Last night, Zhou Chenyu lay in bed with her hair still damp and fell asleep without realizing it. As the night passed, the blankets covering her felt chilly, as if covered with a thin layer of frost, and she was woken up by the cold early this morning.
Achoo!
Zhou Chenyu sneezed, saw the open window, covered her stuffy nose, and walked to the window.
She stood there, having spent the past ten days deep in the rocky mountains. The lush summer scenery outside the window had been replaced by a desolate sight. The leaves and bamboo leaves had turned from emerald green to withered yellow, one after another falling from the branches and onto the ground.
A gust of cold wind blew into the house. She rubbed her arms, put on another layer of clothing, and went outside. She inhaled the cool air through her nose and sneezed loudly.
Li Xiuju was busy preparing breakfast in the kitchen when she heard the noise. She poked her head out and asked, "Have you caught a cold?"
"It seems a bit cold." Zhou Chenyu shivered twice and slipped into the kitchen. The rice in the hot pot had been cooking for more than half an hour, turning into a soft, white, and smooth thick porridge.
Following behind Li Xiuju, she sighed, "It's so good to be at home. There's breakfast waiting for me as soon as I wake up, and I don't have to worry about what to eat."
Li Xiuju smiled, wrung out the water from the dried vegetables, chopped them into small pieces, and mixed them into the porridge with the chopped lean meat and shredded ginger. "It's getting cold, so I'm making you a dried vegetable and meat porridge. It'll warm you up. Is Baoyu awake yet? Tell him to get up early, or the porridge won't taste good if it gets cold."
"I don't see him, I'll go check."
Zhou Chenyu walked to Baoyu's room. Baoyu's room was at the very end, and usually only a little light would shine in around noon. Right now, the room was still pitch black, and nothing could be seen.
"Baoyu, get up and have breakfast." She called twice from outside the door, and Baoyu responded with a heavy nasal tone, saying that he would get up right away. Soon the room became quiet again.
During the hunting trip, Baoyu did far more work than she did.
"You must be exhausted, so I'll let you sleep a little longer." Zhou Chenyu closed the door and quietly left the room. After washing up, Baoyu got up, and it would be a while before breakfast.
Zhou Chenyu walked into the house where the pheasants and rabbits were kept. The rabbits were chewing on tender grass, revealing their two big front teeth, while the pheasants, having eaten their fill, were huddled in a corner, curled up in a ball.
She bent down and counted carefully, "One, two, three... eight rabbits, twelve pheasants, two to keep at home. Each pheasant can be sold for at least eighty coins, each rabbit forty coins, and the wild deer can probably be sold for about one tael. So all together, we can earn about two taels of silver."
“Not bad, not bad. It’s hard work to earn this money, but the returns are high.” Zhou Chenyu covered his hands happily. “After selling this batch of prey, we’ll go hunting twice more at Stone Mountain. All the money we save will be enough to get through the winter and have a good New Year.”
Li Xiuju brought out a bowl of freshly cooked dried vegetable and lean meat porridge, appetizing spicy and sour green beans, and steamed sweet potatoes. "Chenyu, Baoyu, you two come and have breakfast."
"They're here, they're here."
Zhou Chenyu walked over and sat down. Her palms, which were a little cold, warmed up instantly when she touched the bowl full of porridge.
She scooped up a small spoonful, took a small sip, and the hot porridge stimulated her taste buds, leaving her completely bewildered and unable to taste what dried vegetable porridge was supposed to taste like.
The porridge was too hot, so I could only stir it with a spoon and drink it slowly, sip by sip.
Although Baoyu had washed his face, he was still drowsy. He took a sip of the porridge, and as soon as it entered his mouth, his muddled brain was completely scalded awake. He stared wide-eyed and gasped for breath, "Hoo hoo, Mother, this dried vegetable is delicious. Please prepare some for me next time we go into the mountains."
The siblings ate a lot, which gave Li Xiuju energy to work. She nodded happily, "There are plenty of dried vegetables to dry, Mom will pack some for you."
After the family had breakfast in the courtyard and rested for a while, Li Xiuju found several large bamboo cages, and Zhou Chenyu and Baoyu loaded all the pheasants, rabbits, and deer onto the car and set off for the city.
The animals on the cart were bouncing around restlessly. Zhou Chenyu looked around and decided to stuff some grass into their food so that it would both soothe them and add some weight.
But since autumn arrived, the white mist lingering among the green mountains has decreased, and the wild grass on both sides of the road has withered and turned yellow without the nourishment of water. Within sight, only the grass by the ditches and the rice in the fields still look as green as in summer.
"I'll go get a stack of grass, you wait here." Zhou Chenyu lifted her skirt and rushed down the slope.
"Sister, be careful." Baoyu was waiting up there when a rough-looking man with a dark face and white teeth emerged from the rice paddy across the ditch. It was Longzi, Huzi's older brother, one of the few remaining unmarried men in the village.
Baoyu saw the mud on his hands and pointed it at Zhou Chenyu, then shouted anxiously, "Sister, watch out behind you! Someone's going to throw mud at you!"
Zhou Chenyu looked over, but the man didn't dare to throw it at her. He just smiled wickedly and said, "Oh, I was wondering why a pretty girl suddenly appeared in Zhoujia Village. At first glance, isn't she my sister Chenyu? Sigh, I was so happy for nothing. I thought God had eyes and was finally going to send me a wife."
Zhou Chenyu had dealt with this person a few times. Although he wasn't a bad person, he wasn't honest either. He was full of tricks and always tried to take advantage of any young and pretty woman he saw.
Someone as easily embarrassed as Zhou Wanqiu blushed when he teased her.
But Zhou Chenyu wouldn't give him a kind look, and she shut him up several times. He thought he would learn a lesson, but he didn't expect him to still be the same.
Zhou Chenyu was too lazy to reply to him. She hugged the wild grass tightly and walked onto the main road. "Baoyu, let's go."
"Sister, slow down." While the dragon prince was looking down and not paying attention, Baoyu secretly grabbed a handful of mud, rolled it into a ball, and threw it into the rice paddy.
From the rice paddies came the dragon prince's furious curses, "Baoyu, you come back here!"
"You old man, you can't keep your mouth shut! If you dare to bully my sister again, I'll smash you to death!" Baoyu stuck out his tongue and rolled his eyes at the other side.
Zhou Chenyu held onto the cart and burst out laughing.
Baoyu rubbed his hands together in satisfaction, turned around, saw her smile, and asked in surprise, "Sister, in the past, when Brother Longzi scolded you, you would never be soft-hearted, and you would even be more ruthless than me. Why did you let him go today?"
Zhou Chenyu's smile froze as she looked at his strange gaze. She blinked and said, "To deal with such a shameless scoundrel, just ignore him. Why bother arguing with him?"
Baoyu smiled and shrugged. "I don't think that's the reason."
He smiled and widened his eyes, raising an eyebrow slyly to indicate, "Sister, are you so happy because you're about to see Chief Yang?"
"Did I?" Zhou Chenyu asked herself. Baoyu glared at her, a clear threat, determined to get to the bottom of it.
Zhou Chenyu's lips curled up playfully, and a bright smile quickly spread across her face. A fragrance of osmanthus wafted in the breeze. "Hmm, where is that osmanthus scent coming from?"
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