“…” Rong Zhaonan looked at the petite girl beside him.
“What, have you ever seen a fish ride a bicycle?” Ning Yuan raised an eyebrow.
His worldview was turned upside down. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle?
An image of a fish riding a bicycle appeared in his mind…
“Pfft… Hahaha.” Rong Zhaonan truly couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst into muffled laughter.
He hadn’t laughed in many years, but this little spy was too amusing. Where did she get all these strange and whimsical ideas?
Feeling like she was being mocked, Ning Yuan raised her voice. “It’s true! I can earn my own money and work points, I can do my own chores, and if I get sick, I’ll go to the hospital. Tell me, what else are men good for?”
“And I’d be expected to serve him and his whole family, and when he gets old, I’d have to clean up his piss and shit and see him to his grave!”
Seeing her bristle, Rong Zhaonan couldn’t help but be amused. “The way you talk, it’s as if you’ve been married and served a man your whole life.”
Ning Yuan was speechless for a moment, then turned her head and bit into her meat skewer resentfully. “Just tell me if that’s not how it is for most families around here! I have eyes, I can see for myself!”
Rong Zhaonan looked at Ning Yuan’s puffed-up cheeks and teased, “So this is why you don’t want to get married—men are useless?”
Ning Yuan was annoyed by the way he teased her with a straight face. She bit viciously into the meat. “It’s true. Other than maybe being useful in bed for having children, what do you need a man for…”
The moment the words left her mouth, she knew she had misspoken.
Rong Zhaonan cupped his chin and smiled knowingly. “Ah, right. That does require a man to cooperate and complete the… ‘task’ in bed. You seem to know quite a bit.”
Ning Yuan’s small, round face flushed red, and she rolled her eyes at him. “Hmph, Doctor Rong, that’s just medical common sense!”
This man, with his handsome and refined face, spoke with a tone that was roguish to the point of being wicked, making her heart skip a beat.
The girl beside him lowered her head, her tender white ears red and soft. Rong Zhaonan narrowed his eyes, unconsciously pressing the tip of his tongue against his back molars.
He wondered what they would taste like if he bit them.
“I thought you and that Secretary Li were dating, which is why you knew so much,” he said, lowering his gaze and collecting himself.
Ning Yuan’s expression turned cold. “I’m not dating him. My aunt introduced us. I know these things because my neighbor is a doctor at the clinic, and I live right next to it. She often took me and her child there to play.”
Protesting too much was a sign of hiding something, but what she said was also the truth; she wasn’t lying to him.
For some reason, when Rong Zhaonan heard that she had never dated anyone, a strange sense of relief washed over him.
He turned his face, got up to get a plate of sliced watermelon, and handed it to her. “Want some?”
Ning Yuan looked at the melon in her hand in pleasant surprise. “Where did you get this?”
Rong Zhaonan pointed toward the mountains. “I grew it. Even the cumin, fennel, and chili peppers are homegrown.”
Ning Yuan looked at him with a complicated expression. “You didn’t reclaim wasteland and open up fields in the mountains, did you?”
“Just a small plot. To ensure my physical fitness doesn’t decline, I need an adequate supply. After all, I might be here for the rest of my life,” Rong Zhaonan said casually.
Ning Yuan thought about it and agreed. If he didn’t secretly plant crops in the mountains and hunt, the past few years would have been very difficult for him to get through.
Reform Through Labor Elements were not allowed to have private plots of land.
“You won’t be. You won’t be here for the rest of your life. Order is being restored everywhere, and the economy is developing. You’ll go home,” Ning Yuan said, shaking her head.
Rong Zhaonan looked at her, his gaze somewhat deep. “You’re so certain I still have a chance to leave this place?”
Ning Yuan looked at him earnestly. “Because everything is getting better, and you’re a capable person. A dragon won’t be trapped in shallow waters forever.”
Rong Zhaonan looked at the girl before him, an indescribable feeling in his heart.
No one had ever said that to him before, although he himself didn’t believe he would be trapped here forever.
She was the first person to affirm him like this during his lowest point.
“Here.” He handed her the melon and the roasted ribs he was holding.
