Chapter 26 – The county town receives the younger brother

That night, probably due to hunger, Yang Jing had been unable to sleep, tossing and turning . . .

Jiang Zhen was tired of it. He went to him in a few steps and immediately knocked him unconscious, then tied him up again.

Before, Yang Jing was able to break free from the rope he had tied, because he had tied it carelessly, deliberately giving him a chance to escape in order to intimidate him. But now . . .

Jiang Zhen tied Yang Jing in such a knot, that even if the person who taught Yang Jing how to untie ropes came in person, he would not be able to untie it.

After all this, Jiang Zhen got out through the window, planning to wait outside for Zhao Jinge.

He had left some fried bacon meat and eggs for Zhao Jinge and was waiting to feed him.

As soon as he got out, Jiang Zhen saw a man standing motionless not far away. Who was it if not Zhao Jinge? He didn’t know how long he had been standing outside.

This shy man dared to come to find him on his own accord? Jiang Zhen felt amused. He pulled the man towards the pond area again, cradled Zhao Jinge’s face with his hands, and kissed him on the mouth. “I knew you would come to me.”

Zhao Jinge, with a wooden expression, didn’t speak. At this time, he clearly felt that there was a kind of heat coming from the place Jiang Zhen had just kissed, which eventually spread all over his body, so that he did not want to move.

No, there was still a place that wanted to move . . . Feeling that the thing in his crotch was ready to move, Zhao Jinge felt so ashamed that he just wanted to jump into the pond to drown himself.

He . . . So that’s it?

If his parents knew he was seeing someone in the middle of the night, it would still be like this . . .

Zhao Jinge sat motionless beside Jiang Zhen; his thoughts drifted away until he smelled fried bacon.

“Come on. Have some scrambled eggs with the meat.” Jiang Zhen put a chopstick of eggs into Zhao Jinge’s mouth and then gave him another mouthful of rice.

Zhao Jinge slowly ate it and put his heart at ease.

Jiang Zhen should be with him wholeheartedly. In that case, it was okay for the two of them to be close to each other. They would eventually get married in the future.

The next day, under Jiang Zhen’s command, all the furniture in Jiang Chengxiang’s house was moved to his new house along with a large iron pot and pots and pans from the Jiang family.

With just a little tidying up to do, the new house was ready to be moved in . . .

Jiang Zhen guided Yang Jing to look around his house with the knife and then took the villagers who had helped with the building of the house back to the Jiang family’s home for lunch.

After lunch, Jiang Zhen stretched out his hand to Jiang Chengxiang and said, “The silver and the document, are they ready?”

“This is the household registration document, the silver . . .” Jiang Chengxiang looked at old Madam Jiang, who kept the money.

“Here.” Old lady Jiang took out a bag of silver.

Jiang Zhen weighed the money bag in his hand and said to Jiang Chengwen, “Bring me a scale and weigh it!”

Jiang Chengwen, who had been standing far away, did not expect to be chosen by Jiang Zhen. He felt he was unlucky but did not dare to disobey. He quickly brought back a scale.

Many people in the countryside had scales at home, but scales were made from stone, so there was some deviation when weighing things.

The scale in the Jiang family house, when weighing things, would show a weight a little heavier than the actual weight. As a result, the bag of silver that should weigh no less than forty, weighed only thirty-nine.

Jiang Zhen looked calmly at old Madam Jiang.

“There’s only 38 silver in the family, there is not even a penny left.” Old lady Jiang shivered. After seeing Jiang Zhen’s sudden violent behavior, the calmer his expression was, the more frightened she became. She regretted her lack of money. She didn’t want to give him forty silver, so in the end, she only gave him a little more than thirty-seven silver, which wasn’t obvious. Who would have thought that Jiang Zhen would want to weigh it?

“No more silver at home?” Jiang Zhen still had that pleasant-looking expression.

“No, there’s no more silver at home.” Old Madam Jiang could only maintain her stance.

“Well then, I won’t force you to lend more money,” Jiang Zhen said with a smile.

When old lady Jiang heard Jiang Zhen’s words, her face immediately brightened. Is this evil star really not going to investigate? It was an unexpected surprise to her that she could save three silver.

Jiang Zhen put the bag of silver into the sack he had already prepared a long time ago and suddenly walked towards the house.

“What are you doing?” old Madam Jiang asked, surprised.

