In the early morning of that day, Liu Sanjun brought back the hunted pheasant. His wife Cai Zhongsheng was still sleeping in bed and had not woken up. In order to avoid being blamed by her, he boiled a pot of boiling water in advance, scalded the pheasant, shaved the feathers, and The beautiful feathers were gathered into a pile and packed in a big plastic bag. They were carried to the corner behind the house, and they broke off a few branches with leaves to cover them. They were going to take them to the town's scrap collection station to exchange for money later.
Because pheasant feathers are prettier and more valuable than domestic chicken feathers, he doesn't want to throw them away, and he doesn't want his wife to know. If she finds out, she will object to him and shouldn't kill.
After Liu Sanjun finished processing the pheasant feathers, he went into the house, chopped the sloughed pheasant into pieces, washed them, and put them in a pot to make soup.
When the house was filled with fragrance, Cai Zhongsheng woke up and smelled the fragrance. He got up and went straight to the kitchen to open the lid of the hanging pot and see that the boiling water was boiling inside and the pieces of meat were spinning in the pot like dancing up and down.
Cai Zhongsheng asked what kind of meat it was, and Liu Sanjun, who was chopping green onions in a scarf, paused for a moment with the kitchen knife in his hand and answered, "Can't you tell?" It's chicken.
Cai Zhongsheng moved his eyes in confusion, but before he could speak, Liu Sanjun continued, "Yesterday I received my wages at the quarry, so I went to the town to buy a chicken and simmered it in soup to replenish your health, okay?"
Cai Zhongsheng said dubiously that my body should be replenished, but I didn't quite believe that what was being cooked in this pot was chicken.
Wife, what do you suspect? Take a ladle and stir it in the pot to see if it's chicken?
Liu Sanjun sprinkled the chopped green onion into the pot as he spoke, then used chopsticks to pick up a piece of meat for her to see. Cai Zhongsheng said nothing more.
But after it was cooked and eaten, Cai Zhongsheng felt that the meat tasted a bit rough, so he said, "This is not like chicken. Chicken has a more delicate texture. You can't fool me."
Liu Sanjun smiled and said, "Who are you fooling? You don't know. This is old hen's meat. Of course it doesn't taste that delicate."
After hearing this, Cai Zhongsheng reluctantly gave up his doubts.
After eating, she went to the toilet out of urgency. The foul smell made her spit out the door. When she looked up, she saw some eye-catching fresh branches piled in the corner behind the house.
After relieving herself, she went over to take a look and used her feet to push aside the fresh branches, revealing a large plastic bag. She opened the opening and found colorful pheasant feathers inside.
She understood, so she carried the bag of pheasant feathers from the back room through the main hall, threw it in front of Liu Sanjun, who was sitting on a chair leisurely smoking a cigarette, and snorted, "What is this?"
Liu Sanjun knew that his secret was exposed, his cheeks turned red, and he smiled awkwardly, "Whatever you say is what it is."
Cai Zhongsheng said, "You lied to me and said that what you were eating was old hen's chicken. I thought that even if it was old hen's chicken, the texture would not be that rough." It was obviously a pheasant you hunted at night and brought back to simmer in the soup. Why do you insist that it was old hen chicken?
Haven't you always opposed my hunting? So I don’t want to tell you the truth. In fact, if I hunt a pheasant and eat it, it’s nothing. It’s no different than a spiritual animal like a tortoise. If you eat it, its soul will haunt you. Besides, humans can eat pheasants, hares and other birds and beasts, but they are afraid of this and afraid of that. What’s the point of living?
Liu Sanjun defended himself plausibly. He also glanced at Cai Zhongsheng and said that not only would it be fine if you eat this pheasant meat, but it could also nourish your body. Although pheasant meat is rough, its nutritional value is far better than that of domestic chicken.
Then he picked up the plastic bag filled with pheasant feathers and said, not only is the meat valuable, but the feathers are also valuable. I can definitely get money by taking it to the town's waste recycling station.
After that, Liu Sanjun went hunting on the mountain behind the house with a shotgun, but Cai Zhongsheng stopped trying to dissuade him and allowed him to do whatever he wanted.
