Zhou's mother climbed up the stairs in two or three steps and saw Wang Po following Xu Feng, cursing her non-stop. Xu Feng was walking towards the ditch with his head down, carrying a basket on his back.
There were a few women standing behind, watching the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law pointing and talking. She put away the dustpan, walked quickly downstairs, opened the gate, and asked a few old women with a gossipy look on her face.
"What happened to Wang Po and her daughter-in-law? They cursed so harshly, could it be that they saw Xu Feng with a strange man and went to the wild woods?"
"Gui Lan, what you heard is good. At least Xu Feng didn't say anything back. When we met them, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law cursed at each other, using all kinds of dirty words. It was so ugly."
"No wonder when I went to her house this morning and asked her to pick mushrooms, she said she had a headache. It turns out she was planning to secretly catch her daughter-in-law cheating. I don't know if she caught him or not."
"When Xu Feng was a girl, she was not an easy person to deal with. Wang Po is also very capable. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are evenly matched. Now the village will have a good show to watch."
Mother Zhou felt relieved. "She deserved it. She went to my woods to pick mushrooms and was caught by Chunyan and the others... They said we asked everyone to help with the work, and it was for our family..."
"Oh my! How can you say that? Your family hasn't deducted a penny from our wages. We are all sitting idle at home. We wish you would hire us to work every day!"
"Yes, my eldest and second son helped for more than a month and earned more than 200 yuan. The money for the eldest son's engagement and bicycle was earned from your family."
"Gui Lan, we are from the same village, so we all know what kind of person Xu Feng is. We know your family well, so don't bother with such a shameless person."
"I know. It's just infuriating to think about it. If my family had evil intentions, we would have spoken up for the boss in the provincial capital, and they wouldn't have charged such a high price for the truffles and mushrooms."
"That's right, I'm lucky today. I found a nest of morels, several kilograms!" The woman said in a panic, "I have to go to your oven to find a pair of scissors. If I'm late, they will be gone."
"We hurried to line up, and after we were weighed, we had to go home and cook pig food!"
Mother Zhou hurriedly said, "Go, hurry up, many people have come here since around 3 o'clock today."
Several women waved at her and hurried towards the oven.
Mother Zhou turned her head and saw Zhou Huaian holding Jiu'er standing upstairs. She rolled her eyes at him in reproach, "What's so good about a few old ladies talking nonsense?"
Zhou Huaian had a wicked smile on his face, "Are Granny Wang and her daughter-in-law fighting?"
"You're doing it!" Zhou's mother felt something was wrong when she saw his expression. She went into the house and closed the gate. "Your smile is not normal. What bad things have you done?"
"What bad thing could I do?" I just added fuel to the fire!
Zhou Huaian handed her his son and said, "I have dried the medicine. I will bring the mushrooms over to help."
"If you stick your butt out, I'll know what you're doing." Mother Zhou glared at him, "It was you who told Mrs. Wang about Xu Feng's affair?"
Zhou Huaian nodded, "That bitch keeps staring at our family all day long, how can we not find something for her to do?"
"That's right!" Zhou's mother looked at him with gossip on her face, "The one who hooked up with her was really that guy from the big house and that bastard grandson of Xiong Lao San?"
Zhou Huaian didn't expect the news to spread so quickly, so he pretended not to know: "I really don't know which two they are, don't worry about who they are, as long as it's not your son!"
"You dare!" Zhou's mother glared at him, "If any of you brothers dare to mess around outside, I will break his legs!"
"Don't worry, no one dares." Zhou Huaian hummed sweetly proudly as he went downstairs, carrying his backpack and walking towards the next door.
Mother Zhou carried Jiuer downstairs, listened to his proud voice, shook her head, and thought that he probably knew who Xu Feng's two mistresses were!
Not long after Zhou Huaian arrived, it started to rain. Fortunately, the yard outside and the courtyard were covered with plastic sheets, so everyone was not wet.
The villagers who were queuing up to sell mushrooms were no longer panicked when they saw it was raining. Some of them even helped to trim the muddy feet of the morels behind them.
Zhao Huifang looked at the gray sky covered by rain and fog with worry, "I wonder if Huairong and Lao San have covered the tarpaulin in advance?"
Yang Chunyan advised: "Don't worry, it's not the first day to collect mushrooms. Even if they didn't expect it, Third Sister-in-law would have thought of it."
"That's right!" Zhao Huifang put the mushrooms into the bamboo basket. "Jiaming will get his admission notice tomorrow. I don't know if he passed the exam or not."
"Didn't Jiaming say that he had finished all the questions? Mina even checked them for him and said that the chances of passing the exam were still very high."
"I think that girl is trying to comfort me." Zhao Huifang sighed, "If I don't pass the exam, I'll have no choice but to come back and play in the mud."
After the holiday, Zhou Jiaming followed Zhou Huairong and his brother to Baicaoping to collect mushrooms, so that he could experience life in advance and avoid thinking that making money was easy.
Yang Chunyan feels that nowadays, no matter whether you are educated or not, as long as you are smart, courageous and willing to work hard, your chances of making money are much higher than in later generations.
In later times, even the land was not as easy to grow as it is now. Fertilizers and pesticides alone cost a lot of money for an acre of land. Without those things, even crops could not be grown.
There are also seeds. Many vegetable seeds and grain seeds are different from what they are now.
In those days, most people would pick out good crops from their own fields and save them for seeds, and then plant them the next year. In later times, you had to buy seeds every year, and even if you saved seeds yourself, they would only grow seedlings but not fruits after being planted.
