Yang shook her head after hearing this: "Half of such a fresh lamb is not cheap!"

Su Guangfu also nodded: "That's right, not to mention there's a rabbit. I originally asked you to come and eat, but in the end you added so much!"

Sun Guixiang put a mouthful of greens into her mouth and said, "Sister, it's boring when you say that! Why didn't you tell me that I used so much salt to pickle the radish strips?"

Li San'er also nodded hurriedly: "Salt is really... indispensable, but it's so expensive! Not to mention it's refined salt!"

Su Guangfu and Yang looked at each other. They had not told anyone that Su Qingluan could refine refined salt by herself - and they couldn't tell anyone.

Otherwise, once this door is opened, if someone takes the refined salt made by Su Qingluan and sells it, the Su family will have no way to explain themselves.

So to the other party, they could only say that the refined salt was bought from outside - anyway, the Su family was now willing to spend a large sum of money to renovate the houses in the courtyard, so buying some refined salt should be a piece of cake and would not arouse any suspicion.

But even though the Su family can afford it, it still cannot change the reality that salt - even crude salt - is expensive.

In fact, Su Qingluan had long discovered that in this era, seasonings are more luxurious and expensive items than ingredients.

Hearing her husband's sigh, Sun Guixiang's smile faded. "That's right, the price of salt has gone up again recently. Our Huaxi Village is so close to the salt mine, but salt isn't cheap at all!"

Li Saner nudged his wife and lowered his voice: "Keep your voice down! Why are you discussing the price of salt?!" He glanced at Yang and Su Guangfu across from him and said, "I hope the elder brother and sister-in-law of the Su family are honest people. Otherwise, if people tell others, who knows what will happen!"

Su Qingluan was startled when she heard this: "That's right, in this era, the price of salt is monopolized by the government. The common people are dissatisfied with the price of salt and are talking about it. Isn't that...

Sun Guixiang realized she had slipped up and stammered for a long time before finally changing the subject: "Salt prices have gone up, and there will be much less winter vegetables this year."

Su Qingluan looked up at Sun Guixiang: "Aunt, what kind of winter vegetables do you want?" Is it the winter storage vegetable she was thinking of?

She actually guessed it right.

Sun Guixiang and Li San knew that Su Qingluan had just been adopted. Although they did not know that she had lost her memory due to a high fever, they thought that her adopted family might be living somewhere else and the living environment was different from that in Huaxi Village. So they talked to her about the situation in the village every winter.

It turns out that although Huaxi Village is not in the extremely cold north, there are still one or two months every year when the weather is freezing cold and the land is covered with ice.

In this kind of weather, the wild animals and birds in the mountains all migrate south or hide for the winter; the fish and shrimp in the streams are almost extinct because they are frozen into thick layers of ice.

As for the fields that were once fertile with crops, no grass grows in the winter.

In order to survive the winter under such circumstances, the villagers naturally have to prepare various winter vegetables to cope with the long winter days of food shortage - after all, although the ice only covers the land for about two months, the time span of food shortage from late autumn to the blooming of flowers in the spring of the following year is far more than one or two months.

In this era, there were no root crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes that were extremely cold-resistant and could satisfy hunger, and there was no cabbage that could survive the winter and was very durable in storage.

Therefore, many times, people can only pickle and dehydrate the food as much as possible, then dry it in the sun to make dried vegetables, or coat it with heavy seasonings to make jerky or meat jerky, so that the food can be preserved for a long time.

However, the biggest problem is that many villagers don’t even have enough money to eat, let alone store winter vegetables or jerky - they don’t even have extra money to buy a lot of meat.

Su Qingluan couldn't help but think of the time when she just traveled through time, when the Su family had only bland soup and wild vegetables every day.

She couldn't help but feel curious - everyone was obviously farming, so why didn't anyone pick vegetables and grains from the fields to eat, except for the vegetables in their own small gardens?

Su Qingluan was genuinely curious, so she asked the same question, which only caused Sun Guixiang to sigh in surprise: "Oh my goodness, were you adopted by some immortal nun or Taoist priest before? Don't you even know that those fields have to be rented out?"

Su Qingluan blushed slightly, feeling a little embarrassed. "Of course I know that, but not all the harvest will be collected as rent, right? I can always eat a little myself..."

"Who would dare to eat so lavishly before paying the grain?" Li San shook his head and smiled bitterly. "If a natural disaster strikes and there's not enough food, let alone any surplus, I'm afraid we'll have to resort to hard labor to make up for the unpaid grain."

Su Qingluan could hear it and took a breath: "How much tax do we have to pay?"

"Our lands all have owners. We'd be lucky if we could get five out of ten!" Sun Guixiang sighed.

Su Qingluan had actually heard that in ancient times, from a national perspective, taxes in many dynasties were not high, generally less than one-tenth. However, many farmlands were privately owned by landlords, so many ordinary people often paid taxes at multiple levels, resulting in a heavy tax rate.

It is no wonder that although everyone works hard on the farm and hunts to supplement their family income, there are still not many people who have surplus at home.

This was the first time she realized the heavy burden of the ancient "harsh taxes and levies".

"Alas... every year in the village, many children and elderly people who cannot survive freeze to death or starve to death..." Sun Guixiang stopped talking halfway.

Su Qingluan understood that freezing to death was secondary. What was more important was that in such cold weather, without enough food, starving to death was a matter of time.

In fact, Su Qingluan had heard before that the winter in Huaxi Village was not easy, so she was so anxious to make money so that her family would have enough money to prepare winter vegetables and survive the long winter.

Now, she already has enough money to last other families half their lives without worries about food and clothing, so naturally she doesn't have to worry about storing vegetables for the winter - as long as she prepares more dried vegetables and jerky before winter comes, the whole family will definitely be able to survive the long winter.

Even if it cost a lot of salt to prepare pickled food, so what? Her family could afford it.

But now, looking across at Uncle Li and Sun Guixiang, whose faces were still bright but worried about winter food storage, he thought of his new friends Tian Xing'er and Liu'er, as well as the neighbors who had helped her and her family in some way over the past few days...

Although there were occasional oddballs like Zhao Tianbao's family, the vast majority of people were kind and welcoming. Although Su Qingluan hadn't spent much time with these folks, she had already grown attached to this small village—just as she had to her parents and siblings.

This place seemed to be gradually becoming her second home besides her previous life.

But perhaps after this winter, those warm, lively faces in our memories may turn into cold corpses.

Did she really want to watch this tragedy happen?