HPDBC Chapter 1814 The Bully's Scam: Zhao Youcai
Chapter 1814 The Bully's Scam: Zhao Youcai
Chapter 1814 The Bully's Scam: Zhao Youcai
Beneath the Qing Shi Ding Zi in Yongxing Brigade, amidst the vast primeval forest, a joyful shout echoed through the woods: "Bangchui! Bangchui!"
The one shouting was Pang Zhendong, the blind leader of the Pang family gang. When his son, Pang Gaoming, and the other members of the Pang family gang heard their leader shouting, they all used their shuttlecocks to strike the surrounding tree trunks.
Immediately, Pang Gaoming shouted, "What grade of leaves are they?"
"Six-leaf variety," Pang Zhendong replied. Pang Gaoming then asked, "How many seedlings?"
“They’re everywhere!” Pang Zhendong shouted back. The ginseng growers put away their picks and sticks, and knelt down in unison with Pang Zhendong, paying homage to the small seedlings that had sprouted from the cracks in the rocks.
After the three bows, the Pang family members and ginseng carriers all stood up, but Pang the Blind Man remained kneeling in front of the stone. He began to take out his tools from his pocket and started lifting the ginseng.
This is also a stone dragon, and it will take a lot of effort to lift it out. As the second-in-command of the Pang family gang, Pang Gaoming stepped in to help Pang Zhendong.
Unable to lend a hand, the rest of the Pang family gang stood by, keeping watch. Their eyes were filled with anticipation, for Pang Zhendong and Pang Gaoming were carrying not just a ginseng seedling, but a stone dragon worth 100,000 yuan!
By the time the Pang family father and son carried the stone dragon out, Zhao Jun and his party had already entered Shulan County.
The journey back was uneventful; we didn't encounter any robbers, nor did we find another mule.
They went all the way to the supply and marketing cooperative to pick up Sun Haizhu from get off work. Then Zhao Jun treated them to dinner again, this time at the same halal restaurant they had eaten at the day before.
After everyone took their seats, Zhao Jun asked Sun Haizhu to order. Sun Haizhu said he was fine with anything, so Zhao Jun ordered braised pork brisket, braised pork strips, stir-fried three kinds of meat, boiled tripe, green pepper and dried tofu, sweet and sour pork, braised pork strips, beef stew with potatoes, shumai, meat pies, large steamed dumplings, and mutton soup.
Although Sun Haizhu didn't order any food, Zhao Jun still asked him, "Brother-in-law Sun, what else would you like to eat?"
"That's enough, that's enough." Sun Haizhu waved his hand and laughed, "His house is so close to our supply and marketing cooperative, we often go to his house to eat whenever we have free time."
After saying this, Sun Haizhu paused for a moment, then asked Zhao Jun, "Brothers, you guys like this too?"
"Ah, hehe." Zhao Jun smiled and gestured towards Xing San, then said to Sun Haizhu, "My third uncle is happy to eat."
Xing San, who was handing out cigarettes to Wang Qiang and the others, couldn't help but smile when he heard this.
Since coming down from the mountain, Lao Shan Gouzi has never lacked food. He eats whatever the Zhao family eats, but mainly wild boar, roe deer, and bears.
Even though Zhao Youcai hunts an old ox once a month, the amount of beef he eats is still relatively small compared to the amount of wild animals he eats.
Moreover, the Zhao family's beef dishes consisted mainly of braising and stewing, unlike the more varied cuisines of halal restaurants. So, coming to a restaurant for a change of pace and something new, Xing San ate a few more bites.
After eating and drinking their fill, Zhao Jun first took Sun Haizhu home, and then the group of seven took two cars straight to Xiangyang Village.
Today, the Zhao family didn't rush home overnight like last time, because that would be too late and disturb their family's rest. They decided to stay at Xie Chen's house for a while and leave tomorrow morning.
When Zhao Jun and his group arrived outside Xiangyang Village, it was already 8 p.m.
But the Zhao family didn't rush into the village. Instead, they parked the car by the roadside. Zhao Jun and his men got out, cut two bundles of grass, threw them onto the Liberation truck, and then got back in and entered Xiangyang Village.
Upon entering the village and arriving at the Xie family's house, Zhao Jun and his seven men went inside to rest. Two hours later, the Pang family, a group of thirteen men from the Yong'an forest area, returned to Yongsheng Village under the cover of night, carrying pine torches and disregarding their exhaustion from the day.
