"It's done! Girl! The cellar is done!"
Covered in mud and grime, Zhao Si climbed up from the entrance of the cellar, which was more than a meter deep. A big smile spread across his dark face, revealing two rows of white teeth.
Behind him, several other men, equally covered in dust and dirt, crawled out. Although they were panting heavily from exhaustion, their eyes shone with light.
Jiang Chan peered into the cellar. The space below was quite large, even deeper than she had expected. The floor was fairly level, and a small recess had been carved out on the side as a ventilation opening, just as she had requested.
A cool, damp air wafted over me, carrying a strong, earthy smell, but it felt dry.
"Well done." Jiang Chan nodded, offering a rare compliment. The crowd immediately swarmed around, chattering and peering down.
"It's really deep! It's chilly down there!"
"That's great! The vegetables won't wilt anymore!"
"Quick! Quickly move the carrots and potatoes down!"
Someone called out, leading several women, who carefully lowered baskets of freshly harvested radishes and potatoes, still covered in mud, along with some large, hardy tomatoes, into the depths of the cellar using ropes.
Seeing the food, a symbol of abundance, safely placed in the cool, earthen cellar, everyone breathed a long sigh of relief! The worry about food spoilage that had been weighing on their hearts was finally mostly relieved.
With a safe place for the grains and vegetables, Jiang Chan's gaze fell on the large iron pots set up in the open air in the center of the camp.
The smoke and dust from cooking make it unhygienic and unappealing.
“Starting tomorrow,” Jiang Chan pointed to a relatively flat open space by the river, “we’ll build a kitchen there. We’ll build a stove, construct walls, and put up a roof to keep out the rain.”
"Alright, girl!" Zhao Si had just caught his breath when he immediately perked up again. "I'm an expert at building stoves! My dad used to be a bricklayer!"
"We can build walls too! We just need yellow mud and straw!"
"We've woven the thatched roof very sturdily!"
The crowd was enthusiastic. With the successful experience of building cellars, everyone had confidence in building houses.
Many hands make light work, and this simple adobe brick-making job actually felt familiar and comforting to them. Some dug the soil, some mixed the mud, some moved stones, and some felled sturdy saplings to serve as beams and supports... With so many hands working together, they completed the task in just two days! A neat, simple kitchen stood by the river!
Three stoves, built with pebbles as bases and a mixture of yellow mud and straw, stood side by side against the wall. The fireboxes were spacious and well-ventilated. The walls were plastered smooth with mud, rough but able to block the wind. The roofs were covered with several thick layers of woven thatch, making them completely waterproof.
"Let's test the fire!" Someone eagerly stuffed a few pieces of firewood into the stove. Flames leaped up, licking the cold bottom of the pot, and smoke drifted out of the roof through the pre-installed chimney without any backflow!
"Great! That's really great!"
"Cooking is so much more comfortable now!"
That evening, everyone cooked a sumptuous meal in the new kitchen.
The freshly cooked rice is steaming hot, and the stew is bubbling in a clean iron pot.
Although they were still eating outdoors, watching the smoke rise from the roof of the new kitchen and smelling the aroma of food that was free of dust, everyone felt a sense of peace and security.
After a hearty meal, we gathered around the campfire to digest. Our mouths were filled with the satisfaction of food, and our hearts were filled with the growing sense of security of our new home.
It was late at night. Jiang Chan sat alone on the stone in front of the stove in the new kitchen, where unburnt charcoal still emitted residual warmth.
Grain: Plenty of food, enough to last a long time. Vegetables: Greenhouses and cellars, a continuous supply. Water: Deep wells, clean water, never running dry.
Only the meat... in the corner of the space, the mountain of meat reserves had visibly shrunk.
Although the amount of meat she was rewarded with for her previous missions was enormous, she could only sit and eat it all up eventually!
Jiang Chan's post-apocalyptic survival rules told her that she must establish a stable and sustainable source of income! Raise chickens! Raise pigs! Raise sheep! Chickens lay eggs, eggs hatch into chickens… pigs have piglets, piglets grow up… this is the long-term solution! She's going to get into animal husbandry!
The next day, Jiang Chan began to consciously linger around Chen Yan.
Chen Yan was leading a few people to reinforce the foundation of the wall when Jiang Chan walked over, pretending to check on the progress.
“This wall… is alright,” Jiang Chan said, making conversation. “If we keep some animals here, they won’t have to worry about them running away.”
Chen Yan: "?"
He looked at Jiang Chan with a puzzled expression, not understanding what the height of the wall had to do with raising things.
"Hmm... keeping things is good," Chen Yan replied, following the conversation. "What kind of things?"
“Chickens, pigs and stuff…” Jiang Chan said casually, “Chickens lay eggs, pigs grow meat… It’s so nice to have fresh meat and eggs to eat every day.”
“Yes!” A man named Shuanzhu overheard this and his eyes lit up as he chimed in, “My family used to raise five speckled chickens! They laid eggs every day! And those eggs were so oily!”
"Pigs are good too! They're fattened up and slaughtered for the New Year, they smell amazing!" another man chimed in. "They're easy to raise,"
Jiang Chan didn't reply, but stared intently at Chen Yan, muttering to herself in a voice that was neither too loud nor too soft: "Chicks...piglets...preferably hens that can lay eggs, sows that can give birth...lambs will also be fine..."
Chen Yan: "..."
Looking at Jiang Chan's "serious" contemplation and muttering, and recalling the previous topic, his heart skipped a beat! This familiar scene! This familiar muttering! Last time she muttered about "seeds" and "well," and then... Chen Yan suddenly had a flash of inspiration!
He immediately cleared his throat and, in a very "natural" tone, joined in Jiang Chan's "mutterings": "Miss Jiang is right! With grain and land, it would be a waste not to raise some livestock! Hens can lay eggs, sows can have piglets, and lambs can be milked when they grow up! This is the long-term solution! Unfortunately... good chicks and piglets, especially good breeding piglets, are really hard to find... If only we could conjure up a few broods of healthy chicks and a few lively piglets out of thin air..."
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