Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

"Hello, are you Li Long?" The person who came over on horseback was a young man, about the same age as Li Long. He rode his horse to the jeep and asked while sitting on the horse.

"Yes, are you from... the forestry team?" Looking at the young man carrying a rifle, Li Long also asked beside the jeep.

"Yes. I saw you last year. You drove a tractor to save our people." The young man smiled and got off the horse and said, "I heard from Bolati that you drove a car. I didn't recognize you just now."

"Hello, hello!" Since he is from the forestry team, he is one of us. Li Long smiled and took the initiative to extend his hand and shook hands with him. "What's your name?"

"Ali, my name is Ali." The young man said, "Aren't you in the west over at Hongshanzui? How did you get here?"

"I heard there is a Mantou Mountain here. It is said that there are treasures hidden here by ancient people, so I came to take a look."

Ali, who had just dismounted, laughed after hearing what Li Long said: "Treasure? We have lived in this area for several lifetimes, and we have never heard of any treasure. You must be kidding... By the way, what were those three people doing just now?"

"I don't know. I saw them when I came here. They wanted to pay me to lead the way, but I said I was unfamiliar with the terrain and I didn't know what it was like here." Li Long said, "They probably saw that I was carrying a gun, so they left."

"They are carrying guns too, right?" Ali looked in that direction.

"Yeah, two sand guns." Li Long said, "It doesn't look like they're for hunting."

"I'll go take a look." Just as Ali was about to ride his horse, he suddenly remembered something. He took a bag from the horse's back and said:
"I just collected the Fritillaria. Bolati said you collected it?"

"I'll take it. Do you want to exchange it for something or money?"

"Exchange for money." Ali was a little excited. "How much can these be exchanged for?"

Li Long estimated that the bag of Fritillaria should be more than six kilograms but less than seven kilograms. He weighed it and found it was about that heavy, so he said:
"Twenty dollars."

"Okay." Ali carried the bag and put it next to the jeep.

Li Long took out some money from his pocket, counted out two and handed them to Ali.

His coat has two inner pockets, the left one holds a few hundred yuan, and the right one holds a few dozen yuan. Every time he takes out the right pocket, it doesn't seem like much, and when the right one runs out, he secretly replenishes it from the left one.

At least don't show off your wealth too much.

After Ali got the money, he waved happily to Li Long and got on his horse to find the three men.

"Be careful, they all carry guns." Li Long couldn't help but remind them again.

"It's okay, I have a gun too." Ali took a few steps forward, then pulled the reins again and said to Li Long:

"Go west from here and look at the ravine over there. You can drive in there. Drive in and continue west for about two or three kilometers, then turn south. You will then see a patch of trees on the side and a round hill that looks like a steamed bun mountain."

"Then how do I get to Xiaobaiyanggou in the west?" Li Long asked hurriedly.

"From that Mantou Mountain to the north, you can get out of Nanshan Mountain, and then take the road on the north side of Nanshan Mountain to the north side of Xiaobaiyanggou. Do you understand?"

"I understand." Li Long nodded. It seemed that the car still could not travel in the mountains.

While Li Long and Ali were talking, the three men were looking here from the distant ridge.

"The driver must have lied. He talked so much with Hasa on horseback, how could he not be familiar with this place? He lied to us..."

"Do you want to ambush him later?"

The two gunmen were talking, and the old man shook his head and said:
"How to fight? Are ordinary people able to drive a jeep? Do you want them to send troops into the mountains to chase us? It's fine for us to come in with guns now, and go hunting or something, and no one will care. But if we beat this guy, do you think they will care?
I tell you two, if we really want to beat them up, hundreds or even thousands of people will come into this mountain to search for us before today."

He turned his head to look at the two people and said seriously:

"Let me tell you, we are here to make money, not to cause trouble. Listen to me, no one can fight without my permission..."

Both of them nodded seriously.

Ali rode his horse towards this side. The old man thought for a moment and said:
"Let's go and meet this young man and see if we can get some information out of him."

Li Long drove the jeep to the location indicated by Ali. He didn't drive fast and kept his eyes on the back.

