The next day, Yunling and Yunruoxia went up the mountain to find tung oil trees, as they needed to degrease the cotton. Alkali water would be a good help. Fortunately, tung oil trees were not hard to find, and they saw them as soon as they got up the mountain.
Unlike those large, thick-branched trees, this tung tree was only as thick as an arm. Yunling swung her axe downwards and chopped it in the middle, then split its horizontal branches.
Seeing Yun Ling's method of cutting the tree, Yun Ruoxia imitated her, "Ling-jie, are you using this tree to make that lye water? Is it necessary to use lye water?"
"Hmm... you can also use salt diluted with water, but I don't know how effective it would be. I think alkaline water would be better."
"Then let's use alkaline water to avoid unnecessary trouble. Shouldn't cutting down two more be enough?"
"Of course it's not enough. If you burn this little bit of tung oil to ash, the amount of alkaline water produced is less than what a girl uses to urinate once."
Yun Ruoxia immediately felt a pain in her hands and arms. This kind of tool for sharpening knives and chopping wood should have been left to her older sister.
Seeing her aunt's miserable state, Yunling couldn't help but secretly chuckle. If her aunt weren't around, she could have easily wiped out an entire mountain by herself using her supernatural abilities. Now that she was being watched, she naturally had to consider Yun Ruoxia's speed and couldn't have her fill.
The two chopped the tung trees until noon, when Yun Ruoxia hurriedly shook her head and said she couldn't chop them anymore. Yun Ling saw that there were about a hundred pounds of tung trees on the ground, so she gave up. She and Yun Ruoxia dragged and pulled each other back and forth several times before they finally carried all the chopped tung trees to their doorstep.
Zhang had just finished cooking, and there were still some unburnt firewood sticks in the stove. Yunling quickly used tongs to take them out, ran a few steps and put them into the tung tree branches. But before they could burn for long, the whole pile of branches emitted a little bit of white smoke and then went out.
Yunling hurriedly ran inside to ask Zhang for a flint and steel. Zhang, puzzled, stepped to the door to look, and what she saw made Yunling burst out laughing.
"Ling-jie, Ling-jie, there's finally something you don't know how to do, isn't there?"
“Mother, teach me quickly, I want to burn all of these to ashes.”
"It takes at least half an hour to burn these to ashes, and the branches must be arranged properly, leaving space between the leaves and the sticks, so that the fire can burn brighter and brighter."
Zhang didn't linger. She ran into the kitchen, took out a flint and steel and some rice straw. She mixed the rice straw into the branches, and then she clattered the flint and steel together in her hands. The sparks landed on the rice straw and burst into flames.
Zhang then produced some rice straw, took the fire, and placed it at the other end of the pile of branches. Once the fires at both ends were burning brightly, he added more branches and leaves, repeating this process twice. All the tung tree branches were piled into a small mountain, with billowing white smoke rising straight up into the sky from the middle, making the sky and the earth seem to be connected in a line.
After Yunling finished eating the preserved meat rice and drinking the pork rib soup, and after she scooped the beef tendon out of the bucket and handed it to her father to pound, the small hill gradually disappeared, leaving behind a pile of ash and charcoal.
Yunling used the broom to clear away the pile of ash and charcoal. In just a few moments, the broom head was blackened by the smoke. Seeing this from afar, Yunling's mother became very anxious and, despite being hungry, hurried back.
"Hey you little rascal, you're going to ruin my family heirloom broom."
"Grandma, what family heirloom broom? You've broken so many brooms by scaring Grandpa with them."
Grandma Yun snatched the broom away and put it back in its place. "You can't use it like that. If you break it, you'll have to replace it with a new one. Why don't you just use a shovel to clear away the ash and charcoal? When you need to collect it, you can just use the shovel to sweep it up. It'll save you a lot of effort."
"Grandma, I don't know how."
Grandma Yun clicked her tongue and pulled an iron shovel from the woodshed. As she spoke, she used the shovel to shovel away the ash and charcoal. "Look, just shovel it like this, and it'll be fine. It's so simple, how could you not know how?"
"But I just can't do it."
"You silly boy."
Grandma Yun thought that since they were already digging it open, they might as well do it all, letting the embers still glowing inside burn completely, so they wouldn't have to get up so many times at night to check.
But while busy, he forgot about his hunger. It wasn't until he finished and put the spatula away that his stomach started growling and he finally came to his senses. He ate three bowls of preserved meat rice before he was satisfied.
Yunling looked at the ash and charcoal that had been shoveled away and secretly chuckled. It seemed that her aunt's naiveté was inherited from her grandmother.
Before going to bed, Yunling checked the ash and saw that it had burned cleanly and turned to ash with a pinch, so she felt at ease and went back to her room to sleep. She wasn't worried that anyone would steal or tamper with it. Generally, wood ash is used for menstrual blood, and people usually avoid things related to women's scent and wouldn't have any bad intentions.
After daybreak, Yunling set up a grid frame, laid a filter cloth on the top of the grid, and placed a wooden basin at the bottom to collect the alkali water.
While Yun Chu and Yun Ruochun were rushing to the private school, she used an iron shovel to scoop up the ashes at the door, put the ashes into a filter cloth, and then poured hot water that Zhang had boiled onto them until they were thoroughly soaked.
When Yun Shenghua got up for breakfast, light yellow water droplets passed through the filter cloth to the grid frame and dripped into the wooden basin below. After the water settled and stood still, it became usable alkaline water.
Taking advantage of this free time, Yunling put everything she could find at home, including a wooden basin she borrowed from Granny Fan's house, into the yard. Then, she and Zhang took all the cotton from the burlap sack and put it into the wooden basin to soak it in water.
For breakfast, they had congee and mushroom buns. The mushrooms smelled delicious, and Yunling ate five in one go. She let out a satisfied burp, and amidst the sound of her father pounding the beef tendons, she and Yun Ruoxia, still munching on their buns, scooped up the cotton and put it into two large pots in the kitchen. They surrounded the pots with thick cotton cloth, increased the heat of the stove, and cooked for about fifteen and a half minutes before reducing the heat.
After it has cooled completely, take it out and put it in a wooden basin to rinse it with plenty of water. The remaining cotton is also steamed and rinsed in the same way.
Yunling temporarily left this step to Yun Ruoxia and Zhang Shi, and went up the mountain to gather medicinal herbs herself.
She wanted to make menstrual pads to regulate menstrual disorders, so she planned to make them into herbal extracts and soak cotton in them.
Women already have it tough, and menstruation is easily affected by all aspects of the body. Using traditional Chinese medicine can greatly improve immunity or hormones, thereby changing the constitution, just as soaking feet in hot water can relieve menstrual cramps.
This type of menstrual irregularity is mostly due to excessive liver fire, heat forcing blood, or qi stagnation and blood stasis, lower abdominal distension and pain, and irritability and palpitations.
As Yunling muttered about her symptoms, she gathered the corresponding herbs. She could only treat the symptoms, not cure them completely, especially for those with polycystic ovary syndrome or fibroids. They needed to be more careful about their temper and see a doctor and follow their advice.
After returning home from gathering herbs, Yun Ruoxia and Zhang had already washed the cotton clean, and Yun Ling then soaked it all in alkaline water.
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