Chapter 5 Platform (V)
It was dawn. Huo Chong opened his eyes and got up. After going to the toilet, he stood in the yard, looked at the cloudy sky, and sighed in his heart. Today is the first day of April in the fifty-sixth year of Emperor Kangxi's reign in 1717, and it is also the second day that Huo Chong took over Liu Shu's position.
The watch showed that it was half past six in the morning, and there were still fifteen minutes before the junior brothers were called to get up. Uncle Liu's performance yesterday was in front of the public. Uncle Liu evacuated safely, and Huo Chong had to take over. Since it was in public, one of the results was the mess in front of him.
Huo Chong rolled up his sleeves and started to work. He placed the chairs in the main hall and swept the floor. Just as he got to this point, it was already 6:45. Huo Chong put down the broom and went to the dormitory of his junior brothers to wake up the four of them.
In the university dormitory, Huo Chong was used to seeing all kinds of unpleasantness when waking up. Huo Chong was a little surprised that his juniors did not show any reaction of waking up grumpy after being woken up.
In this era, people eat two meals during the slack season, one at noon and one at night. During the slack season, they have a meal in the morning. Huo Chong is not used to this kind of life. After eating three meals a day for many years, Huo Chong's stomach is already rumbling.
"Tie Niu, prepare to cook." Huo Chongming said.
The third apprentice Tieniu went to fetch firewood after hearing the order. Huo Chong stopped him, "Tieniu, Xiushan, Youcai, Shiwang. Wait a minute, wash your faces first."
The brothers were all confused when they heard this, and Huo Chong didn't want to explain. These brothers didn't like to wash their faces, so their faces naturally showed the result of not washing. The money rat tail was ugly enough, and the face was greasy, looking like a barbarian.
After fetching water himself, he found that his fellow apprentices did not have their own wash basins. Huo Chong opened the storeroom and found only a few clay basins. They were so dirty that he did not know how long it would take to clean them. He could only go back to the yard and use the cooking basin to collect water, and let his fellow apprentices scoop water from it to wash their faces.
In the end, his face was not washed very clean, so Huo Chong asked Tie Niu and Xiu Shan to cook. He led his fifth and sixth brothers You Cai and Shi Wang to clean up.
The rice was porridge with a few pieces of sweet potatoes in it. This big bowl of carbohydrates made Huo Chong sigh inwardly. It wasn't that he thought there was anything wrong with it. It was already good enough for ordinary people in this era to have enough carbohydrates every day. Many people didn't even have this to eat.
The grains used to make this bowl of porridge are genuine green crops, without any chemical fertilizers, salt or oil. In the merchants' propaganda, it is a classic in human diet. However, Huo Chong would rather have a big bowl of so-called unhealthy braised pork at this time, the fatter the better.
During the years of martial arts training, Huo Chong finally understood the significance of protein and fat to humans. Carbohydrates provide energy, while meat provides nutrition. To put it more bluntly, Huo Chong can survive by eating vegetarian food, but only by eating meat can he have strength.
After eating pure natural green food for more than half a month, the strong muscles that were once nourished by balanced nutrition and scientific nutrient combination have been consumed a lot. If it continues like this, Huo Chong will soon enter the stage where only the frame is left.
He complained in his heart but said nothing. After Huo Chong finished his breakfast and washed the dishes, he led his fellow apprentices to the fields.
As a person who runs a "platform" in this area, he cannot do without land. Uncle Liu's family has a large piece of land, which is all given to tenants to cultivate. Uncle Liu only gave the house deed to Huo Chong, but did not hand over the land deed. Walking on the ridges next to "their own land" with his fellow apprentices and looking at the green in the land, Huo Chong just felt that he was a bit like a landlord.
A moment of joy in misery completely changed the depression in my heart. I checked the account book and the IOU all night last night. Ancient accounting was not double-entry accounting, and some contents were not completely sorted out. Huo Chong still determined from these contents that the land in front of him had been mortgaged by Uncle Liu.
According to a rough estimate, Uncle Liu left Huo Chong an old house with two entrances and a warehouse without any ironware. Apart from that, the only thing worth money was probably the copper incense burner used to burn incense on the tablet of the ancestors.
In modern terms, this platform is insolvent, its capital chain is broken, and the platform owner has absconded with the money. This is the situation that Huo Chong, the buyer, is facing.