Fortunately, we drove all the way to the round mountain that Ali mentioned and didn't hear any gunfire, so we felt relieved.

The Mantou Mountain that Ali mentioned is actually hidden in the middle of a mountain range. If he hadn't specifically pointed out the location to Li Long, Li Long wouldn't have been able to see it even if he drove here himself.

After all, when viewed from below, this round mountain is actually just a ridge that bulges out and curves around. Its top is not much higher than other mountains, but it is a little distance away from other ridges. It is connected to the mountainside, but separated by a few dozen meters near the top.

Li Long got out of the car and after confirming that this was the Mantou Mountain that Ali had mentioned, he climbed up with his gun in hand.

The mountain was not very high, with a slope of only about two or three hundred meters. After Li Long climbed up and stood on the top, he discovered that it did look a bit like a steamed bun. The top of the mountain looked quite round, and there were quite a few shrubs on the hillside.

The reason why it cannot be seen from below is mainly because it is too close to the nearby mountains. From a distance, it appears to be connected as one, but from close up you can only see a bulge.

He stood on the top of the mountain and looked down, then he found rocks in the southeast part of the mountain, so he went down there.

If there is a treasure, it should at least be in the cave, right? There must be a cave only if there are stones, this is Li Long's understanding.

Unfortunately, when we got down to the pile of rocks, there was nothing there except a lot of thorny bushes.

Li Long walked around the mountain again, but found no cast iron stakes or caves.

It shouldn't be here, right?
He walked back to the jeep somewhat disappointed.

Sitting in the jeep, Li Long thought about it and laughed again. Could it be that he really expected to find a treasure that he didn't even know if it existed? How could he have expectations?

I felt relieved when I thought about it. Looking at the time, it was almost time to go to Xiaobaiyanggou for lunch.

When Li Long arrived at Xiaobaiyanggou, Lao Huang hadn't finished cooking yet. Seeing Li Long coming, those people greeted him one after another.

The men led by Xu Haijun came over the mountain, and Liang Wenyu and his men were coming from the south.

The time is about the same.

When Xu Haijun saw Li Long, he asked half-jokingly:

"How many Fritillaria have you collected today?"

"A few kilograms." Li Long said, "I went to the east, but didn't collect much."

Xu Haijun actually envied Li Long's life. But he was too proud to tell Li Long that he would cooperate at best, just like Sun Jiaqiang did.

Just like now.

You can work hard, but you can't be a subordinate.

After lunch, Li Long brought some food to Sun Jiaqiang and then went to the cabin.

Sun Jiaqiang was still washing the Fritillaria. There were Fritillaria hanging on the table and wooden floor, weighing about ten kilograms.

Half of the time has passed, and Sun Jiaqiang has finally collected a little more Fritillaria every day.

Even so, there were still people who came specifically to Li Long to make the exchange in the afternoon.

Bolati also came over and exchanged some meat with Li Long - Li Long felt something was wrong these two days. Bolati brought too many Fritillaria every day?

"Alas, our people asked me to exchange some meat for them." Bodanla said, "They can't be hunted in the mountains. They usually patrol the forest. If they encounter something while riding a horse, people would have heard it long ago and ran away."

He pointed at the meat that Li Long had packed and said:
"You guys killed them, we can just eat them, otherwise those we shot down... hehe."

"Also, we recently changed the rules. Some people complained that we were getting too much in rewards. You don't know, some of us didn't exchange Fritillaria with you before, but gave them directly to the team. At the beginning, we could get a few dollars a day, which was not bad.

Later, some bad guy said that I took too much, so I changed it to only reward 50 cents for one kilogram of Fritillaria - why bother handing it in? It would be better for him to come to you to exchange meat, things, and money."

Li Long thought, this is a great teammate, a great assist.

In fact, if you think about it, you can understand that some people are probably greedy and want to gain more benefits, so they lower the price of the surrendered Fritillaria.

But I didn’t expect that Li Long would get the advantage.

This time, Bolati brought more than 40 kilograms of Fritillaria, most of which he exchanged for money.