Instead of resting in their hut in Qingshilazi, they hurried home through the night, traversing mountains and valleys. Their urgency stemmed from the desire to call the middleman first thing the next morning to discuss selling their stone dragon.
……
The next day, May 28, 1988, Zhao Jun and his six companions got up at around 5 a.m.
Li Baoyu and Xie Chen carried basins to the tofu shop and bought two basins of tofu pudding. After returning home, they ate breakfast with the large pancakes and canned luncheon meat they had brought from home.
After finishing their meal and cleaning up, the seven of them boarded the bus at 4:30 p.m. and headed straight for the border between the two provinces.
……
At eight o'clock, everyone in the Yong'an Forest Area who was supposed to go to work went to work, and everyone who was supposed to go to school went to school.
Wang Meilan tied her headscarf as she walked from the east corridor to the outer room.
In this season, women don't wear headscarves to keep warm, but to cover their hair while working, preventing dust and dirt from sticking to their hair.
Today, Wang Meilan was leading the women's gang to clear weeds in the southern part of the land. Just as Wang Meilan reached the outer room, Ma Ling came out of the west room.
As Zhao Youcai scooped flour into the basin in front of the dish rack, Wang Meilan asked, "What are you doing? Shouldn't I tell you to tidy up and come with me to shovel weeds?"
"Huh?" Zhao Youcai stood up with the basin in his hand and looked at Wang Meilan, saying, "When did you ask me to help you weed? Didn't you mention last night that you wanted to eat fried dough? I'm making you big fried dough for lunch today."
Upon hearing Zhao Youcai's words, Wang Meilan was taken aback, blinked her eyes, and said, "So you're going to stay home and make fried pancakes?"
"Ah!" Zhao Youcai nodded and said, "Just like a few days ago, you guys do the work, and I'll cook for you at home. Then you can come home and eat something ready-made. Wouldn't that be great?"
"Alright then," Wang Meilan said after hearing Zhao Youcai's suggestion. "Then you can cook some more dishes for us at home."
"Won't stewed tofu work?" Zhao Youcai said. Wang Meilan replied, "Then stew it, and make a lot!"
"Alright, I got it." Zhao Youcai replied with a smile, while Ma Ling said from the side, "Dad, your fried pancakes are the best."
"What else is there to say?" Zhao Youcai smiled, then asked Ma Ling, "Will Dad make you two more sugar pancakes?"
"That's great!" Ma Ling laughed. "Dad, I love eating your sugar pancakes the most. We also make pancakes, but we can never make them as good as yours."
“That’s because you’re not controlling the heat properly,” Zhao Youcai instructed Ma Ling in a serious tone. “Making pancakes is different from making flatbread. When you make flatbread, the heat can’t be too high. But when you make pancakes, the heat has to be high and fast.”
At this point, Zhao Youcai added gestures, explaining, "Once the pancake is in the pan, you flip it over a couple of times until it's cooked through. That's how you make a soft pancake. If you cook it for too long, no matter how you knead the dough, it will turn out hard."
At this point, Zhao Youcai smiled and waved his hand at Ma Ling, saying, "Alright, my dear, you don't need to know how to make them. Just wait for Dad to make them for you, and then you can eat them!"
Ma Ling had never met such a wonderful husband in her entire life. The best part was that she was lucky enough to have such a wonderful man. This made Ma Ling, who was already happy, feel even happier.
The most important thing for a family to live together is harmony. Seeing Zhao Youcai behave so well today, Wang Meilan was also very happy. She took Ma Ling out of the outer room, picked up the hoe behind the door, called to Jin Xiaomei and Liu Mei next door, and the four of them walked together towards the southern land.
As they walked, Wang Meilan said to Jin Xiaomei, "Your older brother made us big fried pancakes and stewed tofu for lunch today."
"Oh my god, that's wonderful!" Jin Xiaomei exclaimed with a smile. "My older brother is an absolute master at making fried pancakes!"
At this moment, Ma Ling interjected with a smile, "My mom mentioned yesterday that she wanted to eat fried dough sticks, so my dad started making them for her today."
"Oh my!" Jin Xiaomei laughed and gently bumped Wang Meilan's shoulder, saying, "Sister-in-law, my brother is so good to you! He makes whatever you want to eat!"
