Chapter 286 The Dying Old Man
"Wow, the air is so nice this morning."
Lin Heng opened the window early in the morning and said.
"I'll sleep a little longer. I'm so sleepy!" Xiulan stretched and lay down again.
"You sleep and leave the rest to me." Lin Heng smiled at her. It is normal to wake up early and feel sleepy during pregnancy.
"Hmm~" Xiulan just hummed and fell asleep again.
Lin Heng looked at his sleeping daughter, went out to complete his daily exercise, and practiced archery in the back mountain.
This kind of thing cannot be interrupted, only by persisting can you have a healthy and strong body. After living a lifetime, you will find out how important a healthy and strong body is. Bad habits in youth will turn into boomerangs and hit you hard in the head in old age.
When Lin Heng was reborn last year, his body was still very weak, and he surrendered after only five or six minutes of sex with Xiulan.
Now I can do it easily for 20 to 30 minutes, and I don’t feel weak even if I do it two or three times with some intervals. This is the reward for exercising.
His arms are now muscular and he has no pressure pulling a 50-pound bow. Although he has not deliberately exercised his abdomen, he has a very obvious vest line and can see four abdominal muscles that are not very hard.
If he were to give a piece of advice to young people, it would be to exercise. If you stick to it, your physical condition and spirit will change greatly. Other investments may lose money, but investing in your own body will always make a lot of money.
After the exercise, Lin Heng squeezed some milk and picked two cucumbers. After returning home, he took some charcoal and ignited it in the ceramic stove, and put a small casserole on it to slowly boil the milk.
While the milk was boiling, Lin Heng turned over the eggs. The incubation started on the 17th, and it has been 16 days now. In fact, it doesn’t matter whether to turn them over or not. In another five or six days, the chicks will hatch.
The reason for turning the eggs is mainly to prevent the chicken embryo from sticking to the eggshell. Now that they are basically formed, this problem no longer exists.
In the past two days, he half-opened the quilt covering the box to lower the temperature inside and maintain it at around 36 or 37 degrees.
When the milk was almost cooked, he added some tea leaves and continued to cook for a while. After cooking, he filtered out the tea leaves and poured in the mashed strawberries, added a little honey, and a cup of real strawberry honey milk tea was ready.
Putting the heated milk aside, Lin Heng put the eggs into the casserole and cooked them. He looked at the time and went to call Xiulan and his daughter to eat.
"Get up and eat. There's delicious food." Lin Heng shook Xiulan and Xiaoxia respectively.
"Oh, I've been feeling more and more sleepy lately." Xiulan yawned and sat up.
The quilt slipped off, revealing Xiulan's snow-white and delicate skin. She had been exercising regularly with Lin Heng this year, and her figure had become better than before, especially her flexibility had greatly increased.
"It's normal. This is what happens when you're pregnant." Lin Heng watched intently.
Xiulan glanced at him and said as she put on her clothes, "You won't like looking at me when my belly gets bigger in a few days."
"I always like watching it." Lin Heng said firmly.
Xiulan was very happy and smiled, "Go and help Xiaoxia get dressed."
Lin Heng came to Xiaoxia's bedside, and she suddenly climbed up with her teeth bared and claws bared: "Wow, I'm a big monster! I'm going to eat you!"
"Okay, okay, you've defeated me. The big monster is so scary." Lin Heng pretended to be dead and started to put clothes on her.
"Dad, I can put on my socks by myself!" Xiaoxia said as she put them on.
"That's great! Daddy just prepared something delicious for you." Lin Heng touched her head.
He looked at the time and asked Xiulan to take Xiaoxia to wash up while he went to get the eggs out and put them in the freezer.
Boil the eggs in cold water for seven minutes and then take them out. Half of the yolk will runny and the eggs will be soft-boiled.
In addition to these, Lin Heng also set up a wire mesh, put dried venison and bacon on it and roasted them. Soon, they began to sizzle and emit a rich aroma.
“It smells so good~”
Xiaoxia ran over like a greedy cat, drooling.
"They even had a barbecue, so luxurious." Xiulan was also surprised.
"Come and try the strawberry honey milk tea I made." Lin Hengjiang said, pointing at the milk tea in the cup, which was just warm at this time.
