Chapter 71
After nearly a year of stagnation, Yangshan Village has finally come back to life.
The most notorious bullies of the villagers of Yangshan were hacked to death by the enraged villagers. The elderly and women, lacking strength, also beat the immobilized fugitive, who was bound in the courtyard. Over a hundred people took turns punching and kicking him, and before long, the fugitive, who had been struggling on the ground, was barely clinging to life.
Seeing that most of the villagers had left, Ashun walked up to the village chief, whispered something in his ear, and kept glancing at Tong Shu.
Tong Shu guessed that Ashun was explaining to the village chief that he would exchange grain for their help, and he stood with his hands down, letting the old village chief look him over.
Before long, the old village chief arrived with Ah Shun. His eyes were filled with tears, and before he even reached Tong Shu, he knelt down on both knees. Tong Shu was caught off guard, and several people spontaneously went to help the old man who looked to be in his seventies.
"Thanks to you all, you are truly our village's saviors!" the old man said in a broken dialect.
Seeing their puzzled expressions, Ah Shun offered to translate for them.
"It's alright, we're not helping for nothing," Tong Shu said.
The old village chief wiped his eyes with his withered, rough hands. After listening to Ah Shun's story, he turned and called over a middle-aged man, then gave him a few instructions.
Upon hearing the old village chief's words, the man's previously excited expression suddenly turned cold, and his gaze towards Tong Shu and the others became unfriendly.
"You want all the grain in our village?" A woman holding a child also heard the old village chief's words. She glared at him and walked over, asking in an unfriendly tone.
Tong Shu shrugged and pointed at Ashun: "He was the one who proposed it. I thought he could represent your village. Now that we've done a good job, if your village wants to renege on the debt, there's nothing we can do."
"Of course he can't! He's..."
"Ah Yan! Shut up! It's not your turn to speak now!" The old village chief, who had just been wiping away tears, turned to the disgruntled villagers and his face turned angry. "What are you worried about now? We can plant more grain! They saved our lives!" The old village chief then looked at his son with disappointment: "Stubborn mule, go and get the grain out!"
Although Tong Shu didn't quite understand what the old village chief was saying, she could roughly understand that those who had objected had reluctantly gone to the cave after being reprimanded by him. She looked at the old village chief with a hint of respect in her eyes.
This old man, who had spent his entire life in the mountains, was not as ignorant as she had imagined. No wonder he could still sit firmly in the position of village chief at his advanced age.
The villagers carried the grain out of the cave one bag at a time. During this time, Ashun sat next to the old village chief the whole time without leaving. The old village chief frequently looked at Tong Shu and the others, nodding respectfully every now and then.
After a while, Ah Shun got up and came over. He scratched his head sheepishly and asked, "I still don't know your names."
“We are all one family, and our surname is Hua,” Tong Shu said.
“Then, I’ll call you Sister Hua,” Ah Shun said.
Tong Shu nodded.
"Sister Hua, the village chief heard that you parked your car outside and asked you to bring it in. There are a lot of vines in the mountains, so you'll have to wrap the car up again soon," Ashun said.
Tong Shu thought about it and realized it made sense; even without the vines, they would still have to sleep in the car at night. So she had her two uncles go with some villagers to get the car, and the little girl who had come back from the forest with them the day before was leading the way. Tong Shu felt quite at ease with that.
However, what Tong Shu was most curious about was why the people of Yangshan Village could remain normal under the toxic fumes of the poisonous mushrooms. Thinking this, she asked Ashun the same question.
Ah Shun scratched his head, a little embarrassed: "I don't know either, we're completely clueless."
"Is there anything you've eaten or used that these people don't have?" Wang Jie joined in, his tone more urgent than Tong Shu's, having been harmed by poison gas once before.
"...If that's the case..." Ah Shun stroked his chin, deep in thought, when suddenly a flash of inspiration struck him: "I know! It must be Lala Vine!"
Tong Shu frowned and repeated, "Lala vine? What's that?"
“Sister Hua, you don’t know, these people are guarding our food. They only give each family two bowls of rice a day. With just that little bit of rice, my family of three—my grandma, my grandpa, and I—can’t even get enough to eat, let alone families with children. So we have to cut vines by the outhouse to eat.”
Upon hearing the word "latrine," Tong Shu's expression instantly became indescribable.
Ashun was still saying, "This vine loves to grow by the outhouse, and it grows incredibly fast! In the past, every household used to cut it to feed the pigs, but for the past six months, our village has been eating it as our main food."
Wang Jie was really curious and wanted to ask more, but Ah Shun's grandmother came over and pointed at his clothes, speaking in her dialect.
Ah Shun smiled sheepishly at them: "Grandma told me to go home and change my clothes. Sister Hua, Brother Hua, wait a minute. I'll pick one out and show it to you when I come over."
