Hearing this, Yun Xiaoxiao understood.
She remembered how after getting beaten as a child, she’d vow to fight back once she had the ability.
A tightness gripped at Yun Xiaoxiao’s heart even more.
What would Zhao Tianlei do to her if he found out she was not the female supporting character?
At this moment, Yun Xiaoxiao dared not even think about it.
"The banquet is about to start, come on, let’s go sit down and eat."
The banquet had meat, bones, chicken, and fish; although not in great quantities, it was considered pretty decent for a brigade gathering.
"I helped prepare the meat and bones," Zhao Tianlei whispered to Yun Xiaoxiao as he served her some food.
A warm room, impossible not to have meat.
So they come to Zhao Tianlei’s place.
If Zhao Tianlei brought the meat, why didn’t he get some for his family?
"We’ll talk about it when we get home."
What to talk about at home?
Da Bao was eating the banquet with Xiao Bao.
"Mom, my wife and I are going to head back first," he said.
Mrs. Zhao was still busy entertaining relatives; when she heard her youngest son saying this, she waved her hand and said, "Go ahead, go on!"
She had noticed earlier that her daughter-in-law hadn’t eaten much; she was too polite while others at the table grabbed the food.
Yun Xiaoxiao wanted to argue: She had really not seen a banquet eaten so quickly; as soon as each dish was served, those people would reach out with their chopsticks, and their movements, seemingly practiced, were just too fast.
It was only with Zhao Tianlei’s help on her side that she could get some dishes; otherwise, she could only stare at an empty plate and shovel rice.
"I’ll make you formula milk..." Zhao Tianlei knew his wife certainly hadn’t eaten enough at noon, so as soon as they got home, he immediately prepared her a cup of formula milk.
"Now that the village has no restrictions on raising chickens, I will go out and buy an old hen to make you some chicken soup."
While helping his older brothers to build their houses, his family had been somewhat neglected.
They could eat eggs every day, but the last meat they had was beef bought by his wife.
"Okay, we all need to nourish ourselves. We don’t have many eggs left, buy some of those too."
She had no intention of buying the chicken and eggs online.
The brigade had purely wild-raised chickens and eggs, genuine free-range chicken eggs and chickens.
Seeing his wife drink the formula milk, Zhao Tianlei grabbed a basket and headed out, returning in less than ten minutes with a big rooster and several dozen eggs.
He then quickly killed it and cleaned out the chicken offal.
"Should I stew it with the yams Er Dan dug up?"
Could those yams really be eaten?
"Yes, they can be eaten; they’re really edible. Peel and cut them into pieces, but you should wait until the chicken is half cooked before adding the yams."
Since that’s what his wife wanted, that’s what he would do.
He chopped the rooster into pieces, fried them in lard, and then began to stew them in the earthen pot.
When Da Bao and Xiao Bao came home, the chicken soup was almost ready and kept warm on the stove.
In the evening, the whole family enjoyed yam stewed chicken, and chicken offal stir-fried with pickled peppers and fermented ginger pickled radish. It was spicy and numbing and went great with rice.
The yams were soft and glutinous; Yun Xiaoxiao and her sons loved these yams.
The following morning, Cao Dali, Fang Chaoyang, and Zhao Tianhe all came to their house.
"Wife, we have to go up the mountain, and I don’t know if we’ll return tonight, so you should go to bed early," he said.
Up the mountain for a trip?
"Then wait a moment," she replied.
Yun Xiaoxiao went back to the room, took out several drawings, and handed them to Zhao Tianlei, "These are some medicinal herbs I recognize, just dig them and bring them back."
"Sister-in-law, these herbs aren’t cheap, are they?" Fang Chaoyang craned his neck to look at the drawings on the paper.
"They’re not cheap; ginseng, Polygonum multiflorum, Lingzhi, white fungus, ..."
They had heard of it but didn’t know what it looked like, did they?
They knew it was expensive.