Chapter 16. Cang Li belatedly read it…

Cang Li belatedly looked over and saw the five cubs' blank stares. Cang Li frowned. Could it be that they were too young and had no memory or concept of their mother? Come to think of it, the original owner's memories didn't seem to include anyone like father or mother.

Now that you mention it, these five cubs and the original owner of this body are quite pitiful; it's not easy for them to grow up to be this big.

Cang Li sighed, completely unaware of the significant age gap between herself and the five children. It was truly strange that she had no memory of the adults.

"Forget it, why did I ask you this in the first place?"

Cang Li got up, braced himself with his hands behind his back, and looked into the distance. At this moment, Yu crawled to Cang Li's side, pointing at the mountains across the river and calling out indistinctly:

"Ah, older sister~ mua~"

Cang Li slapped him: "What mua? Don't call me that. I'm just 'sister,' where did this weird title 'sister mua' come from? You're awake, it's getting late, go back to sleep."

The man hesitated, about to tell Cang Li that their mother goddess was on the other side, when Cang Li got up, picked up the cub, and went back to the cave to sleep. The man had no choice but to swallow his words and lead the group back to sleep.

The next day was another sunny day. Looking at the bright sun in the sky, Cang Li decided to stay in the cave to process the bamboo first, and not go up the mountain for the time being. He also decided to organize the supplies in his backpack and see how many gathering points he needed to unlock the fifth page of the shop.

Cang Li instructed the children to take the dried goods out to dry and not to run around playing in the cave. Then she let the bamboo out, chopped off the branches with an axe, and looked at the branches with leaves still attached. She picked out the thickest part and put it aside. She had the children carry the medium-sized parts out to dry and use as firewood, and kept the thinnest part at the top to make a broom. She really needed a cleaning tool.

After sorting and placing them, Cangli tossed a few bamboo branches to the collector, and then began to saw through the bamboo, which was three stories high. The bamboo was very long, and only one-third of it was inside the cave. The remaining two-thirds were left to dry outside the cave. Cangli sawed off the thinnest section first, and then divided each bamboo into four sections.

Cang Li processed the remaining three bamboo stalks in the same way, obtaining sixteen sections of bamboo, some firewood, and materials for building a fence.

For these bamboos to be durable, they need to be air-dried. Ideally, they should be soaked in salt water or lime water, but Cangli doesn't have that option, so they can only air-dry them.

Cang Li had already planned to make a bamboo mat and a bamboo door. It was summer now, so there was no door. Cang Li knew she would be staying here until at least the end of winter, so if there was no door to block the wind at the cave entrance in winter, the temperature inside the cave could not be maintained. She had to make a bamboo door.

We could also get some bamboo chairs, or better yet, a bamboo recliner. She's worked so hard for so long; she deserves to treat herself.

Cang Li thought about it and realized there was a lot to do. He couldn't help but sigh, but his hands didn't stop. He kept scraping the surface of the bamboo clean with a sickle.

After processing the bamboo, Cang Li neatly piled it on the left side of the cave. Then she quickly made a small broom and a large broom. The small broom was for the children to use, and the large broom was for her to use occasionally.

"Hey, sweep all this stuff out and pile it up by the door to dry. Then burn it in the stove later. Oh, and after dinner tonight, take the ashes from the stove to the ground to compost."

After Cang Li finished speaking, the man came over to work. When it came to wood ash, Cang Li thought for a moment and realized that the straw-woven winnowing basket was not very useful. He would split some bamboo strips and weave a more useful one later.

Seeing that the others were cleaning the cave, Cang Li stopped paying attention, sat down in the cleaned area, and began to check his backpack, taking stock of what was inside, how long it would last, and calculating what he would need for the winter.

Cang Li threw everything out of his backpack.

There's a huge pile of meat. It's a wild boar that was killed just a few days ago, and there's still plenty left. We won't have to worry about meat for at least the next two months.

A jar of pig's blood cut into small cubes; I'll find some seasonings later to stir-fry some and eat it.

About ten pounds of steamed and sun-dried wild plum vegetables. Hmm, this can be used to make braised pork belly with preserved plum vegetables.

There are also seven or eight pounds of dried mushrooms. Next time we catch a pheasant, we can make chicken soup.

There were 23 cantaloupes that I didn't finish eating because I was afraid they would spoil.

Ten pounds of cured and smoked pork belly and two salted fish were prepared in case there was no meat to eat in the winter due to a lack of prey.

A handful of pheasant feathers, a rabbit skin, and a water jar. Among them, there are 20 water jars from the market, and the rest are either filled with other things or empty.

A large jar of lard, about 60 jin of millet, and a basket of bok choy.

There were also two small packets of ramie fire grass seeds that had been exchanged, a pottery jar of wheat seeds, and the axe, sickle, hoe, and saw that Cang Li kept in his backpack at all times.

Cang Li thought about it for a moment and realized that there were still not enough things. The wild eggs that the group had collected were about to hatch, but a heavy rain washed them all away.

Next, she needs to go up the mountain to see if there are any pheasants, and hopefully collect a nest of wild eggs to hatch. If conditions allow, she can weave a chicken coop out of bamboo, and when it gets less hot, she can go to the river to fish and change things up.

Cang Li pulled her scattered thoughts back and sorted the scattered items on the ground. She threw the empty cans back into her backpack, as they were of the same type and only occupied one compartment.

