Chapter 1042: Spring Outing

Chapter 1032: Spring Outing

It was April, and the peach and plum blossoms were in full bloom.

He Lingchuan rode his horse through the splendid pink wild peach forest, its hooves clattering crisply on the gravel path.

The morning breeze met him, carrying with it cheerful laughter.

He Lingchuan lightly nudged his horse's flank. The swift horse quickened its pace for a few steps, transitioning from the peach grove directly onto a pebble beach.

Here, a few adults were supervising around thirty children, predictably creating a lively chatter across the area.

The children were all squatting by the stream, playing. Those with sharp eyes spotted He Lingchuan approaching and immediately pointed, shouting:

“The Commander is here! Commander He is here! Teacher! Teacher!”

He Lingchuan was approachable, and he often went out mingling and sampling food under the guise of informal visits, making him almost universally known in Yuheng City. These children were all students of Yuheng Academy, and they had become familiar with Commander He, who frequently visited.

Someone in the stream stood up at the sound, looking at the sudden visitor.

It was Sun Fuling.

However, today she was wearing a loose, wide blue floral print dress, casually tied with a cloth belt, and her thick, large braid was tied with a blue headscarf.

He Lingchuan also noticed she was barefoot in the water, her trouser legs rolled up, revealing her fair and well-proportioned calves. She was also carrying a bamboo basket.

Seeing him, Sun Fuling dropped the basket and walked ashore, unconsciously chiding him slightly: “Why did you come running over?”

“Why didn't you invite me on your spring outing? I went to the academy and found it empty; they said you were here by the water playing.” He Lingchuan dismounted, and his warhorse self-consciously walked aside to graze on some green grass.

Sun Fuling pouted slightly: “Isn't the Commander a very busy person? I haven't seen you for three days, it seems.”

“Even when I'm busy, I still need to eat. And beautiful women also need company.”

“So you just came for mealtime?” Sun Fuling rolled her eyes at him. “I'm afraid the Commander will be disappointed; we don't have much here to go with rice!”

“Oh?” He Lingchuan, however, saw several makeshift stoves dug into the pebble beach, with charcoal buried inside and pots nearby, though nothing was cooking yet.

So where was that aroma coming from?

He walked over, intending to push aside the pebbles near one of the stoves to look, but Sun Fuling slapped his hand: “Don't touch that! It's not cooked yet!”

His hands were so restless?

“Yams? Sweet potatoes?”

“Both,” she replied. “These are the spoils of Teachers Wang and Liu. What a keen nose you have! But we still haven't found anything to go with the main meal.”

“Where are those two teachers?”

“The academy split into groups. They took about twenty children to pick wild vegetables and mushrooms, while our group is fishing in the stream.” Sun Fuling rarely showed distress, but now she did. “Our results aren't good.”

“Is that so?” As it was his girlfriend's concern, Commander He showed great enthusiasm. “Let me take a look.”

He surveyed the children, finding that most of what they had collected in their baskets were snails and river clams. Their most impressive catch was only a few tiny crabs, barely larger than a fingernail.

As for river fish, there were only seven or eight, the largest no longer than a middle finger.

With so little, how could it possibly feed six or seven adults and around fifty children for one meal?

“Well, you truly are just ‘fishing’,” he chuckled. No wonder Teacher Sun was distressed.

“You're not relying entirely on this for lunch, are you?” He Lingchuan teased the crabs in a basket, making them agitated. “These crabs are so tiny, they're not even enough for one bite for the children.”

“We brought a lot of ingredients ourselves,” Sun Fuling whispered, “but children prefer to eat what they catch themselves.”

“In spring, there are plenty of dace fish in Peach Stream; you just aren't using the right method.” (The stream was named Peach Stream because of the peach blossoms along its banks.) He Lingchuan told her, “Knead some large dough balls for me, a bit on the dry side. Or you can also extract some snail meat, but you'll need a lot.”

Sun Fuling smiled and went off to knead the dough.

He Lingchuan took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs, and moved seven or eight large, smooth stones from the bank. He arranged them one by one to lay a foundation, then clapped his hands, calling out to the children: “Come here, come here! If you want to eat fish, come help!”

The children weren't worried about lunch; they just wanted to play now that they were out. The moment Commander He gestured, they enthusiastically rushed over and, under his direction, began picking up large pebbles to build a small dam in the water.

“Build it tight, build it firm, leave no gaps!”

He Lingchuan chose a shallow, calm section of the water. The pebble dam formed an oblique angle with the sandy bank, resembling a magnified funnel.

Little Fatty didn't build well. With one kick from He Lingchuan, the pebbles tumbled down with a splash.

“Again!”

Four or five bamboo baskets were placed in the funnel's opening, their tops rising above the stream's surface, their bottoms weighted down with pebbles to prevent them from being carried away by the current.

Once built, this became a small, calm eddy.

Fish prefer calm water.

Soon, small fish from other areas swam into the funnel's opening, but not many, certainly not enough for He Lingchuan to eat in one go.

“From now on, don't move and don't make a sound,” he said, raising a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.

The children eagerly imitated him, and a continuous chorus of "shhh" sounds filled the air.

He Lingchuan turned and asked the teachers for the dough.

The three teachers had already kneaded out several white dough balls, which, as expected, had become hard and dry in the wind. He Lingchuan casually broke off a piece of dough, crumbled it, and with a flick of his wrist, sprinkled it onto the water surface within the dam.

At first, no fish paid attention; in fact, the slight disturbance on the water surface scared the existing small fish into the rock crevices.

For a while, it remained quiet, with nothing happening.

Little Fatty couldn't help but say, “The fish aren't coming...”

A little girl beside him clapped a hand over his mouth and raised a finger to her lips, shushing him.

How could the Commander make a mistake?

Another few dozen breaths passed. The small fish sensed no danger, and the sunken dough crumbs were edible again.

Slowly, fish began to surface and nibble on the crumbs.

One, two... ten fish.

He Lingchuan threw in another handful of dough bait, repeating the previous steps.

When he was a child, he often caught fish and shrimp in streams, so he had plenty of patience.

After repeating this about a dozen times for over half an hour, more and more fish gathered inside the low dam. Newcomers, seeing their companions unharmed, grew bolder.

Whenever he tossed in bait, the fish would jostle and compete on the surface, afraid of missing even a single bite.

He Lingchuan slowly tossed the bait towards the funnel's opening, then gestured to the children: “Charge!”

The children had been impatiently waiting for this signal. They now rushed barefoot into the stream, splashing the water noisily.

They lined up and kicked water towards the dam's opening, forcing the fish to swim deeper into the dam.

It was dark inside the bamboo baskets, and the frightened fish felt safer there.

He Lingchuan estimated that it was enough and ordered the three teachers stationed there to lift the bamboo baskets simultaneously.

He himself grabbed a large stone from the side and used it to block the opening.

Sun Fuling looked down into the basket, her face breaking into a wide smile:

“Fish! We have fish!”

And quite a lot of fish, too! They were frantically bumping against the sides of the basket, at least thirty of them. Most were no longer than a little finger.

Looking at the other baskets, the results were much better.

As soon as the children heard there were fish, they all ran over to look.