The weather was beautiful, with a high of over twenty degrees Celsius during the day. The wild boar meat Li Xiang had cured was already dry, but it was still missing a bit of flavor. It lacked the final step: smoking with pine and cypress branches.

By now, New Year’s Day had passed, and it was the beginning of the twelfth lunar month—the perfect time to smoke cured meat.

This was a traditional method of preserving meat in the south. In ancient times, without refrigerators and with the region’s high temperatures, meat would spoil easily, so methods like air-drying and smoking were necessary for storage.

People from regions without the custom of eating cured meat might wonder, ’Now that almost every household has a refrigerator, isn’t it better to eat fresh pork? Why go through all the trouble of making cured meat?’

In truth, cured meat, especially the smoked variety, is not just a means of long-term preservation but also a rare delicacy. Its rich aroma and supple texture are things fresh pork simply can’t compare to.

Li Xiang built a simple smokehouse in his backyard. He hung the cured meat strip by strip inside and piled pine branches underneath, lighting them to begin the smoking process.

Because these pine branches had been cut recently and were still vibrantly green, they couldn’t burst into a large fire despite being rich in oil. Instead, they produced a large amount of thick smoke.

Pine itself has a unique fragrance. Through combustion and smoking, its aromatic compounds permeated the meat, giving the final product its own distinct flavor.

Using cypress branches would have also been excellent, but there were more pine trees on the mountain behind Li Xiang’s house, so what he brought back was mostly pine, mixed with a small amount of cypress and Qinggang oak branches.

The Qinggang tree, also known as oak, is another type of wood with a unique aroma, often used in the West to make wine barrels. Black fungus often grows on these trees, and its flavor is superior to that grown on other woods. It’s also more nutritious and revered as a top-tier mountain delicacy.

Different places have different crafting processes and also use other types of wood, such as apple, pear, cherry, apricot, or camphor trees. Typically, people just used whatever suitable wood was most abundant locally.

Granny Li Xiang was helping nearby, but once the fire was going and the smoke got a little thick, Li Xiang had her go outside.

In fact, there was no need to stay inside the whole time. Once the smoke was dense, you could close the door and go take a break, coming back in to add more pine branches when the old ones had nearly burned out. ’Otherwise, are you smoking the meat or yourself?’

This process would be quite long, generally taking one to two days. Smoking was, in effect, a process of disinfection and slow heating. By the time it was finished, the cured meat was basically cooked and only required simple preparation before eating.

The air-dried wild boar meat was rather tough and hard. Slowly smoking and heating it with pine branches would help soften the meat and improve its texture.

Actually, using pork belly with its alternating layers of fat and lean meat would probably be even better. It was just that many people nowadays disliked eating fatty meat, and wild boars themselves have very little fat to begin with.

As the Lunar New Year approached, many families began making their own smoked meats and sausages.

However, some places had recently issued unreasonable notices prohibiting the private smoking of cured products. To smoke cured meat, sausages, and the like, one had to take them to designated centralized smoking points. The official reason was to combat air pollution.

Many people suspected this was just an excuse, a幌子 to promote the meat products of certain companies under the guise of environmental protection. For rural folks, what was wrong with smoking at home? Sending it to a processing point meant an extra fee, adding to their expenses.

Fortunately, the county where Li Xiang lived hadn’t issued such an incomprehensible regulation. He was bustling with activity at home.

’Air pollution? The Apocalypse is coming, who gives a damn about air pollution?’

Once the smoked meat was ready, Li Xiang picked up a strip and sniffed it. It was indeed excellent. The gamy smell of the wild boar had basically vanished, replaced by a unique and rich, meaty aroma.

He used his White Fang Dagger to shave off a thin slice and placed it in his mouth, savoring it carefully. The taste was incredibly unique. Besides the salty fragrance of cured meat, there were complex notes of fresh grass, lemon, Sichuan pepper, cassia, clove, bean, and fruit. Hmm, and a faint sweetness.

The sweetness was there because a small amount of white sugar had been added during the curing process.