Then I put the dried mushrooms in a separate jar and used a sharp stone to carve a mushroom mark on the jar as a marker. I also put the dried plum vegetables in a separate jar. After putting them in, I put them back in my backpack. I also put the lard back in the jar. Except for the fresh pork and smoked meat, everything else was put in jars. They were all neat and clean.

Each jar was marked with words to prevent confusion.

After checking her backpack, Cang Li opened the in-game store. She hadn't looked at the store since she got the rain boots.

On the first page of the store, all the steamed buns and water were gone, leaving only 9 boxes of matches. She only had so many left because she used them sparingly. Once they were all used up, Cang Li would have to find a way to preserve the fire, as making fire by friction was not something that just anyone could do.

The second page still had a shuttle, but Cang Li glanced at it and turned to the third page. For Cang Li, the things on the third page were truly life-saving. As long as they were planted, they would not starve to death year after year.

Cang Li doesn't plan to exchange the remaining potatoes and sweet potatoes for now. She has to wait until the crops in the field have grown properly and she's sure there won't be any rain before she can make a planting plan.

There's also salt. There's quite a bit of salt there, but we still need to plan ahead. Once we get out, we'll see if there's any sea. Cang Li's knowledge only allows her to use the seawater salt-boiling method. She hasn't thought about the salt mines in the mountains, and she can't manage them anyway.

The fifth page was not yet unlocked. Cang Li clicked on the area in the upper right corner that displayed the number of collection points, and a prompt box quickly popped up.

[Collection Points: 78]

[Collection points used: 301]

[Total collection points: 379]

[Next Page: Required Cumulative Gathering Points to Unlock the Shop: 400]

Cang Li looked at the conditions for unlocking the fifth page. She was still 21 points short. She would go up the mountain to collect more tomorrow. She didn't expect that she had used up 300 gathering points in the past few days. She hadn't looked carefully before and hadn't paid attention. As long as she didn't use up all the gathering points, it was fine. Now it seemed that she had to use them sparingly and not exchange for unnecessary ones. What if some modern farming machine was refreshed later and she didn't have enough gathering points to exchange for it?

Thinking of this, Cang Li's hoarding habit kicked in again, and he only wanted to round up the existing collection points.

Cang Li took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to immediately go up the mountain, and got up to cook to distract herself.

To avoid sweating profusely from the heat, Cang Li only cooked stews, throwing them into the pot so she didn't have to stay by the pot all the time. Even so, Cang Li still broke out in a sweat, thinking to herself that she should teach her son to cook when he was two years older.

With pork ribs simmering in the pot, Cang Li casually grabbed a large soup bowl, placed a thin piece of wood on the pot as a steamer rack, and steamed a large bowl of millet rice.

The few sweet potatoes and potatoes left in the vegetable garden have revived in the past two days and are growing quite well. Cang Li is quite relieved, at least it's not a complete loss. As long as it doesn't rain heavily, she will still have a harvest.

After dinner, the sun was still shining brightly outside, and the birdsong on the mountain had stopped. Cang Li lay down on the bed to sleep, instructing the servants to watch over the younger children and not let them run out. He planned to take them to play by the river when it cooled down in the afternoon.

Jihejie led the three children to play, though they didn't know what to play with. They were happy playing with small pieces of wood, bamboo branches and leaves, etc. As they played, the sun outside the cave stopped shining and started to move westward, so the five of them went outside to play.

Ah~

Suddenly, I pointed at the sky and started babbling.

The man looked over but saw nothing. Helpless, he dragged Yu back and said, "If you climb any further, you'll fall."

I was still looking at the sky, looking a little puzzled.

After a while, the crowd pointed to the eastern sky and said, "Hey! There's light in the sky over there!"

Ji, Jie, and Er all looked over and, sure enough, saw bursts of colorful light erupting from the direction the river came from in the east. The five of them stared wide-eyed, dumbfounded.

So beautiful...

The five cubs stared blankly at the sky with their mouths agape. A few seconds later, the colorful light disappeared, and the five cubs were still in shock.

When Cang Li woke up, she found it quiet, and a thought popped into her mind:

If a child is quiet, they must be up to no good.

Cang Li couldn't sit still any longer, so he got up and went outside. As soon as he went out, he saw that all five cubs were looking in one direction. Cang Li walked over and followed their gaze, but he didn't see anything.

"What...are you looking at?"

Cang Li asked with some curiosity. Although he knew that cubs were all born out of nowhere, this was just too inexplicable.

Yu hugged Cang Li's little leg and babbled, "Beautiful~"

Cang Li: ?

Cang Li looked over again. The sky was ordinary, the clouds were ordinary, the mountains were ordinary... What was beautiful about it? Wasn't it exactly the same as what he saw every day?

Ji snapped out of her daze and pulled Cang Li aside, saying, "There are beautiful lights over there, so pretty, in clusters!"

Cang Li: ...Where did the light come from? In clusters? Could it be that there are auroras here? But that doesn't make sense, the climate doesn't seem like a place where you can see auroras.

Seeing Cang Li's confused expression, Ren gestured anxiously with his hands:

"It's such a beautiful light! Sister, there are so many colors too!"

After all that talk, I still can't describe it more accurately.

Cang Li seemed to be deep in thought, then patted Ji's head and said:

"Okay, next time you see it, remember to call me to watch it together. I also want to see how good it is."

Ji, Jie, and Er all nodded in agreement. They would definitely not be stunned next time and would definitely call their older sister to watch together!