Chapter 13

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Chen Lina was still wearing shoes. It was freezing cold in Ulu, and after standing at the train station for half an hour, her toes were all frozen.

Nie Bozhao was wearing big-toed leather shoes, and was probably colder than her, but men can withstand the cold, and he even had two small stoves in his arms.

One can imagine how difficult life would have been for him raising these three children alone if she hadn't been there.

Chen Lina looked at the middle-aged cadre with a suspicious look on his face, and thought to herself, little guy, you have spoiled me for so long, now it's my turn to love you.

After a while, the car from the oil base came to pick them up.

It turned out to be a jeep with specially modified tires for snow with anti-skid chains. I don't know how the front of the jeep got dented and was badly damaged.

But the car is really good. Besides horses, there are also cows and camels on this road. In the 1970s, when only the big Jiefang and the big Dongfeng were roaring back and forth, this car was simply a landscape of the frontier.

As the train arrived, people of all kinds and nationalities in the railway station, including bad elements who had jumped on the train to escape the revolution and guards holding whips ready to attack the reactionaries, all stared at it intently.

Even Chen Lina, who had driven all kinds of luxury cars in her life, was fascinated by this car at this moment.

However, what happened next made her even more excited, because a man in overalls, leather shoes with turned-toe and a tweed coat got out of the car, stretched out his hand from a distance and saluted, "Nie Gong, Nie Gong, I am here to pick you up in my own car under the order of the organization."

Your own car, Jeep Junior?

Haha, this guy is a wealthy man from the 1970s.

After opening the trunk, the man said, "This gift from a laborer should be pulled by our big Liberation truck. It's about to burst my trunk."

When getting on the bus, Nie Weimin hurried as he wanted to sit in the front.

Cars were a new thing, and off-road vehicles like the Jeep Junior were even rarer, and being able to sit in the front was even rarer. Unexpectedly, Nie Bozhao got there first and opened the passenger door. "Comrade Xiao Chen, sit in the front." Her face was pale, and she looked like she was about to vomit at any moment.

See, his gentlemanly manners are still there.

"Xiao Chen, this is Comrade Xiao Chen. Xiao Chen, this is Xiao Chen, my...new lover." Nie Bozhao introduced them as he carried his three sons to the back row.

"Hello, sister-in-law." Xiao Chen took off his sunglasses and looked Chen Lina up and down. Well, her skin was fair and her hair was long. She looked gentle and pretty, like a college student.

No one knew where the worker had found such a beautiful woman. Xiao Chen acted like a little gangster, shook his hair that was messy in the wind, and whistled.

"Hello, Comrade Xiao Chen." Chen Lina said as she shook hands with him. Xiao Chen seemed to be holding a popsicle and his mouth was grinning.

"New sister-in-law, is she Nie Gong's old family member?" Xiao Chen asked again.

"Yes." said Nie Bozhao.

"You don't have many brothers and sisters in your family, right? You don't even have a younger sister. With the looks of your new sister-in-law, your younger sister must be pretty too." Xiao Chen asked again.

"There are only two sisters in my family, and the eldest sister got married a long time ago." Chen Lina replied.

You little girl, you're used to being pursued by men, can't you see that?

This guy wanted to flirt with her, but unfortunately, she was married and he was not allowed to flirt with her.

"Good things, good things. If you ask me, what's good now is that there are fewer brothers and sisters. Our Sun Gong is good in everything, except that the brothers and sisters at home..." Xiao Chen kept talking.

Although, as early as the early days of liberation, when the Hundred Regiments entered Xinjiang, highways were built to several military corps and oil bases.

However, the road had long been used by large trucks and had not been maintained in recent years, so there were large potholes everywhere. Add to that the ice and snow, and the tires ran over a large pothole, and the three children who were not wearing seat belts were immediately thrown into the air.

"Mr. Xiao, just concentrate on driving your car." Nie Bozhao reminded impatiently as he pulled one, hugged another, and tugged at another from behind.

Chen Lina raised her eyebrows. Sun Gong, Sun Zhuan Nan, Nie Bozhao's deceased ex-wife. Chen Lina had asked her many times in her previous life. Nie Bozhao told her everything but never mentioned the death of his ex-wife.

It was bumpy and noisy, but it was still good. We passed one truck after another from the East, which were loaded with educated youth who had come to the frontier to fight. Some of them were clinging to the edge of the trucks and vomiting violently, while others were huddled together with their faces frozen. They were not wearing much clothes, and everyone's eyebrows were covered with snow, and the exposed skin was all frozen blue.

There were no cars on the road and the truck was driving very fast. It suddenly shook, and the young educated youth on the truck were thrown into the air and fell back down one by one.

Sitting in the heated jeep, Chen Lina looked at the large trucks passing by and was frightened. "Old Nie, those are still children. Will they be frozen to death?"

Nie Bozhao didn't say anything, Xiao Chen said, "Hey, how come you didn't freeze to death? You thought our frontier was an ideal utopia, a paradise. The day before yesterday, several educated youths who went to work in the production team escaped from our Mulan Farm and ran into the Gobi Desert. When we chased them back, two of them had their noses broken off, and another had his limb amputated due to freezing."

When Chen Lina heard about amputation, she vomited.

"Sister-in-law, I was running too fast and I got carsick." Xiao Chen's habit was to be courteous when he met ladies.