But disaster struck quietly. It was a dark and windy night at home. Liu Sanjun had a few glasses of wine at home and then went out from the back room with his shotgun.
When he just stepped out of the door, he fell down and quickly got up.
Cai Zhongsheng rushed over and said, "You drank too much, so you won't go hunting tonight and rest at home."
no! no! Liu Sanjun was resolute. He touched his shotgun and said, "What's the point of drinking?" I'm not drunk at all. I might be better off hunting in the mountains while I'm still drunk. Besides, if I don't hunt some pheasants and rabbits, how can I have any food to go with the wine?
Liu Sanjun usually went out through the front door when hunting, but this time he went out through the back door.
Cai Zhongsheng followed him to see him off. It wasn't until his figure disappeared into the gloomy night that he stepped back from the door and locked the door.
As he was going to bed with a light on, he suddenly heard a clanking sound in the middle room, as if something had fallen. Cai Zhongsheng, who had already gone to bed, put on his clothes and got up. He walked over and turned on the light in the middle room. He looked everywhere but found nothing.
Suddenly his eyes glanced towards the north wall, and he saw a two-inch long iron nail lying on the ground. There was still wall dust on the iron nail opening. Cai Zhongsheng looked at the wall and saw a small hole, where the iron nail fell.
She wondered: This was where her husband hung his shotgun. This nail did not fall when the shotgun was hung. Why did it fall without moving when it was empty?
Without thinking much, Cai Zhongsheng bent down to pick up the iron nail and put it on the table by the wall, hoping that her husband would come back from hunting and nail it firmly to another position on the wall.
The next morning, Liu Sanjun did not go home. As usual, he should go home. After having breakfast at home, he should go to work in the quarry.
Since the husband didn't come home, something else must have gotten in the way. Maybe he went straight to work in the quarry without hunting wild animals.
Cai Zhongsheng thought about it this way. His hair was in a mess and had not been combed yet, but he was not in the mood to comb it because his head was always groggy for some reason this morning.
In the neighboring tile-roofed house, Qiu Decai woke up. He just vaguely heard a gunshot, so he rubbed his swollen eyes and opened his eyes to see that the room was already bright.
He guessed that it must be Liu Sanjun who was hunting and hit another wild animal, which had nothing to do with him. He originally had objections to Liu Sanjun, but opinions were opinions. Qiu Decai, who always loved to watch the excitement, couldn't help but get up. He was only wearing underwear and didn't care about the cold spring day, so he leaned against the wall of the pavilion. While looking out through the stone window like an observation post.
But after a while, no one was seen, and the wilderness was completely silent. After a while, there was the chirping of birds.
He couldn't bear to watch anymore, so he got dressed, got up, washed, and then took the cows to graze on the back mountain.
He heard the cry of a pheasant coming from the thick woods. He got in and tried to catch a live pheasant with his bare hands, take it back and kill it, chop it into pieces and cook it as a tooth sacrifice. Lest he often see Liu Sanjun fighting a wild animal or something, which would make him salivate.
He rolled his green bean eyes and peeped in the woods, but saw no pheasants, only a few unknown birds chirping in the thorn awnings, as if they were mocking him for being a coward and having a cowardly idea.
Qiu Decai ignored it and shifted his gaze to a japonica tree. Looking down along the trunk from the top of the tree, he suddenly found a man who seemed to be lying sideways in the grass under the root of the tree, motionless.
He walked over quietly and saw clearly that the person who fell was not someone else, but Liu Sanjun, whom he was particularly familiar with.
Liu Sanjun's nostrils and mouth were full of blood. There was a shotgun lying on the grass a few inches away from his chest. The barrel of the gun was facing Liu Sanjun's chest, and his chest was still bleeding.
He was dead. Qiu Decai put his hand under his nostrils and found that he was no longer breathing.
Seeing this scene, Qiu Decai concluded that Liu Sanjun failed to pay attention and mistakenly pointed the muzzle of the shotgun at his own chest and misfired, resulting in his death.
Qiu Decai felt extremely horrified. This was the first time he saw the tragic scene of a person being shot to death by a shotgun. He did not dare to stay longer, so he walked through the woods, pushed aside the thorns, and ran down the mountain quickly. He kept stopping until he reached the village. Shout: Dead! Dead people! …
