Green Lotus Peasant Girl

114

Li Qinghe also hired many people. With a dozen or so people working, the result was so obvious that it could be seen with the naked eye. After each hour they could see that a large part of the land had been cleaned and cleared.

With so many people working on the other side of the mountain too, even though there was nothing odd about it, it was a rare thing in the village. When everyone watched them carefully, they found something seemed wrong.

The people hired by the Yang family didn't look like the people who were used to doing any farm work. They did look big and strong but they didn't do much of the work. They didn't do it as smoothly as the villagers usually did.

The weather was gradually getting colder. The villagers were not going outside as much anymore, but the workers from the house next door were still working. Today, Mrs. Zhou came to visit their house.

This year, she lived by herself. At first, she ate meals at Zhang Haiyao's, but later she cooked and ate by herself. She would also occasionally come to visit Xiyu.

As soon as she entered, she asked, "Qinghe, has your side of the courtyard wall been enclosed?"

Since there were so many strangers living next door, they didn't want to encounter any strange situations. So Zhou Chengkang dug thorns and planted them there. It directly cut off the road between the Yang family and their house. Not only did this prevent the people next door from getting into their house, but it also cut off their way to get to the town easily. Now they would have to go around the village.

But this was only a temporary setting. The Yang family can't support more than a dozen people for a very long time. Even Li Qinghe couldn't afford to pay wages to clean her land for a long time. After some time when the workers would leave, then it would be okay for them to remove the thorns.

It was very simple to remove them. They could just cut it and then use it as firewood.

Seeing her nod, Mrs. Zhou breathed a sigh of relief, and said in a low voice, "I heard from your aunt next door say earlier today, that the Yang family quarreled yesterday. Those people were caught roasting fish after stealing from the Yang family."

"I'm afraid they will come to steal your chickens." Mrs. Zhou sighed, "Those people are not to be messed with, I don't know where the Yang family brought them from. It's not worth offending them for the sake of chickens. It's better to stay separated from them."

By the end of October, it began to rain, and the climate became even colder at home. The two pigs that Li Qinghe fed were already big enough to be butchered. On the last day of October, the family slaughtered the pigs, and many people came to help them with it.*

*😥

Because it had been raining a lot lately, many people didn't go to the town. Since it was cold, buying extra meat and storing it won't spoil that. Before noon, half of their pork was sold out.

There were still a lot of people that hadn't bought it yet. Taking advantage of the fact that the butcher was still there and there were also many people, so why not let them help pull out the other pig and kill it too?

One pig was not enough for everyone, and two pigs were too much. In the end, some of the meat was still left. By afternoon, basically, everyone purchased the pork and went home. Li Qinghe also asked Mrs. Chen to cook. Zhang Haiyao, Li Qingmiao, Yu Yan, Li Fu, Zhao Dashan, and the butcher were still there and she needed to prepare dinner for them.

Everyone who was there was either talking or cooking when someone knocked on their door.

The people who came were Xu Changjie and his second brother. Regardless of how close their families lived, the two families basically had no contact between each other at all. He was dressed in a long green shirt and looked gentle, "Is there any meat left in your family to sell?"