The Sweet Little Fulang

The dew washeavy in the morning, the mountains and forests were quiet, and there wasstill white mist when you got up early.

    After the sun came out, the mist dissipated quickly, gradually there wasmovement in the yard, Lu Gu and Shen Xuanqing both got up. Last night, they boiled two large pots of water and they soaked in the bathtub one after the other to wash away their fatigue. they went to bed late because of the spring festival, so they got up later today.

    Hunting fresh fish and digging loach was also labor-intensive work. If you were full, you would get twice the result with half the effort. If Shen Xuanqing didn’t go out in the morning, Lu Gu would cook rice porridge with his own hands.

    It was cold in the mountains, so they got up early and had a bowl of hot rice porridge, and their body waswarm after eating.

    Before going out, Lu Gu watched the sun came out and the mist subsided, and it was no longer damp, so he poured the four baskets of peppercorns he picked yesterday on the bamboo plaque to dry. Fortunately, there were only two trees, otherwise there would be too many and a bamboo mat would have to be used. It was cool in the mountains in summer, Shen Xuanqing didn't bring a bamboo mat at all, it was not easy to get it.

    The peppery smell spread out in the yard, and the two of them spread the peppercorns evenly with their hands. At the end, Lu Gu asked in a low voice, "Is there a stone mortar here?"

After the peppercorns were dried, they could be pounded into powder with a stone mortar, and they were fried with salt.

    "No, go back down the mountain and bring one up." Shen Xuanqing replied, Wei Lanxiang and Ji Qiuyue came up to pick the two peppercorns when they were ripe before, or he picked and brought them down the mountain by himself, and had never processed it in the mountains.

    Lu Gu nodded and said nothing more.

    After finishing these things, they went out with bamboo baskets and fishing nets on their backs. They also drove the chickens and ducks out to find something to eat outside the fence. You didn’t need to worry about feeding them anymore, the grass outside was full of small bugs and they could eat them.

    Shen Xuanqing cast a good net in the gentle and deep stream, and moved many stones with Lu Gu to build a half-leg-high small dam to block the downstream water surface. The river water flowed out from the gaps in the stones, and both nets and stones could block the fishes, not to mention small ones, the big fishes could still be blocked by the stones.

    After the big net was cast, the large mesh could only stop the fat fishes, and other small fishes could hardly get blocked. The two of them set up another small net with dense mesh downstream, intending to catch some river prawns. The shelled river prawns were also bigger than in the summer.

    After finishing all these, Lu Gu followed Shen Xuanqing to the north forest behind the house. When he first came here, he heard Shen Xuanqing said that the north was dangerous, so he never got close to it.

    Walking to the north, there was a large dense forest, more than 30 miles away from here, which was not far away, but because there were wild boars there, and even the bear that the old hunter met came from the north, Shen Xuanqing had a lot of traps were dug in the forest in the north, several of them were big pits as deep as one person, and several rows of sharpened wooden wedges were buried under the pits.

    It was a good thing that Lu Gu didn't come here before, but now that he came, he pointed to the cut marks on several nearby trees, one on the top, one on the left, one on right which looked like the word "口".

    He told Lu Gu that once he saw these things in the mountains, he shouldn’t go any further. There were traps or wild boar traps. Wasn’t the traps were dug just for waiting for wild animals to fall. This was a custom in their place. People who often went up the mountain knew about it, even Lu Gu knew it, but they had never seen it. The front mountain was full of small things, such as hares and pheasants. These years, they were rarely seen because people often catched them. So they were not going to set any traps.

    Shen Xuanqing would come to the north to look at it every few days. The day before yesterday, he saw nothing, and the dog didn't bark. There should be nothing falling in the traps, so he followed Lu Gu, who was carrying a bamboo basket to the hickory tree and picked the leaves.

    The leaves were a bit poisonous, mashed them up and pour the juice into the river to intoxicate the fish, the fish wouldn’t die, they would turn their stomachs over, they would pass out and wake up after a while when the effect of the medicine wore off. Besides hickory leaves, there was also a kind of Buddleia, but unfortunately it was not so easy to find, not as convenient as hickory leaves.

    they saw a lot of hickory nuts, this was autumn walnut, it would be ripe after a while, but Lu Gu didn’t dare come to pick it alone, he was timid and cowardly, if he really encountered any wild boar, wolf or leopard, he might not even be able to run.

    But it was not a bad thing to cherish life sometimes, at least he wouldn't be worrying about walking around in the mountains.

    The leaves of the hickory tree were not very poisonous, so a lot of them had to be picked to be effective. The leaves in the bamboo basket were compacted, and when it was full, Shen Xuanqing carried it on his back.

    The two of them went to the river to crush the leaves with stones. After they were done, they poured the juice and debris into the river in the water area of ​​the lower net. The green juice and broken leaves flowed in the water. Lu Gu stood by the river, he looked at it, but because the effect of the medicine hadn't taken effect, he didn't see a drunk fish, but a grass carp had already been caught in the net.

    Shen Xuanqing was not idle, anyway, he had to wait for a while, he carried a bamboo basket to dig loaches in the silt by the river, Lu Gu also followed, took off his shoes and socks, and rolled up his trousers very high.

    "In less than a month, the rice in the paddy fields would be ripe, and then you could catch loaches , eels, and autumn rice fish in it, which were more delicious than fish in the river." Shen Xuanqing bent over and rummaged in the mud while talking, his hands were covered with mud.

    "Yeah." Lu Gu listened beside him, and he also stretched out his hand to rummage in the mud. Fortunately, he and Shen Xuanqing were the only ones here, otherwise it would be fine if they were barefoot, but the trousers could never be pulled up so high.