"Brother Pei, if there’s anything you need help with, just ask. You’ve done so much for us, we’re embarrassed." Xu Nianhua thought to herself that they couldn’t really be of any help to them, so she could only say so.
"Then, tonight, can I have the crucian carp soup made by you?" Pei Yicheng’s eyes were filled with anticipation.
Xu Nianhua cleared her throat. The contrast to the man she first met was too great, and it took her a moment to respond.
"Of course you can, the fish were caught by you. You can do with them as you please." Xu Nianhua wasn’t really just nineteen, and though she occasionally saw herself as a nineteen-year-old girl, most of the time she was quite self-aware.
Xu Nianhua made such a clear distinction, and Pei Yicheng lowered his eyes and said, "Then, tonight we’ll take out some crucian carp to make soup and pick one grass carp to save for a late-night snack."
"It’s just that it’s going to be a bit of work for you." When Pei Yicheng looked up again, the brief dimness of a moment ago seemed as though it had never been there.
"How could it be hard work when there’s fish to eat?" Xu Nianhua chattered on, "We could buy a few more pieces of tofu to make crucian carp and tofu soup. Simmer it for a while, and the flavor will be delicious. As for the grass carp, we could make chopped chili fish head—it’s spicy and fresh. Then a simple stir-fried bean sprouts, fish-flavored eggplant, and perilla-flavored edamame."
"And with a pot of wine, it would definitely be delicious." As she talked about it, Xu Nianhua even made herself drool.
She liked to drink fruit wine and would only have a little, just enough to feel slightly tipsy.
"You, you want to drink too?" Pei Yicheng seemed puzzled by the thought.
"Cough, not me, my older and younger brothers..." Xu Nianhua paused in her speech and then said, "My older brother can indeed drink a bit of wine."
The younger brother might as well forget it.
He has school tomorrow.
"Little sister, you guys, how many fish did we catch?"
The boat hadn’t even gotten close when Xu Nian’an’s excited voice could already be heard.
Once at the shore, they tossed the sticky net onto land, and oh boy, it was teeming with fish.
"There really are a lot of fish here!" Xu Nian’an, from his childhood to now, had never had such fun.
Even though they didn’t catch many at the beginning, by the last cast, they had caught a lot!
It felt like they were in luck and had stumbled upon a school of fish!
"Right, now we have plenty of fish for that chili sauce." Xu Nianhua looked at the fish peppers and thought of the crispy-fried fish mixed with chili sauce. The taste would be particularly good.
"Let’s not rush to get the fish off the net. Let’s head back to the plant first. Brother Pei caught a lot of crucian carp; we’ll take them home to make soup." Xu Nianhua urged, as the crucian carp soup needed to be simmered for a while to be delicious and fragrant.
Seeing that the sun was almost setting, Mom and big sister-in-law should have returned home early.
When they got back to the plant, Ji Ying and Zhou He had intended to wait for them, but after waiting left and right, they went back without seeing anyone.
Xu Nianhua picked out a dozen or so crucian carp and asked her younger brother to buy some tofu.
The edamame and eggplants were brought by Pei Yicheng from his grandfather’s place, anyway, he was supposed to come over for dinner that evening.
Bean sprouts were specially saved by Xu Nianji that morning.
Xu Nianji had planned to go back, but Pei Yicheng invited him over and over again, so he stayed.
Xu Nianji couldn’t cook, so he just sat there with Ling Dong, peeling the fish off the sticky net, one by one, and then cleaning each one!
As happy as they were when they netted the fish, that’s how despairing they now felt!
"If I had known, I wouldn’t have caught so many." Ling Dong felt that the endless stream of little fish was just too much trouble to deal with.