Chapter 180 Alas! Why do people grow old?

Chapter 180 Alas! Why do people grow old?

Chapter 180 Alas! Why do people grow old?
Li Changle and Chen Yongwei lifted the rubber bucket off the tricycle and saw a few sacks inside. "What are you going to do with the sacks?"

"My uncle gave it to me!" Chen Yongwei said as he took out the overlapping rubber buckets and placed them on the ground.

"Ah Le, take out the jellyfish skins and heads that were pressed first and put them in sacks. Pile the rest together. They will have to be weighed later!"

Mother Li pointed at the pile of jellyfish skins next to the reef and said.

"Okay!" Li Changle walked towards the reef with the sack in his hand. Chen Yongwei thought about it and followed him. "Brother, Xu Xianmei is stopping Ah Shui and Yu Fang at the bridge head. She seems to be asking them for money."

"The family has been divided. They have to stand up for themselves and run their own family." Li Changle opened the rubber bucket and put it down. "Send the last bit back to cook and freeze it."

"Oh!" Chen Yongwei agreed and left.

Li Changle dug out the most piled sand, dug out the jellyfish skins and heads buried under the sand, shook off the sand on top and put it into a sack.

The jellyfish that was originally juicy and bouncy now looks like a cucumber that has wilted in the sun.

After a while, Li Changshui and his sister hurried over, "Brother, we are late."

Li Changle looked at the two people whose eyes were still red, "It's okay, have you eaten?"

"I've eaten!" Li Changshui said, then squatted down to help dig the sand pile and collect jellyfish skins.

Li Changle saw that he didn't say anything or ask anything, and just focused on the work in his hands.

"Brother, she asked me to borrow money, but I didn't lend it to her." Li Changshui said as if he was explaining, but also as if he was venting, "When she gets old and can't move, I will give her food, but I won't give her a penny."

"What can we do for her? All the money will be given to Xu Jianguo." Li Yufang said angrily.

Mother Li frowned and looked at her, "What's the matter? Your mother is asking you for money just after the family division?"

"Yeah! She said we divided the food and they didn't have enough to eat, so she asked us to borrow 20 yuan to buy food. When we refused, she chased us and scolded us."

Li Yufang was still angry and upset when she thought of what Xu Xianmei said, "She came to us to borrow money because she saw that you, Uncle San, and my brother and sister-in-law had pooled money for us after the family split."

"Second aunt, brother and sister-in-law, we will return the money you gave us when we earn money." Li Changshui said in a muffled voice.

Mother Li shook her head sympathetically, "No need, it's yours if I give it to you. Make a name for yourself."

Li Changle patted him, "That's right. If she treats you well in the future, you should be polite to her. If she doesn't treat you well, just take care of yourself, take care of your family and live your life well. Why think so much?"

"I remember it." Li Changshui nodded heavily and started working.

Mrs. Li dug through the sand pile, picked up a piece of jellyfish skin, and shook her head in pain, "This thing has shrunk too much, and the weight has been reduced by more than half. It's not worth it."

"Are you heartbroken? After being pickled with alum for two days, the fresh sting will contract and release more water. When it's done, you'll see that the jellyfish skin is shriveled, even shriveled than my old face."

As Grandma Chen spoke, she pointed to her wrinkled face.

Mrs. Li glanced at her and couldn't help but think of herself when she got old. "Oh! Why do people have to get old?"

Grandma Chen and Li's mother laughed when they heard this. "What's the use of being old? When the time comes, I'll take your life!"

Mrs. Li nodded after hearing this, and then asked again, "Grandma Chen, when I was at my mother's house, my grandma told me that one night, in the middle of the night, she heard someone on the roof asking, 'Are you going to take Wang He away?'"

"Another person said that Wang Heshi had two more years left, and Chen Wangshi, who came after her, would pass away. And the next day, my grandmother really passed away. Is there really an underworld and ghost messengers?"

"Of course not. When a person dies, they are chained by the underworld officials and taken to the underworld to be judged by the King of Hell. Those who have done bad things, committed sins with their mouths... those who have done all kinds of evil things will go to the eighteen levels of hell!"

After hearing this, Li Changle thought about herself. She didn't understand what kind of person she was after dying and coming back to life since she had never even been to the underworld.
The group of people were chatting and laughing, and they worked very quickly. Soon they had dug out several piles.

Everyone was working hard when Brother Li (Eldest Brother) and Brother Li (Second Brother) came pulling a cart with a bag of alum and a large scale on it.

The two brothers carried the rubber bucket to the reef pit. The four of them filled the rubber bucket with sea water and carried it to the beach, then placed it on a cart. Chen Yongwei and Li Erge pulled the cart back.

Brother Li tied the sack of jellyfish around the waist with a rope. Li Changle took a wooden stick and passed it through the rope buckle of the large beam scale, then hooked the rope with the scale hook. The two of them lifted the jellyfish skin and began to weigh it.

Zhou Ruonan stepped forward and adjusted the fishing line with the weight hanging on it to the appropriate position. "Two hundred and sixteen kilograms."

Brother Li nodded, "Take note of this in your notebook. After all the jellyfish are weighed, I will add alum to pickle them."

Pickling jellyfish skin requires three processes: primary alum, two alums and one salt, and three alums and two salts.

The initial alum treatment is to prepare alum in proportion to the weight of fresh jellyfish, dissolve it in water and then pickle it, so that the fresh jellyfish can shrink and discharge moisture.

