The whole mountain is my hunting ground.

Chapter 1815 Zhao Jun's Clever Solution to the Dead Cow Case

Chapter 1815 Zhao Jun's Clever Solution to the Dead Cow Case

As luck would have it, Sun Yongrong, who had heard the car, turned around and glanced at it. Then he turned back to Zhao Youcai and said, "Master Zhao, your son is here. I'll go talk to him!"

Zhao Youcai was about to say something when Sun Yongrong interrupted him, saying to Sun Yonghua, "Brother, Zhao Jun from our village has arrived. That boy is so kind and reasonable!"

Hearing Sun Yongrong's words, Zhao Youcai was secretly annoyed, as if Sun Yongrong was implying that he was being unreasonable.

Just then, the jeep stopped in front of Zhao Youcai. Zhao Jun, who was in the driver's seat, got out of the car and looked at Zhao Youcai, who was fully armed, in surprise. He asked, "Dad, where are you going?"

"Ah, Dad... Dad, well..." Zhao Youcai stammered twice, then said, "Dad was worried about your safety on the road, so I came out to meet you!"

There's no way Zhao Jun would believe him. If he really was as worried as Zhao Youcai said, why didn't he come along in the first place?

But in front of outsiders, Zhao Jun couldn't possibly embarrass Zhao Youcai.

At this moment, Zhao Jun looked at Sun Yonghua and the other two. Of the three, he only recognized Sun Yongrong, so he asked Sun Yongrong, "Aunt Zhou, what are you doing here?"

Sun Yongrong's husband, Zhou Daikui, was Zhao Jun's colleague in the security team, and their families lived in the same village. Sun Yongrong knew Zhao Jun's character, so she immediately said to him, "Zhao Jun, your husband, Master Zhao, just came from over there and bumped into my brother's calf!"

"Who bumped into his calf?" Zhao Youcai interrupted Sun Yongrong, saying, "Don't talk nonsense. I was eight hundred feet away from his calf. How could I have bumped into it?"

“Then why didn’t you hit him?” Sun Yonghua shouted. “You just walked past me and my calf lay down. If you didn’t hit him, then who did?”

"Huh? I was just passing by, so I'm the one who bumped into you?" Zhao Youcai said, "I even walked right past you, why didn't you lie down?"

"What are you saying?" Sun Yonghua said angrily, "How can you talk like that?"

"Then what am I supposed to say?" Seeing Wang Qiang and the others getting out of the car, Zhao Youcai wasn't afraid of Sun Yonghua and the two old women. He shouted, "I didn't hit them, so what am I supposed to say? You're just here to falsely accuse me. If I hit your calf, I'd pay you! I didn't hit them, so why are you accusing me?"

"You bumped into my calf, and you won't admit it?" Seeing that her husband was at a disadvantage, Tian Zhijie immediately yelled at Zhao Youcai, "If you don't pay for my calf today, I'll fight you to the death!"

Seeing this situation, Zhao Jun quickly stepped in the middle, protecting Zhao Youcai behind him, and said to Tian Zhijie, "Let's not argue, let's talk it out, won't that be better?"

Hearing Zhao Jun's words, Tian Zhijie calmed down a little, but he still insisted, "Then tell me, how are you going to compensate us for this calf?"

"Aunt Zhou, who are these people to you?" Zhao Jun asked.

"Ah, Zhao Jun, this is my brother, and this is my sister-in-law," Sun Yongrong said. Zhao Jun turned to Sun Yonghua and Tian Zhijie and said, "Then I should call them Uncle Sun and Aunt Sun, right?"

Zhao Jun's politeness made Sun Yonghua and Tian Zhijie feel a little embarrassed, and they both nodded to Zhao Jun in greeting.

At this moment, Zhao Jun said to Sun Yonghua and his wife, "Uncle Sun, where's your calf? Shall we go take a look?"

“He’s over there.” Sun Yonghua pointed back and then said to Zhao Jun, “Your dad ran away after he hit him.”

"Who hit me? Didn't I say I didn't? Can't you understand me?" Zhao Youcai was very angry, but Zhao Jun stopped him and said to Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, let's go take a look."

At this moment, Zhao Jun was also in a real bind. Knowing his father as he did, his father was capable of doing something like running away after hitting a cow.

But since things have come to this point, this is the only way to proceed.

The group walked towards where the calf had fallen. As they walked, Zhao Jun said to Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, have you seen where that calf is injured?"

After saying that, Zhao Jun immediately added, "If it was killed by the collision, then the cow must have been injured."

“I didn’t look at it,” Sun Yonghua said. “I turned around and hurriedly chased after your dad, and I didn’t have time to look at the calf.”

