Chapter 189 Fighting
Brothers Jiang Sanlang and Li Dayong and Li Eryong quickly cut enough 500 pepper vines and handed them to Chen Changsheng and others.
He kindly gave them ten more coins and then picked up the silver.
He turned around and saw that his little girl had been watching, and asked with a smile: "Have you finished picking the apples?"
"Yeah." Yingbao looked at the pepper garden and saw that the vines were quite thin, so she planned to go back and water them with Pupil Spring to replenish them. "Dad, who else wants to buy pepper seedlings?"
Jiang Sanlang thought for a while and said, "That's a lot. Muramasa from several surrounding villages have come to make reservations, but we don't have enough pepper vines."
No matter what, we can't cut off our pepper vines, so we can only let those people line up and wait for new vines to grow.
Ying Bao nodded and looked around.
Dad and the others always cut at intervals when pruning the vines. At most, they cut two small roots from each pepper plant, so it did not affect the flowering and fruiting of their own peppers.
Fortunately, peppers, like kudzu, are perennial vines that can grow for many years, so she doesn't worry about needing to replant them next year.
The question is how should I take out the pepper vine seedlings and give them to my father to sell?
She is short of money. Not only is she short of money, but her parents are also short of money.
During this time, the family bought a house in the county, bought a shop, repaired and built furniture, shelves and counters, and purchased a lot of household items, basically spending all their savings.
Even if my parents later sold a batch of golden ears, they were all thrown into the county's houses.
The dividends from myself and my cousin were also spent in the shop.
Because the thatched huts at the back of the shop needed to be renovated, she wanted to change the low, damp thatched huts into several large brick and tiled huts to facilitate living and storage.
So with her monthly dividends, she asked her cousin to help her buy bricks and tiles to stack in the yard, and she would start construction as soon as she had enough materials.
After coming out of the pepper garden, I saw several children doing horse walking on the martial arts training ground not far away.
And his younger brother Jiang Wu is already sparring with Master Zhang on the plum blossom pile.
Yingbao stood not far away with her two puppies and watched.
Zhang Meng punched very quickly, but Jiang Wu was not slow to dodge it, and even kicked Zhang Meng coldly, but because his calves are short, it didn't hurt at all.
Yingbao watched for a while and then looked at the children in the field.
There was a five-year-old Chen Bozhong and a few unfamiliar-looking dolls, probably children from neighboring villages.
Hu Zi is not here. He has to study and read in school, so he only has time to practice martial arts in the afternoon.
My younger brother practices martial arts in the morning and goes to school in the afternoon. The brothers are separated so that Master Zhang Meng can teach one-on-one.
"Sister!" After Jiang Wu finished sparring with Master Zhang Meng, he jumped down and ran towards his sister.
"Let's spar." The little baby made an attack gesture towards his sister.
"Okay!" Ying Bao took off the satchel, threw it to Da Huang and Xiao Hei to guard, and started to fight with her brother.
Taking advantage of her height advantage of being more than one year older than her brother, coupled with her experience in dancing in her previous life, her speed and reflexes were both strong, and she was on par with Jiang Wu, and had the upper hand.
But after all, he had never practiced two-person fighting, and in the end he was knocked down by his younger brother.
"Not bad, not bad!" Master Zhang Meng came over and asked with a smile, "Do you want to learn with us?"
Ying Bao nodded: "I think so, but I still have to go to the medicine hall, so I can only come to study occasionally."
Zhang Meng: "Women practice martial arts just to protect themselves. You can learn more moves against the enemy. I heard Jiang Wu say that you practice basic skills every day?"
"Um."
"Then I will teach you a few tricks to deal with the enemy." Zhang Meng pulled Jiang Wu over and pointed at him: "Women are weak, you can find the enemy's key point and defeat the enemy with one blow."
He said while gesticulating with Jiang Wu, "The enemy's vital parts include the head, throat, chest, abdomen, ribs, and crotch. A blow to each vital part will temporarily incapacitate the opponent."
As he spoke, Xuxu punched, kicked, chopped, kneed, and elbowed Jiang Wu.
Then he waved to Ying Bao, "You try sparring with Jiang Wu."
So, Ying Bao and her younger brother practiced each other in the martial arts field until noon, until Chu Chu called for dinner.
Several children from neighboring villages brought food to Master Zhang Meng at noon due to the long journey, and Chu Chu usually helped with the cooking.
Occasionally Jiang Wu would eat here, but today when his sister came back and his mother-in-law cooked delicious food at home, he and his sister naturally wouldn't stay to dine.
"Ying Bao, stay and try the fried loach I made." Chu Chu made a plea to stay.
Yingbao looked at Chu Chu, then at Zhang Meng, and shook her head: "No, I'll go home and eat."
Seeing that Ying Bao really refused to stay, Chu Chu picked two melon leaves, wrapped some fried loach and stuffed them for Ying Bao and Jiang Wu. "It's fried in lard, so delicious."
She went to pick peppers with Dani and Erni in the morning, and used a bamboo basket to catch a lot of loaches in a small mud pit by the river. When they came back, they gave some to Chun Niang.
Ying Bao was not polite, took it and ate it before going home.
Looking back at Chu Chu again, I saw her and Zhang Meng sitting across from each other at the table eating. From time to time, she would put a piece of food with chopsticks into Zhang Meng's bowl, and Zhang Meng accepted it easily.
There were several children sitting on either side of them, and the scene looked like a family.
The sixteen-year-old girl is bright and beautiful, and she seems to be a perfect match for Zhang Meng at the moment.
But this one, after shaving all the stubble off his face, turned out to be surprisingly young. He looked to be no more than twenty-eighty-nine years old, and he had a handsome appearance and temperament. It was a pity that he was missing several fingers on his right hand.
Yingbao thought about it all the way back home.
Chun Niang had already prepared the meal and was about to go out to call her children back. When she saw the two of them coming in, she brought the meal and placed it under the grape trellis in the yard to invite them to eat.
Today I made braised fish, fried leeks with shrimps, fried loach, winter melon soup, a few boiled and cut salted eggs, and a bowl of white rice.
Yingbao and her brother washed their hands and faces, sat down at the small dining table, and took the dishes from their mother-in-law.
"I'm going to soak some soybeans after dinner and cook the beans to dry the sauce in the evening."
Chun Niang said to her husband while eating: "You take the time to go to the town to buy more salt and bring it back. I will use it to mix the sauce later."
Jiang Sanlang: "Didn't I buy salt yesterday?"
"How can that little salt be enough? I want to dry it more so I can eat it until spring next year."
"Oh, I'll go there in the afternoon."
After the meal, Chun Niang packed up the dishes and washed them, while Ying Bao wiped the table with a rag and fed the two puppies some rice soaked in winter melon soup.
Chun Niang washed the pots and bowls and sorted out the mud and bad beans from the soybeans under the grape trellis.
Yingbao also moved a stool and sat down to pick it up together, listening to her mother-in-law talking while picking it up.
"I went back to the county town to see Xiaojie last time, and he asked why you didn't visit him."
"Then I'll go back and tell Grandpa Li to adjust the bathing time to the first or fifteenth day of the lunar month, and then I'll go to the county with you," Ying Bao said.
Chun Niang nodded: "Okay, let's go together on the first day of the lunar month next month."
In the evening, Ying Bao took her two dogs to the pepper garden to water the pepper garden alone, and then went to the martial arts training ground to practice fighting skills with Jiang Jie.
With Master Zhang Meng constantly guiding her, she made rapid progress.