However, even if a small part of the meat was replaced, Li Long felt that the meat was suddenly much less.

He had to go hunting again.

After saying something to Sun Jiaqiang, Li Long drove to Wenquangou with his gun in hand.

He always felt that there must be something there.

Sun Jiaqiang has become accustomed to his daily work of washing and drying Fritillaria.

Although it was very boring, he was still very satisfied because he could bask in the sun and did not have to search around in the mountains and encounter so many dangers.

Therefore, when Li Long left, he reminded him to be careful.

The water flow in the hot spring ditch was a little stronger, and Li Long drove the jeep to a position where it could not be driven, got out of the car and walked in with his gun. The water was a little turbid, and Li Long felt happy in his heart. It seemed that something was bathing upstream, otherwise the water should be clear.

The smell of sulfur became stronger and stronger. Li Long stopped walking along the stream and went into the woods.

With the cover of trees, he could hide his body better. As for the smell, forget it, there was such a strong smell of sulfur that no matter how good the smell was, they couldn't smell it.

Soon, he heard a grunting sound - a wild boar.

A group of wild boars.

Li Long looked through the gaps in the trees and saw a group of wild boars, large and small, of at least twenty or so in number. They not only occupied all the hot spring pools, but also crowded the upstream and downstream areas.

They are not afraid of the heat - the water temperature upstream of the hot spring pool should be around 40 or 50 degrees.

Li Long approached slowly, looking for a suitable target.

The prey he hunted recently were mainly wild goats, roe deer, red deer, etc. He hadn't hunted wild boars for a while, and Li Long was a bit picky about the meat of this creature.

Beat the small, female ones. It is best not to beat the big, male ones, because they are not tasty and are also troublesome to handle.

After finding a suitable position more than 30 meters away from the hot spring pool, Li Long half squatted down and slowly raised his gun.

There were five or six wild boars huddled together in the water, digging for something. Most of these wild boars weighed about 40 to 50 kilograms, not very big.

The biggest one was soaking in the hot spring pool, and it would arch its back from time to time, so much so that the pool was damaged by it.

Two fangs that looked like small knives could be vaguely seen sticking out of the water. Li Long felt that if he pushed this thing forward, it would fly two meters high.

But of course, he had no intention of arguing with this guy. There was a high probability that after the gun was fired, the group of wild boars would run to the other side together.

He has to seize the opportunity and hit two more targets.

After making a plan, Li Long aimed behind the ear of the farthest wild boar among the targets, and when the wild boar lowered its head into the water and pulled out a grass root, he pulled the trigger!
"boom!"

"boom!"

"boom!"

"boom!"

After four shots, three wild boars fell to the ground on the spot. The main reason was that the wild boar at the beginning blocked the way of the other wild boars. When the gun was fired, the wild boars were scattered, but the road to the direction away from the danger was blocked, and the wild boars were in chaos, which was just the right time for Li Long to continue shooting.

However, the fourth wild boar reacted differently than Li Long expected when the gunshots started. It suddenly rushed towards Li Long. After entering the woods, the trees blocked Li Long's vision. The wild boar did not rush towards Li Long again. It turned south in the pine forest and ran away grunting.

The other wild boars had already been frightened by the noise. They fled in all directions like a splash of water caused by a stone hitting a puddle, and soon disappeared into the woods.

When Li Long went down with his gun, the stream had already been dyed red with blood. Li Long stepped forward and poked with his bayonet, and the three wild boars were dead.

These wild boars are bigger than wild goats. Fortunately, Li Long is very strong now and the jeep is close.

He put the gun on his back, held a wild boar in each hand and went downstream.

Anyway, my shoes are already wet, so I'm not afraid of wading through water again.

Li Long placed the three wild boars in the trunk of the jeep, and the original supplies in the trunk had to be moved to the back seat of the car.

Then drove to the cabin.

Although big farmers like Bolati don't eat wild boar meat, others who grow Fritillaria should eat it, right?

So Li Long planned to keep one wild boar meat here and take the remaining two back home. After all, they couldn't consume that much here.

Once upon a time, it was good enough to have meat to eat.