"Chase my dad away?" Zhao Jun frowned upon hearing this and said, "That's not right, Uncle Sun. If my dad hits your calf with his motorcycle and the calf is lying down, my dad will be lying down too!"

"Huh?" Sun Yonghua was taken aback. At this moment, Zhao Youcai said from the side, "I was right, I didn't hit it at all!"

"Why didn't you hit it?" Sun Yonghua's tone softened as he said this. But he quickly added to his defense, trying to find evidence and bolster his confidence: "They all say you hit the old ox, bumped into the old ox, and stuff like that!"

boom!

Upon hearing Sun Yonghua's words, Zhao Youcai was struck dumb. His face instantly turned bright red, his small eyes widened, and he glared angrily at Sun Yonghua.

Under Zhao Youcai's fierce gaze, Sun Yonghua was a little scared and whispered, "I didn't say that, everyone says it."

"Who said that? Who said it?" Zhao Youcai shouted.

Zhao Jun quickly pulled Zhao Youcai back, then asked Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, which village are you from?"

“I’m from Changling,” Sun Yonghua said. Then Li Baoyu muttered softly from behind, “Has this news already spread to Changling?”

Zhao Youcai suddenly turned around, his fierce gaze sweeping over Li Baoyu, who hurriedly retreated, trying to hide behind Xie Chen and Zhao Jinhui.

At this moment, the group walked up to the dead calf. Zhao Jun circled the dead calf and looked at it. He immediately raised a question and asked Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, this calf has such a big belly, what did it eat?"

“No,” Sun Yonghua said, “I didn’t eat anything, just grass.”

"When did you cut the grass?" Zhao Jun asked. Sun Yonghua replied, "Yesterday afternoon. I've been raising cattle for so many years, I know this. I can't feed it grass with dew in the morning."

"Why is the calf's belly so swollen?" Zhao Jun squatted down, pressed his hand against the calf's bulging belly, and turned to ask Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, this belly is so big, something's not right!"

"That belly must have grown from all that walking along the way, eating whatever it took," Tian Zhijie said from the side. "It ate grass when it saw grass, and gnawed on branches when it saw branches. It ate as it walked, and that's how it got so big."

"Is your calf sick or something?" Wang Qiang interjected from the side. Tian Zhijie replied, "How could it be sick? If it were sick, would it have walked this far?"

“This isn’t right, Uncle Sun.” Zhao Jun ignored what Tian Zhijie said and stood up, saying only to Sun Yonghua, “This calf doesn’t have any injuries at all. If my dad had run it over on his motorcycle, how much force would that have taken? How could it not have any injuries?”

“That’s right,” Li Baoyu echoed Zhao Jun, saying, “Even if you didn’t just crash the motorcycle, if you just slapped him with a stick, he’d still have bruises, wouldn’t he?”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Sun Yonghua said. “That year, Zhang Lao Er from our village was helping with the forest railway work. He was driving his old ox to haul sleepers. Suddenly, the winch snapped shut, and the sleepers hit the ox right on the spine. The ox didn’t look seriously injured, but it just lay down and died!”

The situation Sun Yonghua described does exist, but it is ultimately a very rare case.

Zhao Jun knew perfectly well that his father, Zhao Youcai, had truly been wronged this time.

Judging from Sun Yonghua and Tian Zhijie's demeanor, they clearly weren't going to give in easily. Perhaps they genuinely believed that the calf was killed by Zhao Youcai, or perhaps the couple simply wanted to pin the blame on Zhao Youcai in order to extort compensation.

Just then, Zhang Yuanmin stepped forward, pried open the cow's mouth, took a look, and then said to Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, your cow definitely ate something wrong. I think it died from bloating!"

“How could that be?” Sun Yonghua had just raised his doubts when Zhang Yuanmin said, “If my uncle had hit and killed your calf on his motorcycle, it would have been spitting out bloody foam.”

After saying this, Zhang Yuanmin pointed down and said to Sun Yonghua, "It's spitting out white foam now, this doesn't look like it died from a collision at all."

“This…” Sun Yonghua hesitated for a moment, then retorted with a stiff neck, “That’s not necessarily true. How do you know it didn’t cause him internal injuries? Like I just said, the old ox that was killed by the sleeper had its lungs and internal organs damaged. My calf might be in the same situation.”

Even after all this, Sun Yonghua still wouldn't budge, but Zhao Jun already knew what to do.

Zhao Jun stepped forward and said to Sun Yonghua, "Uncle Sun, listen to what I'm saying, what do you think?"

