sinovels Chapter 1984: Evaluation of Yong'an's Four Great Skills - Only the Gun Skill Remains Undec
Chapter 1984: Evaluation of Yong'an's Four Great Skills - Only the Gun Skill Remains Undec
Chapter 1984: Evaluation of the Four Wonders of Yong'an – Only the Spear Wonder Remains Undecided
They say the weather in July and August is like a child's face.
A sudden downpour in the afternoon dispelled the summer heat.
In the evening, men, women, and children gathered together in the outer room of the Zhao family's house to eat, drink, chat, and laugh.
But this harmony was shattered after dinner by an argument between Li Tongyun and Li Ruhai.
The siblings' argument wasn't about anything serious; it was just about a book, a copy of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" published by RM Publishing House in Jilin Province.
This set of books consists of four volumes. Li Tongyun bought the set at a small bookstall when she visited a friend in the city.
After Li Tongyun returned, the set of books ended up in Li Ruhai's hands.
Li Ruhai, who couldn't keep his mouth shut, actually liked the taciturn Huang Yaoshi in the book.
Li Ruhai believed that Huang Yaoshi was not only highly skilled in martial arts, but also exceptionally talented. He was proficient in astronomy, geography, the Five Elements, the Eight Trigrams, divination, and medicine, truly a divine being.
However, Li Tongyun greatly admired the ruthless and vicious Ouyang Feng in the book. In her opinion, even if Ouyang Feng hadn't practiced the Nine Yin Manual recklessly, his martial arts would still surpass Huang Yaoshi's.
The siblings have argued about this several times.
"Don't talk to me about things that are unnecessary." Although Li Tongyun was well-read, her eloquence was no match for Li Ruhai's. Faced with Li Ruhai's endless chatter, Li Tongyun waved her hand to interrupt him and said, "You're just a smooth talker, don't meddle in the affairs of us martial artists."
"A martial arts practitioner, indeed." Li Ruhai scoffed, "I think you're like Pigsy wearing glasses—pretending to be a college student!"
"I'll fucking..." Li Tongyun slammed her hand on the table and stood up. Li Ruhai was so frightened that he dodged to the side and raised his hand to Li Tongyun, saying, "Sister, don't resort to violence when you can't win an argument. That's not how heroes act."
“How am I not a hero?” Li Tongyun retorted, “My pair of mandarin duck legs are unparalleled in the world. Go ask around at my old school, and now when people mention me, Li…”
"Can you just shut up already!" Li Dazhi couldn't stand it anymore and raised his hand to stop Li Tongyun, saying, "You'll be in school for two years, and you'll be kicking out the tuition fees for eight people."
"Hahaha..." Laughter erupted, and Li Tongyun had no way to refute her father's complaints.
"Sister, these aren't mismatched legs, they're money-losing legs!" Li Ruhai added insult to injury, making Li Tongyun's blood boil and her teeth clench in anger.
"Sister, don't even mention your leg anymore," Li Ruhai said, pointing to Li Baoyu beside him, "Our brother's leg is the most formidable."
"Huh?" Li Baoyu and Zhao Jun were both taken aback. Li Baoyu hadn't expected Li Ruhai to praise him. Zhao Jun was somewhat surprised; was this a competition to determine the Four Wonders of Yong'an?
Zhao Jun's previous life's four wonders of Yong'an were also brought to light through "The Legend of the Condor Heroes".
Zhao Jun remembered that one year during the Spring Festival in his previous life, the TV broadcast "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" for several days in a row.
Then, after the New Year, Zhao Jun, from his high vantage point, used a rifle with a hanging barrel to hunt down a herd of pigs running along the hillside.
In that battle, Zhao Jun was in excellent form. He snapped his gun, reloaded, closed the gun, and fired. In just 32 seconds, he fired five bullets and killed four wild boars.
Because Zhao Jun used a 16-gauge cannon that couldn't fire in bursts, his score was even better than Zhao Youcai's, who fired eleven pigs with ten shots using a semi-automatic cannon.