After a while, Fang Zhiqiang came driving a bullock cart. He wiped the rain off his face and said thankfully, "It's raining so hard. Fortunately, I brought a tarpaulin, otherwise it would be terrible."
"Just pull the ox cart in." Zhou Huaian and his father stepped forward to help pull the cart in. Everyone helped to untie the tarpaulin, moved the bamboo baskets off the ox cart, and began to inspect the goods according to the grades marked on the bamboo baskets.
The bamboo baskets in the yard had not yet been weighed when Xu Hongbing, Li Wu and Xu Erchun came back. Yang Chunyan and others hurried over to help unload the goods.
Zhao Huifang looked at the time and frowned, "It's past six o'clock. In the past, they would have been back by now. Could it have collapsed halfway?"
"Pooh, pooh, pooh! Bad things don't work, but good things do!" Zhang Xiuxiang spat several times in a row, "Sister-in-law, don't worry, it may be raining too hard, where are my brother and the others hiding from the rain!"
Zhou Huairong and Zhou Huaishan were now chopping trees with machetes in the rain, with rain running down their faces and necks.
Zhou Jiaming and Li Qiuyue stood in the woods wearing raincoats, helping to pull the cut tree trunks into the woods.
Because there was a four or five meter wide section of the mountain road ahead that had collapsed in half, and from time to time there were sounds of mud and rocks falling down the mountain, they had to cut down some trees on the roadside, widen the road a little, and drive the tractor out.
Zhou Huairong wiped off the rain, looked at it and said, "Old Three, work harder and cut off the ones in front, and then you can get through."
There is no village or shop nearby, and they are still carrying so many mushrooms. Even if they cover them with a tarpaulin, if they can't get back in time tonight, more than ten pounds of mushrooms will be spoiled. It hurts just thinking about it.
"Yeah!" Zhou Huaishan walked to the tree in front with a machete in hand. "Fortunately, the trees on the roadside are not big. If they were the kind in the mountains that one person could hug, the two tractors would have dug up all the mushrooms today."
Zhou Huairong nodded, "Yes, not counting other things, there are several hundred kilograms of morels alone. If they are spoiled, the loss will be huge."
Thinking of the lost money, the two brothers resurrected on the spot and started chopping hard with their machetes.
Li Qiuyue and Zhou Jiaming desperately pulled the tree trunk to move inside.
She looked at Zhou Jiaming who was about to cry, and encouraged him, "Young man, try harder, there are only two more trees left, and we will be done."
"Oh!" Zhou Jiaming gritted his teeth and tried hard, and the two of them finally moved another tree away.
After Zhou Huairong and his brother cut down the two trees blocking the roadside, they also helped to pull the trunks. He looked at Zhou Jiaming who could no longer hold on, and felt angry and sad.
"You are a teenager now, use all your strength. Didn't you say that working is easier than studying? Then work hard!"
Zhou Jiaming couldn't hold it in any longer, tears mixed with rain flowed down, "Wuwu... Wuwu... Old man, my hands are rubbed and the skin is broken, it hurts a lot."
"It doesn't matter if the skin is rubbed a little. Once it heals and calluses form, it won't break if you rub it a few more times."
Zhou Huairong stretched out his hands, which were whitened by rain and covered with calluses. "I started earning work points when I was younger than you. Even now, my hands won't get rubbed raw even if I grind them on stones."
Zhou Jiaming took a look, and Zhou Huaishan also reached out his hand, "Jiaming, look at Third Father's, Third Aunt's hands are also full of calluses. If you don't have some calluses, you'd be embarrassed to say that you are the Second Farmer Brother."
Li Qiuyue took out a handkerchief and tied it around his scuffed hands. "Yes, Jiaming, our family is considered good now. Just think about how we couldn't eat meat for a year or two before. You even complained about your father back then!"
Zhou Jiaming had been remembering things for a long time, and he knew clearly that his family had only enjoyed good days for less than three years. Thinking of what Zhao Meina said, he suddenly felt a little regretful that he had not studied hard before. Otherwise, he would have been able to go to junior high school and high school like her and Li Xiaoping.
Zhou Huairong thought that if he failed the exam, he would use his connections to let him go to junior high school. "If you want to do easy and labor-saving work in the future, you must study hard when you enter junior high school. Only then can you live a labor-saving life like Dr. Xiao Wang and Madam Xiao Mei."
"Oh!" Zhou Jiaming nodded and went to help pull the tree trunk.
The four of them worked in the rain for more than half an hour and finally moved the trees to the side. Zhou Huairong said to Zhou Huaishan, "I'll go first, and you follow me."
Zhou Huaishan stopped him and said, "Brother, my skills are better than yours, so I'll go first."
"Huaishan, drive slowly." Li Qiuyue warned worriedly.
Zhou Huairong warned with a serious face: "Old Three, don't close the door of the driving platform tightly. If something goes wrong, just jump down."
"It's okay, the mountain god is protecting us, otherwise we would have gone down just now."
Zhou Huaishan smiled and opened the door of the cab, started the tractor, carefully crossed the road he had just opened, and slowly drove the tractor to the good road section ahead.
The three people watching breathed a sigh of relief. Zhou Jiaming clapped his hands and cheered, "Hurray! It's over, long live!" He clapped his hands on his broken skin and grimaced in pain.
"You two go to the four-wheeler and wait for me." After Zhou Huairong said that, he ran to the tractor, took the crank to start the tractor, and drove over carefully.
Zhou Huaishan and the others who were waiting in front of him heaved a sigh of relief when they saw him arrive safely. (End of this chapter)
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