Chapter 2 Chapter 2 What to eat on the first day?
Gong Zhili quickly returned to the house. It was too late, and even if she could see clearly at night, she didn't want to stay in the wild. Before entering the house, she broke off a branch and brought it back indoors.
She wasn't quite sure what kind of agreement the curse master and the village chief had reached, but she found the contract tucked inside the quilt—coming back to the point, the curse master was really a bit rash in his actions.
Gong Zhili unfolded the document bag and browsed the contract terms. She was speechless after reading it. She had thought that this person was a fraud before, but after reading it, if she hadn't known that the curse master wanted to sacrifice the people in the village, she would have thought that this person was really a complete injustice.
She bought all the land in the village, but she didn't want the houses that had been built on the land, the cultivated fields, and other properties belonging to the villagers. The villagers could even still fish from the upper reaches of the river and hunt in the mountains to pick wild vegetables and fruits. It seemed that the curser really didn't consider the possibility of these villagers being alive.
As for the ambiguous description in the contract of "assisting villagers in obtaining more and better harvests from the land", she guessed that the curse master's cover was probably that she served a god such as "the god of harvest", "the god of rice lotus" or "the god of Amaterasu".
No wonder they were able to collect all these deeds in such a short time, they seem to be using the same cult tricks.
——She still remembered this insignificant bit of folk knowledge, but the most crucial part was lost.
For her now, the rest of the land in the village belongs to her and no one else can develop it. This is not bad - she can't starve to death in this village.
Judging from the expressions of the villagers when she first arrived here, this clause in the contract might be fulfilled by accident.
Your harvest is the power that she cannot take back at the moment!
After reading the contract, she thought for a moment and decided to put it in the briefcase. She picked up a nearby branch and used it to hold up the briefcase. The branch suddenly came to life and began to grow branches, pushing the briefcase up to the ceiling. The branches swayed, and aerial roots grew that stuck to the wooden ceiling. Then the branches closed together and turned the same color as the ceiling. After hiding the briefcase, she took out the diary again, made sure she had memorized everything, and then, with force in her hand, crushed the entire book.
No movement, the notebook is intact.
Here it comes again, the situation where the "common sense" in my mind does not match the current situation has appeared again.
Gong Zhili threw the notebook at the branch that was shrinking back in frustration: "Can I eat it?"
The branches trapped the diary, stretched out their thin branches and tore the diary into pieces, then suddenly closed them, and the paper fragments turned the color of bark and melted into the branches.
Now she was the only one without food.
She wasn't hungry yet, as she felt that the land was constantly providing her with something - but just because she wasn't hungry, she couldn't stop herself from wanting to eat.
She walked to the west door. If she entered from the west door, there was a corridor through the entrance hall. On the left side of the corridor was the kitchen, and on the right side was a shoji archway that turned into the living room. The archway and the kitchen door were opposite each other.
She opened the kitchen door and fell silent.
It was a stone stove, and the floor was paved with large, flat stone bricks.
She made another note in her mind: I'll go for a walk around the village tomorrow. Now that we have mobile phones and electricity, it doesn't make sense for the villagers to still live a basic farming life.
She knew how to use the stone stove. In fact, if she were placed in the wild, she should be able to build the simplest stove. But she already had a house to live in, so why did she still need such primitive furniture?
When her hands touched the stone hearth, her thoughts changed.
There is no other reason. The stones used to build this stone stove are sourced locally and are also very spiritual - they have absorbed her power.
In her common sense, this kind of object that can absorb power and respond to thoughts is called a "spirit", right?
She seemed to have never seen any spirit-like objects, but why did this common sense exist in her mind?
Forget it, since the size of the stove fire can be controlled by her mind, and both gas stoves and natural gas stoves in the village have time limits, it is better to rely on the mountain and use dead branches and firewood directly.
This rectangular stone stove is about two meters long, with a separate combustion chamber at each end. The right-hand chamber is larger, with a large iron pot that looks like it can cook anything. There's an iron gate for adding firewood. Above the left, slightly lower chamber, there's a pot holder with a medium-sized iron pot. The other two smaller pot holders hold an iron kettle and a small steamer. A hidden slot connects the adjacent pots in the top of the chamber, ensuring that any residual heat can be utilized. The stone stove's chimney faces the large east-facing window, which is located in the recessed space of the house. There's no overhead obstruction, making it a perfect place for exhausting cooking fumes.
From this perspective, this big stone stove is much more useful than she thought.
There is a double-layer wooden shelf against the wall on the other side of the kitchen. It is covered with dust and should still be usable after wiping it. On the other side of the stove is a cabinet for dishes. When I opened it and took a look, I saw that everything was complete and the cabinet was intact and usable.
She found tableware and kitchen utensils in the kitchen cabinet. It seemed that the curse master was planning to stay in the village for a while, so the kitchen was relatively well stocked.
Looking at the rice, vegetables and seasonings in the kitchen, she thought of the simple bedding outside and felt a little complicated: How could the accommodation be so sloppy?
She followed the curser's train of thought and thought that the other party might want to occupy a villager's home directly after the ceremony.
With vegetables, seasonings and rice, she felt that it would not be a problem for her to stir-fry vegetables and stew rice.
Wash the rice, turn on the fire, and steam the rice; wash the vegetables, cut the cabbage, smash the garlic, light the fire, and pour the oil.