Since then, Zhao Jun has been hailed as the number one spearman in Yong'an.
At the Shanhe County Staff Track and Field Meet that year, Li Baoyu's long legs swept all the awards, winning the championships in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 3000m, leaving all the staff from other units as mere bystanders.
It was precisely because of Li Baoyu's monopoly on the award that Shanhe County never held such a workers' sports meet again.
From then on, stories of Zhao Jun's gun, Bao Yu's leg, and Li Ruhai's broken mouth circulated in the Yong'an forest area.
Later, while chatting idly, they decided to select the five wonders of Yong'an Forest Area based on the five wonders of Central China featured on television.
But after thinking about it for a long time, the only person who could gain the approval of the entire forest area was the deceased Zhang Yuanmin.
Thus, Zhang Yuanmin was posthumously honored as one of the Four Wonders of Yong'an, which led to the saying that Zhao Jun had a gun, Bao Yu had a leg, Zhang Yuanmin had a head, and Li Ruhai had a mouth.
When Li Ruhai praised him, Li Baoyu puffed out his chest, looking proud.
Upon hearing Li Ruhai's words, Li Tongyun glanced at Li Baoyu but said nothing.
Even Li Tongyun knew that Li Baoyu was fast, a fact that was universally acknowledged and beyond question.
Just then, Li Ruhai chuckled and said, "My brother's legs are amazing, no doubt about it. But what's truly outstanding in our forest area is my mouth, hehe."
"Hmm!" As soon as Li Ruhai finished speaking, Xie Chen laughed and said, "That's right, Ruhai! Baoyu's legs are the fastest, and your mouth is the biggest."
"Huh?" Li Ruhai was also taken aback when he heard this. He didn't understand why his mouth was so big.
Seeing Li Ruhai's bewildered expression, Jie Chen laughed and said, "Isn't it said that your mouth is as thick as a cotton waistband?"
"Hahaha..." The burst of laughter nearly lifted the roof off.
Li Ruhai was so angry that his face turned red. He stood up and pointed at Xie Chen, saying, "Fine, Brother Chen! You wait until tomorrow, and I'll go to the village and make you pay! I'll show you the waistband of my cotton trousers!"
"No, no, no!" Xie Chen was startled by Li Ruhai's words and quickly begged for mercy, "Ruhai, Brother Chen was just joking with you, you're not going to gouge out my eyes!"
"Then tell me, isn't my mouth amazing?" Li Ruhai asked. Xie Chen nodded like a chicken pecking at rice and said, "Amazing, your mouth is absolutely amazing!"
"Of course!" Li Ruhai tossed his head and proudly said with his hands behind his back, "In the past year, haven't we occupied the public opinion front in the forest area? We vigorously publicized anything that was good for us; and we suppressed anything that was bad for us."
As he finished speaking, Li Ruhai looked at Zhao Youcai. It was Li Ruhai who suppressed the rumors of Zhao Youcai's extramarital affair last year. As for the scandal of beating Lao Niu, Li Ruhai was helpless; he suppressed it once, and Zhao Youcai brought it up again…
“They have five unique skills, while we only have two.” These were the words of Zhao Jinhui. He patted his three-fold belly and laughed, “Isn’t my fatness a unique skill too?”
Amidst the laughter of the crowd, Li Tongyun said to Zhao Jinhui, "Brother Hui, that doesn't count. You're so fat, you might fall off any day now."
Zhao Jinhui loved hearing Li Tongyun's words: "Xiaoyun, it has to be you. When I told them I was on a diet, they didn't believe me."
Li Tongyun smiled slightly, and even Lin Xiangshun, who rarely complained, couldn't help but say to Zhao Jinhui, "When you came back at noon, you ate two plates of dumplings by yourself, that's more than sixty! And then you ate three bowls of rice for dinner, where are you going to lose weight!"
Upon hearing Lin Xiangshun's words, Zhao Jinhui rolled his eyes and fell silent.
"Huh?" Amidst the light laughter of the crowd, Xie Sunshi clenched her fists and came over, saying, "My martial arts are not bad either, shouldn't you have included me?"
