Although Yan Jiangtao made a fuss, it did not affect Shi Zhen’s business. He quickly sold the remaining pig head meat, and then said to the somewhat absent-minded Guan Baiyu, “Xiao Yu, let’s go eat wontons. After eating, we’ll go to the market and buy some wonton wrappers. When we get home, I’ll make wontons for you to eat.”
Guan Baiyu nodded.
Shi Zhen arrived at the store and asked for a bowl of wontons. He also asked the store owner to give him an extra empty bowl. “I don’t like these soupy things, so I’ll just eat a few.”
It was now 1 p.m. in the afternoon, and the business of the steamed stuffed bun shop was the best in the morning. Now the business was not that good, and there were only the two of them in the shop.
When the wontons arrived, Shi Zhen scooped a few out of the big bowl and gave the rest to Guan Baiyu.
Guan Baiyu glanced at Shi Zhen, his eyes a little sore.
The wontons were so delicious. How could his brother not like them?
A bowl of small wontons cost one yuan, and the bowl was a big bowl with about twenty to thirty wontons in it.
Guan Baiyu ate slowly, feeling that this was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten.
His adoptive parents didn’t have much money, but they were willing to spend money on his sister. When his sister was still young, his adoptive mother would buy his sister a bowl of wontons when she took her to town. When she came back, she would proudly tell others that his sister had a good appetite and could eat a large bowl of wontons by herself.
But he…his grandma didn’t like spending money on him. This was his first time eating wontons.
Shi Zhen waited for Guan Baiyu to finish eating, then they went to the market to buy some wonton wrappers before returning home.
When they got home, the fire in the stove had long been extinguished. Shi Zhen used chopsticks to poke the pig head, lit a fire and continued to braise it.
The stove was stuffed with fire-resistant wood, so he didn’t have to keep watching it. Shi Zhen cut a piece of lean meat from the face of the pig head that hadn’t been put in the pot yet, chopped it into minced meat with a knife, and added green onions, salt, and MSG as seasoning. The filling was then ready to make small wontons.
The skin of small wontons was very thin, and there was usually very little filling inside. The bowl of wontons they had before in town only had meat filling about the size of unsoaked soybeans.
“I’ll make the wontons and put in more filling for you. They’ll taste better than the ones sold in town… When people make the wontons sold in town, they either skimp on the filling or remove all the green onions.” Shi Zhen laughed.
This was the first time Guan Baiyu heard such a statement. He couldn’t help his eyes curving. He watched Shi Zhen wrap a few wontons and then followed suit.
The Guan family members all had dark skin, and their faces were generally a bit square, but Guan Baiyu had a pointed face. Even though he was a little too thin now and looked lacklustre, it was still possible to tell that his facial features were very good.
Seeing that he was in a good mood, Shi Zhen asked casually, “That classmate of yours often bullies you in school? What’s his name?”
Guan Baiyu raised his head and smiled at Shi Zhen. “He just said a few words about me, but it doesn’t really matter… He is jealous of me because of his poor grades.”
Shi Zhen said, “If he bullies you in the future, tell me.”
Guan Baiyu’s eyes curved. “Okay.”
“Do you have lice on your head?” Shi Zhen asked.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Guan Baiyu’s expression froze.
Ktfgf kjr j rwjii mbcnfclfcmf rabgf lc atflg nliijuf, jcv jii bvvr jcv fcvr kfgf rbiv ja atf mbcnfclfcmf rabgf.
Ca 3 q.w. lc atf joafgcbbc, Xejc Djlse mjwf ab atf rabgf rjvis jcv ybeuta wfvlmlcf obg ilmf jcv gbecvkbgwr.
Ktf mbcnfclfcmf rabgf kjr jirb bcf bo atf ujatfglcu qblcar obg atf nliijufgr. Vfnfgji wfc mjwf ab atf vbbg klat ybkir jcv ybeuta ildebg. Ktfs kfgf vglcxlcu jcv mtjaalcu. Qtfc atfs rjk Xejc Djlse mbwlcu ab yes wfvlmlcf, atfs jii rjlv, “Djlse, atja mberlc bo sbegr lr nfgs qjgalmeijg!”
“Your pig head meat is also delicious. Do you have any more for dinner?”
“Would you like to buy some wine for your cousin?”
