin, but I didn't see a single pearl.
Li Ping had given up hope of finding pearls in freshwater clams. He took a glass bottle left over from drinking orange juice, filled it with water, and then picked out two small white grass carp from a bucket and put them in to keep them.
Li Jiabao was immediately attracted. Since he didn't have a glass bottle for orange juice, he filled a canning jar with water and raised a small crucian carp in it.
Li Zhen and Ning Ruoruo helped clean the river mussel shells, while Li Xiangdong resignedly continued to open the mussels. He had to get rid of the pile of mussels quickly, as they smelled bad in the hot weather and soon attracted a lot of flies.
As he cleaned the last few skirts, Li Xiangdong habitually touched the hem of the skirt, and suddenly felt a bulge!
Li Xiangdong picked up the clam and examined it closely; it looked like a pearl!
Suppressing his excitement, Li Xiangdong squeezed the bulge upwards with both hands.
"puff!"
"puff!"
"puff!"
"puff!"
Four perfectly round, pink pearls, each the size of a soybean, were squeezed out from the yellowish-white hem of the skirt.
"Pearl!" Li Xiangdong exclaimed, attracting everyone's attention.
In the sunlight, the pearl shone faintly in Li Xiangdong's palm.
"Quickly wash it with clean water!" Li Jin heard this as he returned home. He had served in the army by the sea and had seen wild sea pearls.
Sure enough, after washing with water, the pearl's color deepened and its luster became brighter.
Everyone got excited and their eyes lit up when they saw the remaining few clams. Soon, each person took a clam and expressed their desire to open them themselves and find pearls!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com