The whole mountain is my hunting ground.

Chapter 1816 Which Zhao Family Gang Does Blind Pang Belong To?

Chapter 1816 Which Zhao Family Gang Does Blind Pang Belong To?

Sun Yonghua and Tian Zhijie accepted the 100 yuan Zhao Jun gave them and turned back to Changling, while Sun Yongrong followed the Liberation truck back to Yong'an Village.

When passing by the Zhou family, Zhao Jun dropped off Sun Yongrong. He politely declined Sun Yongrong's offer to "come inside and wait a while," and then drove the jeep back to the Zhao family compound.

At this moment, Zhao Youcai had already ridden his motorcycle home.

The Jiefang truck drove directly into the compound, and Zhao Jun and his men dragged the dead calf off the truck. The calf had died from bloating after eating plastic sheeting; it didn't have any disease problems, and its meat and internal organs were safe to eat.

Xing San said he needed to go back and change his clothes; he needed to keep this outfit for when he went out. Meanwhile, Wang Qiang, Zhang Yuanmin, Li Baoyu, Xie Chen, and Zhao Jinhui skinned the cow and unloaded the beef, while Zhao Jun led the mule they had found to the donkey shed.

The Zhao family's donkey shed is at the landlord's end. When it was built, they built it as big as possible, hoping that they could raise a live roe deer someday.

But ever since the Zhao family moved in, only that clever and quick-witted little donkey has lived in the shed.

When the little donkey, who was chewing grass, saw Zhao Jun leading a beast that looked somewhat like itself toward the shed, it froze.

"Ugh! Ugh!" The little donkey brayed twice. Zhao Jun looked at it and laughed, "What's wrong? Haven't seen me for two days, missed me? Want to say hello?"

It's unclear whether the little donkey understood Zhao Jun's words; at this moment, its attention was entirely focused on its distant relative.

After tying the mule to the shed, Zhao Jun returned to the front of the house, took the snakeskin bag containing money from the jeep, and went straight into the house.

Zhao Jun entered the outer room and saw a person standing by the side of the room, with a panel on the table and a basin on top of it.

Zhao Jun, ever the opportunist, went over and lifted the basin to take a look, then called out to Zhao Youcai, "Dad, what are you doing kneading this dough?"

"Make pancakes!" Zhao Youcai, who was smoking in the east hut, responded. Zhao Jun, carrying a snakeskin bag, went over and smiled at Zhao Youcai, "Dad, how long has the dough been resting? If it's ready to bake, can you bake me a couple now?"

"Immediately?" Zhao Youcai was taken aback. He subconsciously glanced at his watch and said, "Didn't you eat breakfast?"

"I ate. Not much," Zhao Jun said. "Eating so early in the morning, I couldn't eat much."

Upon hearing this, Zhao Youcai glanced at Zhao Jun and said, "What a trivial matter."

Even so, Zhao Youcai still got down to the ground.

Zhao Jun carried the snakeskin bag to the east room, and when he came out, he saw Zhao Youcai rolling out dough in the outer room.

Zhao Youcai divided the kneaded dough into a quarter, rolled it into a large flatbread, and then brushed oil on it and sprinkled a thin layer of flour on top.

He then started rolling the large flatbread from one end, rolled it into a roll, pinched off small pieces, and finally rolled each piece into a flatbread.

Zhao Jun sat to the side watching Zhao Youcai work, neither of them saying a word.

Suddenly, Zhao Jun seemed to remember something. He quickly turned around and went out of the house to find Wang Qiang and the others who were cutting the beef. He instructed them, "Uncle, keep all the beef fat you cut off. Don't feed it to the dogs."

"Brother," Li Baoyu asked Zhao Jun upon hearing this, "Do you want butter-wrapped fried dough?"

"Okay," Zhao Jun replied, "Let's keep it and freeze it in the refrigerator, just in case we need it."

