Chapter 2 – Cultivating by Eating Mea (1/2)

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“I lost it,” Li Qingshan replied in a detached manner as if he had just been pulled out of a fantasy world to a cruel reality.

“Then go look! If you lose our ox, it’ll be a miracle if your brother doesn’t beat you to death when he comes home, you wastrel of a thing. If the ox is gone, you can go too!”

“That’s my ox!” Li Qingshan strided out from the house. If he still did not leave, he would probably fail to hold himself back from teaching this woman a lesson. However, if he really did that, he would no longer be able to remain in the house. As such, he could only yield.

It was not until dusk did he return to the cowshed in exhaustion. His eyes shone as he looked around the empty cowshed before gloominess overcame him again.

Aside from letting the ox out to graze and cleaning, Li Qingshan’s daily job was to lead the cattle to the landowner’s home to help out so that he could cover the expenses of some necessities.

Without the ox, he could only work like the other farm hands today; this was work that even adults found tiring, let alone a growing child like him. He had not even eaten breakfast.

Compared to his exhaustion, the insults and scolding from the farm head only seemed like an insignificant daily matter. Falling into the straw head-first, he no longer wanted to think about anything else, but his belly began to rumble.

It was obvious. In an environment like this, any aspirations he had would have been worn away completely, only leaving behind the instincts needed for survival.

Just when Li Qingshan was bleary-eyed, the thud of something heavy hitting the ground sounded. He opened his eyes and came face to face with something strange with a pair of long, white tusks. He could not help but jump in fright. Only when his head cleared up did he see that it was a wild boar. It had died recently, so it still emitted warmth.

The black ox crouched down before the trough and ‘smiled’ at him. Li Qingshan could already distinguish the expressions of the black ox to some degree.

Night fell. In the house, the sister-in-law grumbled to Li Qingshan’s elder brother, “That little bastard is completely hopeless. He actually managed to lose such a large ox. No, he must have sold it secretly. Nope, we have to split the property and break up the family. If this continues, he’ll bring ruin upon us.”

The elder brother was in his thirties. He had a large build and was known for being unreasonable and insolent in the village, but he was extremely submissive to his wife. “But if we do split, all that good land had been allocated to him before the village elders.” He had used Li Qingshan’s young age and inability to farm as an excuse to claim the land. He had no plans to return it, but if they planned on breaking up the family, they would be forced to.

“But what if he doesn’t want to go forward with this?”

“Starve him for three days. Will disagreeing still be an issue then?”

As the two discussed, the sister-in-law suddenly sniffed. “Do you smell something?”

“How fragrant! Seems like someone is cooking meat!”

“There’s no festival right now, so what’re they cooking meat for? It seems… it seems to be near us.”

The two of them followed the smell and arrived inside the cowshed. All they saw was a propped up pot inside with a bonfire below. The pot bubbled as a delicious smell permeated the surroundings.

The fire flickered about in the darkness, projecting Li Qingshan’s shadow onto the walls.

The sister-in-law gulped. “Brat, where’d you steal the meat from?” Not only was she lazy, but she was even gluttonous as well. Looking at the pot of meat soup, she even forgot about how Li Qingshan had offended her. She went up and picked up the ladle, stirring the soup.

On the other hand, the elder brother had sharper eyes. He immediately spotted what Li Qingshan was sitting on and cried out, “A wild boar!”

Wild boars could be described as extremely dangerous amongst the creatures that roamed the mountains. Their hides were so thick and tough that they were difficult to wound even with blades. Even regular hunters would avoid them like the plague upon encountering them, so capturing one went without saying.

“When I was looking for the ox, I came across it at the foot of the mountain. It was injured, probably chased to its last breath by hunters,” Li Qingshan answered with the story he had prepared beforehand. He had to keep the black ox’s intelligence an absolute secret. Otherwise, once news of a daemon ox made its way out, who knows when the forces of heaven would come knocking.