Gong Zhili observed the state of the oil in the pot and thought: "Turn up the fire."
The crackling sound of the firewood in the stove became louder and smoke began to rise from the pot. Gong Zhili smiled, poured the garlic in, and then confidently poured all the cabbage into the pot.
Smoke instantly rose from the iron pot, choking Gong Zhili so much that she couldn't see clearly what was inside the pot. She tentatively used a spatula to stir it a few times before she remembered to turn the stone stove to low heat.
Unfortunately, it was too late. After the fire was subsided, the cabbage in the pot was burnt. She tasted a piece of cabbage leaf and her expression twisted for a moment.
It's full of mushy smell, dry and hard. Is this cabbage?
It turns out that her cooking skills are not that good, no wonder she doesn’t feel skilled when cutting vegetables. But where does this illusion that “cooking is not difficult” come from?
Wait, her rice!
She lifted the lid on her left hand side, examined the state of the rice and water, put the lid back on, and patted the stone stove: Cook for me well.
The flames in the stove flickered and then calmed down, as if protesting her distrust of herself.
"Okay, it takes time to get used to each other." Gong Zhili said to the stove, "Then I'll leave it to you to control the heat when we stir-fry the cabbage later."
Although there are many key points in cooking, the most important thing now is to make something edible.
Improving her cooking skills should also be put on the agenda. She doesn't want to keep treating her taste buds badly.
The fried cabbage was out of the pot and the rice was quickly steamed. She sat on the small wooden stool in the kitchen and ate a bite of the second plate of cabbage she had fried.
It’s okay, a little bland, but at least it doesn’t taste burnt.
After fooling around a bit, she cleaned up the dishes and found that there was no detergent in the kitchen, so she used the wood ash from the stove instead. By the way, she collected the excess wood ash in a dry wooden barrel - wood ash has so many uses and should not be wasted at all.
After collecting the wood ash, Gong Zhili stood up and thought about another pressing problem: there was not even dishwashing detergent at home, so would there be any toiletries?
She sighed, walked out of the kitchen, passed through the archway, and turned into the living room. On the west side of the living room was a bathroom with separate wet and dry areas. The bathroom was very large, and there was a door leading to the balcony on the south side. Outside the balcony was a semicircular open space, and looking down, there were several terraces of the same shape.
Gong Zhili closed the door and found the washing machine under the closet in the corridor between the living room and the bathroom.
What a civilized object!
Gong Zhili was moved by the washing machine.
She opened the closet and thought that if there was a washing machine, there should also be laundry detergent or laundry powder, right?
——Only a small can.
Is this kind of thing also going to take over the villagers?
After Miya Chiri had a rough idea of the inventory in the house, he stood beside the small piece of tatami and began to write a memo.
She didn't plan to leave the village until all her memories were restored, so she had to use local materials in the village for many things - for those things she had to buy, she would first borrow some from the villagers, or look for plants such as soapberry, cypress, soapberry, mugwort, and mint. If she really couldn't find them, she also knew how to use wood ash solution for simple cleaning, and rice water was also fine... No, no, no, it shouldn't come to this.
...Anyway, just write it down on the cleaning supplies first.
Then there were towels, new clothes, toothpaste and toothbrushes. She needed to find someone to help her purchase these things outside the village. Although she still had some money in her account, she didn't want to use the curse master's account at the moment. As for cash, she took out about 50,000 yen from her clothes. This was all her cash reserves.
She walked around the house and found a lot of useful things. She didn't know when her memory would be restored, so she had to make long-term plans. There were many things she was missing.
There was a lot of land near the house and on the other side of the lake. She'd seen things growing on it before. She didn't know who had planted it, but it should belong to her, along with the land. She needed to prepare a set of basic farm tools. Speaking of farm tools—her memories of this were particularly vivid! She thought she must have been a large farmer before she lost her memory, right?
She walked out of the west door and walked down the stone steps to the right. There was a large warehouse there. There was a ladder next to it that led to the second floor, where some things seemed to be stored. On the other side of the warehouse was a large stone mill. When she entered the warehouse, she found only a wall lamp, so she went back home and got a lighter from the kitchen to light a fire - she was still not used to seeing things in the dark.
The wall lamp was lit. She was not surprised to see dust and cobwebs in every corner of the warehouse. She focused on searching for tools: a plow, a shovel, a hatchet, a hoe, a rake, a pickaxe, a bucket, a shoulder pole, a sickle, a sprayer... There were quite a lot of things. The tools were placed on the left side of the warehouse entrance. To the right and further inside were bundles of firewood and straw stacks. Were these things prepared by a previous owner of the house?
It seems that tidying up the warehouse is also a big project.
Gong Zhili smiled bitterly: Once you enter a full-fledged farming life, there will be so much to do.
She turned off the lights and left the barn, deciding to climb up the rocks next to the barn to get around to the main entrance of the house and take the stairs up to the second floor - there was no other way, if she went in again, it would be a bit troublesome to go through the house and then out.
She stood under the stone and said to the rose bush growing on it, "Give me a hand."
There was a rustling sound, and the flower branches hanging from above were very thick. It seemed that they were nourished by her power and grew particularly strong. Gong Zhili grabbed the flower branch, and then felt a strong force lifting her up into the air.
Um?
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