At this moment, a happy smile appeared on Wang Meilan's face.
Inside the Zhao family's house, Zhao Youcai was kneading dough in the outer room.
When making the pancakes, half of the dough was scalded with hot water and the other half was mixed with cold water. After kneading the dough, Zhao Youcai covered it with a bowl on the work surface to let it rest.
By this time, twenty minutes had passed since Wang Meilan and the others left.
Suddenly, Zhao Youcai's eyes changed. He strode into the east room, then climbed onto the kang (a heated brick bed) and took out the jacket and washed cloth trousers that Zhao Jun had bought for him from the kang cabinet.
Zhao Youcai hurriedly changed his clothes and then took the satchel off the wall.
He opened the bag and rummaged through it, finding gauze, painkillers, pills, and bullets inside, before slinging the bag over his shoulder.
Immediately afterwards, Zhao Youcai took down the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle hanging on the wall.
With his Type 56 pistol slung over his shoulder, Zhao Youcai also tied the holster containing his Type 54 pistol to his waist.
After dressing neatly, Zhao Youcai strode out of the house and walked to the first storage room on the right side of the courtyard gate, from which he pushed out a large motorcycle.
Zhao Youcai pushed his motorcycle out of the compound, closed the gate, got on the motorcycle, and headed north.
Zhao Youcai was going on a long trip to Lingnan to hunt tigers in Qiaotou Village.
Ever since he learned that the Siberian tiger in Laoyingou was a threat, Zhao Youcai had been eager to hunt it. But he knew Wang Meilan wouldn't let him go, so he behaved himself well these past few days. It wasn't until today, when Wang Meilan lowered her guard, that Zhao Youcai finally slipped out of the house.
Knowing that Wang Meilan was leading people to work in the southern part of the country, Zhao Youcai came out from the north of the village and rode his motorcycle all the way to the preparation road.
On the road, Zhao Youcai rode his motorcycle very fast. At this moment, he was in a good mood and truly felt like he could fly freely in the sky.
After riding for more than a mile, Zhao Youcai saw a man leading a calf towards him.
Although it was called a calf, it weighed over 200 pounds. The calf wasn't wearing a nose ring or tied up; the man walked in front, and the calf followed behind.
But for some reason, the calf looked sickly and kept stopping and starting.
The man walked ahead, turning back every few steps to call out to the calf or to wave.
Cows are intelligent animals; even though the calf was unwell, it followed its owner when called upon.
When Zhao Youcai saw the calf, his legs went weak. It wasn't that he was afraid the calf would bump into him, but rather that he was afraid of hitting the calf while riding his motorcycle, given his past record of doing so.
Zhao Youcai controlled the motorcycle and, after confirming that he would not hit the calf, sped away, getting away from the troublesome place.
But by some strange coincidence, when the motorcycle and the calf passed each other, they were about two meters apart. Zhao Youcai and the motorcycle didn't even touch a hair on the calf's head, but right after Zhao Youcai passed, the calf let out a mournful cry, its four hooves went limp, it collapsed to the ground, foaming at the mouth, and died.
"Ouch!" The man leading the cattle turned around and saw the calf lying on the ground, its life hanging in the balance. His first reaction was to leap forward, point at Zhao Youcai who was riding away on his motorcycle, and shout, "You stay right there! You hit my calf!"
Zhao Youcai, who was riding a motorcycle, heard the man shout. He glanced back, but didn't take it seriously because he knew he hadn't touched the cow.
At that moment, about ten meters ahead of Zhao Youcai, two women were walking together.
The man leading the cattle chased after the motorcycle for a few steps, then shouted, "Rongzi! Rongzi! Stop him! Stop him!"
The Rongzi the man was referring to was none other than Sun Yongrong, one of the Five Golden Flowers of Yong'an Village and Li Ruhai's best friend.
The man leading the cattle was Sun Yongrong's brother, Sun Yonghua, and the woman accompanying Sun Yongrong was her sister-in-law, Tian Zhijie.
A few days ago, Sun Yonghua asked someone to pass on a message to Sun Yongrong, asking him to inquire in the Yong'an forest area if anyone was willing to buy his family's calf.
Li Ruhai was away from home those days, so Sun Yongrong didn't arrange this for her brother.
When Li Ruhai returned, Sun Yongrong told him about it. While calming down the trouble caused by Ma Yang, Li Ruhai also took care of the matter for Sun Yongrong.
