"If you save him, you won't survive."

Aunt Wang gave this warning with a dark face, then led her youngest daughter away.

Wan Shu didn't quite understand what that sentence meant, but once she walked out of the alley and saw the beggars all over the street, she understood.

Sishui County was severely affected by the disaster, and many disaster victims who had no surplus food at home became beggars.

Although the county government provides each beggar with a bowl of porridge every day, the porridge is so thin it's like rice water, and the beggars are all emaciated and pale, with green eyes.

It's not hard to imagine how frantic they would have become if someone had taken pity on them and given them food.

“Mother, I heard from the yamen runners that our town has run out of food. In a few days, the porridge at the yamen gate will also be gone.”

The people speaking were a mother and daughter who were beggars.

The daughter stared at her mother with her dark, round eyes: "Even the porridge is gone. Are we going to die?"

The mother gently stroked her daughter's head: "No, no, we will survive."

The daughter felt a little more at ease and nestled in her mother's arms, struggling to resist her hunger.

The little girl was young and innocent, but Wan Shu understood that if even disaster relief food ran out, in such a famine year, orphans and widows like them would definitely die.

She felt sorry for them, but she was just an ordinary person. Even with the power of the mall, she could do nothing more than protect her own family.

For the sake of her five children, she had to protect herself first!

Wan Shu turned her head away resolutely and continued walking towards the grain store.

Rice, wheat flour, millet, and buckwheat were displayed at the entrance of the grain store.

The prices were 20 wen per catty, 17 wen per catty, 14 wen per catty, and 12 wen per catty, respectively.

Many people think it's too expensive.

"Shopkeeper, I came to check yesterday and buckwheat was only ten coins a pound. How come it has increased by two coins in just one day?"

"There's a food shortage right now, and the price changes every day. There's nothing I can do about it. If you think it's too expensive, it contains flour made from inferior grains, and it's only six coins a pound!"

The worst-tasting grain flour is made from inferior grains. It's rough on the throat and contains a lot of impurities. But in order to fill their stomachs, most people still buy this worst-tasting grain flour.

Wan Shu didn't buy it, because those six coins were enough for her to buy three catties of rice in the mall!

She turned and went to the vegetable market, where the prices were outrageously high; a single radish cost a penny.

However, wild vegetables are not worth much because many people now dig them up from the mountains to sell, resulting in supply exceeding demand and prices naturally falling.

Her basket of wild vegetables weighed at least three or four pounds, but she could only sell it for three copper coins.

It's definitely more cost-effective to buy and sell in the mall.

Wan Shu walked to a secluded corner and sold the wild vegetables to the mall for 85 coins a basket.

Adding what she had left over from buying chicken yesterday, along with the original owner's personal savings, she now has a total of 300 coins left over.

These 300 coins can't buy much in town, but they can buy quite a few good things in the mall.

The family was almost out of oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and other condiments, so Wan Shu picked the cheapest ones to refill their supplies.

Staple food is the most important. Yesterday, the children ate two kilograms of rice in one meal.

Even if it's not the busy farming season now, and even if we don't eat lunch, we still consume at least three or four kilograms of rice a day.

With a wave of her hand, she bought fifteen kilograms of rice. Worried that her children wouldn't be willing to eat pure rice, she gritted her teeth and bought five kilograms of millet at 3.5 yuan per kilogram to mix in.

Secondly, there's meat. Meat is a source of protein, which is indispensable for children who need to supplement their nutrition.

Since her five children liked oily food, she bought ten pounds of pork belly and ten pounds of pork fat.

Not only can pork fat be rendered into lard, but the remaining cracklings are also excellent for stir-frying or stewing.

Moreover, with lard available, any meat dishes she makes won't attract too much attention in the village; people will just assume she's using lard to cook.

Finally, she also bought two old hens to lay eggs.

Eggs are an excellent source of protein, making them a great way to nourish children.

After doing all this, Wan Shu did not leave immediately. To avoid being noticed, she wandered around the market for a while, bought some cheap vegetables as a cover, and then headed towards the oxcart.

Twenty catties of rice, ten catties of millet, ten catties of meat, ten catties of lard, plus all sorts of other miscellaneous items. Wan Shu really put in a lot of effort to carry the basket to the oxcart.

Seeing that she was panting and struggling to carry the basket, Uncle Erniu quickly got off the oxcart and helped her lift the basket onto the horse-drawn carriage.

Wan Shu thanked her, thinking that next time she would use a pretext to come to town to buy things, she should make sure to get the items from the mall before she got home.

Several women who were already waiting there also reached out to help, but when they saw the two chickens in Wan Shu's hands, their words couldn't help but be tinged with sourness.

"Oh, you're such a lucky woman! You ate a rooster yesterday and now you've bought two hens to eat."

"I smell meat in this basket. You even bought meat? It's generous to receive compensation..."

“I don’t have any compensation. The government said they would give me ten taels of silver after the approval, but you know how slow the government is. Who knows when it will be approved? This hen isn’t for eating. I bought it to lay eggs so my child could get more nutrition.

Wan Shu wiped the sweat from his forehead, moved the top layer of vegetables in the basket a little to reveal the pork fat underneath.

“This isn’t meat, it’s pork fat. Everyone knows how thin my children are. As their mother, it breaks my heart. Even if I have to eat a few less bites of rice, I have to give them some oil and fat. It’s my way of making up for all the years they’ve been through.”

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