Seeing the brother and sister sleeping soundly, Ningxia got up to deal with the fruit the monkeys had brought her. There was quite a bit of it. She picked up a peach at random, didn't even bother cleaning it with water, wiped off the fuzz, and took a bite. Sweet! Sweet and crisp, a long-lost peach flavor. Ningxia squinted her eyes and chewed it carefully for a long time before swallowing it. Then she couldn't stop eating, one bite after another.

After she finished eating the peach in her hand, she squatted down and sorted the messy pile of fruits into categories.

There were more than twenty fist-sized hard peaches, and Ningxia loquats weighed about ten pounds. The most eye-catching one was the watermelon that weighed more than five pounds, and it was green and lush, and it looked very attractive.

There were also more than five pounds of walnuts and about ten pounds of chestnuts, some of which were dry and some were still raw. It was not difficult to see that the monkey group had taken out a lot of last year's stock. Ningxia packed up the dry ones and put them in the luggage bag, and would think about what to do with the remaining raw ones tomorrow.

The biggest headache was the two large bunches of bananas. Ningxia roughly counted them and found about 70 or 80 bananas in each. One was completely yellow, and in the hot weather, it would go bad if not eaten within two days. The other was still green and could last a few more days.

Looking up at Ningxia, the mountains are still the best. There are so many fruits, I don’t know where the monkeys picked them.

She was a little distressed. She couldn't think of any other way to deal with so many fruits except drying them and taking them away. This would delay her for a few more days. Ningxia sighed, but she was helpless. The three of them couldn't eat only fruits for three meals a day even if they wanted to eat as much as they wanted. Not to mention whether it would satisfy their hunger, their stomachs couldn't bear it either. They couldn't just watch them go bad.

At six in the morning, the sun was rising incredibly early, Ningxia woke Lin Yi up and told him to make some sweet porridge, then went to sleep peacefully. Ningxia had been eating fish porridge for several days, and she was a little tired of it. There was still plenty of sugar left, so a lavish meal was no problem.

Breakfast was sweet porridge with grilled dried fish. Ningxia hadn't asked Lin Yi to prepare too much, as the fruit on the ground was still waiting to be consumed. Ningxia hadn't asked them to eat much either, just one peach and two loquats per person.

"Sister Xia Xia, do we need to cut all of these?" Lin Yi looked at the bananas and loquats at Ningxia's feet.

"Well, go pick some calla lily leaves, pick the clean ones, and spread them on a flat surface. The sun is out, let's cut them into slices and hang them to dry." Ningxia picked the fully ripe bananas, about a hundred of them, dried them all and packed them!

Ningxia waited until Lin Yi had prepared the place before she started slicing the bananas. Cutting into round slices was time-consuming and laborious, so Ningxia simply cut a banana into two halves and cut three slices from each half. The shape was a bit strange, but it saved time and effort.

After a while, the empty space in front of them was covered with bananas. As the sun grew hotter, Ningxia sent the brother and sister to peel loquats under the shade of a tree. She was quick and soon finished peeling the bananas. They were golden and radiant in the sun, looking very pleasing to the eye.

Ningxia didn't keep any loquats. She peeled them all, removed the cores, and cut them in half, spreading them out in the sun. Ningxia lay in the shade of the tree, looking at the loquats. It was a pity. It was a pity that there was no big pot or suitable container. Otherwise, it would have made delicious jam. Instead, they were dried like this. What a pity.

The three of them lazed about like this for two whole days, while the bananas and loquats, under the scorching sun, lived up to their expectations and successfully transformed into dried fruit. Ningxia tried some and found the bananas quite good, not much different from what she'd had before. The loquats weren't quite as good, badly oxidized, wrinkled and blackened. They were a bit astringent, but still a rare treat.

"Let's go!" Ningxia waved his hand, and the three of them set off on their journey again.

Ningxia even found some tough reeds and made a small, ugly basket, which she hung on Maomao's back. She put the big watermelon and the remaining dozen or so peaches in it.

The mountain road was difficult to walk on, and the three of them walked and stopped. From time to time, a few monkeys passed by their heads, but they had no intention of attacking them, so Ningxia relaxed.

"Sister Xia Xia, is this...chili pepper?" Lin Yi held a handful of thin and pointed things that looked like chili pepper segments in his hand.

Ningxia took a look and his eyes lit up. He took it, broke open one and smelled it. The stimulating smell went straight to the top of his head, and even his fingers felt a little spicy. It was a wild chili pepper!

The weather had been getting hotter lately, and the heat was making everyone irritable at noon. The three of them hadn't changed their clothes for a long time and looked very disheveled. Ningxia simply stopped and let the brother and sister rest in the shade of a tree with the sugar water in their hands. He quickly grabbed all the peppers in front of him.

Ningxia took a sip of honeysuckle tea. They should be in the territory of Xuanwuzhou now. Xuanwuzhou connects Liefengzhou and Qingniaozhou. Before the disaster, it was famous all over the world for its extremely hot weather and spicy food.

The closer she got to home, the more anxious Ningxia became. But she knew she couldn't rush it. Judging by the weather, torrential rain would arrive within a month, followed by two months of scorching sun. Given the time, a few hundred kilometers on foot would be enough.

Ningxia knew they had entered Xuanwuzhou because she had encountered several groups of people and learned about it from their conversations. At first, Ningxia was on high alert, and the brother and sister were even more frightened.

The several groups of people Ningxia encountered were almost all young and middle-aged men. Judging from their attire, they were out hunting and were in good spirits. They were probably more worried that these three "weird-looking" homeless people would cause trouble.

When everyone met, they tacitly avoided each other without any conversation, and everyone remained extremely vigilant, which made Ningxia feel relieved.

"Sister Xia Xia, are we going?"

Before the three of them stood a sign dug deep into the earth, marking the National Refuge. A small map was also provided.

Time could not be wasted any longer, and Ningxia had no intention of taking a detour to this shelter. The Bluebird was her final destination.

After entering Xuanwu, they found out that the government had already integrated existing resources and established shelters in various places.

Although the various systems are not very perfect, the people in the shelter are not like those in the Dawn Base, where the gap between the rich and the poor is huge. Now they live the life of eating public food like many years ago, and everyone is working towards the same goal.

Ningxia also learned that the Dawn Base had established contact with the Central Province in its early days. The Central Province was the highest level of government in Chu Hua State, governing over a dozen continents, large and small.

Because of Liefeng's terrain, reconstruction work was difficult and productivity could not keep up, so Liefeng did not build a shelter elsewhere. Only the Shuguang Base was outsourced. However, the central government sent abundant poverty alleviation supplies twice a year.

Ningxia swore that she had lived in the Dawn Base for five whole years and had never heard of this incident. Now that the communication link was broken, the people in the Dawn Base were like frogs in a well, completely unaware of the situation in the outside world.

It seems that the high-ranking officials at the Dawn Base rely entirely on deceiving the lower-class people into working for free to support themselves, and they take advantage of the lack of communication and information in this era to become local tyrants.