Almost all the old and young people in the village gathered in front of this unfinished house and pointed and discussed loudly, their eyes full of surprise.

Although Chen Xu's house still has the structure of thatched houses, it looks much taller and more spacious. The lowest columns are nearly three meters high. The beams on the central roof are four meters long, and there are three rooms in a row. Each room has an area of ​​more than twenty square meters. The area of ​​any room is larger than the original entire thatched hut.

There is also the foundation, which surprised everyone and praised Chen Xu's great efforts, because in this era, most of the house repairs were to find a place with a higher terrain to level the foundation. If you pay more attention to it, use stones to build around it, which is extremely high. However, Chen Xu's foundation was lifted up by half a meter, and three steps were built in front of the door. It took more than a dozen men a whole project to fill it out. The food was almost one stone, and meat and vegetables were consumed very much. According to the current expenses, it would cost at least seven or eight hundred yuan to repair Chen Xu's house.

Seven or eight hundred yuan, God, these villagers with torn clothes dare not think about it.

The annual income of each household in the village will not exceed one hundred yuan, and there is not enough food to eat. On weekdays, except for selling salt, you can’t afford to buy burlap for clothes. If you break a pottery bowl and pot of two or three cents on weekdays, you will feel distressed for half a month.

However, most villagers knew that Chen Xu made a fortune a few days ago. The big wild boar and a big snake sold nearly 3,000 yuan. This not only gave Chen Xu the confidence, but also made the villagers envious. In addition, Chen Xu was also very generous when he was sharing the meat. In addition, Chen Xu actually cured Erxi, who was about to be poisoned to death, which suddenly increased his status to an unparalleled position in the village.

As the saying goes, poor people are in the downtown area, and wealth is in the deep mountains and has distant relatives.

This sentence is fine no matter how it is placed at any time.

Chen Xu's family is rich and has status, so everyone in the village is willing to help. In the past, when Jiang Chen was raising children alone, his family was so poor that he couldn't bear to lose his temper. Although the villagers didn't look down on her, they just felt that she was a widow who had no men and lived a worse life than her family. Although he greeted him warmly and would still help when he should help, he would always be careful and alienated her. He was poor and widowed. The man was afraid of being gossiped about by others, and the woman was afraid that she would seduce her men. After a while, the Chen Jiang family became almost the loneliest person in the village. Although Niu Dashi's family next to him did not have a middle-aged man, his uncle was in the village. Niu Tian's family was also from the village, and there were relatives to help. The situation at home was much better than Chen Xu's family.

But at present, almost all the villagers come to Chen Xu's house to help, and they are voluntarily to help do some work within their ability. The man and the half-aged man help carry stones and soil, while the woman and a few girls help Chen Jiangshi make a fire, cook, wash vegetables and other work. Even Xing'er has become the head of the village. A group of children under the age of ten follow her all day long, helping to pull pig grass and feed a few wild boars by the field and river ditch in the village, collect wild onions, ginger and garlic and other seasonings. Anyway, the whole family is extremely popular in the village.

"Brother Xu, the mugwort you want has been cut back. What's next?"

After lifting the frame of the house, Chen Xu was chatting with Uncle Ma and others. Niu Dashi, who was sweating profusely, brought back a bundle of mugwort and a half-year-old boy over ten years old, and threw it in front of the house.

"Look a few fires inside and outside the house and put mugwort in and burn them!" Chen Xu said, pointing to the unfinished house.

"Burn? Why do you need to burn? I thought you had dried and built a house?" Niu Dashi asked in confusion.

Mugwort has a strong smell and has the effect of repelling insects and relieving itching. People long ago knew that making beds and building houses can put some dry mugwort to drive away ants, insects and snakes. In this era without mosquito nets and mosquito repellent, mugwort is almost an indispensable universal insect repellent at home. Usually, hanging some in front of and behind the house, mugwort must be used to fumigate the surrounding houses in the spring to kill insect eggs. Even more than two thousand years later, there is still a custom of using mugwort to deworm insects in rural areas. Even if people in the city do not have the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth day of the fifth month, they will buy some mugwort to hang them at home. First, to commemorate Qu Yuan, Qu Dada, who brought three days off to the people of the whole country. Qu Dada is also a native of Chu. He has a very high civil status in Chu. Therefore, he will also be commemorated together during the Dragon Boat Festival, eat some rice dumplings to express his nostalgia, and second, it can also have some mosquito repellent effects.

(Special note: The Dragon Boat Festival was not born to commemorate Qu Yuan. On the fifth day of the fifth month of Qu Yuan every year, hundreds of years before Qu Yuan's death, the custom of dragon boat racing and eating rice dumplings had already existed. Moreover, the vassal states in China had this custom, and Qu Yuan was only a Chu country. At that time, Qin, Zhao, Han, Wei, Qi and Yan and other countries would never commemorate Qu Yuan, the Sanlu doctor who was not famous during the Warring States Period. Later generations involved these two things, but Qu Yuan happened to jump into the river and committed suicide on the fifth day of the fifth month. The Chu people also began to commemorate Qu Zi on the Miluo River on this day, and gradually formed the later statements about the Dragon Boat Festival, which was actually not recognized in the academic community.)

"If you want to cook, go quickly. You can eat after cooking!" Chen Xu was too lazy to waste brain cells with this future brother-in-law who cooked a whole frog. This may take a lot of verbal explanations, and he may know so much about you? How should he explain it?

So Chen Xu simply said many things directly and never explained them.

Under Niu Dashi's leadership, a group of half-grown men quickly lit several fires next to each other on the foundations of several houses in the new house. After the fire was very strong, they spread mugwort on the fire. Suddenly, thick blue smoke rolled. With the help of the wind, these thick smoke enveloped the entire house, including hundreds of meters around, and rushed to a height of hundreds of meters like a beacon tower, which looked quite spectacular in the sunset.

This large-scale use of mugwort to smoke houses is naturally to deworm, mainly to kill the worm eggs on the soil and rocks and wood.

Sure enough, after dinner, the smoke had slowly dissipated. When Chen Xu walked to the near of the new house with a bamboo tube, holding a cup of water brewed from mint leaves, he found that the ground was densely filled with smoked ants and centipedes, and even a few small snakes as thick as thumbs, all of which were smoked from the soil and grass.

The helpers gradually dispersed, went home to wash and rinse and then went to bed.

After digesting the food, Chen Xu took Niu Dashi to mow the grass on the river beach.
Chapter completed!