June is almost here. In just over a month, the corn will be turning red, and it will be time for the wild animals to come down from the mountains and wreak havoc on the crops.

By then, wild boars and bears would swarm into the cornfields. These wild animals both ate and harmed the crops, which was incredibly infuriating.

Our land was painstakingly cultivated and sown by my mother and daughter-in-law; how could we let wild animals ruin it?

Protecting farmland has always been a troublesome matter. Even Zhu Dashan, who doesn't hunt, knows that unless you chase them with dogs, setting off firecrackers and banging gongs won't help.

If you use a dog to chase them, wild boars and black bears can easily push them through the cornfield where people are taller than themselves, but dogs can't do that; they would easily get injured in that situation.

Since people can't help dogs much in the dark, Zhao Jun wanted to prepare in advance so that if wild boars or black bears harassed his land, he could use explosives to destroy them.

Setting off explosives is a skilled job, and Jiang Hua used to be an expert in this field. When he was alive, he could shoot several bears every year.

Now this skill has been passed down to Zhao Jun. Although it can't be said to have been carried forward and developed, it's still enough to protect crops and farmland by using explosives.

Zhao Jun had learned the technique of entangling the bear with bait. But entangling the bear with bait also required bait. This bait could be rotten fish and shrimp, dead cats and dogs, but the best bait was mutton fat and beef fat, which were fatally attractive to the black bears with their keen sense of smell.

Compared to beef tallow, mutton tallow is even harder to obtain, after all, how big is a sheep and how much oil can it produce?

Zhao Jun had been thinking about where to find some mutton fat and beef tallow, but unexpectedly, someone delivered them to his door today.

The only thing that bothered Zhao Jun was that the source of this butter was again related to his father. Despite Zhao Youcai's flowery words, Zhao Jun didn't believe a word he said. What "afraid of the road being unsafe, he came out to pick me up"—he clearly wanted to hunt tigers in Lingnan.

Zhao Jun was so angry at the thought of this that he knew Zhao Youcai was making fried pancakes at this time to shut him up.

Zhao Jun's plan was that he had to eat the cake himself, and he wouldn't delay filing a lawsuit.

"Zhao Jun!" Zhao Youcai's voice came from in front of the house. "Bring me a bundle of firewood, especially the thin branches."

When Zhao Jun carried firewood into the house, Zhao Youcai had already rolled out seven or eight dough balls.

Although Zhao Jun is his only son, when eating pancakes, he cannot be the only one given to Zhao Jun.

After entering the house, Zhao Jun, without Zhao Youcai's instructions, stuffed firewood into the stove pit and lit the firewood with a match lit by igniting birch bark.

"Son," Zhao Youcai called to Zhao Jun, "put a little bit of bear fat in the pot."

Zhao Jun responded, then went to the dish rack and picked up the small jar containing bear oil.

Zhao Jun carried the small jar to the stove and used a spatula to scoop spoonfuls of bear oil into the hot pan. As the solidified white bear oil entered the pan, small bubbles sizzled around the edges and gradually melted.

Once the bear oil had melted, Zhao Youcai had rolled out all the dough balls. He reached out and snatched the spatula from Zhao Jun's hand, using it to scoop up the oil from the bottom of the pan and sprinkle it onto the inner walls of the pan around the bottom.

Once the oil was hot, Zhao Youcai used a spatula to shovel hot oil into the small pancakes, leaving only a little oil at the bottom of the pan. Then he picked up a pancake dough and patted it into the pan.

After Zhao Youcai patted three dough pieces into the pan, he used a spatula to scoop up the hot oil from Xiao Kui'er and poured it down the side of the pan in a circular motion. The hot oil flowed down the pan and onto the side of the dough pieces that were touching the pan, and then a fragrant aroma wafted out of the pan.

In just over twenty seconds, Zhao Youcai used a spatula to flip the three dough balls one after another, and the flipped sides were all golden brown.

