frightfiction Chapter 178 The old house needs renovation
Chapter 178 The old house needs renovation
The mother in the kitchen suddenly cried out.
Li Ju'an quickly put down his work and ran over to take a look. The kitchen was steaming, and smoke was billowing out from both stoves. He rushed in and pulled his mother out, and even in that short time, he was tearing up from the smoke.
Song Lanhua, the mother, coughed incessantly from the fumes, and Li Xiao shouted, "Fire! Fire!"
Li Ju'an didn't see any open flame either. He untied the cloth bag, submerged it in the water vat, covered his mouth and nose, and rushed in. He discovered that a lot of steam was billowing out from the edge of the pot. The kitchen was filled with smoke and fumes. He looked again and saw that the chimney was blocked.
He coughed and cried out, "Bring a ladder from the yard."
He took out a piece of ash wood from the corner against the wall, took the cloth bag handed to him by Li Xiao, wrapped the end of the ash wood tightly, and stepped onto the wooden ladder to start cleaning the chimney.
He struggled against the rising steam, tilting his head to the side, and forcefully poked at the chimney with his hand. Voices came from the doorway.
"Brother Li, why is the chimney blocked?"
He glanced down and saw Sun Weimin standing at the door, carrying half a frozen piece of meat and a raccoon dog pelt. The raccoon dog pelt was something Li Ju'an had hunted before; it was from the Ussuri region of the Xing'an Mountains, and it looked a lot like a raccoon, so cute! Behind Sun Weimin followed Sun Hao, the chubby son of the Sun family.
That shout just now was from Sun Hao.
After coughing, Li Ju'an called out, "What brings you all here? Didn't we just see each other?"
Sun Weimin put half a frozen piece of meat on the ground and shouted, "Can you handle this? If not, get down here."
Li Ju'an said, "This old house is too old. It's been there for so many years. It needs to be renovated, otherwise the chimney will always be blocked."
"You come down, I'll go up."
He pulled Li Ju'an down, took the ash wood from his hand, and climbed up the wooden ladder to help clear the chimney.
The Sun family's house was older, and their chimney got clogged more often. He was a skilled worker, and he cleared the chimney in no time.
Once the chimney is opened, the heat from the kitchen can be released, and the smoky scene is immediately resolved.
Sun Hao said with a smile, "Brother Li, Aunt Song, Grandpa asked us to deliver meat. He said it was to thank Brother Li for his help, otherwise Sun Weimin would still be lying on the ground right now."
The chubby boy imitated his grandfather's speech so well that it annoyed Sun Weimin, who really wanted to slap him.
Mother Song Lanhua said apologetically, "These past two days I've been cooking meat in there, and the chimney is full of ash. The chimney was blocked a few days ago, and it was just cleared up, but it's blocked again today."
Li Ju'an patted the soot off his body and began to think that he should hurry up and build a new house on the dry land that had been divided up. He hoped that he could get some good bricks and, with a little more effort, even install a terrazzo floor.
He pointed to the half-frozen meat on the ground: "Sun Weimin, didn't your father just send me and Lu Zhiqiang some deer antler velvet wine? Why are you sending more? You've prepared way too much for the New Year."
Lu Zhiqiang was carrying half a frozen meat, which Li Ju'an moved to the courtyard outside the gate. "Didn't the old man scold me and then ask me to bring this over?"
"What's wrong? Your dad just beat you up, and now your grandpa's beating you up too?"
Little Fatty Li Hao said with a smile, "That's right. Brother Li, look at our uncle's butt, it's covered in broom marks. The old man grabbed him by the ear and dragged him over, saying he's never allowed to go to that place in Wangxing Village again."
Li Ju'an put the frozen meat in the snow in the yard because if the meat thawed inside, it would leave a bloody mess, and his mother would be busy and wouldn't be able to cover it up with ashes.
Li Ju'an returned the bad guy to Sun Weimin and didn't take it back.
