When Wang Tianxiao woke up the next day, he didn't see the two kittens. He only found them when he put on his shoes. They were hiding in his shoes and sleeping soundly.
He rubbed the little ones' heads, picked them up, and placed them on the kang (a heated brick bed).
"Swoosh." The kitten squinted its eyes but quickly burrowed into the blankets and lay down next to Wang Fang, continuing to purr.
At this moment, Li Yali also woke up, squinted her eyes and asked, "Shopkeeper, why are you up so early?"
“It’s getting late,” Wang Tianxiao said with a smile, pointing out the window. “It’s almost dawn. I’m going to make some cages to catch rabbits and pheasants and put them in the mountains.”
“Oh,” Li Yali didn’t know anything about things in the mountains. She struggled to sit up. “Then I’ll heat up some steamed buns for you. You can eat them with some pickled vegetables. It’s too early to cook now.”
Wang Tianxiao gently laid her down on the kang (a heated brick bed).
"No need to trouble yourself, I'm not hungry right now. You need to get some rest. The baby should be due within the next week, and you'll have a lot of work to do then."
Li Yali smiled and said, "Giving birth is never easy. As long as I can give you a big, healthy son, I'm not afraid of being tired."
Wang Tianxiao smiled again.
He found that he loved to laugh after his rebirth. It wasn't the kind of happiness that comes from looking forward to the future, but rather the kind of happiness that comes from seeing his wife, his daughter, or even from eating cornbread that he used to find dry and hard to swallow.
He felt alive.
In his previous life, he didn't know when it started, but life had already crushed his body and drained his spirit, turning him into a walking corpse.
Exhausted from running around.
Difficulties always come one after another. Hardships are like mountains. After climbing one, you think that the road ahead is temporarily flat and smooth, but when you get over it, you find that there are even higher mountains ahead.
"What are you laughing at?" Li Yali asked.
"It's nothing, I'm just happy to see you."
"It really is you, you rascal." Li Yali felt the love in her husband's eyes and smiled shyly.
"Let's go."
Wang Tianxiao turned and left.
Remembering what he said last night, he led the three dogs to the cliff and tied them to a large apricot tree in his house.
The apricot tree is surrounded by alfalfa fields, and it's far from the road on all sides. No one would run across most of the alfalfa field to provoke the dog, so there shouldn't be any more trouble.
The three dogs seemed a little resentful and didn't want to be tied up, but Wang Tianxiao communicated with them amicably, telling them that this was only temporary and that they would be freed once they lived in the mountains.
That finally calmed them down.
Wang Tianxiao got off his bicycle and rode to town.
He bought a set of fitter's tools, four rolls of wire of different thicknesses, some thin wire coils, and some thin steel bars, all of which were essential materials for making cages.
It's a bit heavy; it feels quite cumbersome hanging on the back of the car.
If it weren't for the increased weight and strong load-bearing capacity of the bicycle, it might not have been able to withstand it.
But riding it isn't so easy.
On his way back, he bought a few locks; all the locks in the rooms in the mountains needed to be replaced.
These materials cost him more than 100 yuan.
However, these are all necessary investments, and if you're lucky, you can earn them back in a day.
People's mindset about business in the 1980s was different from that of later generations.
In this era, people tend to think that the better the product, the easier it will sell, so you get what you pay for, and there are very few products with inflated value.
Decades later, the market has shifted from a buyer's market to a seller's market.
It's not about selling you whatever you want, but about giving you what you need based on what I have.
Various luxury goods, some trendy cultural elements, and a cup of autumn milk tea that everyone should have, etc.
These goods do not just have intrinsic value; they are given additional artificial value, which gives them a higher premium.
This is the basic model of postmodern business.
Even though Wang Tianxiao had never done business before, he had been exposed to it through his surroundings and had participated in it countless times as a consumer.
Therefore, when he imitates others, his thinking is always much more advanced than that of this era.
And with just this one point, he is already at the forefront of the times.
Back at the pit-house, the third brother's family and the fifth brother also returned.
They had just arrived at the production team to work and earn work points.
In 1984, Qingcheng was undergoing a period of change, with both old and new policies coexisting. On the one hand, some villagers were able to contract land from village leaders, cultivate their own land, and then hand over the harvested grain to the state.
However, there are still some people, such as those who have had more children than allowed or those who have just married into the village, who do not have land yet, but can also earn work points on the land in the village or the team.
This situation did not last long. The land was redistributed shortly after the Lunar New Year. In her previous life, Li Yali was allocated two mu of land, and her daughter Wang Fang was allocated one and a half mu.
As for their son, Wang Peng, he was born in violation of the one-child policy, also known as an unregistered resident. Not only could he not be registered in the household registration system, but he was also ineligible for land allocation.
It wasn't until he was seventeen or eighteen that Wang Peng was allocated one mu of land. In the years that followed, his family only had three and a half mu of land for his wife and daughter, which was far from enough to feed them.
When they met face to face, the third brother and his wife saw Wang Tianxiao but didn't say anything. Yu Xiaofeng, that hanged ghost, had her eyes downcast, as if someone had eaten at their house without paying.
He naturally couldn't be bothered with this awful couple.
After the fifth brother and the others went inside, he whispered, "Brother, look at that hanged ghost."
Wang Tianxiao flicked Wang Tiancheng's head with his index finger, "Don't talk nonsense."
"No nonsense, it's true." Wang Tiancheng was actually a very gentle and kind person who rarely spoke ill of others behind their backs, but he also disliked Yu Xiaofeng very much.
Wang Tianxiao smiled and turned around to unload his things from his bicycle.
"Brother, why did you buy so much wire?"
"Make a cage."
"What are you pretending for... Oh, I see." Wang Tiancheng immediately understood, leaned the hoe against a nearby tree, and went over to help Wang Tianxiao lift the steel bars.
Wang Tiancheng is indeed a good young man; with his help, unloading the truck became much easier.
The two men carried the items down first, and then carried them together into Wang Tianxiao's cave dwelling.
Li Yali was making lunch when she called Wang Tiancheng to eat with her later.
Lunch was quite plentiful; it was rabbit stew with vermicelli.
Rabbit meat is usually not very tasty, but under Li Yali's superb cooking skills, a rich aroma wafts out.
The staple food was steamed buns, and the soup was chive and egg soup.
The chives are salted chives pickled at the beginning of winter.
In winter, the temperature drops to minus 20 degrees Celsius, and almost no vegetables can survive. Therefore, people mainly rely on pickled vegetables and kimchi during the winter.
Vegetables that can be pickled or soaked include radishes, chives, cabbage, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, celery, tomatoes, green beans, and so on.
It can be said that everything can be soaked.
Wang Tiancheng didn't stand on ceremony. He sat down and picked up his chopsticks. He had always been very close to his second brother and sister-in-law, so there was no need for formalities.
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