Chapter 153 The Jar Was Stolen

Chapter 153 The Jar Was Stolen

Chapter 153 The Jar Was Stolen
Li Changle almost laughed out loud when she saw this, "Mother, don't worry about anything, good luck, everything will be fine."

Li's mother glared at him and said, "What are you still standing there for? It's still early. Go to sleep for two or three hours. We still have to go back to work when the tide goes out!"

"Got it." Li Changle took the basin and walked into the house.

Mother Li came into the room angrily and said to Father Li who was sitting there with a sullen face: "Did you hear what that vicious woman Xu Xianmei said just now? If you lend money to Ah Si's family again in the future, I will break up with you."

Father Li said awkwardly, "I borrowed five dollars from her at the dock last time to buy diesel for her. Ah Si is waiting for diesel on the boat. I can't just watch them go out to sea without money to buy oil, can I?"

When Li's mother heard this, she became angry. "I have lent more than 30 yuan to the fourth roommate, and she has never paid it back. The children are about to get a land grant to build a house, and they need money right now. If you dare to lend money to the fourth roommate again, you will go with her."

"The money is all with you. I don't even know where you put it." Father Li turned his trouser pockets upside down. "Look, I don't have a penny on me. Where can I lend them the money?"

"I don't care. As long as I know about it, I will go to Room 4 and ask them to pay back the thirty plus they borrowed. Otherwise, I will ask someone to take something to pay the debt."

Children and grandchildren are Li's mother's bottom line. Xu Xianmei cursed her child, which completely touched Li's mother's bottom line.

Father Li sat there and sighed again when he thought about how the old lady had asked them, the older ones, to help look after Yufang before she left.

After thinking about it, he got up and went to Brother Li's house. Seeing Li Xiaoqing at home, he said to her, "Qing, go to Fourth Grandpa's house and see if Fourth Grandma beat Aunt Yufang?"

Li Xiaoqing didn't want to go, so she sat there without moving. "Fourth Grandma chased Aunt Yufang and beat her yesterday. We saw her hiding in the master's hall, and Grandpa Qin even gave her rice cakes to eat."

Grandpa Qin is an elderly widower. The villagers asked him to guard the temple and clean the ancestral hall. The old man likes children and often gives offerings to the children in the village.

Father Li said in a gentle voice: "Be obedient and ask Xiaoyang to go and take a look together!"

"Oh!" Li Xiaoqing put down the shuttle thread in his hand, walked a few steps, turned back and asked, "Grandpa, if Aunt Yufang gets beaten, we will come back to call you?"

"Xiaoqing, don't go." Li's mother came out and stopped her, then turned to Li's father and said, "If her biological mother and father don't care about her, what's the point of calling us?

If you want Xu Xianmei not to torture Yufang, you must have money in your pocket to lend to that treacherous idiot Xu Xianmei at all times.

You old man, you have been soft-hearted all your life. People are cursing your son, but you are still worried about their daughter. The old lady is gone, you can protect her for a while, but you can't protect her forever.

Either you take her home and raise her, or ask the old lady to show up and take Xu Xianmei away. As long as she is gone, the fourth room will live in peace."

Father Li was so shocked by Mother Li's criticism that he stood there for a long time before he whispered, "Xiaohua, before Mother left, she asked us to help take care of Yufang, otherwise she would be worried down there."

"How are you going to take care of her? Don't you think about why the main house demolished the small house after the old lady passed away? It was because they didn't want Yufang to live there." Li's mother asked unhappily.

After hearing this, Father Li thought about his own family's conditions and waved his hand listlessly at Li Xiaoqing, "Ah Qing, you don't have to go."

Mother Li also felt sorry for her niece, but given the family's financial situation, she could only take care of her own child first. Seeing Father Li's listless look, she felt a little distressed.

She helped him back to the house and sat him down. "Don't worry about Yufang. She is already fifteen or sixteen years old, not a child. She doesn't know how to resist. Yesterday, Xu Xianmei chased her with a broom and beat her. The girl ran away to the master's palace and hid for a long time, but Xu Xianmei couldn't do anything to her."

"If you want Yufang to have a good life in the future, unless you and the third brother go to find Ah Shui and ask him to take over the fourth room's property, otherwise you won't even have the money to marry a wife in the future."

Father Li thought for a while and sighed, "Ah Shui is only eighteen this year. Is it okay to let him be the head of the family?"

"Ah Si doesn't care about things. The only person the Fourth House can rely on is Ah Shui. If you don't let him try, how do you know he can't do it?"

"Okay, I'll go find the third brother tomorrow." After saying this, Father Li went back to the house with his crutches.

……

Li Changle was woken up by Zhou Ruonan in a daze. He quickly got up and went out. He saw that she had already packed up the tools and cooked a few turtle eggs and a few bags of corn cobs.

The cooked turtle eggs are only half the size of an egg, and some are like flattened ping-pong balls.

After peeling off the eggshell, the egg white inside is still liquid. People who have never seen it might think it is not cooked, but in fact it is already cooked.

Because the protein content of turtle eggs is much higher than that of chicken or duck eggs, even when cooked, the egg white remains liquid, while the yolk will gradually solidify.

Li Changle saw the turtle eggs in the bowl, smiled and came forward, and took a sip on her face when she wasn't paying attention, "Wife, why did you think of cooking this for me? Are you worried that I'll be tired and can't pay my taxes?"

"You're talking nonsense and you know nothing. Can't you think of something positive?" Zhou Ruonan knew from his look that he was not saying good things. She glared at him in reproach and wrapped the corn cobs and turtle eggs and put them in a snakeskin bag.

