Another year has passed in the blink of an eye.

Song Tantan sat in the rented office on the second floor of the pastry shop, doing the accounts. Last year, she taught Xiao Tao how to make cakes, candies, cookies, and other foods.

The process was somewhat difficult, mainly because there was no egg beater for making cakes and no oven for making cookies. This posed a challenge for Song Tantan, as she didn't know what to do without the right machines.

Finally, the cookies are fried, similar to making walnut cookies. Anyway, once those things are made, they can be sold, so Xiao Tao and her friends no longer sell instant noodles at their stalls.

Because we rented a shop to sell pastries, we also sold instant noodles there. We sold the noodles directly, and customers could take them home and eat them dry, boiled, or soaked as they pleased.

Not to mention, they sold even more than when they were setting up a stall, because they also had to make cakes and cookies, and Xiao Tao and the others weren't enough people to handle it.

The young men were no longer selling food; Ye Moxun had arranged for them to work as technical instructors in workshops that made paper, cement, and bricks, and also to manage and supervise the work.

Originally, Song Tantan wanted to hire people, but Xiao Tao and the others were unwilling, saying that it was better to bring the villagers from Songlin Village to help instead of letting the good stuff go to outsiders. Song Tantan couldn't persuade them, and besides, Song Tantan didn't trust outsiders. Just then, Song Zhuiyan also wanted to go back to the village to deal with the more than twenty pigs in the village.

Actually, she just keeps them in her space. She doesn't live in Songlin Village now, so she can't take care of anything. She can give the land to others to farm, but she can't bear to give away more than twenty pigs for free. The villagers can't eat so many pigs either, so it's better to take them to Fengcheng to raise.

She has already bought a manor on the outskirts of Fengcheng, specifically for building a pig farm. The brick factory has been set up, and the cement factory is also on track. Construction on the city wall of Xiangyang City began at the end of last year and will be completed in a few more months.

Building a pigsty is simpler. Just buy the bricks, hire people to dig the foundation and lay the bricks, and it should be built quickly. However, there is a problem: Xifeng is short of manpower.

Refugees from other places have been fleeing to Xifeng since the second half of last year. This is thanks to Bai Pingfeng's propaganda efforts. Traveling from Xifeng to the capital is very time-consuming because the army is on foot.

Normally, it takes more than a month to travel from Xifeng to the capital by horse-drawn carriage, and at least two months to travel on foot.

Those who heard that Xifeng was taking in refugees, that there was no war, and that they could have enough to eat, would receive relief food from the government, be provided with accommodation, and have land distributed to the refugees.

Many refugees began to flee towards Xifeng, but they were starving and had no horse-drawn carriages, so their journey was very slow. While a normal person could reach Xifeng in two months, the starving refugees would probably take at least three months.

During these three months, no accidents can happen on the road, such as the food being stolen, the children being eaten, encountering cannibalistic criminals, or being carried off by wild animals while passing through the forest...

The journey was long and fraught with danger, and very few refugees managed to reach Xifeng alive.

Sometimes Ye Moxun even doubted whether his decision to have Bai Pingfeng promote the benefits of refugees coming to Xifeng and allow them to settle there was the right one.

But then I thought, if the refugees didn't come to Xifeng, things would only get worse. With constant war and no way to farm, they would only be able to keep fleeing, and the more they fled, the less they could survive. Coming to Xifeng now is the best option.

After the city walls of Xiangyang were built, Xifeng became much safer. As long as the city gates were guarded, the people of Xifeng could live and work in peace and contentment.

Zhong Qingyi did not accompany Song Zhuiyan on her return to Songlin Village this time. He wanted to go back together, but he could not find the time. He went to the military camp early in the morning and returned late at night to train the troops and practice troop deployment.

The military book that Song Tantan gave him was really useful. He had been studying it for over a year, hoping it would come in handy to reduce casualties and defeat the Hu and Qiang people more quickly.

So only three people returned to the village: Song Zhuiyan, Song Tantan, and Ye Moxun, along with a few dogs. The others were too busy; the girls were busy selling pastries, and the boys were busy managing the workshop.

The three traveled quickly, escorted by five dogs, and made their way through the village without incident. After staying in the village for only a few days, confirming the number of people who wanted to leave the mountains, and disposing of the pigs at home, they left Songlin Village.

The older people were unwilling to leave the mountain. Only two families who had left the village because their children were to be married off did follow them out of the mountain. Then there was Zhu Xiu and a woman with two children, making a total of thirteen people.

Fifteen people had left before, and now thirteen have left. With the addition of four people from Song Tantan and Ye Moxun's families, nearly half of the people in Songlin Village have left. Lin Fuhai felt a little sad. Although he had expected this day to come, it was still hard to bear.

Song Zhuiyan slaughtered two of her domestic pigs and made them into pork jerky. She put the rest into her spatial storage. When she was traveling with over a hundred pounds of pork jerky...

Zhu Xiu, who had been feeding the pigs for her, looked at her with a look of disbelief. "More than twenty pigs, and this is all that's left after making pork jerky?"

Although she had never made pork jerky, she had made cured pork. Even if cured pork is dry and shrinks, it shouldn't lose that much weight, so she really couldn't understand it.

"I cut it into small pieces. I've eaten quite a bit these past few days. I gave some to Chen Yunshuang, and the villagers also gave me a lot. This is all that's left," Song Zhuiyan explained earnestly.

But Zhu Xiu felt that she was being somewhat perfunctory, as if she didn't want to say more. Even if she wanted to ask again, it was too late. She had eaten quite a bit of pork from the Song family. Did she have to admit that the villagers were too big for their stomachs and had eaten all twenty of the Song family's pigs?

Sigh, she had taken care of the piglets for over a year, watching them grow bigger and fatter day by day, imagining how much meat there would be if all these pigs were slaughtered, and how long it would take to eat so much meat.

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