He had already drunk half a cup himself and it tasted very good.
Xiulan took a sip out of curiosity, and a look of surprise appeared on her calm face: "What a wonderful taste."
She licked the milk stains on her lips and took two more sips.
"It's so delicious! Dad is so awesome!!" Xiaoxia gulped down several gulps before she had time to talk.
"How do you make it? I'll try making it some other day." Xiulan asked curiously. This tastes much better than milk alone.
"It's very simple. Just boil milk with tea leaves and then pour in mashed strawberries." Lin Heng said as he handed her a piece of meat.
"I'll try it another day." Xiulan nodded, sat down and continued to taste it.
Having eggs and some grilled meat was the perfect breakfast and it made for a happy whole day.
The already fragrant bacon and venison become even more fragrant after being roasted like this, and I couldn't stop eating them for a while.
After eating barbecue, you can also eat cucumber to relieve the greasiness, which is perfect.
"Let's go and pick some snails." After finishing breakfast, Xiulan looked at the watch and said, it's already nine o'clock.
"Okay." Everyone nodded. They took the plastic bucket and two small landing nets more than two meters long and set off.
“Woof woof woof~~”
Xiongba was having fun in the back, he really loved coming out for a walk.
"Is Xiongba in heat this year?" Lin Heng suddenly became curious about this.
"She's in heat, but I didn't let her out." Xiulan said.
"Then let's find a mate for it in September or October." Lin Heng thought for a while and said that Lai Fu, the child dog, is not grown up yet and cannot be used for the time being.
But you can find a suitable dog in the village to try first.
"Let's go to the Yang family's big field, next to the river ditch. I heard that there are a lot of snails in that field." Xiulan said.
"Then let's go and take a look." Lin Heng nodded, and the three of them walked down along the road.
From a distance, I could see my father and elder brother spreading fertilizer in the fields. His family's seedlings were planted earlier and were obviously thicker than those of other families.
"Where are you going?" Father Lin shouted from a distance.
"Picking snails." Lin Heng responded. He did not go to help spread fertilizer, as two people were enough for this job. He would go to help weed the corn and soybeans in a few days.
"Your mother is herding cattle in the river, you can come along." Father Lin shouted.
Lin Heng responded and pulled his daughter forward. After a while, they arrived at Xiahe, one kilometer away. There was a small gully with water flowing down here, and the river valleys on both sides were quite wide.
They saw their own cattle and sheep from afar, but they didn't see their mother.
“Grandma, grandma!”
Xiaoxia called a few times but there was no response.
"Let's go to the fields first." Xiulan said.
Lin Heng nodded and picked up Xiaoxia and crossed the river. After a while, they came to the edge of Yang's field, which was a large field covering an area of 1.2 mu. At this time, the seedlings had just been planted in the field. The water was clear and the seedlings seemed very scarce.
However, what shocked them were the large snails crawling in the water. Under the warm sunshine, they moved quickly on the gray soil with their shells on their backs, revealing two horn-like tentacles.
"That's a lot! Liu Lan didn't lie to me!" Xiulan said in surprise. The number was too much.
"There are so many." Xiulan reached out and grabbed one, examining it curiously.
The snails in this field are really big and numerous. Each one is as big as a mineral water bottle cap, and there are so many of them that you can see them everywhere.
Lin Heng nodded and said, "These are much bigger than what we caught in the river. Let's catch some this time and take them back to grow in the fields."
Few people here eat snails. Many people think it is dirty, and some even think it is poisonous.
But in fact, only a few people in the north eat it, while the south has been eating it since ancient times. And it requires skills to make it. It tastes good if it is well made, but it smells fishy if it is not well made.
"Let's start catching." Xiulan nodded. There was no need to go into the water. Just use the scoop net to scoop up the big ones.
In a short while, the two of them caught half a bucket. It was so easy. It was Xiaoxia who was messing around with the scoop net.
"Hey, it's really you. I said it sounded like it." Lin's mother came down from the woods at the side, her voice filled with surprise.
"We called you several times but you didn't respond." Xiulan replied.
Mother Lin picked up the epimedium and honeysuckle in her hand and said happily, "I went to get these and I didn't hear them in the woods. How many snails did you catch?"
"There are so many in this field. I've caught half a bucket and am ready to catch a whole bucket." Lin Heng said.