…
Guan Baiyu rarely spoke to these people, and he didn’t know how to reply. He could only say, “I have pig head meat at home…”
When Guan Baiyu returned, Shi Zhen asked him to take roundworm medicine. After thinking about it, he also took some himself.
After eating, he crushed the lice medicine, added water, and combed it through Guan Baiyu’s hair.
After applying it, he asked Guan Baiyu to help apply it for him.
It was embarrassing, but he also had lice on his head.
In rural areas these days, people didn’t like to bathe in winter and also washed their hair less frequently. There were many people with lice. However, in seven or eight years, when conditions improved, few people would still have lice.
Guan Baiyu was very careful when combing the medicine through Shi Zhen’s hair, which made Shi Zhen’s scalp itchy. After finally applying the medicine, he took Guan Baiyu to wash their hands. He washed them clean before daring to touch or eat anything.
This pot of pig head meat was braised at around 4 p.m. Shi Zhen took it and went to town again, planning to catch the evening market. As for Guan Baiyu, he asked him to continue braising another pig head at home.
In the evening, there was also a group of people buying food at the farmers’ market. They all had to work during the day and had just gotten off work.
Shi Zhen kept greeting people, and it took about an hour to sell all the pig head meat, which was only a dozen catties in total.
After selling, he went to buy a stainless steel basin before returning home.
It was a little late when he got back. Shi Xinghuo had already returned home. When he saw him, Shi Xinghuo started to talk about what he had done during the day and what he had eaten for lunch – they had soybean stew for lunch today, and he especially liked it.
Shi Zhen listened to him with a smile, grabbed him by the way, and applied lice-killing medicine on his head. Of course, he also had to feed him some roundworm medicine.
People only had to take medicine for roundworms once, but medicine for killing lice should be applied for several days. When the lice were finally gone, as long as they didn’t get too close to people with lice and washed their hair more often, they wouldn’t get them again.
That night, many people living nearby came to buy pig head meat. About half of one pig head was sold. Shi Zhen also braised the remaining two pig heads and put them in two stainless steel basins to sell tomorrow morning in town.
The next day was Monday. They ate wontons and crispy rice in the morning. He used an iron pot to cook. There was often a layer of crispy rice on the bottom of the pot. When Guan Baiyu was reluctant to use more firewood, there was almost no crispy rice. Recently, he bought a lot of firewood, so the crispy rice was a bit thick.
In the past, when they were eating, they would shovel it down and chew it. Yesterday, there was a lot of rice, so they left the crispy rice. After Shi Zhen finished making the wontons, he brushed a layer of oil on the pot, put the crispy rice on top and cooked for a bit, then added a little more oil and fried it…it was crunchy and especially delicious.
It just consumed a bit of oil, and most people were reluctant to eat it like this.
In the next few days, Shi Zhen remembered to apply lice medicine to Guan Baiyu’s head every day. The lice on Guan Baiyu’s head were finally gone, and the lice on his own head were also gone.
In addition, he worked back and forth every day. He could roughly sell four pig heads a day and earn about forty yuan.
He finally had a little more money, but he still didn’t dare to spend it arbitrarily – if he spent all the money now, there would be no way to expand his business.
However, some necessary money still had to be spent… Shi Zhen bought suitable knives one after another, as well as cutting boards, iron scales, shampoo, towels, etc.
After selling like this for four days, on Friday, the business was not so good. He only sold three pig heads.
In particular, there were very few villagers who came to buy pig head meat from him. However, some people went to town to buy a pig head and braised it themselves, which made the price of pig heads rise to 70 cents per catty.
No matter what it was, once it was no longer unsellable, the price would go up.
Fortunately, Shi Zhen had made an order in advance with Butcher Zhu. Although the price had increased, it was not impossible to buy it.
Although business was not that good on weekdays, it would be better on the weekend. But even so, Shi Zhen left the house on Saturday afternoon and went to the next village to find someone.
He had inquired with people in the village these days and already knew enough about Yan Jiangtao.
The Yan family was from a nearby village. Yan Jiangtao’s father bought a power loom home a few years ago, and then the family became prosperous. Now there were six power looms in the family, and they even hired people to look after them.
After their family became rich, Yan Jiangtao became more generous and acted more arrogantly. He disliked Guan Baiyu in school and always made trouble for Guan Baiyu.