At this point, some hot oil had accumulated in the center of the pan, which Zhao Youcai scooped up and poured over the pancake. Then, Zhao Youcai flipped the pancake over.

A dozen seconds later, when Zhao Youcai flipped the dough for the third time, Zhao Jun saw that there were many irregularly sized, reddish-brown spots on the dough.

Less than two minutes had passed since the dough was put into the pan. Zhao Youcai scooped up the pancake, placed it on a large enamel plate, and said to Zhao Jun, "Take this and eat it."

Zhao Jun took the plate and went out, leaving Zhao Youcai in the house to continue making pancakes.

……

There was a loud thud, the sound of a telephone receiver hitting an elmwood table.

"What are you doing, Lao Pang?" Qi Shengli, the village head of Yongsheng Village, rushed over, grabbed the telephone receiver from the table, and shouted at Pang Zhendong, "You broke the phone, are you going to pay for it?"

At this moment, Pang Zhendong sat blankly on the stool, his face full of frustration.

During the phone call just now, Pang Zhendong received some heartbreaking news: someone had sold a seedling of amber dragon to a big boss before him.

The news only came out the day before yesterday. At that time, Pang Zhendong was wading in the river at Qingshilazi. The middleman wanted to tell him the news, but he couldn't get in touch with him.

Pang Zhendong got up and walked out in a daze. Although Li Baoyu always said that the Zhao family gang was the largest ginseng gang in Lingxi, in terms of scale and seniority, the Pang family gang was the absolute leader in the Lingxi ginseng-growing industry.

In the past five years, the Pang family's only success was two years ago, when they stumbled upon an old millstone by chance. Pang Zhendong managed to pull out two promising young talents from it, which brought their profits to 100,000 yuan that year.

Therefore, the reward of 100,000 yuan for the three dragons in the seedling made Pang Zhendong very excited and determined to win. In this early spring, he took his son all over the mountains of Yong'an Forest Area to conduct on-site investigations of the rivers flowing from the sunny slopes to the shady side.

Finally, Pang Zhendong found the stone dragon under the bluestone roof. He was full of hope, but unexpectedly someone else beat him to it.

At this moment, Pang Zhendong's mood was somewhat similar to Zhao Youcai's; both were frustrated and helpless, lamenting their bad luck.

"Dad!" As Pang Zhendong approached home, Pang Gaoming came out of the yard to greet him and asked, "What's the arrangement? Should we deliver the clubs to him, or should they come to pick them up?"

"Still taking chicken feathers? Take them?" Pang Zhendong said, and Pang Gaoming hurriedly asked, "Dad, what's wrong, Dad?"

"Damn it!" Pang Zhendong said irritably, "We're so late! We've let them gamble away 100,000 yuan!"

"Who is it? Who's so amazing?" Pang Gaoming asked incredulously. "Our family has a secret technique. Who can be faster than us? The Shao family?"

Upon hearing this, Pang Zhendong turned to Pang Gaoming and asked, "Are there any members of the Zhao family gang among the hunters around here?"

The Zhao family gang was famous in Lingxi for their hunting prowess, and everyone knew they were the leaders in the hunts, so Pang Zhendong didn't suspect Zhao Jun and his gang.

"The Zhao Family Gang?" Pang Gaoming frowned, then shook his head and said, "Never heard of them? What's up, Dad? What about the ginseng they sell around here?"

“Hmm!” Pang Zhendong nodded and said, “The Shao family gang released the news that the Zhao family gang from the Eighteen Ridges carried the amber dragon.”

After saying this, Pang Zhendong thought of the pine torches that had been picked at and were in disarray under the bluestone roof, and said to Pang Gaoming, "Gaoming, do you think it could be someone from the Yongxing Brigade?"

"No way." Pang Gaoming suddenly realized something and immediately said to Pang Zhendong, "Dad, I have a feeling it's Zhao Jun and his men!"

Upon hearing this, Pang Zhendong narrowed his one eye: "Zhao Jun?"

(End of this chapter)