"Stop it, Mom." It was Xie Sunshi's youngest son who stopped her. Xie Chen said to Xie Sunshi with a helpless look, "With your fists and feet, I'm afraid I can't even be your wife."
"I'll give you a good whack with this pestle." Xie Sunshi meant it, and the pestle hit Xie Chen so hard that it took him a long time to recover.
Upon seeing that Xie Sunshi had also been rejected by the Zhao family, Li Tongyun sighed and said, "I can't do it, and neither can Aunt Sun. Where are we going to find the Five Perfections?"
"Hahaha." As soon as Li Tongyun finished speaking, a soft laugh was heard. Zhang Yuanmin waved his goose feather fan and said, "Little Yun, your brother Zhang is certainly a genius when it comes to brains, isn't he?"
"You..." The moment Li Tongyun heard Zhang Yuanmin's words, a hundred rebuttals flashed through her mind, but she was afraid of hurting Zhang Yuanmin too much, so she pursed her lips and said nothing.
Zhang Yuanmin looked around and, indeed, no one contradicted him. After all, Zhang Yuanmin's field was a niche one, and no one was really competing with him.
Seeing that no one objected, Zhang Yuanmin became even more smug, smiling as he waved the goose feather fan in his hand.
“Alright, including Brother Zhang, that makes three wonders.” Li Baoyu said, looking around at everyone, “Now I’ll suggest one more.”
As Li Baoyu spoke, he stood up, pointed towards Zhao Jun, and said, "My brother Zhao Jun is a master of hunting boars and capturing tigers. He is renowned throughout the mountains and is known as the Tiger-Taming General Zhao Jun!"
"Good!" After Li Baoyu finished speaking, Li Ruhai was the first to applaud and said, "With my elder brother's reputation, he must be the leader of the Five Greats!"
The others didn't applaud, but Zhang Yuanmin, Xie Chen, and Zhao Jinhui clearly supported the Li brothers. As for Wang Qiang and Lin Xiangshun, although they were also part of the Zhao family faction, they treated it as idle chatter and didn't participate.
But just then, the Li brothers' common father objected.
"Wait a minute, you two!" Li Dayong waved to the two brothers and said, "Baoyu, you just said your brother is an amazing hunter?"
"Ah!" Li Baoyu nodded, then heard Li Dayong say, "What you said is not right."
As he spoke, Li Dayong stretched out his hand in front of Zhao Youcai and said, "When it comes to hunting in our forest farm, your grandpa is the best. Your grandpa can kill three people with just his big claws."
Upon hearing Li Dayong's words, Li Baoyu retorted without hesitation, "My brother has four of those big claws."
After saying this, Li Baoyu paused slightly, then added, "Killing two and capturing two, who can compare?"
"Then your grandpa killed eleven wild boars with ten shots." Li Dayong said with a proud look, "He also has the amazing skill of shooting through candied hawthorns. He once killed three roe deer with one shot and two bears with one shot!"
As he finished speaking, Li Dayong pointed at Li Baoyu and asked, "That's Xiong Ba, isn't it? You've seen him beat up a candied hawthorn stick?"
"I..." Li Baoyu was getting anxious, and in his haste, he blurted out, "That time when we went to hunt tiger cubs, my brother shot one of the tiger cubs on the head, and my uncle chopped off its tail. Why didn't you mention that?"
"You're talking nonsense..." Li Dayong was furious upon hearing this. He was about to curse when he suddenly remembered that his daughter-in-law was still there. He quickly changed his words and said, "You're talking nonsense. Your uncle is a master marksman. He once killed two tigers in one day in Wudaogou and also shot a black tiger in front of Shuguang Forest Farm under the moonlight. He is known in the martial arts world as: Tiger-Slaying King Zhao Youcai!"
In the following three days, he killed five bears with five shots, one shot each, smashing the bears' skulls with every shot. People in the martial arts world gave him the nicknames "Unrivaled Steel Spear" and "Divine Shot Zhao Youcai!"