Jiang Zhen had already answered old Madam Jiang’s question with actions. After he rushed in, he grabbed a pig and dragged it out by its ears.

The pig squealed in bursts; its four hooves were fixed on the ground. It refused to move, but in the end, it could not withstand Jiang Zhen’s strength and was dragged out by him.

The Jiang family raised three pigs, and Jiang Zhen had coveted them for a long time.

He didn’t think about killing these three pigs before because he felt that he wasn’t the eldest brother Jiang who had been beaten by the Jiang family. It was not easy for him to take this and that from the Jiang family. But now . . . he can finally kill a pig and eat pork!

“What are you trying to do? Stop it!” Seeing Jiang Zhen dragging a pig, old lady Jiang shouted in panic.

“Little sister, go get a bucket for the pig blood!” Jiang Zhen said to Xiaomei Jiang and ignored old lady Jiang. Originally, he certainly didn’t care about a little bit of pig blood, but recently, he hadn’t had any meat to eat, which made him reluctant to waste even pig blood.

Jiang Xiaomei stood still and didn’t dare to move. At last, Butcher Jiang kicked her and said, “Go get the bucket!”

“Boil some water by the way!” Jiang Zhen ordered again, then he pressed the pig to the ground, stepped on it with his feet, and said to the villagers around him, “I want to kill a pig and sell pork. You’d better not go away. . . Of course, you can go home to get money.”

Jiang Zhen spoke in a calm voice, but his momentum and the struggling pig under his feet made him look particularly ferocious.

People who originally wanted to go back didn’t dare to go right then. Of course, some people went home to get money.

Jiang Zhen smiled and said to Jiang Chengxiang, “Go and fetch a bench!”

The ancient pig had no fodder, and it was often fed grass, so it was light. The Jiang family’s pig was already fattened, but it only weighed about a hundred kilos. He estimated that he could get 70–80 kilos of pork after clean up.

Such a small pig, Jiang Zhen could naturally press it down to death. But even if he could do it, the rest of the villagers couldn’t. Seeing the pig under his feet struggling and screaming but still unable to escape, they all unconsciously took a step back.

After Jiang Chengxiang moved several stools together, Jiang Zhen picked up the pig and pressed it against the stool. By that time, Jiang Xiaomei, who had seen Butcher Jiang kill a pig before, had placed the bucket under the pig’s neck in order to collect its blood.

Jiang Zhen stabbed the knife into the pig’s neck. As soon as the handle of the knife turned and cut the pig’s throat, the pig suddenly lost its breath, twitching. Blood gushed out of its throat.

When he did this, he deliberately let go of his forceful aura and smiled deliberately. This smile was learned from a perverted killer; it was full of satisfaction and enjoyment. There was nothing to look at, but it was creepy to smile with a butcher knife in hand.

The people around were really scared. Butcher Jiang used to kill pigs in the same manner. Everyone saw that he had never been afraid of killing pigs, but for some reason, when Jiang Zhen killed the pig just now, he made their hairs stand on end and terrified them.

Jiang Zhen was in a good mood at that moment. When the pig’s blood flowed out, he threw the pig on the ground and suddenly thought that if he had nothing to do, for the time being, he could actually kill pigs . . .

Eldest Jiang had the skill for killing pigs, which he inherited from his memories. I think that killing pigs is very simple. He had even killed people before, so it was not like he was unable to kill pigs.

Next was . . . to soak the pig in hot water for a while in order to scrape off the pig’s hair. When the pig’s hair was scraped clean, he needed to open its stomach in order to take out the intestines and then deal with its internal organs.

There was no technical content in those things. Jiang Zhen skillfully scraped off the pig’s hair with a piece of clamshell and then turned his attention to the intestines in the pig’s stomach.

He was too lazy to wash the pig’s intestines, so he only cut off the heart, lungs, liver and stomach, then took out the machete to cut the pig, and divided it into two parts.

When killing pigs, Jiang Zhen was actually on guard, for fear that someone would attack him at the first opportunity, but at the moment, it was obvious that he was thinking too much . . .

They did not dare fight him at all, so he butchered the pig in peace.

The whole pig had been divided into two parts. Jiang Zhen divided each half into three pieces: front legs, torso, and back legs.

What he did was what Butcher Jiang had done for many years, but his blade was unswerving as it cut and his face was still smiling, which made people tremble.