Guan Baiyu said that Yan Jiangtao only said a few words, but according to what Shi Zhen heard, Guan Baiyu was often bullied by Yan Jiangtao.
Such a person…should be taught a lesson.
But the person Shi Zhen was looking for was not Yan Jiangtao, but another person, a person who had joined his construction team earlier than Guan Baiyu in his previous life and had followed him ever since.
When he was doing construction work here, he did everything by himself at the beginning and only used people from his own village. But later, when the business became bigger, they couldn’t handle it all on their own, so he hired some locals. That person was one of the people he hired. This man was one year older than Guan Baiyu and was born in 1978. According to what he found out, he had already graduated from junior high school and was now an idle man without a job.
This man often bragged to him back then, saying that when he was in junior high school, he walked sideways* in school and was the boss of the school. Shi Zhen wanted to see if it was true.
The man Shi Zhen was looking for was surnamed Qian. When Shi Zhen came over, he was lying on a recliner in his main room, looking lazy.
Shi Zhen asked, “Are you Qian Qilai?”
“Yeah? What’s wrong?” The man glanced lazily at Shi Zhen.
Shi Zhen said, “I heard that you are very good at fighting… shall we exchange a few moves?”
When Qian Qilai heard Shi Zhen’s words, he kicked off the recliner and stood up. He was unspeakably surprised. “You came to compete with me? Am I so famous now?”
Shi Zhen said, “Anyway, I heard people say you are very powerful.”
Martial arts dramas had become popular in recent years. At this time, young people did not have time-killing tools such as computers and mobile phones. During the restless years of adolescence, they were full of energy and had nothing to do. They were more interested in things like fighting.
Qian Qilai was one of the people who was particularly enthusiastic about it.
When Qian Qilai first entered his construction site, he even used the sandbags on the construction site to practice iron sand palm* during his break. He repeatedly slammed his good hand into the sandbag until it became swollen the next day…
At that time, he used the radio to listen to martial arts stories and watched martial arts dramas on TV partly due to Qian Qilai’s recommendation.
By this time, Qian Qilai should already be very interested in martial arts.
Qian Qilai’s face was full of excitement. He didn’t expect that he was already so famous, and people he didn’t know would come to fight… He couldn’t wait to compete with Shi Zhen right away.
“Okay, let’s fight!” Qian Qilai stood up, shook his arms, stretched his neck, and began to move his shoulders.
Shi Zhen didn’t do any preparatory movements. At this moment, he… felt like things were different and people were also different.
Before his death, Qian Qilai suffered from diabetes and fatty liver, with a protruding belly and a greasy face. But now he was a thin young man.
He just didn’t know what he was thinking, but he actually had a bit of a mustache above his lips… With his young age, these few sparse hairs looked very unpleasant to people.
When Shi Zhen was in the village, he was very good at fighting. No one in the nearby villages could beat him. Later he became a contractor. Because he read too many martial arts novels that Qian Qilai recommended, he also practiced specially. However, he later cultivated his character and stopped fighting.
But even if he hadn’t fought in many years, he still knew where people’s weaknesses were.
What was more important was that Qian Qilai was only one year older than Guan Baiyu. He was now only sixteen years old and just over 1.7 meters tall.
Shi Zhen bullied the minor and quickly suppressed him to the ground. “You are not as powerful as me.”
“What was that move you just used?” Qian Qilai was not angry after being knocked down, but he couldn’t help but wonder how Shi Zhen knocked him down.
Shi Zhen said, “I have learned a little from people before, and I know where people’s weaknesses are…”
“Can you teach me?” Qian Qilai asked without thinking.
Shi Zhen said, “Of course, but I’m very busy and don’t have much time.”
“Whenever you are free, just teach me… Where are you from? Why haven’t I seen you before?” Qian Qilai asked like a machine gun, his slender face full of curiosity.
Shi Zhen laughed, “I didn’t live in this area before. I just came here not long ago.”
***
T/N: *walking sideways – slang for being able to do whatever you want basically. I believe the origin of the term is because normal people walk straight, but if you have power, you can do whatever you want, including walking sideways.
*iron sand palm – some type of martial arts technique.
😂 this chapter was too real
Hiring a minion to bully the Bully?😁
thanks for the chapter!