Finally, the fire went out. The group stepped forward and began cleaning the wild boar according to the previously assigned plan. First, Liu Ruoxi took a handful of dry grass and brushed the ash off the boar. Then, Wang Lun and the other two scraped the dirt off the boar's skin with knives. Liu Ruoxi then took out a pot, filled it with water, and prepared to cook the meat. The rest of the group helped out or took turns, as scraping the wild boar's skin was quite laborious.
Finally, after more than an hour of hard work, they managed to clean the wild boar. Wang Lun, Li Ling, and Liu Ruoling carried the boar onto a pre-prepared wooden frame and prepared to begin butchering the meat. Liu Ruoxi had brought out two baskets beforehand: one for the meat, lined with leaves, and the other for the offal. Since the wild boar had eaten poisonous mushrooms, they weren't sure if the mushrooms had actually worked, but to be on the safe side, it was best not to eat the offal.
Wang Lun pierced the wild boar's belly with a single stroke, then made a large cut. He put the knife down and reached inside to remove the internal organs. At the same time, Li Ling and Liu Ruoling held the boar's legs together to make the cut bigger so that Wang Lun could see more clearly.
Wang Lun quickly removed the internal organs, placing the inedible parts at the bottom and the edible intestines on top. He planned to wash the intestines after processing the wild boar and make some sausages that evening.
After Wang Lun finished cleaning the internal organs, he came over to continue butchering the meat. First, he chopped off the pig's head, and then Liu Ruoxi took the pig's head to process it, removing the meat from the pig's face, leaving only some bone meat. Then she put the pig's head in an earthenware pot to cook for dinner. As for the pig's face meat, Liu Ruoxi made a rack and hung it by the fire pit to roast.
Wang Lun continued to butcher the rest of the pork. The first step was to flatten the wild boar, which required some effort. Wang Lun pulled on one side, and Li Ling pulled on the other. Since the head had been removed and a large gash had been made in the belly, it was still easy to flatten the wild boar.
Wang Lun started by separating the pig's feet, while Liu Ruoling used a knife to separate the two pig legs on the other side. After separating the legs, the next step was to remove the pork fat, followed by the ribs. Wang Lun had seen how this was done before, so he was quite skilled and successfully removed the pork fat, handing it to Li Ling to take inside and render the fat. Next, he removed the two ribs whole, but they were still a bit too large, so he gave them to Liu Ruoling to cut into smaller pieces. This would make them easier to hang from the rafters, and later, when needed, they could be taken down directly without further processing.
Next, Wang Lun cut the wild boar meat into strips. He estimated one strip would be enough for one meal, so he began cutting and separating the meat. After one strip was separated, he tossed it into a basket and continued cutting the next. Before long, the meat from the belly was all separated, and then it was time to prepare the spine. Wang Lun had seen this before; he had watched people slaughter pigs in the countryside before, and although they hadn't given him any meat, he had still witnessed the slaughter.
With a few swift cuts, Wang Lun separated the spine from the meat on the wild boar's back. The spine was too long, so he had Liu Ruoling chop it into two or three sections. He then tossed the entire spine, along with the pig's tail, to Liu Ruoling, specifically instructing her to remove the tail separately. Pig tails are delicious, but there's just too little of them; after all, a pig only has one tail.
Wang Lun spent some more time sorting the meat from the wild boar's back and putting it into baskets. This was the second basket of meat; the previous basket had been brought inside and hung on a rack. Now, the area around the hearth was filled with meat racks, leaving only a small gap for people to squeeze through. That gap was only left to add firewood to the hearth; otherwise, there wouldn't even be a gap.
Wang Lun and Liu Ruoling carried the basket of pork, bones and all, into the house and placed it on the ground. Liu Ruoxi and Li Ling then hung it on a rack while the two of them buried the offal and cleaned the intestines. As for the offal outside, Li Ling and Liu Ruoling took care of that as well, since it was still early, they went to clean the intestines.
Wang Lun and Liu Ruoling carried the entrails and took entrenching tools to the stream. They walked downstream for a while, found a suitable spot, dug a large pit, threw the entrails and the contents of the intestines into the pit, filled it with soil, and placed a few stones next to it to weigh it down in case any animals pulled it out.
Then they went back to the usual water pit to clean the intestines. The cleaning method was the same: first, they rubbed them with sand, then carefully inspected them, and finally washed them again to finish.
When the two returned to the house, Li Ling and Liu Ruoxi had already cleaned up the entire campsite, washing away any bloodstains and burning the firewood used to trap the wild boar. Upon entering the house, the first thing they saw were several racks piled high with meat. Then they saw two stoves burning; Li Ling was rendering lard on one stove, while a pig's head was stewing on the other. They figured they couldn't just eat the pig's head, so Liu Ruoxi planned to add some meat, mushrooms, and wild vegetables later. They couldn't eat only meat; they needed some vegetables for a balanced diet. Seeing this, Liu Ruoling went to help.
They were all busy cooking, while Wang Lun sat on the kang (a heated brick bed), lost in thought. The plans for the next few days would likely need some adjustments. First, the camp's perimeter wall and toilets needed to be built. This time, it was the poisonous mushrooms in the hut that saved the wild boar, thanks to Liu Ruoxi's clever handling. What about next time? Would they be so lucky? Probably not, so the wall still needed to be built. As for the toilets, that was part of the plan, and now that there were four of them, they couldn't keep digging holes in the grove to relieve themselves; the toilets needed to be built. He estimated the workload would take five to seven days. Food wouldn't be a problem during that time, but he wasn't sure if they could sustain themselves with other necessities.
Thinking it over, Wang Lun went to check. First, he checked the salt. He found the bamboo tube containing salt on the shelf, looked at it, and saw there was still some left. He figured he could manage. Then he went out to the shed to check the firewood. There were five bundles left, which should be just right. Besides, there was still some inside the house. Now that they weren't heating the kang (a traditional heated bed), they would use even less.
After inspecting the site, Wang Lun made up his mind to resume infrastructure construction starting tomorrow, striving to complete the camp as soon as possible so he could finally rest in peace. Wang Lun returned to his room, sat on the kang (a heated brick bed), and began to devise construction plans for the walls and toilets, mainly focusing on the toilets. The walls were manageable, but Wang Lun planned to thicken the rear sections, especially those near the stream. Frankly, Wang Lun was somewhat worried about heavy rains bringing mudslides; a thicker front section was essential for the rear sections to survive.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com