After Chen Mei finally blocked the leaking gaps with cloth strips, a drop of rain fell from above. Not only Chen Mei was drenched, but also Lin Rui, who was sitting in the corner, was drenched.
I almost forgot that this teahouse has a second floor, but no one has gone up there. The wind and rain are particularly strong at night, and I can hear the sound of doors and windows being blown to the ground.
The biting cold wind blew from all directions in the teahouse, and the cold rain that almost soaked everyone's faces made the cold even worse.
It has been less than three months since they fled the famine, which means that the people of Baixing Town have been away for less than three months. How come, as soon as they left, this place has become a dilapidated building, as if it had been in disrepair for ten or eight years?
Lin Rui's hair was soaked in just a short while, and water was dripping down like a drowned chicken.
The situation of others was not much better. Feng Zhenniang took out the only oil-paper umbrella in the house to cover Lin Erjie and Niuniu Mutou who were holding Qingqing. Lin Dajie and her husband and sister-in-law were also ready to tear off their clothes and follow Chen Mei's example to block the leaking rain.
Lin Rui thought of the several rainproof sheets in their family's luggage. They relied on them to survive the rainy days in Lianshan before. Later, when they left, they put them back in the car.
Isn’t it used again now?
"Hurry, Dad, brother-in-law, find the rainproof cloth we used on the mountain before and give two to each family. There are only three people in the Fang family, so we can just make do with it." Lin Rui got up and went to the ox cart to look for the things. The things were put in place by Feng Zhenniang. In order to prevent her son from scattering the things she had arranged, she quickly handed the oil-paper umbrella to Mu Tou to hold and came forward to help.
Before Lin Changhe and Lin Changfa made their fortunes, when they were in Lianshan, they knew that only in the shacks of the clan leader and the village head could they sleep peacefully until dawn without any leaks.
I thought the shelter was well built and filled with enough moss and lichen, but I never thought they had such a good thing.
Now that his family had been assigned one of the teahouses, he immediately used the uneven textured edges on the teahouse wall to fix a rainproof cloth about the size of a bed sheet. Although it was a bit crowded with seven or eight people in his family, the annoying dripping water finally couldn't hit him.
Brothers Gao Yumin and Gao Yuliang and their families also looked at the waterproof cloth above their heads in amazement. It felt light when they picked it up, and it looked like cotton on the outside, but ordinary cotton cloth would drip water once it got wet. This rainproof cloth used by the patriarch of the Lin family was magical. There was a sound of dripping water above their heads, but an hour had passed and they were not wetted by a drop of water.
Winter fell instantly on the first night we arrived in Baixing Town. The storm lasted for two hours and seemed to stop only around midnight.
However, even with the fire, everyone still felt cold in the middle of the night and were woken up by the cold.
"Why is it so cold?" Gao Yuliang's daughter Gao Yuan couldn't help muttering as she tried hard to warm her hands by blowing out air.
Gao Yuliang's nose was running from the cold, and his butt seemed to be numb from the cold sitting on the ground.
"Yeah, it's really cold. Is it raining or snowing?"
The others who were woken up by the cold also murmured and added a handful of firewood to the firewood pile.
"Oh, the firewood is almost gone!" Lin Zikun saw that there were only one or two sticks left at the firewood storage area: "What should we do? We will freeze to death without firewood!"
The firewood that was moved into the teahouse in advance was all the dry firewood left in the backyard of the teahouse. I was so busy when I came in that I didn't expect the weather to be so cold. I only brought enough firewood for everyone to cook, and didn't even consider firewood for heating.
It's really not easy for this fire to last until now. But even if I want to go to the backyard to get firewood, it's too late. It has been raining for so long that the firewood is soaked and there is no way it can be lit.
"It will be a hard night without firewood!" Lin Changfa also sighed.
Seeing his people like this, Lin Rui couldn't help but feel angry. He pointed at his head and said, "What's the purpose of having a head on your head? It's for thinking, for finding solutions! What's the point of complaining and making sarcastic remarks when you encounter difficulties? Find a way to solve it!"
"Look at this teahouse. Aren't the tables, chairs, and counters all made of wood? You have an axe, right? You have a hatchet? Chopping up one or two tables is enough to keep us burning until dawn."
Lin Zijun and Lin Changfa woke up as if from a dream, and said with an embarrassed look: "The clan leader is really smart."
After saying that, he took the ox cart from the cart and started chopping wood.
"Hey? Do you listen? Is it snowing outside? Why do I feel like there is a rustling sound!" Gao Ze'an put his ear close to the wall of the teahouse, trying to hear more clearly.
Lin Changfa and Lin Zijun also stopped chopping wood and listened attentively.
There would be no rustling sound when it really snowed. To Lin Rui, it sounded like fine sand particles hitting the tiles outside the house. It must be hail outside.
Lin Ziming was a restless person. He pushed the door of the teahouse open a little, reached out to catch the snowflakes, and the snowflakes melted into his palm and turned into water droplets.
Surprised, “It’s really snowing!”
It’s really hard to imagine that I was scorching hot on the road yesterday, but the temperature dropped sharply and it started snowing the night I arrived in Baixing Town.
Just like when they arrived at the border between the south and north mountains of Lianshan, the alternation between heavy rain and scorching heat was so sudden, and now the scorching heat and extreme cold can also switch in a second.
This year's abnormal weather has completely eliminated spring and autumn, leaving people with only the intuitive feeling of cold and heat.
No wonder it was so cold, it turned out to be snowing. No one had the heart to sleep, so they immediately braved the wind and snow to dig out winter clothes from the carts and wheelbarrows. Without the sun, everyone simply built wooden racks by the fire using the tables and chairs in the teahouse to dry the clothes.
In ancient times, most farmers' winter clothes were made of linen and multicolored furs, and very few people could afford cotton. In the original owner's memory, the Lin family usually wore all the clothes they could wear all year round during the winter, after all, they were poor.
Lin Rui didn't expect that in just two or three months, the weather in Baixing Town would get cold so quickly. If he had known this earlier, he would have bought some cotton from Longting Town.
When Lin Zao Zao was brought back from Jiang's house by Lin Rui, she was carrying a small bag with only two sets of clothes. Even if she put on all of them, she still couldn't keep out the cold, not to mention that Qingqing was too young. In the end, Lin Erjie's clothes were all used to keep Qingqing warm.
I'm afraid that the only one who is having a better time here now is Sister Lin's family, because her brother-in-law Zhao Qing is a hunter. In addition to pickled meat and bacon, the most abundant thing in his house is fur.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
