Chapter 189： Fight

Jiang Sanlang and Li Dayong The two brothers Li Eryong quickly cut enough 500 pepper vines and gave them to Chen Changsheng and others.

He kindly gave them ten more pieces, and then picked up the silver.

Turning around, I saw my little girl watching, and asked with a smile: "Have you finished picking the apples?"

“Hmm.” 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. The village chiefs from several surrounding villages have come to make reservations, but we don't have enough pepper vines."

No matter how hard you try, you can’t cut off your own pepper vines, so you can only let those people line up and wait for new vines to grow.

Yingbao nodded and turned around.

Dad and the others always cut at intervals when pruning the vines. At most, they cut two small roots from one pepper plant, so it does not affect the flowering and fruiting of their own peppers.

Fortunately, pepper, like kudzu, is a perennial vine that can grow for many years, so she doesn’t worry about needing to replant next year.

The question is how should I take out the pepper vine seedlings and give them to my father to sell?

She is in need of money. Not only is she in need, but her parents are also in need.

During this period, 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.

My own and my cousin's dividends were also spent in the shop one after another.

Since the thatched huts at the back of the shop need to be renovated, she wants to change the low, damp thatched huts into several large brick and tiled huts to facilitate living and storage.

So she used her monthly dividends to ask her cousin to help her buy bricks and pile them in the yard, and she would start work as soon as she had enough materials.

Coming out of the pepper garden, I saw several children walking on horseback on the martial arts training ground not far away.

And his younger brother Jiang Wu was 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 looked at it for a while and then looked at the children in the field.

There is 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 in school and learn to read. 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 were staggered so that Master Zhang Meng could 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 against his brother.

She took advantage of her height advantage of being more than a year older than her brother, and her experience in dancing in her previous life. Her speed and reaction ability were both strong, and she was on par with Jiang Wu, and she 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!” Master Zhang Meng came over and asked with a smile: “Do you want to learn with me?”

Yingbao nodded: "I think so, but I still have to go to the medicine hall, so I can only come to learn from time to time."

Zhang Meng: "Women only practice martial arts 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'll 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 vital points and defeat the enemy with one blow."

As he spoke, he gestured with Jiang Wu, "The enemy's vital parts include the head, throat, chest, abdomen, ribs, and crotch. A hit to each vital part will temporarily incapacitate the enemy." Make punches, kicks, palm chops, knee thrusts, elbow thrusts, etc.

Then he waved to Ying Bao, "You try to spar 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 his sister came back and his mother-in-law cooked delicious food at home. Naturally, he and his sister would not stay to dine.

“Yingbao, stay and try the fried loach I made.” Chu Chu made a plea to stay.

Ying Bao 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.

Turning back to look at Chu Chu again, he 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 man who shaved off all the stubble on 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.

Ying Bao thought about it all the way back home.

Chunniang 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 his younger brother washed their hands and faces, sat down at the small dining table, and took the bowls and chopsticks 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.”

Chunniang said to her husband while eating: "You take the time to go to the town and buy more salt. I will use it to mix the sauce later."

Jiang Sanlang: "Didn't I buy salt yesterday?"

“How can I get enough salt? I want to dry it more so that I can eat it until spring next year.”

“Oh, I’ll go there in the afternoon.”

After dinner, 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.

Chunniang washed the pots and bowls and picked out the mud and bad beans from the soybeans under the grape trellis.

Ying Bao also moved a stool and sat down to pick it up together, listening to A Niang's chatter while picking it up.

“I went back to the county town to see Xiaojie last time, and he asked why you didn’t go to see him.”

“Then I will go back and tell Grandpa Li to adjust the bathing time to the first or fifteenth day of the lunar month, and then I will go to the county seat with you.” Ying Bao said.

Chun Niang nodded: "That's okay. Let's go together on the first day of the 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 beside her, she made rapid progress.