Back to 1984: Hunting in the Mountains

After being busy for half a day, when it was almost noon, Yu Qiutang decided to go back to see his father.

Because he was in a hurry to make the coffin, my father did not get involved in these chores.

There was a carpenter in the village who could help my father.

The coffin is made of different panels and is not a seamless whole. The division of labor does not affect the final effect.

But Yu Dejin did not agree.

He insisted on making a coffin for his brother himself.

There was no other way, time would not wait for him.

Making a coffin is actually very time-consuming. It requires many steps, from selecting the wood, processing it into boards, polishing it, brushing it with oil over and over again, painting it, etc.

Even though it is winter now and wood is relatively easier to dry, it is very difficult to rush the work because there are too many fixing steps involved.

Therefore, people here usually prepare coffins in advance.

If one feels that he is not in good health, he will prepare a coffin in advance and keep it ready.

Basically, the old couple’s coffins were made together.

One person uses it, and the other person's is kept in the side room as a reserve.

If you are lucky, you may not need it for ten or twenty years, otherwise you may need it very soon.

Generally speaking, if two people have depended on each other for a long time and one of them dies, the other will inevitably be affected and will not live long.

But there are always those who care deeply and insist that they can live for several decades more, letting their spouse wait for them in the underground for a while.

When I came down from the alley, I saw my father working in the yard. The northwest wind was blowing hard, but he was wearing very thin clothes and was working hard.

Chen Meidi helped silently.

Yu Qiushi sat on the doorstep, and for once he didn't have a seizure.

It might be the depressing atmosphere at home that made the child feel heavy in his heart for the first time.

Seeing him coming down, Yu Dejin looked up and said, "Second brother, go pick up your eldest sister."

"what?"

Yu Qiutang was slightly stunned.

"I go?"

Yu Dejin just finished saying one sentence and immediately lowered his head to look at the work in his hands, without noticing Yu Qiutang's confused look.

Without him.

He couldn't remember where his eldest sister's house was.

This is another sad story.

My eldest sister was originally going to marry in a village not far away, but for some reason, her husband's family moved to the next county, which was at least 200 miles away from Rongcheng.

It’s also in a big mountain.

Yu Qiutang didn't have a motorcycle in his previous life, so it was basically impossible for him to ride such a long distance.

In addition, since his daughter was married, her connection with her parents' home was relatively weak, so he had only visited his eldest sister's house twice in total.

My mind is a mess now and I can't tell the direction.

Even more serious than my second sister.

My second sister's family at least knew that the approximate location was the bottom of a valley.

This kind of thing sounds exaggerated. How could the younger brother not know his sister's home?

But the truth is so cruel.

In this era of underdeveloped information and transportation, it is really not easy for poor people to go out.

It has little to do with emotions.

"Does my elder sister have to come back?"

Yu Qiutang asked tentatively.

This is not a rare thing. When her uncle passed away, the niece thought that it was not too much for her to not come back after marrying far away, as long as she brought some money with her.

Yu Qiutang didn't want to cause trouble for his elder sister.

The relationship between my eldest sister and her brother-in-law is very bad. My eldest sister is weak-willed and is said to have a hard time at her husband's house. If she leaves and goes home, she might suffer...

Well, he just didn't know where the people were.

The key is that there is no one to ask.

As for the people in the family, my father has never visited my eldest sister's in-laws' home. Let's forget about Chen Meidi. When my eldest sister got married, it was my mother who went to visit her, and Chen Meidi didn't know about it.

Among the younger generations, the second sister doesn’t know, and the third sister definitely doesn’t know.

Yu Qiushi naturally has no chance of doing this.

Where should he find it?

So he wanted to ask his father, if not, his eldest sister should not come back.

He was willing to bring some money for his elder sister.

Besides, there aren't many people at Fourth Uncle's house, so no one would know whether he comes to pay his respects or not.

"You have to come back. When your eldest sister was a child, there was a flood and she was almost washed away. It was your fourth uncle who risked his life to carry her back. If it weren't for your fourth uncle, there would be no eldest sister."

"Is there such a past?"

"Why are you saying so much? Go quickly and bring the person back tonight."

"Oh."

What can Yu Qiutang say?

I can't find any excuse to shirk my responsibility.

Since the person has done him a favor, it would be unreasonable not to come back to pay tribute to him now that he is no longer with us.