“Hey buddy, what do you say?” Sun Yonghua said, and Zhao Jun replied, “If we’re going to be serious, let’s cut this ox open and see what’s going on.”

After saying that, Zhao Jun immediately added, "If it's like what Brother Zhang said, that your cow ate some random stuff and died from bloating, then we won't take care of it, and you can deal with the cow yourself. But if that's not the case, then I'll take care of the cow for you."

Hearing Zhao Jun's words, Sun Yonghua hesitated, while Tian Zhijie asked, "Will that work?"

"What else can we do?" Zhao Jun said, "After we gut it, we'll have to watch it eat all sorts of random things. What else can we do?"

After Zhao Jun said this, Tian Zhijie fell silent.

Seeing this, Zhao Jun looked at Sun Yonghua and said, "Uncle Sun, what do you think we should do? If you say we won't cut this open, then we'll leave."

Upon hearing this, Sun Yonghua turned to Tian Zhijie and asked, "Old Kuai, did you feed him anything or not?"

"No," Tian Zhijie said. "The barnyard grass we ate at home this morning was cut from the cattle we herded by the river yesterday afternoon."

After saying this, Tian Zhijie swung his arm and said, "Isn't our Da Niu eating like this too?"

At this point, Zhang Yuanmin tried to find a way to save face for the couple, saying, "Could it be that the calf ate something it shouldn't have while it was walking along the path?"

“That can’t be right either,” Sun Yonghua shook his head and said, “I walked along the same path and kept an eye on it, but I didn’t see what it ate.”

After saying this, Sun Yonghua asked Zhang Yuanmin, "Old Niu isn't like a dog. Dogs eat dead rats and are easily poisoned, right?"

In fact, Sun Yonghua said this not for Zhang Yuanmin's benefit, but for his own, to strengthen his confidence in dissecting and examining the cow carcass.

Thinking that his calf hadn't eaten anything weird, Sun Yonghua turned to Zhao Jun and said, "Then let's cut it open and take a look. Let's make this clear: if there's nothing weird in its stomach, you're on my side!"

Upon hearing this, Zhao Youcai immediately wanted to refute it. Even though his son had once suspected him because of his criminal record, Zhao Youcai knew that he had truly not messed with this calf.

Why should I pay compensation if I didn't cause any damage? What does it matter to me what the cow eats?

Of course, Zhao Youcai wasn't concerned about the money from the cow; he was concerned about his reputation. If the cow were mistakenly attributed to him again, he would be guilty of killing two cows and smashing two cows to death.

But Zhao Youcai was stopped by Zhao Jun as soon as he opened his mouth. Zhao Jun wasn't acting recklessly; he trusted Zhang Yuanmin's judgment.

At Zhao Jun's command, Zhang Yuanmin, Li Baoyu, Xie Chen, and Zhao Jinhui all sprang into action, flipping the calf over. Then Zhang Yuanmin, knife in hand, opened the calf's chest.

Any one of the Zhao family members could easily handle this job, let alone Zhang Yuanmin personally taking charge this time.

After opening the cow's ribs, Zhang Yuanmin gestured directly to Sun Yonghua, inviting him to come forward and take a look.

When Sun Yonghua went up to take a look, he saw that the cow's stomach was swollen to more than twice its normal size.

"What did you eat?" Sun Yonghua turned around and asked Tian Zhijie. Tian Zhijie quickly took a few steps forward, glanced at the food, and immediately shouted, "Nothing! Nothing at all..."

Cattle farmers certainly wouldn't intentionally feed their cattle to make them sick or even kill them; the cattle must have eaten something strange or unusual.

Now that things had come to this, Zhao Jun said to Zhang Yuanmin, "Brother, open up that cow's belly and see what's inside."

Zhang Yuanmin squatted down and used a knife to cut open the cow's stomach, revealing a large clump of messy plastic sheeting wrapped with straw crumbs.

"Holy crap!" Tian Zhijie exclaimed, slapping his thighs. "What a spendthrift! When did he eat the plastic sheet?"

After saying this, Tian Zhijie turned to Sun Yonghua and said, "That time when you took that plastic sheet off the back window, I told you to put it away in the storage room. Did you put it away?"

In today's forest area, the Zhao family compound can definitely be considered a luxury mansion.

Even so, every winter, they still have to nail plastic sheeting to the window frames to block out the harsh cold outside.

This plastic sheet will not be removed until May of the following year.

A few days after Sun Yonghua's family took down the plastic sheeting, Tian Zhijie was in a hurry to do other work, so he asked Sun Yonghua to put the plastic sheeting away.