"Then let me help you." Mother Lin put down the bag and walked over.
"Grandma, I also caught a lot of snails." Xiaoxia held the snails in her hand and smiled, revealing a mouthful of snow-white milk teeth.
"You're awesome! Grandma picked some delicious food for you." Mother Lin praised her and took out a leaf ball from her pocket. When she opened it, she found rosy goat milk fruit inside.
"Wow, thank you grandma!" Xiaoxia happily hugged her grandma's hand and cheered.
"Wash your hands and eat quickly." Lin's mother touched her head and said. She picked two portions and one for Lin Tao and the others. She was not a partial person.
This reminded Lin Heng of his grandfather, who always brought him various wild fruits.
With Lin's mother and Xiaoxia by his side, Lin Heng went into the field to catch fish. He soon filled a bucket, which came with a plastic bag weighing about five pounds.
"Let's go to the river to wash snails." Lin Heng said with a smile as he carried a bucket full of snails.
"We can enjoy a good meal this time. This bucket must be about 30 to 40 kilograms." Lin's mother said with a smile. She also ate this once last year and thought it was good.
Lin Heng smiled and said, "About thirty kilograms, but not much meat."
But eating snails is really a happy thing.
When he arrived at the river, Lin Heng poured some snails into a sack, then poured in some coarse sand and kept rubbing the sack. After a few minutes, the snail shells that were poured out were so clean that there was no trace of mud or moss.
However, they are not edible yet. Next, you need to put them in a bucket with some table salt and drop some oil on the surface. It won’t take long for them to spit out the mud and sand.
The three of them played on the big bluestone by the river while waiting for the snails to spit out the sand. Xiulan took Xiaoxia to play by the water, soaking her feet in the water, while Lin Heng tried to catch fish barefoot in the water.
Wait for about half an hour to deal with the mud and sand spit out by the snails, then wait another half an hour, and you can start killing the snails at about 11:30.
Lin's mother went to check on the cows, then came over and helped Xiulan use pliers to remove the internal organs. The snail's internal organs could be removed by simply pinching off the pointed end of the snail.
After Lin Heng washed all the snails in the bucket, he came over to help process them. It took him an hour to kill about half a bucket, which was enough to eat.
"I also drove the cattle and sheep back." Lin's mother stood up and said.
"I'll go, you guys wait for me on the road." Lin Heng stood up and said.
He ran fast and soon drove the cows to the road, then walked back with the snails in his hand. When he was almost home, he threw the five catties of snails he caught into a muddy field in his home that was always flooded.
His father and elder brother had also finished their work and returned home. They were now killing eels. Lin Heng took the snails they caught back to his room, preparing to fry them and bring them back for consumption.
This thing requires a lot of ingredients, and also requires soul basil. He was afraid that all the hard work he put into making the snails would be ruined by his sister-in-law.
At about one o'clock, Lin Wei ran over and shouted, "Second Dad, let's eat."
"Okay, my snails are ready too." Lin Heng nodded with a smile and took the pot of snails over.
"There are so many, Second Dad. Why didn't you ask me to catch the snails? I'm an expert." Lin Wei drooled as he looked at the large basin of snails.
"You were in school this morning." Lin Heng gave him one to try.
Lin Wei sucked it up in one gulp and gave a thumbs up: "It's delicious, better than what my mom made last year."
Lin Heng smiled slightly, took the snails and walked over. Xiaoxia and Xiulan were both seated.
"Today's meal is rich. Let's enjoy it." Father Lin said with a smile as he looked at the dishes on the table.
"Eat as many snails as you want." Lin Heng said with a smile.
After everyone was seated, they picked up their wine glasses and took a few sips before starting to eat. Lin Heng picked up two pieces of food for Xiulan and her parents with his chopsticks and started to eat the snails.
Although there is not much meat, it is really delicious. Not only him, but also his father and elder brother can't sit still. This thing is perfect with a little wine.
After the meal, the ground was covered with snail shells, which were too delicious to eat. However, there were still some leftovers from other dishes on the table.
I had some rice to finish off the meal.
After returning home, I took some honeysuckle tea to the pavilion in the backyard, sat on the bench and watched the fish playing and chasing each other in the water while digesting the food.