Do you know what that means? It means that no matter what my older brother shoots, he can finish it off with one shot, no need for a second.
I don't know how Li Dayong came up with this nickname for Zhao Youcai, but when he said it, it really stunned Li Baoyu.
“I…I…” Li Baoyu knew that he could not admit defeat for his brother’s sake, so he gritted his teeth and said, “My brother has knelt before the 1,200-jin bear.
"My older brother even knelt on a 500-pound claw!"
“Your older brother’s five-hundred-pound claws were something we chased away.”
“That’s an interesting thing to say. You guys used explosives and ground guns to kill that big claw, but it was my older brother who chased it away!” Li Dayong said, “My older brother was crippled by that big claw, so it wouldn’t have bitten you when you used explosives, and it wouldn’t have survived anyway.”
"Then my brother..."
Thus, the previous sibling rivalry between Li Tongyun and Li Ruhai has now turned into a father-son conflict between Li Dayong and Li Baoyu.
Not far away, a group of women were eating sunflower seeds and watching the new wave of internal strife within the Li family.
It's more lively when everyone's together, making a ruckus.
"These two are really interesting," Jin Xiaomei laughed. "They argue about who's stronger."
The father and son Jin Xiaomei mentioned were Li Dayong and Li Baoyu, while the father and son in question were Zhao Youcai and Zhao Jun.
As Li Dayong and Li Baoyu recounted Zhao Youcai and Zhao Jun's past achievements, the Zhao father and son maintained a calm and collected demeanor, but sparks would fly when their eyes met unintentionally.
"Dad." At this moment, Li Baoyu said to Li Dayong with a serious expression, "Our Zhao Family Gang is the number one hunting gang in Lingxi. We are strong and powerful, and we are invincible!"
Li Dayong was taken aback by these words. Their Zhao Family Hunting Gang was indeed weak. But he certainly couldn't say that, so he simply replied, "It's not about the quantity of soldiers, but their quality. Our Zhao Family Hunting Gang has the best gunner in Yong'an in charge; we can fight whatever we want!"
"Didn't you call yourself the number one gunman in Yong'an?" Li Baoyu, despite the unfriendly looks from Zhao Youcai and Li Dayong, spoke up for his brother, saying, "I would also say that my brother is the number one gunman in Yong'an."
"Then let's have a contest." Li Dayong waved his hand at Li Baoyu and said, "If we two brothers fight you two brothers, let's have a shooting contest."
"I..." Upon hearing this, Li Baoyu's heart immediately wavered. It wasn't that he lacked confidence in Zhao Jun, but rather in himself.
Just as Li Baoyu was struggling with his problem, Jin Xiaomei patted Li Dayong lightly on the back and said, "Why are you acting like a child?"
Jin Xiaomei didn't think too much when she said that. She just felt that it was okay for father and son to exchange a few light jokes, but it was not acceptable to have to go on and on.
But when Jin Xiaomei said that, it sounded to Li Baoyu as if she was saying that he, as a junior, was no match for the two older brothers.
Li Dayong thought so too, and laughed, "Look, when we went up the mountain to hunt and shoot, they weren't even here yet!"
Hearing Li Dayong's words, Li Baoyu's lips moved slightly. At this moment, he even wanted to bring up the matter of Zhao Youcai beating Lao Niu. But in the end, Li Baoyu didn't dare to say it, afraid that he would get beaten up if he did.
Seeing that Li Baoyu remained silent, Li Dayong laughed and said, "Then let's leave it at that. The Spear Technique is settled."
"Will that work?" Li Baoyu immediately objected upon hearing this.
Just then, Wang Qiang stood up and said, "Alright, shall we go up the mountain tomorrow and fight those black bears? Then brother-in-law, nephew, the three of us can see who can take down the most, and that'll be it."
"Huh?" Upon hearing this, Zhao Jun and Zhao Youcai both looked at Wang Qiang.
Stop judging people with old eyes. Now that we're rich, we won't cause trouble anymore; we'll always appear as top-tier experts.