He had no choice but to turn around in the yard and prepare to rush to the alley entrance.

"Crench!"

Before leaving, he braked the car again, turned around and asked his father helplessly and shamefully: "What is my eldest brother-in-law's name?"

Yu Dejin poked his head out from behind the coffin and glanced at him.

"Wang Youcai."

"What's their village called?"

“Hongxing Village, Shengli Township.”

Yu Qiutang said nothing more and left home in a flash.

When I got on and prepared to speed away, I found that it was extremely cold. I couldn't even hold on to the front of the car. The wind was also too strong and blew into my neck. My nose was so cold that it seemed to be frozen together. I couldn't move forward at all.

The winter in the Northwest, especially the winter in the 1980s, is different from that in later generations.

The temperature difference between day and night is large here, and the temperature between day and night can sometimes differ by more than 20 degrees.

The same is true for sunny and cloudy days.

It's only a few days until the twelfth lunar month. If there is sunshine during the day, the temperature will be at least minus six or seven degrees Celsius, which is still acceptable for people.

But once you face away from the sun, the temperature may drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius, which is enough to freeze you to death.

Today is a cloudy day.

The clouds in the sky don't appear thick, but rather look like a grayish-white pot lid. There are no gaps between the clouds at all, giving people a hard and solid feeling.

The temperature is naturally exceptionally low.

The northwest wind at low temperatures is something even more terrifying.

If you face it head-on, you will feel like a thick wall that firmly blocks people's progress, but it is clearly not a wall, but a cutting knife with countless fine blades that cuts people's face layer by layer and makes them bleed.

Even a tough man like Yu Qiutang could not resist the murderous intent of nature, but if he ran downstairs to change his clothes now, he would lose face in front of his father and Chen Meidi.

He had no choice but to run back to his new house, find some clothes to change into, and then set out for Huaiyang County.

Fortunately, the manager hired by the village was very professional and was also his cousin, so he took care of all these things. Otherwise, he would not feel at ease if he left this business.

Huaiyang County, Shengli Township, Hongxing Village. The end of the journey.

Yu Qiutang walked along the provincial road, constantly looking at the road signs.

He knew that Huaiyang County was a county south of Rongcheng, close to Shaanxi, but that was all he knew.

So for the first two hours or so, he could travel at lightning speed without any fear in his heart, but when he arrived in Huaiyang, he became very careful and would ask someone how to get to Shengli Township after walking a certain distance.

In this way, we walked and stopped along the way, and by the time we reached the entrance of Hongxing Village, it was already dark.

It gets dark early in winter, and it is usually too dark to see anything before 5pm.

Today the sky is still overcast and it gets dark early. It is just past four o'clock and the surrounding scenery is already quite blurry.

Fortunately, I finally found the place.

Yu Qiutang then asked several people how to get to Wang Youcai's home, but everyone looked confused and said they had never heard of such a person.

But Hongxing Village is so small that anyone living in the village should have heard of it.

It was not until I asked a young man that I learned that Wang Youcai was his real name. Everyone in the village called that guy "Dog Hammer".

It's not a nice nickname.

But it also fits the rural name.

So, after six or seven hours of hard work, he finally found the door of Wang Gou Chuizi's house.

Looking at the fenced yard shrouded in darkness, Yu Qiutang's memory finally came back and he knew he was in the right place.

This is my eldest sister’s house.

Speaking of Huaiyang, it is naturally far inferior to Rongcheng.

Rongcheng is surrounded by mountains, but the urban area of ​​Rongcheng is located on a flat land, so Rongcheng later developed into a prefecture-level city, covering all the surrounding county-level cities.

Later, Rongcheng discovered oil, and became even richer.

Airplanes, trains, high-speed railways, nothing is left out.

A small, remote mountain county like Huaiyang has a total population of less than 200,000 and has little presence. If it were not so remote, it might have been directly removed from the county's establishment.

Huaiyang is nothing, let alone Shengli Township.

Hongxing Village is even smaller.

Small means poor. Apart from basic agriculture, there is basically no source of income.

Whether you can have enough to eat depends entirely on whether God gives you food.

If God is not willing, life will be very difficult and even eating will be a problem.

Just like the yard of my eldest sister's house.

Even worse than the worst family in Wangjiazhuang.

It is called a yard, but in fact it is just a fence made of various branches inserted into the ground and tied with straw vines. It is impossible to keep anyone out.