"The lotus flowers are about to bloom. The buds have grown." Xiulan said with a smile, pointing at the two graceful lotus flowers.
"The Dragon Boat Festival is in two days, so it must be open." Lin Heng nodded. The weather was already very hot.
The fish pond is now heavily occupied by lotus leaves, and fish can only be seen in a small spot in the center. Lin Heng plans to cut some lotus leaves in the afternoon, as too many leaves will affect the view.
After playing here for a while, Xiaoxia went to swing under the grape trellis over there, while Xiulan leaned against Lin Heng and watched the fish for a while before falling asleep without realizing it.
Lin Heng looked at her sleeping face with a faint smile on his lips. As the pregnancy went on, she gradually had the symptoms of pregnancy. Now she was just sleepy, and it would probably be soon before she started to have morning sickness.
Being pregnant is such a hard thing.
Seeing the sun coming, Lin Heng picked her up and brought her into the house. He put her on the boat and wanted to leave, but she grabbed him like an octopus.
Lin Heng thought she was pretending to be asleep, but after a closer look, he realized that it was not the case. It was probably just an instinctive habit. He lay beside her and waited for a while before he was able to get away.
"Dad, I want to go play with Yang Qing. I gave her strawberries yesterday." After Lin Heng came out, Xiaoxia said with her head tilted.
"Then I'll take you there." Lin Heng pulled her.
I went to the ginkgo tree in the center of the village but didn't find Yang Qing. I asked someone and found out that she had been sent by her mother to collect grass for pigs.
It is not uncommon for children in rural areas to start working at the age of four or five. Xiaoxia could only play hopscotch with others. After playing for a while, she felt bored and went home.
Lin Heng took her to the study to play paper cutting. At about three o'clock, there was a knock on the door: "Is Xiaoxia here?"
After a while, a little girl pushed the door open and came in.
"I'm here, I'm here!" Xiaoxia ran out happily.
"Look, I found crotch fruit today." Yang Qing took out some goat milk fruit and shared it with Xiaoxia.
"Wow, it's so red." Xiaoxia exclaimed, and the two of them soon started playing together.
Lin Heng rested for a while. It was almost four o'clock and he was about to take a hoe to help his parents weed. Before he got up, he found that Xiulan had woken up.
"I'll go too if you want to weed." Xiulan said with a smile. She knew that this was something they had discussed at noon.
"Let's go." Lin Heng nodded with a smile. It would be nice to walk around since she wasn't pregnant yet. She just needed to do less work.
Xiulan took the lead, while Lin Heng carried a bag of ammonium carbonate and walked towards the cornfield. Yang Qing went back and took a basket with Xiaoxia and went up the mountain. She used the excuse of picking pig grass to let her mother allow her to run around.
"This ammonium carbonate has to be applied at a distance. One large spoonful is enough for one corn. It has to be about five or six centimeters away." Lin Heng watched Lin's mother and Xiulan demonstrate it.
While they were applying fertilizer, he, his elder brother, his father, and his elder sister-in-law were weeding with hoes.
"I understand." The two nodded and began to apply fertilizer according to Lin Heng's request.
These people are quite curious about this thing and are looking forward to the results of this year's fertilizers and purchased seeds. So far, the seedlings of these purchased seeds seem to be only slightly larger than their own seeds.
Father Lin asked curiously, "Then we just need to dig up the grass and cover it with fertilizer?"
"Yes, that's it." Lin Heng nodded, demonstrated it, and everyone started working in a hurry.
Although we have separated, we still work together, which makes things more lively and faster.
"A lot of people in the village are talking about our family now. It all depends on the effect of the seeds we bought." Father Lin said with a smile. He no longer doubted the effect of the fertilizer because it had been tested.
Two peppers were planted on the same land. One was treated with urea, one was treated with manure, and the other was treated with nothing. The comparison between the last two plants was too obvious. The one treated with urea was ten centimeters taller than the other two. The effect was simply too good to be true.
"I guarantee that after seeing these seeds, they will want to buy them next year." Lin Heng said that the seeds they bought had an overwhelming victory in terms of yield.
"Then you can sell it directly in the village and make some money." Lin Yue said.
"I thought so too." Lin Heng nodded, and then said: "Brother, you can actually open a store in the village, which is also very profitable."