Although Yang Jiang was released by Jiang Zhen, he didn’t dare to run away and stayed in place. Every time Jiang Zhen slashed with the knife, his head could not help but duck. For a moment, he was extremely glad that he had not provoked Jiang Zhen. At least, he was able to leave the Jiang family house in one piece.

“Twenty copper pennies for a kilo of pork. Do you want it?” Jiang Zhen looked at the villagers he had ignored.

Jiang Zhen looked like he would cut them if they didn’t buy, but everyone was afraid to be the first one to buy.

In the end, Jiang Ping, the village head, clenched his teeth and walked forward in the spirit of self-sacrifice. “I’ll buy five kilos.”

“Okay.” Jiang Zhen cut off the front leg of the pig and removed the big bones from the meat. Then he went with a knife, and after estimating he had cut 5 kilos of meat, he weighed it. “Four and a half kilos. Ninety copper pennies!”

There was a butcher in the county town who sold pork every day. He would sell it more expensively on New Year’s day, but usually, he would sell it a little cheaper.

It’s a normal day. When Jiang Zhen started selling pork at 20 copper pennies per kilo, the village people felt that it was expensive, especially as they were being forced to buy, making them even more reluctant.

As a result, when Jiang Zhen sold the pork, he even removed the bones from the meat. That is to say, what he sold was pure pork meat!

After Jiang Ping, others came forward to buy meat one after another, and the reluctance in their hearts disappeared without a trace.

Butcher Jiang looked at this scene with a black face. The pig was so big that he wanted to buy better silkworm eggs from the profits he would have gotten from it. But the result was . . .

Jiang Zhen soon sold most of the pork. Because he didn’t open his mouth to say he would allow the people around him to leave, those who bought the pork didn’t dare to leave.

“I’m not selling it.” All of a sudden, Jiang Zhen said this. There remained only about ten kilos of meat, bones, and internal organs. He didn’t want to sell it but put them all in a big wooden bucket, waiting to take it home to eat.

Of course, he didn’t want the intestines.

Hexi villagers always eat the pig intestines. With the lack of food and clothing in ancient times, no one was willing to throw away the oily pig intestines, but this thing was very troublesome to clean, so Jiang Zhen didn’t want it.

After packing up what he wanted, Jiang Zhen looked at the butcher and said, “This pig didn’t get me two silver, so I also want the egg-laying chicken at home and other food. Please send it to me as soon as possible.”

In addition to the forty silver, Jiang Zhen had asked for five sacks of grain.

Five sacks were six hundred kilos. These days, people rarely have the opportunity to eat fats and protein, and they had to do physical work. They ate a lot of food; it was absolutely no problem for an adult to eat two or three kilos of grain a day, but with 600 kilos of food, Jiang Zhen wouldn’t have to worry about starving for a long time.

“It’s spring. Where will you get the five sacks of grain from home?” Butcher Jiang was so busy gathering money that he forgot about it.

If there had been no special circumstances, country people were not willing to sell the newly beaten grain after paying the full tax, but they would sell the last year’s grain when there was a surplus and the family had enough food.

The Jiang family had a lot of land, so every year, after the grain in the field had been collected, the harvested grain from the previous year would be sold. So Jiang Zhen knew very well that the Jiang family would certainly be able to come up with five sacks of grain.

But at the moment, he was too lazy to talk to Butcher Jiang . . .

With a big knife for cutting meat, he went directly to the granary, which was built behind the house. After a few slashes with the knife, Jiang Zhen directly opened the granary. “Are you sure there is no grain I want in there?”

After doing this, Jiang Zhen didn’t have much to say. He went to his new home with a bucket of pork. By the way, he took away all the knives that Butcher Jiang used to kill pigs and cut meat.

The heavy bone machete was not cheap. The butcher and old lady Jiang were bound to be distressed again.

But no matter how distressed they were, they didn’t dare to ask for the knives back. They even sent to him five sacks of grain and the chicken that can lay eggs that same day.

Having learned from the past lessons, this time, they didn’t dare to be short on the weight for fear of Jiang Zhen going back and robbing them of the remaining two piglets.

Jiang Zhen was very satisfied with this and did not look for trouble after collecting the things he demanded. After several days of struggling, he didn’t want to continue struggling.

Finally, he was separated from this family. Now he could live his own life . . .