Chapter 007

The following days were repetitive and busy for Beiming Island Xingming and the children.

Every morning, Airi would drag Kiyoki out of bed early and run to the trap she'd dug to see if any prey had fallen in. If so, they'd go over and inspect any pheasants, hares, or sika deer that looked well-preserved. They'd have Yota, Sho, and, worried about the two of them, Gyoumei Beimingyu down the mountain to town to sell them while they were still fresh. There was no need for Gyoumei Beimingyu to ask restaurant owners who might need them, because Yota and Sho, who had been selling their wares before him, had already found long-term clients.

They would bring the prey they hunted in the mountains to him first. If the other party didn't need it in the next few days, they would take the prey to ask other restaurants if they needed it. They had developed a whole process in just a few days, from being shy and embarrassed at the beginning and unable to speak to being thick-skinned and eloquent now.

When you make money from selling things, you naturally cannot treat yourself badly, especially when there is someone at home who has a good appetite but has to eat less and endure hunger for the sake of the children.

Qingxi divided the money he earned into two parts, saving one part to buy necessities when winter came, and keeping the remaining half for household expenses.

However, she also felt that the money was not enough to spend. The biggest expense was buying food.

If we calculate that an adult and a child consume 1.2 kilograms of rice a day, and if there are four children, they will consume at least three kilograms of rice a day.

The price of three pounds of first-grade rice is more than 100 coins. For Ai Li and her friends, they would rather buy third-grade rice, which costs only more than 90 coins for three pounds. Apart from the fact that it has little nutrition and is difficult to absorb, at least it can fill their stomachs.

Not only that, but even that much rice wasn't something Airi, Yota, and the other four knew they could finish in one day. Aren't there still wild yams from the mountains? If they added some to the rice, everyone would be full.

Qingxi: ...

If she hadn't remembered that the money she saved was for the winter, she wouldn't want to stay here any longer and would have wanted to rent a storefront in the town and open a restaurant.

Qingxi, who could no longer bear it, finally secretly gave herself a snack every time she went into the mountains alone.

She also didn't eat the food in the food space that had a strong smell, because the smell of the food would stick to her clothes and it would be very likely to be smelled by Airi and the others, and then she would have a hard time answering them if they asked her about it.

At the same time, she also significantly reduced her daily meals, dividing the remaining rations among the five of them. She didn't make excuses like Gyoumei from Beiming Island, such as a small appetite. Instead, she had grown up living with everyone here, and besides eating a little more when she cooked, she usually ate the smallest of the five children. So, without her making excuses, Airi and the others just assumed she was a small eater.

After a month when food was not too scarce, neither Gyoumei Hirame nor the four children, Youta, Sho, Airi nor Sayo, were as thin as when she first came here. Especially Gyoumei Hirame, he had changed the most. He used to look like a skinny man who would fall down at the sight of the wind, but now his body seemed to be filled with air, and he looked much fuller.

"Mr. Beimingyu, do you have any plans for the future?"

After a night of heavy rain, the air in the mountains became fresher, but there was one thing that was not so good. The flooded mountain roads became muddy and very difficult to walk on.

Qingxi was carried on the back of Beimingyu Xingming and was not going anywhere else. He just went to the places where the traps were set to see if any prey fell into them last night.

Originally, Airi wanted to come along, but the road was too difficult to walk on, so Qingxi asked her to stay in the temple and make breakfast for everyone.

"As for me, I will continue to stay in the temple and practice." Beimingyu Xingming, who could walk steadily like a normal person even though he was blind, said without hesitation.

"Have you made any plans yet?" he asked.

"A little bit." Qingxi frowned and said with some distress. "My original plan was to rent a shop in town and open a restaurant when I had enough money.

I might not be very confident about other things, but when it comes to cooking, I think I’m pretty good at it.”

After living in the world of food explosion for so long, you would be laughed at if you still don’t have any cooking skills to show for yourself.