"Okay, go ahead." Tong Shu waved to him.
There was so much grain stored in the cave in Yangshan Village that a group of people carried it for quite a while, and a small mountain of grain had already been piled up outside the courtyard. The grain in the cave was still not all moved.
A woman, reluctant to part with the grain, went over and whispered a few words to the old village chief. After listening, the old village chief hesitated for a moment, then nodded and led her to find Tong Shu.
"Hey, young lady, do you need any meat to eat?" the woman asked nervously as she approached the old village chief.
"Meat? You raise livestock?!" Tong Shu's eyes lit up.
"Yes, yes, we raised quite a few pigs, ducks, and chickens in the mountain valley to the north. Many of them ran away last year, but there should still be quite a few left," the woman said honestly.
Tong Shu and the others hadn't had fresh meat in a long time, and they were getting a little hungry. She swallowed a bite without making a sound and asked, "Okay, how do you plan to exchange it?"
"There are only five of you. You can't finish this much grain even after several years. Otherwise, you can leave half of it to us and we'll exchange it for ten pigs."
The conditions were surprisingly good, which made Tong Shu somewhat suspicious. However, the woman's thinking was simple: raising pigs was easier than growing crops. Usually, the children in the family could go to the mountains to cut some pig feed to feed the pigs. But crops were precious and needed to be watched over every day. She was still hesitant when she proposed ten pigs.
Anyway, since the grain was essentially free, Tong Shu didn't care what they were thinking. She wasn't going to lose out, so she readily agreed. Finally, she pointed to the grain pile and said, "Leave us ten bags of rice. As for the rest, see what poultry you have and catch some for us."
The women happily agreed and immediately told the men to carry the grain back. However, this time they weren't carrying it to the cave. The old village chief had given the order for each family to carry the grain back according to the number of people in their household.
"Our grain was stolen from house to house by that group of people. Now that the grain has been returned, the village chief has distributed it back to us." A man carrying sacks of grain passed by Tong Shu and, seeing Tong Shu staring at him, he spoke up to explain.
Tong Shu nodded. The villagers were so hungry they were eating wild grass, and their thirst for food was self-evident.
At this moment, Ah Shun also changed into a clean set of clothes and ran over. His face was beaming, and he was holding a handful of green vines in his hand: "Sister Hua, this is it." He handed the vines to Tong Shu, "You have to be careful, there are small thorns on the leaves, you might prick your hand if you're not careful."
Tong Shu took it and looked at it, but didn't recognize it. She then handed the vine to Wang Jie. Wang Jie didn't know much about this either. He examined it carefully for a while and then put it in his bag, planning to ask Butuo to take a look that evening.
Seeing that there was nothing more for him to do, Ah Shun skipped off to move the grain that belonged to their family.
Tong Shu and the other two sat down to rest. There was a camphor tree right above them, and it looked like it had been there for a long time, unlike the giant tree that had grown recently. After waiting for a long time under the shade of the old camphor tree, Wang Jianye and the others finally drove over.
Tong Shu stood up, patted his bottom, and walked towards the cart with a bag of grain in one hand: "Uncle, those bags of grain over there are for us. I traded the rest with them for pigs and other poultry."
"Oh? They even raise pigs?" Qin Jiaqiang found it rather surprising: "How can livestock survive in this kind of weather?"
"That's really impressive," Wang Jianye said.
They thought they wouldn't see the first pig in the apocalypse until tomorrow, but unexpectedly, Ah Shun knocked on their car door that evening. He brought over two huge pig legs and handed them to Wang Jie with difficulty: "The village chief said that today is a good day, so he sent someone to catch a pig in the mountain valley to slaughter. These are two hind legs, the meat is firm, and I brought them here for you to eat."
The pig leg was washed spotless, not a single hair could be seen, indicating that someone had carefully cleaned it. Tong Shucheng accepted the favor, turned around, and took two packets of instant noodles from the car to give it to him: "Thank you for your hard work."
When Ah Shun saw the instant noodles, his eyes lit up: "Thank you so much, Sister Hua!" Before the fugitive went into the mountains, these things from outside the mountains had to be brought in by people who ran around selling goods. His family was poor, and he had seen these instant noodles a few times in people's small trucks, but he couldn't bear to buy them. He didn't expect that this time he would get two packs for free after they sent him two pig legs.
Ah Shun's smile became even more genuine. He thanked Tong Shu repeatedly, clutching the instant noodles like a precious treasure, and hurried home.
Tong Shu was quite happy. She and Wang Jie each carried a pig leg. Although the pig wasn't fed with concentrated feed and wasn't very big, it was clear that it was a free-range pig raised in the mountains. The muscle texture in the cross-section looked very beautiful. She weighed the pig leg in her hand and returned to the car with a smile.
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