Sun Weimin was still somewhat moved and said, "Li Ju'an, you really are my brother. You didn't even accept my help. I'll help you clean up the mess next time. But if we get beaten up next time, could you and Lu Zhiqiang go together and send me back? It's too much of a commotion. Dad and Grandpa beat me up even harder than Zhang Fengzi."
Li Ju'an looked up and said strangely, "I don't accept bad meat because I don't need it. If you really want to thank me, give me a few weasels, fresh ones, preferably alive, or just dead."
Sun Weimin's eyes widened in disbelief. He took two steps back and shouted, "Are you crazy, Li Ju'an? You even dared to hit that Weasel God? You're trying to kill me!"
In the villages of Xing'anling, many folk tales portray the Weasel as a deity, and that harming it will bring retribution, so hunters rarely hunt the weasel.
However, in recent years, weasels have become rampant in several nearby villages. In winter, they enter the villages along with the rodents and steal the chickens raised by the villagers.
Lin's mother loved raising chickens in the yard, which was frequently visited by weasels. In the past few months, Lin Mei's younger brother had mentioned that the number of chickens they kept had decreased significantly, and these were all hens that laid an egg a day. Lin's father, in a fit of anger, set a trap, which caught the weasel's front leg. However, ultimately hesitant due to folk tales, he dared not actually kill the weasel and instead took the trap to a deserted area and released it.
As it turned out, the Lin family was targeted by the weasel. When the weasel came to the Lin family again, it not only ate the chickens, but also killed all the old hens that it couldn't finish eating, leaving chicken feathers all over the ground. It just wouldn't eat them, it just killed them for fun, which made Lin's mother very angry.
That day, Lin's mother went to the brigade leader, Yang Dezheng, to ask him if he had any ideas on how to deal with the weasel. Brigade leader Yang was also panicked. He said he didn't believe in superstitions and suggested finding someone to kill it, otherwise no one in the village would dare to raise chickens in the future.
But when it came to actually asking Yang Dezheng to find a hunter or borrow someone from the forest farm, he would only talk the talk but not walk the walk, just saying he was writing a report. He didn't dare to do it in his heart. What if the Weasel spirit held a grudge? Not to mention retribution, he might even find himself walking into the forest farm one day, and suddenly a Weasel spirit would stroll up to him, stand up on its hind legs, and ask, "Do I look like a human or a god to you?"
What should he say? What can he do?
Yang Dezheng broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of this scenario. Who wouldn't be terrified if Huang Daxian asked him such a question? He was neither human nor not human.
Li Ju'an said to Sun Weimin, "You don't dare to fight the weasel, but I see that your family has quite a few wolf-hair brushes. When your father used to write with wolf-hair brushes, you were such a troublemaker, pulling on the bristles of the brushes while cursing your father as an old fool."
The chubby boy Sun Hao's eyes darted around cleverly.
Sun Weimin quickly covered Li Ju'an's mouth and shouted, "Brother, dear brother, I admit defeat, okay? Don't talk nonsense in front of children. So many years have passed, who still remembers? Really."
Wolf hair brushes are made from the hair of the weasel. In the county town market, many hunters specialize in selling weasels because their pelts are valuable and can be used to make brushes, hence the name "wolf hair brush." The market also attracts many merchants from the south who come specifically to buy weasel pelts.
After a while, Sun Weimin finally agreed that if he encountered a weasel next time he went into the mountains to set traps, he would bring it to him. He then asked Li Ju'an when he planned to sell weasels, wondering if he wanted to become a cultured person, get some wolf-hair brushes to practice calligraphy, and show off to the girls he was going to meet.
Li Ju'an laughed at him: "You'll have to ask the forestry manager. He loves to use weasels for specimens. If there really is retribution from the weasel spirit, I'll just tie up a live weasel and send it over. Anyway, the retribution won't be on me. Whoever wants it can have it."
Sun Weimin patted his head and realized that this made sense.