Qingxi thought silently in his heart.

What's more, she is the one who has mastered the complete book of recipes and the complete book of winemaking.

"Mr. Beimingyu will be in charge of the store for us, Airi and Sayaka will help out at home, and Youta and Sho will be responsible for purchasing the ingredients needed for the store every day... When I have enough money, I'm also thinking of sending them to school."

Learn more words, read more books, and understand how to be a good person... Especially Sayaka, stop doing things that let your teammates down.

"What about you?" asked Beimingyu Xingming.

Her plan had arrangements for everyone, but he didn't see her plan for himself.

"Me?" Qingxi, who could only see the back of Beiming Island Xingming's head, said confidently, "Of course I will continue to open my restaurant."

Isn't it better to just live a life of meager living? She'd been trying to return to her original world for over sixty years, but now there was no chance of going back. Furthermore, there were still man-eating ghosts in this world. To survive until Ah Tong returned, she naturally had to be as ordinary and inconspicuous as possible.

Oh, and ghosts are afraid of wisteria. Once she opens the shop, she can make it a specialty.

The specialties are wisteria flower cakes, wisteria flower tea, wisteria porridge, and wisteria cakes. If there is a place to plant a wisteria tree, she will definitely find a place to move one here.

She just didn't believe that even though she had armed her shop with wisteria flowers, ghosts would still come to her house.

"Aren't you going to school?" Beimingyu Xingming frowned.

No, no, I don't want to. Qingxi rejected them three times in her heart.

Did they not learn enough in the nine years of compulsory education, or did they not study hard enough in high school? Or did they not write enough graduation papers in college?

She was crazy to go back to the drawing board and start over again.

However, he didn't know about these sad things, and she couldn't explain to him that she was not a child, but an old woman in her seventies or eighties who had been pushed back to the pre-liberation era.

But, if she really asked herself to say it, she really couldn't say it. As I said, who would complain about getting younger as they get older?

"I'm not going." Qingxi said with a slightly vacant look in her eyes and a slightly vacant voice. "My family actually hired a teacher for me."

But the invisible Beimingyu Xingming misunderstood her voice.

Her premature maturity made her tend to consider things from an adult perspective.

She could even consider Youta, Sho, Airi, and Sayaka as her own responsibilities, and it was even possible that she included herself in the responsibilities so that she would put them first when planning her next goals.

Beimingyu Xingming felt that this was not acceptable.

At the very least, these are things that should be considered by an adult like me, and I can't let a child like her take over.

"If that day comes, Ah Xi, you should go to school too." Beimingyu Xingming said.

Qingxi stared at her in disbelief with her azure eyes.

No, no, no, she absolutely does not want to go back and be retrained by the teacher again. Mr. Beimingyu, at this time you should think about the four children you adopted, not her, a newcomer who has only been here for a month.

Qingxi shut up. She didn't want to talk about school anymore because she thought the other party would forget about it after a while.

.

When they arrived at the traps she had set, the top layer of leaves that had covered them had disappeared. Qingxi walked over to take a look and found that there was no prey inside. She thought that the top layer of leaves must have been blown down by the heavy rain last night.

The ground is very wet now, and it is not easy to find anything to cover the traps here. Qingxi just left them as they are. However, after a day or two when the rain here is dried by the sun, she plans to come back and cover them with leaves.

There was no prey. Qingxi looked down at her muddy straw sandals and said to Beimingyu Xingming, "Mr. Beimingyu, when I came here just now, I saw a lot of mushrooms growing in the grass. I want to pick some and take them back. I can dry them and eat them in the winter, or take them to the town to sell. They are very good."

Beiming Island Xingming hesitated: "Axi, can you identify mushrooms?"

If she couldn't identify them, or only had a general idea of ​​what they were, he wouldn't agree with her picking mushrooms, because it would be easy to pick poisonous mushrooms.

"Don't worry, I recognize it." Qingxi said confidently.