Two alum and one salt treatment: add appropriate amount of coarse-grained sea salt and alum according to the weight of the initial alum jellyfish skin, and then marinate for 7 to 10 days to further remove moisture.

Three alum and two salt treatment: according to the weight of the two alum jellyfish skin, add coarse sea salt and alum according to the proportion and then pickle for about ten days. After three processes, the jellyfish skin can be completely dehydrated and gradually change from transparent to light brown. Then the jellyfish skin is stored in concentrated brine diluted with sea salt.

Zhou Ruonan nodded, took out the account book from her bag and wrote it down, then passed on the second bag, "Two hundred and eighteen kilograms."

Li Changshui and Li Dasao pulled the jellyfish in the bamboo basket over to continue weighing. After the weighing, Li Erge and Chen Yongwei took the jellyfish back home to wait for pickling.

A group of people were busy on the beach for more than half an hour before they weighed all the jellyfish. Fortunately, it didn't rain.

The jellyfish they collected, plus the jellyfish skins and heads they caught themselves after being drained, weighed 12,685 kilograms.

Several people put the remaining jellyfish into bamboo baskets and sacks, moved them to carts and tricycles and pulled them back.

Li Changle was pedaling his tricycle back breathlessly, and halfway through he met Ge Changfa who was running towards him breathlessly.

"Ah Le, you guys are so fast?"

"Get lost!" Li Changle raised his leg and kicked him. "If I don't hurry up, do I have to wait for you to help me?"

Ge Changfa said embarrassedly: "I went home to change clothes and eat, and my brother asked me to go to the waterway to watch the boats, so I forgot about your matter."

Mother Li patted Li Changle and said with a smile, "Ah Fa, don't listen to Ah Le. Ah Shui and Yu Fang are also helping. With more than ten people working, it will be done in a short while."

Li Changle waved his hand at him, "My family doesn't have much else, but we have a lot of people. My kids are helping out, so I don't need you. Go do your thing."

Seeing that he didn't look angry, Ge Changfa smiled and said, "Then come and call me tomorrow morning to go to the mountain to check the wood!"

Li Changle smiled and nodded, "If you stand me up again tomorrow morning, you'll just have to wait for me!"

"Don't worry, we definitely won't!" Ge Changfa and Li Changshui followed them to the intersection, said goodbye, and walked towards their home.

When Li Changle and his party arrived home, they saw more than a dozen water vats in the yard. Li Xiaotao ran out and pointed at the water vats, "Dad, Mom, Third Uncle, we helped wash them!"

"Grandpa said he would buy you sour plum powder, so you washed it." Li Xiaobo exposed him mercilessly.

"Traitor, you also ate the sour plum powder I bought!" Li Xiaotao looked at him sideways, his eyes were so white that even his black pupils could not be seen.

Li Xiaomei ran to Li Ersao and said, "Mother, I also helped to apply it and ate the sour plum powder."

"Be good!" Mrs. Li rubbed her head and went to help carry the sacks.

Li Changle stroked Li Xiaotao and said, "Be good, wait for your uncle to go to Tuxia Bridge to sell the jellyfish brains, and I will buy you pancakes when I come back."

Li Xiaotao immediately perked up and asked, "Do you keep your word?"

"You little rascal, keep your word!" Children of Li Changle's generation are like bricks. As long as they can do the work, they will be moved anywhere.

If you do a good job, your parents will praise you when they are in a good mood. If you do a bad job, or your parents are in a bad mood, you might even be given a meal of fried pork with bamboo slices.

"Oh, there are pancakes to eat!" Several children cheered in unison.

Mrs. Li smiled and patted Li Xiaoqing, "You are a grown-up girl, but you act like you haven't eaten for three days!"

"You're reluctant to buy it for us!" Li Xiaoqing helped move the backpack into the house.

After everyone unloaded all the jellyfish, Li Changle slumped in a chair, squinting his eyes and not wanting to move.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Chen Yongwei, Big Brother Li and Second Brother Li, as if they were tireless. They picked up the buckets and scooped sea water from the rubber buckets into the large vat, and then dragged their sore legs to help scoop water.

After the water in the rubber bucket was poured into the large vat, Brother Li calculated the amount of alum needed, weighed the alum, and poured it into the rubber bucket and diluted it with sea water.

Li Changle turned to look at Mother Li, "Mother, after completing the three steps, how many kilograms of pickled jellyfish are there?"

Mother Li thought for a moment, "After a hundred kilograms of fresh jellyfish are pickled, there is less than ten kilograms. These have been preliminarily dehydrated, and after pickling, we can get at most 1,300 to 1,400 kilograms of jellyfish."

Li Changle also began to feel distressed. "Damn it, jellyfish are just like a sponge that has been soaked up with water and then squeezed dry."

After Mother Li and Big Brother Li mixed the alum water, they spread out the jellyfish skins and stacked them, and placed the jellyfish heads in a single layer. When the container was about 70% full, they pressed it with cross-tied bamboo strips and then placed a stone on top.

Brother Li and Chen Yongwei dragged bamboo baskets over and said, "Ah Le, when you go to the restaurant to sell jellyfish brains, buy a few meters of tarpaulin to cover them."

Brother Li looked at the time and said, "It's already past three o'clock. How about you and Awei go now?"

"Okay, let me weigh it first to see if the shipment is large."

　Thanks to my friends, Yes Yu, not Ah Yu, for your 2023...3886 reward support! Thank you!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)