He was too lazy to open a shop in the village again. Compared with his current business, the small shop in the village was really a drop in the bucket. And Xiulan said that she preferred to make things and go up the mountain with him, and didn't like to sit at home selling things all day long.
But for his older brother, earning a few hundred dollars a year is considered a huge income.
"We have thought about it too. The cost is probably not low." Sister-in-law Liu Juan was very interested and asked quickly.
"Just buy a little bit and invest only four or five hundred yuan. I can earn four or five hundred yuan a year by selling daily necessities in the village. I can get the goods from my shop in town without going to the city." Lin Heng said after thinking for a while.
Lin Yue was the first to say, "Let's save money for a year first. I'll see if I can catch it through hunting. We'll open it when we have money."
He didn't want his wife to ask his brother for money again. Lin Heng had helped them enough, and they couldn't take advantage of him in everything.
Liu Juan glanced at her husband and could only agree, "Yes, let's save the money first."
"Tell me when you have made up your mind." Lin Heng nodded and said, without even asking to lend money to his elder brother. Helping in such a matter would be as bad as excessive.
He gave them a way to make money, but whether they could succeed depended on their own efforts.
Just like the fertilizer and seeds, this year we let them experience the effects, and next year when my eldest brother’s family needs them, they will have to buy them themselves.
The amount of corn and soybeans planted this year was much less than last year, and they removed all the grass from both farms in two days.
Then I spent another day fertilizing the sweet potatoes and turning over the sweet potato bowls.
Farming is not an easy job, but when you are free from the need for survival and do it slowly for fun, it is okay.
While doing farm work, Lin Heng did not forget his shrimp fry. He checked on them at least twice a day to make sure there were no problems with them and that they were growing day by day.
The Dragon Boat Festival passed quietly during these two days. They inserted mugwort and calamus on the door, and also picked various herbal medicines for reducing internal heat, such as honeysuckle and houttuynia cordata, on the Dragon Boat Festival.
But they did not have the meal at home, but went to his uncle's house. Lin Heng visited his dying grandmother again and gave her the milk powder made by Xiulan and some freshly picked strawberries.
The old man's legs and feet were getting worse and worse, and it was difficult for him to walk, but he still smiled happily when he saw Lin Heng, and habitually took his hand and stuffed rock candy into his mouth.
Lin Heng and Xiulan fed her strawberries and told her that Xiulan was pregnant with her second child. The old lady was so happy that she couldn't stop smiling. She held the hands of the two and kept talking. Her words were not continuous and she couldn't make it clear.
But it doesn't matter, Lin Heng knew that she just wanted to find someone to talk to, they just needed to keep smiling and nodding, and the old man would be very happy.
His grandmother liked mint and planted a large patch in the corner. Whenever Lin Heng came in the summer, he could drink mint water. But his uncle always felt that it was blocking the way and he often quarreled with the old man because of this.
But this year my uncle didn't remove the weeds because the old woman was too old and he couldn't bear to see his son make her angry.
Lin Heng wanted to spend more time with his grandmother, but unfortunately he could only visit her once every few months because of the distance. His grandmother didn't survive the winter before his rebirth, so he now cherished the time he spent with her and asked his mother to come more often.
He couldn't stop feeling sad when he thought about this. Aging is something that even money can't change.
He persuaded his family to live a healthy life more frequently and took Xiulan and Xiaoxia to exercise because he had experienced the feeling of losing a loved one.
Even though I know that rebirth cannot change the passage of time, I still want my parents to live longer.
…
It's the morning of June 5th. The weather is rather gloomy and it seems like it's going to rain soon. It's raining more and more frequently since we entered summer.
Xiulan's pregnancy symptoms were becoming more and more obvious, and she was always not getting enough sleep. Lin Heng got up early to make breakfast. Strawberries were beginning to ripen in large quantities in the past few days. In the morning, he made Xiulan and Xiaoxia's favorite strawberry honey milk tea, boiled eggs, and then called them to eat.
"It's so rich." Xiulan came over and said with a smile after washing up.
She picked up the milk tea and just took a sip, then she quickly put it down, covered her mouth and ran out the door.
“Hmm…”
She held onto the door and vomited violently.
(End of this chapter)
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