As for the other aromas, they were a combination of flavorful substances produced by protein and lipid oxidation and microbial fermentation, as well as the special flavors imparted by compounds like phenols and furans from the burning pine, cypress, and oak branches.

After Li Xiang finished the smoked meat and recorded the video, he immediately shipped out the pre-orders he had promised his fans via SF Express. He kept some for his family, hanging it on a wooden rack in the cellar, and gave some to his maternal grandparents and his Little Aunt’s family.

For dinner, he took a small strip of the smoked meat and made a simple stir-fry with chili peppers and garlic. The chilies were bright red, the garlic shoots were a vibrant green, and the smoked meat was a brownish-red, interspersed with white garlic cloves and yellow ginger slices. While stir-frying, he added a splash of high-proof white liquor, mixing in the fragrance of sorghum spirits. When plated and set on the dining table, it was a feast for the eyes, nose, and palate. The taste was absolutely divine. Even Granny Li Xiang ate an extra small bowl of rice.

The weather was clear, and there wasn’t much farm work to do, so Li Xiang’s family finally broke ground and began building high walls.

He hadn’t built them before because he didn’t have the money, but now, Li Xiang was no longer short on cash.

So he personally designed the plans, hired a construction crew, had the foreman review and refine the design, and then started work immediately.

The wall snaked in a large circle around the former backyard, measuring over three hundred meters long, 2.5 meters high, and 60 centimeters thick. It was no exaggeration to call it a fortified compound.

The rapeseed flowers he had planted earlier were thriving, having been covered and nourished by the heavy snow and meltwater.

Rapeseed is inherently cold-resistant, and Li Xiang had taken protective measures for his vegetable patch before the big snow, so not many of the plants had frozen to death. In fact, after surviving the wind and snow, the remaining rapeseed flowers were even more resilient.

The high wall was built around the perimeter of the rapeseed field, enclosing it. Once spring arrived and the flowers bloomed, it would be a breathtaking sight.

The wall was designed with a back gate leading to the mountain and a side gate leading to the front of the house. This side gate was quite large, so if anything needed to be delivered in the future, vehicles could use it to drive directly into the backyard.

He also had a doggy door built for Er Huang to come and go. As for the cats, they were masters of high places; a wall of this height couldn’t stop them.

The mother cat had already begun teaching her kittens the art of Wall-Climbing and Roof-Soaring, as well as hunting skills. She led them running back and forth on the rooftops and in the trees every day.

Of course, she was also teaching them grooming—how to wash their faces, lick their fur, and bury their waste to hide their scent.

Li Xiang even filmed a few videos of the mother cat teaching her kittens and posted them online, earning a flood of likes from his fans.

One little mouse had a particularly miserable fate. The mother cat had caught it from who-knows-where and turned it into a living teaching prop, to be tormented in turn by the five little ones.

Li Xiang’s house was actually mouse-free; a normal mouse wouldn’t dare come near. He guessed the mother cat had gone on a "long-distance expedition" and caught it in a faraway, abandoned house.

There were many deserted houses in the village that had become paradises for snakes, insects, mice, and ants.

In addition to the wall, Li Xiang also built a pigpen, one large enough for two or three pigs.

He didn’t dare raise more, not out of fear of swine fever, but because if he had to leave home for a few days, it would be too hard for his grandmother to feed so many pigs by herself. She wouldn’t be able to manage.

Granny Li Xiang was getting old, after all. Feeding chickens and ducks was still manageable—just scatter a few handfuls of grain. The cats and dog were fine too; they didn’t eat much. But pigs were different. They could eat and they could make a mess. Just moving all that pig feed would be exhausting work.

Third Granny’s house was also finished, and she reluctantly moved out of Li Xiang’s home. She hadn’t done much decorating, so there was no need to air out formaldehyde. Having stayed at their house for so long, Third Granny felt quite embarrassed and tried to give Granny Li Xiang some money, but she refused to take it.

In truth, Li Xiang wouldn’t have minded if Third Granny had stayed with them for good.