"Auntie, are you alright? Are you hurt?" Xingxing hugged Zhao Guihua's leg tightly, her big, clear eyes welling up with tears.

Zhao Guihua put the basket on the ground, hugged Xingxing, and felt a warm glow in her heart. "It's okay, your Uncle Zhou and I are both fine. We just got into a fight with some refugees on the way, but we won."

"Really?" Xingxing looked at Boss Zhou.

Old Zhou raised his axe. "We absolutely cannot lose. We were refugees ourselves, what haven't we seen? Do you think we'd be scared by a few skinny refugees?"

When the refugees rushed up to loot, the people of Yegou Village were really wielding knives and axes, hacking and slashing anyone who dared to steal from them, showing no mercy.

It's not that they're ruthless; in this situation, it's either you die or I die. Naturally, they have to prioritize their own lives. They have elderly parents and young children waiting for them to come back. Did they have an easy time surviving until today?

"Sigh, we can manage now that there are few refugees, but I'm afraid that more and more refugees will flood in after a while, and then it will be troublesome," Zhao Guihua sighed with worry.

Old Zhou agreed wholeheartedly and said in a low voice, "We need to talk to the village chief about how to prevent refugees from entering the village."

They've sown the seeds, and it'll be time to transplant the rice in a few days. They'd better not let the refugees rush into the village and steal their food while they're transplanting. They didn't have much food left to begin with, and they've been eating mostly wild vegetables and thin porridge with little rice for months.

If we get swept away again, none of us will survive.

"Hide the meat well, don't let the bad guys steal it," Xingxing hugged Zhao Guihua's neck tightly. "How can we prevent disasters and refugees?"

"Ordinary people rely on God to provide for their livelihood. Who can control God? Who knows when they will have enough food and no longer have to flee?"

Zhao Guihua patted Xingxing on the back. The little girl is lucky. She can find wild game or catch loaches in the water, but that's not enough for the refugees to go crazy.

Governing the country is the emperor's business, something for the high-ranking officials of the court to worry about. Ordinary people can only worry in vain, they are powerless to do anything about it.

Xingxing suddenly remembered the dream she had last night. In the dream, she was sitting in a golden room, and a man in a yellow robe said to her, "I hope that the Great Jin Dynasty can always be so stable and free from disasters, that the people can live and work in peace and contentment, that the country can be prosperous and the people can live in peace and tranquility."

Although she didn't quite understand what the man in the yellow robe meant, and she couldn't see his face clearly in her dream, they seemed to be very familiar with each other, and he seemed to want her to do something.

"Star doesn't want to see natural disasters, and even less does she want to see refugees. Star hopes that all people in the world can have enough to eat, but Star is too small and can't help everyone." Star was very sad; the meat she found wasn't enough to feed so many refugees.

Why did that uncle in the yellow robe speak such incomprehensible words to her in her dream? She was just a child under five years old. All she wanted was to have meat to eat every day and not go hungry. How could she possibly care about the life or death of others?

In the imperial study in the capital, Emperor Taikang felt a splitting headache after listening to the reports from officials about the disasters in various places.

Since the princess disappeared, the Great Jin Dynasty has been plagued by disasters again, with one prefecture suffering from floods and another from drought, leaving him exhausted.

The national treasury was emptied by disaster relief alone. Four years ago, after the princess was born, the Great Jin Dynasty had been free from famine and disaster, and the national treasury had become much fuller.

The despicable Prince Gong actually sent people to kidnap the princess, and her whereabouts are still unknown. If it weren't for the princess's accident, how could there have been continuous disasters throughout the country, almost emptying the national treasury?

"Find her! Dig three feet into the ground if you must, and bring her back!" Emperor Taikang ordered in a deep voice, leaning against the dragon bed with his eyes closed.

The chief eunuch Wang Shun opened his mouth, but in the end he kept it shut and didn't dare to say anything more.

The princess had been missing for half a year. A month ago, the Imperial Guards found the decomposing body of a little girl in a forest. The deceased was about four and a half years old, and the clothes and accessories on her body matched those of the princess.

The empress wept bitterly, believing that the princess was truly dead, but the emperor refused to face reality and refused to believe that the princess was dead. He ordered that the search continue, no matter how long it took, until the princess was found.

But how can the dead be brought back?

However, these words cannot be spoken in front of the Emperor, or else one could expect to be dismembered.

At night, Zhou Laoda returned from the village chief's house and began whispering and discussing with Zhao Guihua as soon as he entered the house.

"The village chief asked everyone to think of a solution, and I shared the idea that Xingxing had suggested. The village chief thought it was feasible and said that we would start arranging for people to do it tomorrow. Because we need to plant rice seedlings, we can only take turns working. We will all work together after the seedlings are planted."

Actually, that method was inspired by a story Xingxing told them. Xingxing said, "Last night I had a dream that there were many people living in a big house. The big house was surrounded by a very high wall, and people outside couldn't get in..."

Upon hearing this, Zhao Guihua had a flash of inspiration. She realized that Yegou Village could also build a wall to block the refugees from entering.

"Such a high wall would require so many bricks. Our village is so poor that all that's left is people. Where would we get the money to buy bricks?" Of course, even if we had the money to buy bricks, we couldn't transport them back. Old Zhou thought she was being delusional.

"Then, if we can't afford those bricks, can't we use something else instead?" Zhao Guihua retorted, unconvinced.

"What can we use instead? Thatch? What good is that?"

"...Who said we have to use thatch? We can use thorns, find trees and vines with lots of thorns, and I don't believe we can't stop them." Although it's not as sturdy as a city wall, it's still an obstacle.

After thinking about it, Zhou Laoda also thought the method was feasible, so he told the village chief about it during the meeting. The village chief also thought it was a good idea.

Even if they planted thorns, they still had to send people to keep watch, because they still needed to leave a door for the villagers to come and go. Even if they didn't leave a door, some fearless refugees might risk being stabbed to crawl into the village.

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