Chen Lina shook her head quickly and said, "No, I won't vomit. The shock absorption of the Jeep Junior is great. Many cars that came after it are not as good as it. Even if it gets bumpy, it's still more comfortable than ordinary off-road vehicles."

"My sister-in-law knows a lot. This car looks small, but it is a gas guzzler. But we are in the oil field, and what we lack is cars, not oil." Xiao Chen said.

In fact, his father was the director of the Shanghai Automobile Factory and was also sent down to the countryside as an educated youth.

But every cat has its own way, and every crab has its own way. Xiao Chen was a naturally sweet-talker and a man who knew how to maneuver. Because he loved cars, he brought the jeeps that the factory had purchased from abroad, disassembled and assembled, and studied the parts to the border.

And when all the educated youth were sleeping in sand caves and chewing on ice chips that were frozen hard and impossible to chew, he suddenly turned around and sneaked into the oil base.

Meeting someone who knows cars in this place is like meeting an old friend in a foreign land. Xiao Chen couldn't help but look at Chen Lina a few more times.

Chen Lina loves cars and knows all kinds of small cars and off-road vehicles.

When I was fifty, I was still a desert rally athlete. Once I put on my racing suit and helmet, my figure was still like that of a young girl, with a group of young men following me and whistling.

In her previous life, she also drove from Uru to Umayee. The straight highway took her less than two hours to reach the destination at 180 km/h. But now, even the best off-road vehicle kept shaking and swaying, which made her eyes pop out. A passing truck was full of vomiting female educated youths. She was so scared that she dared not even open her eyes and simply pretended to be dead.

We arrived in Uru at six in the morning. It took us ten hours to travel the three hundred kilometers, and we finally arrived at the oil base at four in the afternoon.

However, the oil base was much better than Chen Lina had imagined.

The office building is on one side of the road, and the workers' homes are on the other. Surrounded by poplar and jujube trees, the square courtyards have green smoke rising from the roofs of every household.

In front of the residential area is a river and a snow-covered desert oasis.

A lone wild goose flies straight in the desert, and the setting sun is round over the long river; it is exactly like this.

These are all houses built uniformly at the oil base.

There is a small front hall at the entrance, the kitchen in the middle, a large room on the right with a big kang, and the living room on the right. There is another room next to the living room, a standard two-bedroom and two-living room apartment.

The bedroom was a little dark. After entering, the shadows were vague. Chen Lina felt that there seemed to be a hint of red behind the curtain hanging on the back wall, which looked like a woman's skirt.

Her heart was pounding and she thought to herself, "Sun Gong, I don't know how long it was after you died that I followed Lao Nie. We came first and were the same. I'm calling you sister. Your wronged soul, hurry up and leave, don't scare me. After all, I'm jealous and a bitch. Even if you're a ghost, you can't be more cunning than me."

Holding Sandan in her arms, she bravely pulled open the curtain and immediately cried "Mom!"

On the curtain were written a few big words: Nie Bozhao killed his grandson and changed his son to a boy. He is worse than beasts and has no conscience!

The scarlet letter was written with red paint, and there were traces of it flowing down.

This is simply a horror movie.

Chen Lina immediately stepped out and said, "Comrade Lao Nie, can you go in and take a look?"

Nie Bozhao came in, as if he was used to it, and simply pulled down the curtain and threw it into the fire wall.

Chen Lina then walked in, walked around the rooms, opened the only cupboard and looked inside, and came to the conclusion that the worker's home could only be described in four words: bare and empty.

The seven necessities of life are firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea. The three children are already starving. The two younger ones are gathered in the kitchen, clamoring for egg instant noodles. Nie Bozhao is lighting a fireplace.

This kind of house has a fire wall, and as long as the fire wall is lit, the whole house will become warm.

Xiao Chen carried a half-cooked lamb and threw it on the chopping board. He walked around Chen Lina and asked her a few questions, but when he saw that she ignored him, he left.

That sheep was the food that Nie Bozhao had saved during his return home.

When Nie Weimin saw the half-cooked, smelly old sheep, he started crying, "Don't eat mutton. I don't want to eat mutton."

After Nie Bozhao built the firewall, he had to rush to the base to report. He found some time to go into the kitchen and saw Chen Lina cooking the last pack of instant noodles for the three children. He hesitated for a moment and said, "If you want to ask about Sun Gong, I can explain."

"It's no big deal. Just change the locks at home later." Chen Lina was of course curious, but now was not the time to ask this.

After finally coaxing the three children into obedience with the last packet of instant noodles, Chen Lina then focused on hygiene.

After cleaning, I have to prepare dinner.

Besides the cabbage and radish that were just brought in, the only thing in the house is that old sheep.

Chen Lina stood there for a while with her neck tilted, then took out a kitchen knife and cut the whole sheep into eight pieces, taking out only the lamb roe. She followed the example of others and froze the rest in the snow outside.

A rusty iron pot, the red rust inside was half a foot thick, such thick rust was impossible to clean. She took it outside and scrubbed it several times, then brought it back in. Chen Lina cut half a large radish, lit the fire, and began to wipe the pot with the radish.

Rub the raw iron pot with raw radish, it is called a cooked pot. If the pot is really cooked, it will never rust again. Of course, there will be no unpleasant rusty smell when cooking.