So there are many gaps in the fence that are visible to the naked eye, and presumably someone or an animal has climbed over each gap.

The gate of the yard is also made of woven branches.

Compared to fences, gates are a little more "sturdy" because they are made of hemp ropes instead of straw vines that will age quickly after a summer and autumn.

Naturally, there is no gatehouse at the main gate.

Beyond the gate, three dilapidated mud houses can be seen, with a faint light coming from the window of one of them.

The so-called mud house is a house without any bricks or tiles.

The walls of the house were built with an earthen foundation, and the roof was built with wooden rafters, which were covered with thin branches, and the branches were covered with straw, and the straw was covered with mud.

The same goes for walls.

It was all smoothed with mud.

Only three layers of mud are needed. The inner two layers are coarse mud with wheat straw a few centimeters long mixed in, and the outermost layer is fine mud made of wheat husks.

For a building like this, bricklayers will try every possible means to make the surface smooth.

Make the new house look not too ugly.

But it is mud after all, and it cannot withstand the constant erosion of rain. Slowly, the mud layer will gradually fall off, just like the bald spots on a leper's head.

When you encounter this kind of thing, you must fill the mud.

If it is not replenished, the mud inside will be washed away.

Presumably, fine mud and coarse mud are easier to be washed away. Once there is a problem with the coarse mud, it is like a broken human skin, which loses the ability to block bacteria, and the wall will be quickly washed away by the sticky mud between the bases.

Then the wall is not far from collapsing.

To prevent this from happening, people always fill in a spot as soon as it appears.

But the old mud had already been dyed gray by wind and rain, while the newly applied mud was khaki in color, as if it had been patched.

At first, people will hate such patches, which make the whole house look ugly.

But gradually there are more and more patches, and I got used to it.

In the end, they started to give up and didn't even bother to cover the outer layer with fine mud, but just used coarse mud to cover it.

If it continues to fall, then it will continue to be a mess.

Anyway, there is nothing else here but plenty of loess, which can be seen everywhere. It turns into mud when watered.

Yu Qiutang looked at the shabby yard of his eldest sister's house, and then thought of the new yard he had just built, and he began to feel uncomfortable again.

He wondered if other people felt the same way.

He is the kind of person who would feel guilty if he lives a good life but his family members do not.

In fact, it stands to reason that we are all adults and live our own lives. Who lives a better life is up to their own ability.

But he just couldn't let go of his happiness.

He felt very sad thinking that his sister, who had been so good to him in the past, now lived in such a shabby house and must have a very hard life.

This might be a mental illness, he thought to himself.

Just as I was thinking about it, suddenly the door of the only room with light was opened, and two small shadows ran out from inside, ran straight to the corner of the yard and hid.

Then, I saw a man holding a soft thing in his hand, probably a rope, and he rushed out and went straight to another room next door.

Finally, a woman came out crying, shouting, "Don't hit them. If you want to hit someone, hit me. The children are still young. Don't take it out on them."

"Snapped!"

The person in front didn't find anyone in the dark room, so he rushed out again. He just happened to meet the woman and was hit in the face with a rope.

Yu Qiutang closed his eyes subconsciously.

It was as if the rope was hitting his face.

This is a familiar scene.

It's like a copy of him.

He no longer cared about anything else and rode his bike through the fence, arriving in front of the attacker. He braked, struggled, then grabbed the attacker, swung him up with one hand, and slammed him to the ground.

"puff!"

The force of this blow was naturally not light.

The man was crawling on the ground like a wriggling worm, scratching the ground with his hands with great effort, but no sound came out for a long time.

At this time, the beaten woman finally reacted and subconsciously threw herself on the person on the ground to stop Yu Qiutang: "Who are you? Why are you still hitting people? Look at this person...ah, Tangtang!!"

Yu Chunxing finally saw clearly that the tall man in front of her was actually her younger brother Yu Qiutang.

She stood up in shock, and cautiously came over, looking up at Yu Qiutang with disbelief in her eyes. She even looked over the fence to make sure this was real.

She wasn't dreaming.

"It's really great, I really wasn't dreaming, why are you here, you...you..."

Yu Chunxing didn't know what to say for a moment. She looked at her husband on the ground, then at her brother in front of her with a terrifying aura, and for a moment she stood in the middle and began to feel confused.

Oh my God, I...what should I do? (End of this chapter)