Chapter One Hundred and Ten: Autumn Rain (Happy Police Day; just reached Chapter One Hundred and Ten)

Whoosh.

The sky, clear just a moment ago, suddenly turned overcast. A soft wind brushed past, striking his skin and bringing Zhong Di a faint chill.

“Is it going to rain?” Zhong Di looked up. One glance was enough to tell him that it probably was.

The weather in the northwest was always so strange. A sky that showed no sign of rain would suddenly break into a shower.

“Brother, are you there? I’m here.”

Just as Zhong Di was about to call his parents, Zaker arrived and called out to him from outside the farm.

After taking a brief tour of the orchard with Zaker, Zhong Di decided to give it a try here first. They would work for a week and settle the wages afterward.

He did not even need Zaker to say it; Zhong Di would have handled it that way anyway. Full wages, nothing less. Though it was a probation period, and Zaker had been the one to insist on it, Zhong Di felt there was no need to make a fuss over such things.

Whether probationary or official, labor had been paid for. If the work was worth doing, then the wage should be paid in full. Even if someone worked only one day, they still deserved their pay. And if they decided not to continue, he would never do something like cutting the wages in half just because they had not worked a full thirty days.

The whole matter took very little time. They agreed that it would begin tomorrow, and after one week they would decide whether he stayed.

Zhong Di knew Zaker must have his own reasons for doing things this way.

A man with such skills, yet only now opening a shop—there had to be something behind it. Perhaps his previous employer had treated him badly.

Only after Zaker left did Zhong Di call his parents back. According to them, let alone now that it had not yet started raining, even if it did rain, they could still keep working.

But Zhong Di was insistent, and the two elders could not outlast him, so they came back.

When working the land, one should rest when it was time to rest. Why work yourself so hard? If the weather was fine, that was one thing, but to keep working even when it rained would be going too far.

Drip. Drip.

While he was watching, the light rain began to fall, pattering down in drops. On the awning, on the leaves, in the fishpond, the sound of rain striking could be heard everywhere.

Unlike the fine, lingering rains of early spring, the raindrops after the Start of Autumn were much larger, carrying a faint bite of cold.

It was as though the rain were a signal, telling the plants that autumn had arrived—bear fruit quickly, because once autumn passed, the cold would settle in for good.

It had been quite a while since there had been a proper rain.

And once it came, the temperature dropped all at once. Zhong Di went to fetch a coat and put it on. His parents had brought their own when they came that morning, so he did not need to worry about them.

In the northwest, once autumn began, the mornings grew very cold, standing in stark contrast to the scorching heat at noon.

That was why people said, “Wear padded jackets in the morning, gauze in the afternoon, and eat watermelon around the stove.”

Shao Hong was over there setting up rain cloth over the chicken coop, something they had prepared in advance.

Several wires had been strung above the coop to hold the tarp in place, the kind that could be moved. When it rained, all you had to do was pull it over and fasten it, and that was that—simple and efficient.

Zhong Di braved the rain to help Shao Hong cover the coop, and his parents joined in as well. Before long, it was done.

As for the ducks and geese, they loved water to begin with, so there was no need to bother with them. A little rain would only make them happier.

“Shao Hong, what are you still planning to do?” Seeing Shao Hong head toward the fermentation area with a filter net in hand, Zhong Di hurriedly asked.

“Filter the soybean milk, what else?” Shao Hong found it a little odd. If he was going to the fermentation area, what else would he do there besides filtering the soybean milk?

“Forget working in the rain. Don’t do anything else. Come on—let’s make a table full of dishes and eat and drink together,” Zhong Di said, tempted by the idea. Then he turned and said to his older sister, “Sis, you stop too. Those plans and all that can be handled later. Come over and join us.”

He called them over. The days before had been sweltering; today, at last, they had a pleasant, refreshing kind of weather.

A rainy day like this would be wasted if they did not make good use of it. They could relax a little, cook something delicious, eat their fill, and then take a nap. There was nothing better.

“But we’re still watering, and it’s not even noon yet. What are we eating for?”

“Who says you can only eat at noon?” Zhong Di said with interest. “Come on, didn’t we throw all the fish we caught into the pond yesterday? Let’s catch them again and make some fried small fish.”

“Hey, hey, why is it that we can’t work in the rain, but we can go catch fish?” Shao Hong was full of questions. Zhong Di’s way of thinking was something else.

Before Shao Hong could say anything else, Zhong Di had already gone to the storage shed and fetched a fish trap, along with some spare chicken bones.

Since they were catching small fish, using a fishing rod would be fun, but it would take too much time. Just put the chicken bones in the fish trap, and that would finish it in one go.

The last time they had been at the reservoir, there were big fish, so they could not use a fish trap. But this time it was their own little pond, so there was nothing wrong with it.

Seeing this, Shao Hong said nothing more. It had already come to this; there was no way they were going to insist on continuing to work.

Once the trap was prepared and the chicken bones stuffed inside, Zhong Di tossed it straight into the fishpond. In that brief instant, water splashed high where the trap hit.

Quack, quack, quack.

Whether duck or goose, they all hurried toward the spot where Zhong Di had thrown the trap.

They would dive down in a flash, then rise again, heads lifted, and a fish would disappear into a duck’s stomach.

Damn it—now even the ducks were stealing our food?

Watching the ducks catch fish so expertly, Zhong Di thought they must have been born for it.

Feeling that it was about right, Zhong Di yanked the fish trap back up hard. Good heavens, there were quite a few.

Carp, grass carp, silver carp—small fish all around ten-odd centimeters long, and even some only a few centimeters in length.

The rain kept drizzling down, and as it grew heavier, Zhong Di quickened his pace, tossing the fish of suitable size into a plastic bucket.

That day they had only caught a few buckets of fish to begin with, and this one trap had pretty much hauled them all up.

Those that were the right size were kept. The ones that were not were thrown back into the water, including the middling ones. Zhong Di kept none of them; all went back into the pond.

He had only wanted to eat fried small fish in the first place, so there was no point in keeping the in-between ones.

Crash, crash, crash.

After Zhong Di finished sorting the fish, the rain truly came down. It pounded hard and heavy on his body.

Whether it was his parents or Shao Hong, they all ran for home, not stopping until they reached the shelter under the foundation shed.

“Goodness, this rain is really something today.”

By the time he reached the shelter, Zhong Di was already soaked through like a drowned chicken. He sighed in admiration. Luckily they had moved fast enough. If they had been out fishing, who knew what state they would have ended up in.

“Exactly. It’s been ages since we had such a heavy rain. Since it’s already like this, hurry up and cook. It’ll warm us up too,” Shao Hong muttered, taking the bucket from Zhong Di and beginning to clean the small fish.

Fried mixed small fish was all about the little ones. Large fish had bones and spines that made eating troublesome; small fish were much more suitable for frying.

The various small fish were lively, darting back and forth. Zhong Di reached out, seized one neatly and decisively, and in a flurry of motions cleaned it thoroughly.

Scaling the fish, removing the innards.