Yesterday, after finishing her chores at home, Sun Yongrong went back to her parents' home to tell Sun Yonghua about the matter, which is why the three siblings came to Yong'an today to deliver the cattle.
Unbeknownst to Sun Yonghua, the calf had a pre-existing condition, but he couldn't detect it when he examined it himself, assuming that the calf simply didn't want to leave home.
Unexpectedly, the calf died on the way, and he mistakenly thought that Zhao Youcai had hit the calf with his motorcycle.
Sun Yonghua's misunderstanding stemmed from Sun Yongrong. Yesterday, when Sun Yongrong was chatting with his brother and sister-in-law, he told them the story of Zhao Youcai beating and ramming the cow as a joke.
Sun Yonghua chuckled after hearing this, and immediately remembered the incident of Zhao Youcai hitting the old ox with his motorcycle. So when the motorcycle passed by and the calf fell over, he instinctively assumed that Zhao Youcai had hit his calf.
Hearing Sun Yonghua shout, Sun Yongrong was taken aback. But the next second, he heard Sun Yonghua continue shouting, "Rongzi, Xiaojie, stop him! He's bumped into our calf!"
Before Sun Yongrong could react, his sister-in-law, Tian Zhijie, had already rushed forward. The old woman stood in the middle of the road, arms outstretched, blocking Zhao Youcai's path.
Zhao Youcai had no choice but to stop the car. As soon as he stopped, before he could say anything, Tian Zhijie lunged at him, reaching out to grab Zhao Youcai's face. Fortunately, Sun Yongrong reacted quickly and pulled her sister-in-law away.
"What are you doing?" Zhao Youcai, who had narrowly escaped a disaster, couldn't help but feel a little scared. Men are supposed to show their faces when they go out. Even when a couple is fighting, it's rare for a woman to scratch her husband's face. If Zhao Youcai had been badly scratched by Tian Zhijie, he wouldn't have been able to go to Lingnan at all.
Women in rural Northeast China are known for their fierceness, and those who have come from hardship are willing to fight tooth and nail for the sake of their family's cattle.
At this moment, Tian Zhijie's left arm was being held by Sun Yongrong, so she raised her right hand, pointed at Zhao Youcai, and shouted, "You hit my cow!"
"What the hell? I bumped into your cow?" Zhao Youcai frowned and said, "You saw me bump into your cow? I was walking right next to it, eight hundred feet away from the cow, how could I possibly bump into it?"
Just then, Sun Yonghua came running up, panting. Seeing his wife and sister blocking Zhao Youcai, he grabbed Zhao Youcai's sleeve and said, "You hit my cow! You're responsible for my cow!"
In the local dialect, "包" means "to compensate".
"I'll beat your grandma to a pulp!" Zhao Youcai snapped, shoving Sun Yonghua aside and yelling, "Did you see me crash into your cow?"
"Do we even need to watch over it?" Sun Yonghua shouted. "My calf lay down as soon as you went over. Didn't you hit it? Who hit it?"
As soon as Sun Yonghua finished speaking, Sun Yongrong said to Zhao Youcai, "Master Zhao, if you hit him, just admit it. We're all from the same village, we can't extort you, just pay for my brother's ox."
Sun Yongrong wasn't deliberately biased towards his brother; it's just that whenever an old ox died unjustly in the surrounding villages, everyone immediately thought of Zhao Youcai.
Moreover, Zhao Youcai does have a criminal record. This past January, he crashed his motorcycle into Wang Fu's old ox, crippling it. If he could cripple an old ox, he could certainly kill a calf.
"Get out of my way!" Zhao Youcai glared at him with wide, small eyes. "Did I hit your brother Niu? Wouldn't I have fallen down too? How could I have driven this far?"
"I don't know!" Sun Yonghua said, "I don't care if you fall or not, I just know you bumped into my cow!"
Just as Zhao Youcai was about to lose his temper, he saw a jeep and a Jiefang truck coming from the opposite direction.
Upon seeing the two cars, Zhao Youcai's heart skipped a beat: "Could it be such a coincidence?"
I owed you a chapter from yesterday, so it'll be late. You guys go to sleep now. I went to the city again today for a checkup, and it turns out I still have insufficient blood supply to my heart and brain.
(End of this chapter)