So Qingxi started picking mushrooms around.

Pick the mushrooms!

Chicken mushrooms, pick them!

Porcini, pick them!

Tea tree mushrooms, pick them!

There are also bamboo fungus, matsutake mushroom, black fungus, and ground lotus to pick.

In just a short while, Qingxi's small backpack was half full.

A large dark cloud in the sky completely blocked the sun, but Qingxi, who was busy picking mushrooms, did not notice it.

Qingxi picked the last bunch of tea tree mushrooms in the area where she was and put them in the basket on her back. She was about to move on. Suddenly, every part of her body was shouting at her that there was danger ahead, forcing her to rush to the side with the basket on her back.

Puff——

The moment Qingxi fell into the mud, her face was covered with mud and water, and most of the mushrooms she picked were scattered on the ground.

Qingxi felt heartbroken that the mushrooms she picked had fallen out, and at the same time, the sense of crisis that was screaming danger surged into her heart again. She was originally supporting herself on the ground with both hands, but in an instant she became shorter and fell to the ground.

"Axi, what's wrong with you? What happened?" Hearing the noise here, Beimingyu Xingming ran over like she was making a noise.

"Mr. Beimingyu, be careful. It's the same ghost as that night." Qingxi finally caught a glimpse of what was attacking him from the corner of his eye. He didn't have time to spit out the muddy water he drank because he lay down too quickly. He used a quick and clear voice to remind Beimingyu Xingming, who could not see anything.

She got up from the ground and looked up at the sky.

Grass!

Looking at the dark clouds above his head that blocked the sun, Qingxi cursed in his heart.

Damn it! There was no weather forecast, so she had to judge the weather herself. She thought it would be sunny, but who knew it would rain again.

What's even worse is that she didn't spray the fragrant wisteria perfume on herself today!

Qingxi got up from the ground and ran towards Beiming Island Xingmei, but how could a child's speed compare with that of a ghost.

She had just taken a step when a woman's hand with sharp nails grabbed the small backpack she was carrying and dragged her back.

"Meat...food...it's a little girl...so tender, what a great ingredient..."

The female ghost grabbed the small backpack's hand and lifted Qingxi up. Her face was very close to Qingxi, and her sticky tongue swept across her face from time to time, making her feel nauseous and a little cold.

It's not that she wants to be racist, but this female ghost smells very bad all over.

She glanced at her from the corner of her eye. Her hair, which should have been tied up in a bun, now hung down at her side in tangled strands like instant noodles. The original color of the clothes she wore could no longer be seen, but she recognized the ink-like stains of various sizes. That was the color of oxidized blood.

So, how many people had this female ghost eaten before her?

"Ah Xi." Beimingyu Xingming shouted loudly.

Qingxi realized that he needed to hear the sound to identify his direction.

At that moment, she called out the gourmet backpack that only she could see, and said, "Mr. Beimingyu, I, cough!"

The girl's voice just sounded and then quickly stopped.

Qingxi was about to take out her thirty-meter machete from her gourmet backpack and stopped there.

Bastard! Why did this guy just grab her neck without following the rules?!

What about the nonsense literature here in Japan?

Why the hell don’t you talk for ten more minutes before taking action?

Feeling the hand that was strangling her neck gradually tightening, Qingxi, who couldn't breathe, was still thinking in her mind. For example, she was thinking that she must look like a fairy at the moment with her eyes wide open and her face ferocious.

Brush——

The sound of a sharp blade cutting through flesh and breaking bones was heard.

The next moment, the girl, who was still being strangled by the female ghost, fell to the ground.

This time, in order to escape from the female ghost's hunting range as quickly as possible, she ran towards Beiming Island Xingming as soon as her feet touched the mud, and she also brought the half-cut-off arm of the female ghost with her.

But she didn't need to do anything. The severed half of the ghost girl's arm turned into ashes on its own.

The moment she met up with Xingming from Beiming Island, she was protected by him behind her.