But now Li Long began to feel disgusted. It is easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but difficult to go from extravagance to frugality.

When the jeep drove back to the cabin, Sun Jiaqiang was explaining to a person who mentioned Fritillaria. However, the person seemed unmoved by Sun Jiaqiang's explanation and just stood there motionless.

Li Long got off the car and realized that this was the woman pretending to be a man.

When Sun Jiaqiang saw Li Long coming back, he came over and said angrily:
"He insisted on exchanging you for the Fritillaria."

Li Long smiled, patted Sun Jiaqiang on the shoulder and said:

"There's a wild boar in the trunk. We'll deal with it later."

"You are awesome." Sun Jiaqiang exclaimed and went to move the wild boar.

"What do you want to change?" Li Long went over and asked the man.

"Do you have a knife?" the woman asked in a hoarse voice, "Also, change some money."

"Knife..." Li Long thought for a moment and said, "There is one."

He searched in the jeep and found a sharpened knife that was about twenty centimeters long from head to tail.

"Is this okay?" The knife still had a cowhide sheath.

In the 1990s, at the free markets and some crossroads in Ma County, some ethnic minority comrades would set up slanted racks with four or five rows of small knives and daggers with very beautiful handles on them.

The price is not expensive. When it was first sold in the 1980s, it was only a few yuan a bunch. In the 1990s, it was more than ten or twenty yuan a bunch.

The knives at that time were basically handmade, and were very useful for cutting meat.

Some young people will buy this when they fight. Of course, they basically won’t really stab anyone, it just serves to intimidate them.

Li Long saw some for sale when he passed by the market two days ago, so he bought one.

This knife is not as good as the one his elder brother Li Jianguo asked someone to make using artillery shell skin, but it looks pretty good.

I didn't expect someone to change it at this time.

The man drew out his knife, looked at it, and asked:
"How to change?"

"Two kilograms of Fritillaria."

"Okay." The other party did not bargain and continued, "The rest will be exchanged for money."

This time the woman brought nearly ten kilograms of Fritillaria, and Li Long gave her sixteen yuan.

The woman left with the empty bag. At this time, Sun Jiaqiang managed to get all three wild boars down, but he didn't have the strength to get them to the spring.

Watching that person leave, Sun Jiaqiang came over and asked:
"Li Long, that knife is only six dollars?"

"That's about right." Li Long bought it for five yuan in the city, and exchanging it for the Fritillaria meant he made one yuan, which wasn't much.

"Then can you bring me one?" Sun Jiaqiang said with a smile, "I think the knife is very beautiful and seems to be sharpened. I want to get one for self-defense."

Li Long smiled:

"Okay, I'll bring it to you tomorrow."

When he was chatting with Sun Jiaqiang, he remembered that he had forgotten about the morels.

Forget it, let’s do it tomorrow.

Li Long picked up one wild boar in each hand and brought it to the spring, then took out his knife and began to skin them.

"Li Long, I think your knife is not as beautiful as the one you just gave to that person. Why don't you use that kind of knife?" Sun Jiaqiang asked as he came over with a basin to help.

"My brother asked someone to make me this knife. I'm used to it." Li Long used the knife to cut the wild boar's skin. He held the skin with one hand and cut the oil layer with the other hand, peeling off the skin bit by bit. "I don't want to change it after I get used to it."

Sun Jiaqiang nodded thoughtfully.

There were three wild boars. Li Long planned to leave one here to dry and exchange it for Fritillaria, and take the other two back to give each family a share.

He planned to completely change the eating habits of his family. Although they had been eating meat for two years, they were still quite frugal. After all, other families could only get by with food and clothing.

What he wants is not just food and clothing, but a complete well-off life.

There is no way to solve the other problems. After all, neither logistics nor products can be so abundant and convenient at the moment, but when it comes to eating meat, he still has the ability to do so.

Li Long peeled the skin and removed the meat, while Sun Jiaqiang processed the internal organs. The two of them worked together quite well.

The cleaning continued until the sun was about to set in the afternoon, and the three wild boars were finally cleaned up.

It's time for Li Long to go back. (End of this chapter)