Ning Yuan beamed. “Thank you, Doctor Rong!”
The watermelon was sweet and refreshing, cutting through the richness of the roasted wild meat, which was so delicious that her mouth glistened with oil as she ate.
Rong Zhaonan watched her smiling face, then lowered his eyes and said faintly, “We’re married. Don’t you think it’s strange for you to always call me Doctor Rong in front of others?”
Ning Yuan was stirring the marinade with a small brush. She paused at his words. That was true, it was too formal.
She glanced at Rong Zhaonan, hesitating for a long while before asking awkwardly and tentatively, “Then… should I call you… um… Zhaonan? Or A Nan?”
The girl’s soft voice calling his name was like a piece of fluffy grass lightly brushing against the skin of his ear.
It was a little ticklish…
Rong Zhaonan paused, then turned his face away expressionlessly. “Whatever you want.”
Ning Yuan looked at his tall, slender profile, a little puzzled. This man was truly strange. Why did he suddenly have a stern look on his face again?
Forget it. Great minds often had eccentric tempers.
She would just eat, eat, eat—and fill her stomach first!
An hour later.
“Didn’t you say you knew how to smoke meat?”
Standing before a “mountain of meat,” Rong Zhaonan frowned slightly as he watched Ning Yuan look completely at a loss.
Ning Yuan sighed. “Come on, big brother, look at this mountain of meat! It’s five whole wild boars, enough for the entire village to slaughter and eat. How am I supposed to handle this all by myself!”
Smoking ten or so pounds would be one thing, but this was nearly a thousand pounds of meat!
It would take days just to sell it all, right?
Besides, the smoke from curing the meat would be easily spotted.
It was her own fault for being dazed by hunger earlier. When she saw the food, she spoke without thinking.
“So what do we do now?” Rong Zhaonan asked.
Ning Yuan rubbed her Taiyang acupoints, thinking for a long time. “The best way, of course, would be to sell all this pork for money and the ration tickets we need.”
So much pork could be exchanged for a huge amount of money and tickets, easily several hundred or even a thousand yuan.
But that was impossible. They had no way to process all these wild boars by themselves and transport them down the mountain into the city.
“Or we could tell the village chief, have the boars dragged down, and divide them among the village production team in exchange for goodwill,” Ning Yuan suggested again.
She and he, this “couple in hardship,” still had to live in the village for a while. Debts of gratitude were hard to repay, but if the village team benefited, they would have to look out for the two of them a little.
Rong Zhaonan pondered for a moment. “I can handle one boar. There’s a cave in these mountains that no one ever goes to. We can smoke the meat in there without being discovered.”
Ning Yuan’s big eyes lit up. “Then we can also raise those little piglets in the cave! We can have roasted suckling pig whenever we want!”
She squatted down by the few trembling piglets. “We’ll keep one boar and the piglets for ourselves. The remaining four can be taken down to the village by the party secretary and his men. That’s perfect!”
They got to work immediately. Rong Zhaonan picked one wild boar, and along with the pheasants and muntjac, he swiftly slaughtered and skinned them, then carried the boar to the cave.
The remaining boars were left where they were, tied to a tree with hemp rope.
Ning Yuan herded the little piglets from behind, watching him carry a two-hundred-plus-pound boar through the rugged mountain path as if he were walking on flat ground, as if he were carrying nothing at all.
She was utterly amazed. How on earth did he manage to do the work of a fierce warrior while having such a refined and handsome face?
Once inside the cave, Ning Yuan also saw a pile of firewood and a considerable amount of food supplies.
She knew then that this was Rong Zhaonan’s “secret base.”
This man was incredible.
By the time she and Rong Zhaonan had the fire going and all the pork and muntjac meat was cut up and hung, the sky was beginning to lighten. Only then did the two of them head down the mountain.
With Rong Zhaonan leading the way, the descent was much faster.
When they reached the Cowshed, Ning Yuan caught a whiff of herself—the stench of pig’s blood and sweat—and almost gagged.
“I’ll go boil some water. Want to wash up together?” Rong Zhaonan asked, seeing the way Ning Yuan’s little face was scrunched up.