She saw her husband working day and night to earn money after coming home, without even a good night's sleep, and she felt sorry for him, so she cooked some turtle eggs for him to take with him.

Li Changle smiled and picked up the snakeskin bag, raised his hand and pinched her cheek, "I'm leaving, you go to sleep quickly, and wait until the tide rises to pick us up with the eldest and second sisters-in-law."

"Got it. Be careful." Zhou Ruonan sent him outside. The two older ones and Chen Yongwei were already waiting outside. When they saw him come out, they took the lead and walked up the mountain.

Zhou Ruonan stood at the door, watching Li Changle walk away, then turned back to the house and closed the door. Li Changle and the other three carefully went up the mountain one after another, passed through the cave, and when they reached the beach, they split into two groups. He and Awei went to the rocky beach to collect jars, while the second brother and the eldest brother went into the cave to dig oysters and conchs.

After the two brothers entered the cave, they searched the three water holes as usual. This time the harvest was not very good. After searching the three water holes, they caught two conger eels, a few stone bass, and two miscellaneous fish.

The two brothers tied the net bag to the reef and started chiseling with chisels.

Li Changle and Chen Yongwei first went to a farther place, the mudflats, to collect cans.

After placing the cans on the reef beach for a while, the harvest was not very good, so the team put most of the cans down to the rocks.

After checking it out, I found the harvest was pretty good. There were seventy or eighty top-quality Wangchao fish weighing one or two taels each, and they cost 45 cents each, which meant an income of more than 30 yuan.

There were about a hundred octopuses weighing more than two taels, which cost another twenty yuan. Two full backpacks were filled with octopuses, which cost at least two hundred yuan. At three thousand and fifty yuan per pound, they could be sold for sixty or seventy yuan.

There are six hundred jars, and the income from collecting them every other night is more than one hundred. The two men grinned so hard that their teeth were showing.

The two men excitedly returned to the rocky beach, carrying a backpack and an oilcloth bag. They put down the backpack and the snakeskin bag and went into the water. They picked up the jars and checked twenty or thirty of them, and found that all of them were empty.

Li Changle felt that something was wrong. Even if the octopus here had learned to be smart, it would not be that nine out of ten rooms were empty. It must have been discovered and stolen.

"Awei, do you have any goods?"

"I have collected more than thirty cans, but they are still empty. Someone stole our octopuses." Chen Yongwei shouted at the top of his voice.

Li Changle was sure that someone had stolen the jars, "Collect all the jars and don't put them away."

That's how it was with the traps and jars. Thefts often happened, and the hooligans in the village would keep in touch with each other and go to each other's villages to steal.

"Oh!" Chen Yongwei thought about it and asked again, "Brother, do you think it was Wang Mazi, that monkey, who did it?"

"I'm not sure. Let's take these cans back and go to the dock tomorrow morning to ask Adong about it."

There are only a few dishonest people in the village. If any of them has sold octopus and tide-watching fish, it is likely that that person did it.

Chen Yongwei pulled the cans along the fishing line until he had finished catching the entire string of cans, and he only managed to catch four or five octopuses in total. Li Changle's catch was even worse than his, with only three.

Chen Yongwei angrily put the cans into the sack and said, "These three hands should have their claws chopped off if we catch them."

Li Changle picked up the sack and said, "Think positively, it's good enough that the jar was not stolen."

Although the can is not valuable, the fishing rope and steel wire cost more than ten yuan, and it is also very time-consuming to tie them up.

The two men arrived at the cave panting, hid the backpack, snakeskin bag and jar in the cave, took off their clothes and went into the cave.

Only after entering the cave did I realize that today’s harvest in the cave was not good.

When Brother Li learned that the jar on the reef beach had been stolen, he even thought that it was bad luck that Aunt Li came home tonight, and he also said that he would go to the master's temple to pray and get rid of the bad luck before going out to sea in the morning.

Li Changle comforted him with a few words, picked up his tools and started working. After a busy period, he finally chiseled all the oysters he could reach and put them into sacks before the tide rose.

The four of them only felt sore hands and waists, and swollen legs. They were so tired that they leaned against the cliff and didn't even have the mood to laugh. They ate turtle eggs and corn cobs, and continued to chisel Buddha's hand snails.

Seeing that the tide was starting to rise, they hurriedly carried the sacks out. Before all the sacks were carried outside, Zhou Ruonan's sister-in-law and Li's mother came to help.

Seeing the two brothers coming over with sacks dripping all over their bodies, he hurried forward to help take them and asked, "How much more have you left to transport?"

Li Changle wiped the water drops off his face and said, "There are more than twenty bags left. You go ahead and we will follow."

"Okay, be careful." Li's mother reminded them worriedly.

"Don't worry, I can swim back and forth with my eyes closed." Li Changle waved his hand and followed Brother Li to the beach.

Zhou Ruonan and her mother-in-law lifted the wet sack, placed it horizontally on the backpack, tied it up with a hemp rope, and carried it up the mountain.

Seven or eight people ran back and forth seven or eight times, and were busy until the first crow of the rooster before they finally brought all the catch back home.

Li Changle dragged his legs, which felt like they were filled with lead, back home. He simply washed himself, fell on the bed and fell asleep.

Zhou Ruonan looked at the man who started snoring just seconds after his head touched the pillow. She picked up a palm-leaf fan and fanned him with concern, and fell asleep unknowingly.

(End of this chapter)