Zhangdian is located at the transition point from mountainous area to plain, and the ground is not very flat. Huo Chong walked with one foot deep and one foot shallow, thinking about the situation he was facing. Then he heard a noise in the grass by the roadside, and a hare jumped out. The yellow-gray figure disappeared in another patch of wild grass in an instant, leaving only a rustling sound that disappeared from near to far.
Meat! The next second when this word popped up in his mind, Huo Chong couldn't help swallowing his saliva. Then the knowledge points about rabbit meat also popped up.
The main reason why rabbit meat has not become the mainstay on the table is that rabbit meat lacks fat and will consume vitamins and trace elements in the user's body. To put it more bluntly, it is not fat and delicious.
Sichuan people love to eat rabbit meat and there is nothing wrong with it. That's because when this method of cooking rabbit meat was fully developed, China had no shortage of cooking oil and various seasonings. The thick red oil hot pot is enough to make even the fattiest rabbit meat full of fat.
The memory of the red oil pan made Huo Chong swallow his saliva again. Huo Chong had already decided to get some meat to eat first. As long as rabbit meat was not the staple food, nothing would go wrong.
"Are there any hunters here?"
The junior fellow apprentice told Huo Chong that there was a hunter at the head of the village, so Huo Chong went straight to the hunter's house. When he arrived at the door, he saw several animal skins drying in the hunter's yard, which were bloody and a bit scary. Just as he was about to knock on the door, it was pushed open from the inside, and a sturdy man walked out. He looked Huo Chong up and down, "Are you Lao Liu's apprentice?"
Since the other party knew him, it naturally saved a lot of trouble to get to know each other. After a simple exchange of names, most people in this village were surnamed Liu, and the hunter was also surnamed Liu. After hearing that Huo Chong wanted to catch a few live rabbits, the hunter asked in confusion: "Why are you catching rabbits?"
"Raising rabbits." Huo Chong didn't want to hide it.
The hunter answered readily: "Rabbits will die as soon as you raise them. You are wasting your time."
As the person in charge of the platform project, Huo Chong has read too many business plans, many of which are about the animal husbandry industry. Rabbits are small animals that are not very durable. If they are infected with bacteria, they will die in large numbers. Even a slight shock can cause the rabbit's body to become dysfunctional and die.
Compared to this fragility, rabbits are small animals with strong reproductive capacity. Rabbits can be bred at 6 months old, and can be bred again 14 to 18 days after giving birth after a 30-day pregnancy period. The rabbit breeding cycle is only about 44-48 days.
The more fragile a person is, the more fertile he or she is. The emotional description in the report left a deep impression on Huo Chong.
"Brother Liu, I want to give it a try." Huo Chong gave Liu the Hunter a clear answer.
Seeing that Huo Chong had made up his mind, Hunter Liu said, "I just caught a few here, but I can't exchange them all."
After saying that, he went into the house and took out a cage. Inside, he saw a few blood-stained rabbits, lying listlessly in the cage without moving.
"How long can this... last?"
"Here you go. If you think the rabbit is dying, kill it and eat the meat."
"Just take it away like this?" Huo Chong was a little hesitant to accept the hunter's kindness.
"What's the matter? You still want to buy it? Then you have to pay!" the hunter replied in a rough voice.
Huo Chong sighed in his heart that different times are different. In the 21st century, China has completed the second round of currency revolution and is marching towards the third round of currency revolution. In this era, the currency transaction volume is very low. "Talking about money hurts feelings" among villagers .
But not having to pay for a transaction does not mean there is no transaction. Huo Chong stepped forward and asked, "Brother Liu, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Brother, I want you to get me a talisman." The hunter answered straightforwardly.
Huo Chong felt relieved after confirming that this was a transaction. Transactions are good things, and trust can be established between people. Moreover, the Tianli Sect he inherited must provide spiritual services to the people around him.
Taking the cage and placing it at the hunter's feet, Huo Chong asked, "Brother Liu, who are you inviting?"
"My wife has been absent-minded recently, and seems to be possessed by a demon. But she is no different than usual, except that she acted as if she didn't hear me when I called her several times. When I approached her and called her, she was still the same as usual. I'm thinking about whether I should get a talisman."
Huo Chong did not dare to neglect the matter as it concerned him. "Brother Liu, if it was evil spirits, it would be what you said. But if my sister-in-law was sick, it would also be what you said. I can't ask for talismans randomly. If I ask for the wrong ones, the gods will be unhappy..."
The hunter nodded repeatedly, and it was obvious that he believed it firmly.
