Chapter 7: Going to the Mountains? Are You Tired of Living?

“Then let’s break up,” Li Long said. “I won’t be a burden to you. You can tell anyone you like that we’ve broken up and that there’s nothing between us anymore.”

Li Long’s expression was calm, leaving Wu Shufun puzzled and taken aback. She stared at him, surprised; this wasn’t like him at all. Based on what she knew of his temperament, shouldn’t he be groveling and begging her not to leave?

What’s going on? Did he find someone else while he was in Wucheng?

When they met last month, Wu Shufun remembered that when she had only slightly hinted at her dissatisfaction with their long time apart, Li Long had immediately spent his wages at the commune store on a hair accessory to appease her. Why was he so indifferent this time?

Still, Wu Shufun had her pride. Although she couldn’t wrap her head around his reaction, she couldn’t possibly take back the breakup in front of Li Jianguo, Li Juan, and Li Qiang. She suppressed the urge to look at the rock partridges and said to Li Long, her face stern:

“Fine, let’s break up. And don’t go around telling people you’re my boyfriend anymore!”

She turned and marched away, her strides large and purposeful, quickly disappearing behind the house.

“Xiao Long, are you alright?” Li Jianguo looked at his brother, finding his behavior today rather strange.

“I’m fine, Brother. We need to put the partridges inside; once they thaw out a bit, it’ll be easier to pluck them.”

“Right.” Li Jianguo didn’t press further, helping Li Long carry the birds inside.

Li Qiang and Li Juan’s ears were bright red from the cold, and they rubbed them vigorously. They didn’t really care about their uncle’s breakup, but their eyes remained fixed on the partridges with excitement.

“There really are five,” Liang Yuemei said, feeling happy. The family’s pig had died of “superstition” (disease), making this winter hard to endure. Now that her brother-in-law had caught these partridges, it wouldn’t solve all their problems, but at least the kids could have some meat. In these times, a meal with meat was a rare luxury.

“Yeah, there were over a dozen. But after I caught the first five, the rest got spooked,” Li Long explained. “It was getting too late, and they’re hard to track once they’re frightened.”

“Five is plenty,” Li Jianguo said. “With snow this deep, partridges aren’t easy to snag. Not many families in our team have even tasted them. We’ll cook them for lunch today.”

“How many should we cook?” Liang Yuemei scooped the pickles out of the pan. After taking the pan off the stove, she used a warmed-up corn pancake to wipe the pan clean, soaking up the leftover oil and pickle bits.

She split the oil-coated pancake in half and gave it to Li Juan and Li Qiang. The two kids ate happily, one hand clutching the crumbs, their eyes still glued to the partridges.

Li Jianguo turned to Li Long. Since he had caught them, he had the final say.

“Let’s cook two,” Li Long suggested. “We can pack up two more to take to Juan’s grandfather’s place. We’ll leave the last one in reserve. Brother, Sister-in-law, what do you think?”

Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei exchanged stunned looks. Li Juan’s grandfather was Liang Yuemei’s father. In the past, Li Long had never once thought of the Liang family when something good came along.

Has he truly grown up? Li Jianguo thought, linking this to what he had just said to Wu Shufun. It all felt surreal.

“That sounds like a plan,” Li Jianguo said. “We’ll clean them right after we eat.”

When the food hit the table, Li Long waited until Li Jianguo sat down and picked up his chopsticks before he started. He had been craving these pickles for a very long time.

In his previous life, he had eaten with his brother and sister-in-law right up until Li Jianguo’s accidental death. The winter pickles were a staple. Even later, when he became better off, he had insisted on pickling a large vat every winter. But after Li Jianguo died—a death Li Long blamed himself for—Liang Yuemei had treated him like an enemy and stopped him from eating there. He had drifted through life until his forties, when he married a woman who had been divorced and brought along a child. That woman had pickled vegetables, too, but they never tasted as good as Liang Yuemei’s.

As he ate, accompanied by steamed buns, a whirlwind of emotions surged within him. Reborn into this life, I must make something of myself. And I must prevent the tragedy of the past from repeating!

After lunch, Liang Yuemei boiled water to scald the feathers. Li Qiang and Li Juan picked through the discarded feathers, looking for the prettiest ones to collect and use for shuttlecocks—every family had a stash of old copper coins used specifically for tying these.

Seeing the kids sorting the feathers, Li Long remembered his brother mentioning how, over a decade ago, he had been plowing fields with the production team’s tractor and had unearthed a coin cellar beneath an old temple. He and the others had sold the haul for hundreds of yuan.

Hundreds of yuan in the sixties! A kilogram of copper only cost one yuan back then, and according to his brother, while most of the coins were rusted to scrap, the sheer volume had been immense.

When the weather warms up, I should go take a look. Maybe I can find something others missed.

There were no cultural heritage laws in this era, and these dug-up coin cellars weren’t under state protection, so it was worth exploring. But that was a task for later.

Living a second life, Li Long’s horizons were wide. The mountains were full of treasures: velvet antlers, deer horns, deer penises, fritillaria, and more. Not only did state-run pharmacies buy them, but there was also a private market, and the prices were high.

Moreover, every year the militia underwent three to five months of intensive training, and they were issued guns directly. In the autumn, villages near the mountains organized militia units to hunt wild boars to protect the crops. With a gun in hand, wouldn’t all those mountain treasures be within easy reach?

In his previous life, Li Long had participated in that militia training thoroughly. Before the guns were confiscated by the county armed forces department in the nineties, his shooting scores during the annual winter military competitions were among the best in the team. He wouldn’t call himself a master marksman, but taking down a wild boar was child’s play.

His mind drifted until Li Jianguo called him to help dress the birds, snapping him back to reality.

The partridges looked large, but once plucked and gutted, they yielded barely half a kilogram of meat each. They saved the gizzards, hearts, and livers—the main ingredients for a stir-fry. Li Jianguo also carefully peeled off the chicken gizzard lining (the yellow, leathery membrane). Once dried and ground into powder, it was a proven remedy for children’s digestive issues.

The five birds were soon cleaned. Liang Yuemei set two aside on the cutting board to chop up. Li Jianguo packed the other two to be taken to the Liang family when the time was right, and the last one was hung in the spare room as a reserve.

After everything was finished, Li Long said to Li Jianguo: “Brother, I plan to borrow the team’s horse cart tomorrow to head into the mountains and haul back some wood.”

“You’re not going!” Li Jianguo glared at him, stunned and resistant. “It’s freezing out there, the mountain roads aren’t guaranteed to be clear, and you’re unfamiliar with the terrain. How are you going to go? What can you do there? You might not get any wood, and if you get lost in those mountains, we’ll be in serious trouble!”

Li Long said with quiet confidence: “A colleague of mine from the food processing plant lives in Qingshuihe Commune. It’s right on the edge of the mountains. He came back with me, and I’m going to find him; he’ll guide me into the mountains. I’ll leave early and aim to be back by nightfall—”

Watching the determined look in Li Long’s eyes, Li Jianguo hesitated.

[End of Chapter]