Unexpectedly, no sooner had Tian Zhijie left than someone came to call Sun Yonghua to play cards.

Sun Yonghua figured that the plastic sheeting would have to be taken away eventually, so he went along with it.

When he returned, the plastic sheet was gone, so he assumed that Tian Zhijie had put it away.

Upon closer inspection, it became clear that the plastic sheet had been eaten by the calf.

The calf couldn't digest this food and died of bloating a few days later, causing this farce.

Now that the situation was clear, Zhao Youcai, still angry, flung his hand away, turned and left, calling out to Zhao Jun, "Come on, son, let's go home."

"Master Zhao." Upon seeing this, Sun Yongrong quickly caught up with Zhao Youcai and apologized, "I'm so sorry, look at the mess you've made, I've even wronged you."

Zhao Youcai glanced at Sun Yongrong, said nothing, and quickly walked towards the motorcycle.

Just then, Tian Zhijie's cries came from the other side.

Li Ruhai had already found a buyer for the calf. As long as Sun Yonghua and his wife handed it over to the buyer, they would receive four hundred yuan.

With this four hundred yuan, the couple can pay the bride price for their son's wedding.

Now that the calves haven't been sold, Tian Zhijie feels like the sky has fallen.

"Zhao Jun!" Sun Yongrong called out to Zhao Jun, "Auntie, can I ask you for a favor?"

"What's wrong, Aunt Zhou?" Zhao Jun asked. Sun Yongrong said, "Look, his ox is dead here. How is he going to get it back? I thought you had a cart. Please, Aunt, could you help him take this dead ox to the market on the edge of our village? Then he can sell it."

Hearing Sun Yongrong's words, Zhao Jun glanced back at Sun Yonghua and Tian Zhijie, then said to Sun Yongrong, "Aunt Zhou, go ask my Uncle Sun. If he's willing to sell, I'll give him a hundred yuan and take the calf. If he doesn't agree, like you said, I'll help him take it to the market, and then I'll leave it to him."

“One hundred yuan? That’s too little.” Sun Yongrong said, “This cow should yield at least one hundred and twenty jin of meat. If it’s one yuan per jin, how much more would it cost? And that doesn’t even include the cow’s head, hooves, offal, or big bones, right?”

"Alright! Alright!" Zhao Jun waved his hand and said, "Aunt Zhou, just pretend I didn't say anything. I'll take it to the market for him after this."

If Sun Yonghua and his wife hadn't wronged Zhao Youcai, Zhao Jun alone would have had to give Sun Yonghua 120, 130, or even more for this matter.

But the couple had so wrongly accused Zhao Youcai, which made Zhao Jun somewhat unhappy. However, even if they only gave him a hundred, it would still be Zhao Jun helping them.

Upon hearing Zhao Jun's words, Sun Yongrong's expression changed, and he hurriedly said to Zhao Jun, "Zhao Jun, wait a moment, let me ask my brother!"

Unlike winter, meat that can't be sold in winter can be taken home, frozen, and sold whenever there's time.

It's already the end of May. If this meat doesn't sell, it will go bad, and then it won't even fetch a hundred yuan.

"Son!" Just then, Zhao Youcai shouted to Zhao Jun, "You can't buy that piece of junk! He's framing me! I wouldn't take it even if it were given to me for free!"

"Master Zhao!" Sun Yongrong clasped his hands together and bowed twice to Zhao Youcai, saying, "Don't be angry, we were wrong, we were not human!"

"Aunt Zhou," Zhao Jun called over Sun Yongrong and instructed, "I'll buy this cow. But I have to make this clear to you: if anyone asks how the cow died, you have to explain it to them clearly. You can't blame it on my dad again."

Upon hearing Zhao Jun's words, Zhao Youcai instantly understood his son's intention.

For a moment, Zhao Youcai couldn't help but sigh, "It's still the son who's the closest to his father; he knows how to protect his reputation."

Thinking of this, Zhao Youcai stepped forward and said to Sun Yongrong, "Da Kui's wife, you're always in the village chatting with those old women. Afterwards, please speak up for me and don't always say that I hit or bumped into the old ox or anything like that. I didn't do any of that!"

Zhao Youcai thought that by relying on Sun Yongrong, he could get rid of his hat as a butcher.

Upon hearing this, Sun Yongrong looked troubled and said with a wry smile, "Master Zhao, I can't handle this!"

"What's wrong? Why can't you handle it?" Zhao Youcai asked. Sun Yongrong shook his head and said, "Master Zhao, you think too highly of me. Even Ru Hai couldn't handle this, how could I?"

Zhao Youcai: "..."

(End of this chapter)